The Space Pirates [TV/1969.3.8 ~ 4.12]

(poster by Oliver Arkinstall-Jones)

★★★☆☆

  Honestly? This thing is pretty enjoyable once you make peace with the fact that a much more entertaining serial with a similar premise/plot structure exists, Frontier in Space (made four years after). Patrick Troughton, Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines are such an assured team that they make even the most uneventful of scenes somehow fun to watch. That's the magic of The Space Pirates -- it feels as if it's barely holding onto its six-episode structure (it could easily have been two episodes shorter), and it's your typical classic-series runaround which is more intent on exploring the possibilities of certain topics as drama rather than making something necessarily good out of it... but in a way, that all adds to its charm. 

  Maybe it's in the fact that it's a Robert Holmes script. The man simply cannot write boring characters for his life. Even in his most drab scripts, there's at least one character that manages to take your attention by the lapels, and The Space Pirates happens to have (in my opinion) one of Holmes' most memorable creations: Milo Clancey. Gordon Gostelow knows exactly what the script requires from him and gives an honest-to-god ham extravaganza of a performance, and it's glorious. In the pantheon of companions who never were, this gun-carrying old fogey spacefarer is sitting at the very top. He makes the serial immensely more enjoyable; I dread to think how it would've been had Clancey not been there. Maybe then I'd have shared the public's sentiment in calling it one of the classic series' worst ventures. 

  Even without Clancey, though, I can't see myself actively disliking The Space Pirates. It's overlong and it has quite a few boring spots, but the entire thing's steeped in this unique sci-fi atmosphere of the 60s. Add the general structure and character tropes of a classic western to the mix, and we have ourself a pretty intriguing piece. The Doctor and his friends are less active in the story than they usually are, sure, but that doesn't mean that the story itself is terrible or anything. It's just a very clichéd adventure tale, albeit one told with style and a certain amount of confidence and competence. No way on Earth does it deserve the reputation it has.