Wednesday 20 July 2011

240 The Space Pirates: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Space Pirates: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 240
STORY NUMBER: 049
TRANSMITTED: 22 March 1969
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Michael Hart
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Space Pirates

As you'll know I try to watch/listen to an episode of Who every day, and then write about it. Sometimes I'll do more than one and that's why at time of writing, I'm 50 episodes in front (Enemy of the World 4 went up today) Having watched Space Pirates 2 at the weekend and thoroughly despised the experience, a train journey on a Bank Holiday Monday has given me the opportunity to deal with the remaining four episode of this story and the last four missing episodes. We start with Philip on Swindon station and Jamie lying on the floor.....

Clancy has just stunned Jamie: he rescues them from the station segment, deploying copper needles which immobilise Major Warne's ship. Zoe works out where the space pirates went: The planet Ta where Clancy wishes to hide under the nose of Madeline Issigri. Pirate leader Craven orders his subordinate Dervish to route the space station segments to Lobos, where Clancy's headquarters is located, to throw suspicion on him. Once on Ta The Doctor, Jamie & Zoe leave the ship but are chased by pirate guards and end up falling down a chasm.

Oooooh Clancy is annoying, That accent is awful & he's heavily featured in this episode which combined with the rather rough quality of the audio recordings it makes it a job to follow what's going on. Thankfully I've found the scripts online!

Not a lot of the cast of this story have Who form. Donald Gee playing Major Warne in this Troughton's penultimate story later returns as Eckersley in The Monster of Peladon which is Pertwee's penultimate story. By far the most recognisable face here is George Layton (2nd March 1943) playing Technician Penn. Famed for his role as medical student Paul Collier in Doctor in the House he's got an extensive TV CV both writing and performing. He memorably appears as Australian Ray Stackpole in two episodes of the Sweeney.

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