Doctor Who: The Space Pirates

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The Space Pirates is the sixth serial of Season 6 of the classic Doctor Who series. Originally broadcast in six weekly episodes from 8 March to 12 April 1969 It was written by Robert Holmes; directed by Michael Hart. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, Gordon Gostelow as Milo Clancey, Jack May as General Hermack, Lisa Daniely as Madeleine Issigri, and Dudley Foster as Caven.

The TARDIS arrives amid raids on space beacons, where pirates blow the stations apart to steal precious argonite and vanish into the void. Caught on a drifting fragment, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe join forces with the eccentric prospector Milo and get pulled between the stern Space Corps and a powerful mining company with secrets of its own. The Doctor follows clues through wreckage and hidden bases, while Jamie and Zoe brave tight corridors and tense standoffs.

Due to missing episodes, most of the serial survives only in audio and stills and telesnaps, with Episode 2 the only one fully preserved.

Episode 1

In deep space, a chain of argonite navigation beacons hangs like pearls. Explosions ripple along one; pirates detach a segment and tug it away to strip the precious metal. The TARDIS lands on the next beacon moments before fresh charges are set. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe step into a silent service corridor as the structure shudders.

Below, General Hermack of the Space Corps and his aide Major Warne track the sabotage and fix suspicion on a notorious independent miner, Milo Clancey, whose battered ship, the LIZ 79, always seems near trouble. On the beacon, demolition cutters bite through girder joints. The Doctor notices shaped charges and understands too late: the beacon is being carved apart around them. Emergency bulkheads slam; the section with the travellers shears free and drifts, air bleeding, comms dead.

A shadow passes the porthole (pirate tugs) but they steer for richer pickings. Hermack orders patrols to seize Clancey on sight. In the drifting cell, the Doctor calculates a way to nudge their orbit with the meagre thrusters, buying time before the oxygen runs out. Jamie braces a hatch; Zoe keeps figures straight and panic down. Far off, a small, ugly freighter changes course toward them. Its pilot grumbles and tips his hat: Milo Clancey.

Episode 2

Clancey grapples the beacon cell aboard the LIZ 79 and is immediately suspicious of his “passengers,” figuring them for rivals or decoys. He locks them in, sets a course for Ta (the Issigri mining world) and resumes his running argument with the Space Corps, who hail him and threaten arrest. On Ta, Madeleine Issigri runs her father’s company alone since Dom Issigri vanished years ago.

She pretends not to know why beacons are vanishing; in truth, she has let a smooth “contractor,” Caven, use the facility, believing it simple smuggling. Caven is the pirate king, his men cutting beacons to feed Issigri’s ore cutters by night. He plans to keep Madeleine pliant and the Corps misdirected by pinning everything on Clancey. The Doctor talks his way out of Clancey’s lockup, wins him over with a quick fix to a balky valve, and hears about the bad blood between Clancey and the Issigris.

On approach, Space Corps fighters swoop; Clancey dives into canyons to shake them, then lands anyway, stubborn as rock. In the tunnels, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe explore and find beacon plating stacked like lumber. Pirates spring an ambush; Caven smiles and has them marched to a cell. In a sealed chamber nearby, a gaunt man stirs: Dom Issigri, alive and hidden.

Episode 3

Hermack, convinced Clancey is the mastermind, throws a net around Ta and authorises a boarding. Caven leans into the lie, seeding evidence that points to the LIZ 79 and feeding the Corps false sightings to pull them off-base. Madeleine entertains Hermack in her office, cool and cooperative, while privately pressing Caven to leave before troops arrive.

He laughs and shows her “insurance”: Dom, chained in a back room, declared dead years ago but kept to guarantee her silence. She reels; Caven warns that any appeal to the Corps means Dom dies. In the pirate pens, the Doctor maps patrol routes, Jamie tests hinges, and Zoe listens to the vibration of hidden conveyors moving beacon metal under their feet. Clancey stomps in with bluster and a concealed cutter; between his theatrics and the Doctor’s timing, they break out, rescuing Zoe as guards scramble.

Warne’s squad lands at the wrong warehouse and finds nothing; Caven’s men stage a firefight to make Hermack sure he’s on the right scent. A sealed shuttle lifts with stolen argonite; the Doctor notes its trajectory and mutters that pirates always return to the same well. Madeleine slips to Dom’s cell, swears to find a way out, and realises at last the scale of Caven’s operation.

Episode 4

Caven tightens the screws. He orders beacon raids accelerated and sets a trap for the Space Corps: a mined cargo lighter broadcast as a distress call. Hermack, stung by failures, takes the bait; a patrol cutter is nearly destroyed before Warne yanks it clear. On Ta, the Doctor convinces Clancey to stop running and start sabotaging; they rig the ore cutters to jam under a load of argonite, choking the pirate line.

Zoe raids a terminal and traces flight plans to a canyon-side hangar where Caven’s tug fleet nests between sorties. Jamie and Clancey bluff past gate arms as maintenance men and plant charges. The Doctor confronts Madeleine, laying out Caven’s lies; she snaps that she already knows, then confesses Dom is alive. The Doctor promises to free him. Caven arrives with guards, too amused to kill them yet.

He strands the Doctor and Zoe aboard an automated shuttle set to rendezvous with a booby-trapped beacon husk; one spark will turn them and the evidence to vapour. In orbit, the shuttle locks onto its path. The Doctor overrides guidance with a jury-rig and side-slips into a decaying loop that the pirates won’t notice: yet. On the ground, Madeline hesitates at a crossroads: warn Hermack and risk Dom, or keep silent and lose everything.

Episode 5

Conscience wins. Madeleine signals the Space Corps in code, telling Hermack where to strike and that Clancey is innocent. Caven intercepts part of the message and retaliates by moving Dom to the hangar as a human shield while he packs a freighter with argonite for a last, big run. The Doctor and Zoe drop from the shuttle on thrusters and sprint through the canyon to join Jamie and Clancey as explosions thump from their planted charges.

Pirate tugs scramble amid smoke and falling rock. Warne’s squad hits the perimeter; the fight becomes a three-way knot (Corps versus pirates, pirates versus saboteurs) while Caven drags Madeleine at gunpoint to the freighter ramp. The Doctor finds Dom, cuts his chains, and urges him and Clancey to settle old wounds later.

Zoe kills a launch interlock with a handful of pulled fuses; a tug’s engines flame out and crash rather than lift. Caven grabs Zoe as a hostage and backs into the freighter, thumbing a detonator tied to charges in the hangar. He wants a corridor cleared and a free sky. The Doctor raises empty hands and talks, buying seconds as Hermack’s men edge closer. The detonator’s light winks, impatient. Everyone is one bad breath from disaster.

Episode 6

The Doctor moves first. He flicks a switch he palmed from Zoe’s sabotage kit, shorting Caven’s detonator. Jamie rips Zoe free; Clancey swings a spanner; Caven fires and misses as the freighter lurches on half-cut lines. Space Corps marines pour in; pirates break and run. Caven flees to the cockpit and hammers launch; the freighter lifts dirty, dragging a fuel hose.

The Doctor yells, and Hermack cuts power to the gantry. Sparks race the hose like a fuse. The freighter becomes a bloom of fire over the canyon, and a rain of hot argonite hisses into the sand. In the stunned quiet, Dom and Madeleine embrace; Clancey mutters that a man could die of sentiment and then grins when Dom clasps his arm: partnership restored. Hermack, chastened, apologises to Clancey and thanks the travellers, gruff but genuine. The Corps begins clearing the hangar and towing beacon segments home to rebuild the chain.

The Doctor warns that beacons are only as safe as the people who watch them; Hermack promises a tighter net. Clancey invites everyone to share stew on the LIZ 79; Zoe diplomatically declines. As Ta’s dunes cool, the TARDIS stands in the shade of a silent ore tower. The travellers step inside, and with a sigh of old engines, slip out of a sky suddenly free of pirates.

Themes

As a frontier space-western, The Space Pirates lands in the lower–mid tier of Season 6. It is well short of the scale and snap of The Invasion and the icy drive of The Seeds of Death, but more distinctive than its reputation suggests. Its model work, lonely outpost mood, and eccentric tone give it a shaggy charm, even if the pacing can meander.

Measured against its neighbours, it’s a curio: tidier than The Dominators, far less audacious than The Mind Robber, and a long way from the epochal heights of The War Games, yet still an atmospheric detour with a personality of its own.

In the series tapestry, it follows The Seeds of Death and points directly toward The War Games, closing the trio’s wandering run with a last deep-space yarn. As an early Robert Holmes outing, you can see seeds that later bloom in the roguish schemes and corporate cynicism of Carnival of Monsters, The Ribos Operation, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and The Caves of Androzani.

Its Earth-Empire bureaucracy and commerce-choked space lanes look ahead to Colony in Space, The Mutants, and Frontier in Space, while its outlaw-on-the-trade-routes vibe finds distant echoes in The Pirate Planet and Nightmare of Eden. Modest in ambition but rich in texture, it serves as a stepping-stone between sleek sieges and the grand reckoning to come.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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