The Space Pirates

Somewhere in space a spacefaring society's future depends on the mining and use of a mineral called argonite; the material is touted as almost indestructible and is used to make space vehicles. A group of space pirates have begun a campaign of theft, blowing apart navigational beacons and salvaging the argonite for their own purposes. Space security is onto them and is working on a plan, but prospector Milo Clancy is also investigating in his own beat up old ship, and on board one of the sections of a recently attacked space beacon he finds the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. They have their own interest in the argonite pirates: the TARDIS is on another section of the beacon and without it they are stuck in this time zone.

I wouldn't say this is the best one out there, but visually all I have to go on in episode 2 where most of the action takes place inside a stuffy section of space beacon and various command bridges of various spaceships. The whole thing has echoes of an American western drama with Clancy more or less just being a prospecter with his claim being jumped, right down to his costume which is at odds with the futuristic costumes of the rest of the contemporary cast. Although, I don't know if anyone else saw it but I am sure General Hermack isn't wearing pants when he is in the office of Issigri Mining. Puts one in mind of characters on Futurama.

For a 6 part story there's not a lot happening; there's more running around in corridors in an old mine than necessary for a start. The V-ship of the local military is no starship Enterprise and seems to take forever to get anywhere to be of any use to anyone. The effect isn't bad though, nor is that of it's minnow-class fighters; I would have liked to have seen more of the ships but with five of the episodes missing it's all about using the imagination.

The good news, though, is that this is is last story to be missing anything; from here on in all the televised episodes exist and can be watched to present day. The BBC Radio Collection has fulfilled a vital role in enjoying the first years of the series - without the audio CDs there would be little means to enjoy it all save for the novelizations and the jumbled missing episodes compilations. The success of the BBC Radio Collection would make the future for Big Finish a worthwhile gamble; if fans would listen to audio of televised episodes, then they would certainly be interested in original cast recordings of new material.

This would be the second last adventure for the current TARDIS crew, with the next one seeing them part ways, but that finale is still some ways off given the amount of new material that has been made to go in this space. Starting with a novel.

NEXT EPISODE; THE MENAGERIE