The Smugglers episode 1 discussion:
R: Wow, this cliff notes version of Treasure Island is really weird, Joel.
H: Hello everyone, welcome to Season 4.
R: Use the beeps! <reference to Captain Pike from the classic Star Trek episode “The Cage”>
H: So, Cornwall, 17th century. Smugglers. Pirates.
M: Woohoo!
Sp: And a ship’s captain who looks like Colonel Kadophi. Hartnell’s got his coot on. I’m afraid he’ll run out of coot points for the season at this pace.
M: And Ben was without his shirt on?
H: Eye candy?
M: Yes.
Cz: Boobies?
R: The Austrialian censors cut out some strange bits.
M: Yeah, what do they got against horses.
H: The death of church warden was cut for obvious reasons, but I don’t know about the rest of it.
K: Footage probably came from a different source.
H: I believe this is our first story that actually has telesnaps. The Savages did as well, but we’re finally into the telesnaps era, which makes the recons easier to watch in some ways. A pro photographer took pictures of the monitor. There were some in earlier stories, but these later episodes have a lot more.
E: I just can’t get over the fact that Polly was all “WEEEE” on the beach.
H: Maybe if we’d seen her jumping from rock to rock it would have made more sense.
Cz: I don’t even say wee.
E: It was made funnier by the guy who was just standing there being all serious, and she’s all “yay!”
H: Ben is a navy man, and he’s worried about getting back to his ship on time or he’ll be AWOL.
M: And Polly is a party girl.
Cz: She’s a party girl?
H: She took Dodo out to that party in the last story. Anyway… oh and yeah, everyone say Happy Birthday to Ronelyn!
K: Of course, by the time we post this it will be quite a bit later.
H: We’re back to historical. Historically, the TARDIS project really likes historicals. What did everybody think?
Cz: What was the story? Who’s the guy?
MS: It was not good at the end because they went to jail for NOTHING!
Cz: I agree.
E: They were framed!
M: I can see why the recon put the documentary at the beginning. The storyline seemed to rely on you knowing some background.
H: With the exception of the mention of Avery’s treasure, these are all fictional characters. But yeah, having some knowledge of smuggling in Cornwall would probably help.
P: Yeah, I was wondering.
Sc: Cornwall is a legendary site for smugglers and pirates.
K: Arrr!
MS: of the Caribbean.
Sc: Well, it’s possible they did have boats. They did move around.
MS: Dunnana
R: I’m going to have a hard time watching a storyline where the villain is captain glavegisarmglave
M: And 90% of cigarette smuggling between Canada and the US is in Cornwall, Ontario.
H: I’m not surprised.
Sc: So, a positive thing about this story is no theme song. I enjoyed it.
Sp: They got the exposition out of the way quickly at the beginning.
R: “Gather round maties and I’ll tell you a tale. A crazy old Doctor and his bevy of males!”
P: None of the males are named Beverly.
M: But if they were from the 17th century, they wouldn’t know the difference.
H: As I was going to say 5 minutes ago, I believe this might be the first time we’ve heard the Doctor voluntarily admit that he doesn’t not know where he is going.
Sp: I thought we hear that once a season.
H: He’s been brow beaten into admitting it, but doesn’t directly say it.
<derailment discussion of Daleks in time machine hot tubs.>
M: AGITATE! AGITATE!
H: So, getting back on topic. I really enjoyed this episode. I thought the recon was good and nice and clear.
P: It was better that usual. Although they kept spelling things wrong with that British spelling.
<groans.>
Sp: So there was some minor deal made about Eye-Candy about “don’t eat the food” and she’s going to drink the water. She should no better about drinking water in questionable places.
H: It was brandy she didn’t not want to drink and the Doctor did not want to drink it either.
M: It flowed the whole thing of the Doctor trying to appear a gentleman and fit in.
Sc: Yes, I thought he was trying to calm things down and get out as fast as possible, and that added a sense of danger to the story for me. He realized this was a bad place.
Sp: He realized he was surrounded by… sailors.
M: He was careful to stress that they hadn’t seen anything or anyone to everyone.
K: I thought Hartnell’s bodydouble in the wagon was very amusing.
H: I’m wondering if that was refilmed.
K: By the recon folks? I thought so at first as well, but there was one actor who looked just like the bald guy.
R: And it really looked like the spot that “bob” took the horse from.
H: It looked like a guy in a bad bald cap to me. I’ll have to look it up for next week.
Sp: Is this the second or third time the TARDIS has been stranded by high tide?
H: At least the second.
M: The Time Meddler.
H: The TARDIS is something that they use to get from place to place, but not something they use within the stories.
P: Oh my, no music!
H: That’s true.
M: No attack of soundtrack.
P: First of all “Do you see the scanner up there, it’s called a scanner…” I caught that line and I was all “Wow, coot”
H: That line mess up could have been a result of Hartnell’s health problems.
E: Department of redundancy department.
MS: At least they can talk, but they DON’T MAKE THEM MOVING!
Sp: You just don’t get it, do you son?
M: It was really hard to get the actors to stand that still in every scene.
P: And then move 10 feet in one second.
Cz: This episode was getting even more like the regular <modern> Doctor Who episodes that I’m used to watching. It was really cool.
H: In what way? Why do you think that?
Cz: They were like not in a jungle. And they had like wide moving backshots. They were in a place.
H: Location filming?
Cz: Yeah. And the Doctor being all more… the fact that he was like “I don’t know how to control the TARDIS.”
Sp: He’s resigned. He’s given up pretending that he can fix or control the TARDIS and thinking he can get away from companions ever.
M: It was like “I don’t want to get attached again, but if I don’t follow these people they will die.”
MS: Ben without shirt. Illegal.
P: No, boys can go without shirts. Boys are ugly. Girls have to wear shirts, cause they’re pretty.
K: No shirt, no shoes…
Sp: No time travel!
M: Wait a minute! I object to the tone of this conversation. Boys are not ugly.
H: Your objection has been noted.
Sp: Polly’s a pretty ugly boy.
K: So you say.
Sp: I was really sad that they introduced this really rich NPC and then killed him off immediately. He had a tragic back story, interacted well with the party, and then offed him.
Cz: Did he give the Doctor something?
H: He told the Doctor something. I believe it was three names.
MS: I want some Daleks.
K: Not for a while, sorry.
M: The corpulent squire’s costume was FABULOUS.
H: It really, really was. And not that historically outrageous either.
E: I wasn’t really sure what to think of this one, as I haven’t been to the project in a while. I did think it was pretty interesting though. One thing that really caught me was about the tide coming in was “is the TARDIS going to sink or float?”
H: It also happened in the first story of the last season, the Time Meddler. The TARDIS just sits there under water.
P: Do we ever see someone pick up the TARDIS?
K: Marco Polo.
P: So why can’t the ocean?
H: Plot.
M: Or he put on the parking break this time.
Sc: So, I guess I liked Ben and Polly chemistry in this episode. They seemed to be working really well. This is their first original story arch. They were in the War Machines, but they are really companions now. And the story as a whole felt very fast paced and exciting, which is a good sign for Doctor Who.
Sp: Yeah, they packed an awful lot in there. Reminded the viewers of how the universe works, established they were in a new place, new companion vibe, new NPC, killed off new NPC, split the party, got half the party in danger, introduced a new new villan, and then ended on a cliffhanger. I’m exhausted.
Sc: Is this a new writer?
H: Yes. Brian Hayles. We’ll see more of him as the project continues.
R: I actually did kind of enjoy this. I thought the writing was good overall. Every once in a while I would go “Treasure Island” – they lifted huge segments of this from Treasure Island.
H: Not quite. They lifted it from a different, slightly earlier.
R: Well, I’m enjoying “Treasure Mainland” very much.
K: Arrr. Ahoy maties. Pirates, cool. Doctor in a wagon, very silly. No idea how they’re going to resolve this one, which is cool. Not predictable. Well, I knew church guy was going to die, but otherwise not predictable.
H: Well, an interesting note for current Doctor Who is that the Avery mentioned in this story is the real life Captain Avery that last season’s (2011) pirate story is based on in “Curse of the Black Spot.” An interesting historical thing in how it ties in together.
P: And interesting note is how the church guy asks the Doctor if he knows him… you never know that it could be in the Doctor’s future and in church guy’s past.
H: True. You never know!
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