The Space Pirates (1969) Review

I don't have a clue...

The Space Pirates is a mess. It has no idea what it wants to be and seems to go in completely random directions until ending on a complete cliche(done badly): a ticking bomb.

 PLOT

Sometime In The Future™, space pirates are attacking navigational beacons for a rare mineral, so the Space Corps' patrol, led by the amazingly incompetent General Hermack goes to track them down i.e. blame lazy bum Milo Clancey for all his problems.

Things only... stay pretty much the same when the TARDIS crew gets mixed up with old Clancey for a Wild West-style runaround/space opera/Sherlock Holmes mystery/action thriller.

Believe it or not, it all concludes with Jamie saying: "Oh no, not again!" and everybody laughing.

CHARACTERS

Patrick Troughton is very subdued here. I presume he does his usual slapstick, but the recons don't translate it very well.

Frazer Hines gives an unusually whiny performance as Jamie. Shouldn't he know better than to disbelieve the Doctor's abilities?

The only noteworthy things about Zoe this time is that her skirt length should be elementary for all women and I liked the continuity with her not knowing about candles(someday we need a Doctor Who story that reveals how the 21st century ended up so not-futuristic).

The guest stars are all bad. Hermack is a silly-accented buffoon, Clancey's character is cliche beyond belief and Issigri's headgear has to be seen to be believed.

Caven and Dervish are kind of fun to watch, but that's about it.

NOTES

*The scene where the Doctor has to find the right sound in order to escape a cell is either an outstanding coincidence or Robert Holmes saw The Power Of The Daleks and wanted to give his own little tribute.

*Most of the dialogue in this story is so incomprehensible I'm gonna have to read a transcript before moving on. I think the last time I did that was for The Highlanders.

*Oh great, the quotation marks in the titles are back.

*Very good incidental music. Way too atmospheric for this nonsense.

*I liked the 2001: A Space Odyssey-style depiction of space.

*What pirate would kidnap his associate's father and lock him up for three years just in case he might need leverage? Imagine Jack Sparrow kidnapping Governor Swann and holding him in the bottom of The Black Pearl just in case Elizabeth was gonna turn him in one day!

*Zoe's math looked way too simple for someone projecting space trajectories and so forth.

CONCLUSION

Worthless.