Hello everyone, the Historian here, and we are excited tonight! Admittedly, not because we’re reaching the stunning climax of The Space Pirates (we’re more relieved than excited about that), but because we have reached…the final reconstructed episode of the Project! Yes, we are definitely in the home stretch now, and, starting next week, it’ll be existing episodes all the rest of the way. Obviously, I have to give a shout-out and thank you to the good people at Loose Cannon Productions who have done an amazing job with each and every missing episode. Truly a labor of love, done in their spare time. I’m sad their website seems to have disappeared, so I can’t steer you towards their excellent work. Poke around youtube or elsewhere online and you’ll be in for a treat.
Now, without further ado, let’s get to the final reconstructed episode! This episode first aired 12 April 1969.
H = Historian
K = Ketina
R = Ronelyn
Sp = Spoo
P = Photobug
A = Altair
E = Ezio
Cz = Cz
M = Mr. Mother (during the discussion)
—-
K: It’s OVER!
Sp: <cracked voice> we made it!
R: The Doctor falls lifeless to the floor. Or, you might say, inanimate.
<groans>
K: Doctor quote tonight, “I think the remote control will be probably somewhere in the computer somewhere.” Clearly the writers weren’t paying much attention. I’m surprised Troughton got through that line without fixing it.
H: Most likely it was Troughton who was not paying attention to his line. And he did fix the location later.
Sp: I think, for the first time in a while, possibly for the first time ever, we even got some indirect commentary from Loose Cannon themselves on the quality of this one. Because there were long stretches where even they didn’t have anything to say. I’m thinking of the compelling Doctor in the radiation suit scene.
H: They did say it in the caption. But then it was done and the scene went on.
Sp: For like another 2 minutes. I mean dang, really! Red wire, blue wire? That’s how they were going to end this? They might as well have had Pat say he was three days from retirement. Whoops! Spoilers!
H: 10 weeks.
Sp: Time has not meaning here.
P: Sure it does. It’s the meaning of the whole series.
K: <raises eyebrow> Anyway. This one was a weak ending.
H: Actually, I thought this was one of the better episodes of the story.
Sp: <gestures> low bar.
H: Okay. I thought the reconstruction was fun, because they did all kinds of little tricks during it. From the Doctor in a still animation early on, which was pretty cool, to that really nice bit on the bridge of the space control ship where the foreground was a still and the background was moving footage. I thought that was really neat.
E: I thought that was cool.
H: And I enjoyed this episode more. Which leaves me to continue to say that I might have enjoyed the story more if we’d actually had full episodes. Not saying it would be a great story, but I think I would have enjoyed it more. I did like bits and pieces of this episode though, and I liked how it was slightly more nuanced in the ending than it was expecting it to be a couple of episodes ago. Back when we thought Madeline was E-VIL!
K: Yeah. We were mostly wrong about her being a bad guy. And the recon did some fun stuff.
H: Nice for our final one.
R: Can I make a last Australian censor joke?
H: I don’t know if that’s where the footage came from, but please, be my guest.
R: Last Australian censor joke.
K: <pause>
R: That’s it.
E: <slow applause>
H: Moving on.
P: Deep sigh.
H: You haven’t said anything.
P: I did enjoy all of our bit actors showed up on one last time. I’m sure that blew up the actor’s budget for this episode. Of course we did see lots of nice models, which we did comment every other time, but they’re just not as impressive anymore. I guess we just didn’t have a lot of closeups in the recon. We did have 60’s era music here.
K: Same as we’ve had every week of this story, though.
P: I did enjoy the bomb disassemble sequences. Which I guess we got somehow?
H: I honestly didn’t do the research for this story. By the time we got there…I just didn’t care.
P: I actually, honestly look forward to not seeing another recon. I really value what they brought to us, which is the rest of the story in an arc, but the quality of the last recon is nowhere near some of the better recons. I’m not saying they didn’t do a good job. I just didn’t come off very well.
H: I think it was one of the earlier ones.
K: I hope it was one of the earlier ones.
H: Well, they didn’t have a lot to work with.
Sp: And either way, we need to be…
P: Respectful?
Sp: Yes. Because, for all that this seemed long and painful to us, imagine how much longer they took, watching all of this, stopping, rewinding, finding the right picture. Putting it all together. In assembling this, Loose Cannon probably watched this story about 6 or 7 times, at least.
R: Many Bothans died to bring us this recon.
K: Ugh!
Sp: So just as an endurance test, above and beyond any technical achievement, this is impressive. And, if it’s one of the earlier ones, that they could keep going after making this one.
P: Amazing.
K: Ugh!
H: Something that I recall, that I was going to say, was there’s another reason to that this is one of the better episodes of the story. The Doctor actually did something that mattered to the story!
<Mr Mother comes in>
P: Rewired things?
Sp: Slowly.
H: Not only did he defuse a bomb, but he managed to take care of the remote control thing.
K: That was Jamie shooting at it.
H: But he rewired it, and got the thing working. I honestly think that this is the only episode of this story where, if the Doctor hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have gone the same way.
K: Yeah. But this one still really did not feel like Doctor Who.
Sp: Closer to Doctor WHY!
R: I liked the implication that Madeline was just going to buy her way out of a piracy charge.
H: It wasn’t quite the implication I got, but it’s a fair interpretation.
K: She helped them in the end. She’ll end up in witness protection, or something.
P: Change her name to Roger. Jolly.
Sp: I have a perfect witness protection for her.
K: Just take the hairmet off.
<laughter>
Sp: No. Sequel to this episode. “Where no one will ever find her.”
P: Just hide where he dad was.
Sp: Yeah. Her dad has got to be, just completely lost by this point. He was already babbling in a corner for however long he was locked up in that hidden library thingy. And then severe oxygen deprivation.
H: The thing is, it wasn’t even a hidden library. It was his study that Madeline just never went into. She thought she’d locked the door, and no one was allowed in. And that’s where they hid him.
K: I don’t understand why he didn’t just try to break the door down. Or scream or something.
R: It was almost Dalek level planning.
H: Oh comeon. If it was Dalek level planning, it would have been somewhat convoluted, and probably wouldn’t have worked. In this case, it was entirely dependent on the stupidity of other people, and worked perfectly.
R: “I’m going to lock your father up in YOUR broom closet. Where I’m sure you’ll never look for him.”
Sp: How long had Madeline and Company been there by the time we’d entered this story.
R: <Clancy voice> “Well, it must be near on 55 years.”
Sp: But Clancy, what does Pepperidge Farm do?
R: <Clancy voice> “Not a damn thing! I mine all them cookies!”
H: Do you mean how long had it been since Dom had disappeared? Or do you mean how long Madeline had been on Taa?
Sp: <nods> Yes.
H: Well, Madeline had been on Taa for many, many years. I think…I’m trying to remember from the story. I think it had been something like 5 years since Dom disappeared, and she thought Milo had killed him. But I can’t remember for sure.
<discussion on if the hairmet was the main entertaining aspect of this story. Mixed opinion on that one. I think it was – K>
Sp: Well, then there you are. See, you know how, after you’ve been living in a house for a really long time. There’s just some rooms you don’t go into.
P: But eventually you get paroled.
K: I would think she would have checked the library just to make sure there weren’t mice or something.
M: I didn’t even see the thing, but I know she was traumatized about that room when she was a little girl. And wouldn’t go in there unless someone forced her too. There, now I’ve got a comment in.
R: Oh god. Now I have this terrifying image in my mind of Dom in a dress screaming “Don’t look at me!”
Sp: All of this would have been more compelling that what we saw.
<discussion derails for a bit>
Sp: Meanwhile, in deep space!
R: <sings the opera howl of the opening title displays and when the V41L0 appears>
K: That’s the other good thing about this story. The name of the ship. I am totally naming a ship V41L0 / Vailo at some point, in something.
Sp: So, that makes me give the episode points for a couple of other things. The missiles were adorable.
H: We’ve seen them before.
Sp: But they were still adorable.
R: Yeah. I’ve never actually seen a ship go “pew pew pew” before.
Sp: And then there was the model for Clancy’s frog hopper thing.
H & R: The Liz.
Sp: Sure. Let’s go with that. There was something about the way that model jumped out of the hanger to the front of the ship before taking off that was just adorable.
K: You mean the fighter? Ian’s ship.
Sp: Yeah, right. Ian’s ship. I could almost see the hand behind it going “foop” pushing it into place.
K: Weren’t those all CG?
H: No, I think they were reused footage from the second episode.
P: And how about those transposed headshots?
<laughter>
K: Those were terrible!
P: The heads were completely the wrong size for the bodies.
H: That’s what you get when you need to do composites. They didn’t have a lot to work with.
K: But Ronelyn tended to get annoying when they showed the pirate captain.
R: Caven’s smug smerk.
Sp: Wasn’t just Ronelyn. She and I were exchanging that exact face whenever it came it.
K: Well, you guys were DISTRACTING! And it was already hard to pay attention to the story without that. <grumpy> Mer.
Sp: Well then… Frankensense.
K: <sticks her tongue out at Spoo>
Sp: So go ahead, Historian. Ask us what we thought about the story as a whole?
H: I will not use those words. I am not that stupid. So…final thoughts?
E: :C
H: Is that it?
E: <nods> :C
H: Mr Mother, you said something this week.
Sp: He didn’t suffer like we did! He doesn’t get to say a damn thing!
M: :3c
<Emoticon / smiley suggestion for Mr. Mother’s look provided by Cz>
H: Cz, do you want to say something this week?
Cz: I’m really glad I chose not to pay attention to these past 6 episodes.
P: In fact, you chose the flu in order to get past them.
Cz: The gods have saved me. They have granted me safe passage around this story. They have allowed me to escape.
K: Wow. I didn’t think it was that…no, it was pretty bad.
H: Okay. Right. Photobug?
P: That was the greatest story I have seen of Doctor Who…this month.
Sp: <stamps on ground to count> Yes. Yes it was.
K: I can’t say the same.
H: Alright. That’s it. Let’s break out City of Death. We gotta get him something better!
P: I liked this story as far as characters went. We didn’t have the standard “not much to say” characters. We had characters who had attitude, personally, accents. We cared about them no dying.
R: We did?
K: I didn’t want Clancy to die. But meh! I half expect him to.
P: They even mixed in a lesson on electromagnitism.
K: The best thing we can come up with is the science lesson?
P: One of the annoying things of this story is that we hid the pirate operations and the dad at home. It’s like hiding the stolen money under the bank. I still don’t know why the worlds most valuable metal is the worlds most valuable metal. If it’s so valuable, why would you make a ship of out it.
K: I guess that’s why it’s so valuable. Because it’s good for making ships out of?
H: My guess is that the fact that they were using gold in spacecraft gave them the idea of using valuable minerals in space craft construction. But that’s just a guess.
K: Are you done, Bug?
P: Well, this story sure did go a long way…
K: This story sure did go long.
P: Early in the episode we were sneaking around inside of communication satellites. We were engaged in hand to hand combat. There were explosions. Paper ships that were cool that had paper ships inside them. Crafty fellows that get away by dropping copper mules. Disdain for the law.
Sp: What you’re describing sounds like a really compelling story. I wish we had watched it.
P: Yeah.
H: Technically we did.
P: We had actresses breaking the fourth wall and making us think she was in on it. We had a helmet with a part.
R: They’re called hairmets.
P: The Skyped video at each other.
K: Well, everybody in the future (or today) has video phones. That’s trivial.
M: Yeah, but were these the kind of video phones that didn’t have any discernible camera, and the camera couldn’t actually be where the shot is from?
H: Pretty much.
K: Well, the camera on my laptop is pretty hard to see.
P: Well, I thought this story covered a lot more ground than just running through scenery, and pointing and saying “look out!”
H: As I said, I think, if we had been able to watch it, and seen people moving about, it might have been more engaging. There was stuff happening. It just wasn’t that interesting watching the stills, and the audio was terrible, which didn’t help.
P: Other missing episodes that have been recovered with this Doctor have been better, so I certainly expect this to be the same. Now I guess I’ll go to my basement and finally unearth that reel I’ve been hiding.
K: If only.
P: I never did see a wooden ship. I was sort of expecting that. We sails and stuff. Cannons.
H: Now he’s just rambling.
P: As opposed to…
K: <confused> Okay. Ronelyn?
R: “I’d like to thank Gabby there for that demonstration of authentic frontier space gibberish.”
H: Anything more?
R: <Clancy voice> “No! Fraggit consarndit!”
K: Spoo?
Sp: This story really drove home for me how attached we are to the Doctor and Jamie and Zoe. And it so hard to get into a story where the focus is on the new characters / secondary people / what have you. When the plot focuses on the Doctor or his companions directly then the story is just that much more compelling.
K: Unless we don’t like the companions.
Sp: But overall of this time, I think we’ve all grown very fond of this specific Doctor and these specific companions and how all three of them interact in all combinations. It’s a really great nucleus.
Sp & P: And I look forward to a lot more stories with them.
H: UUUMMMMM….
Sp: <significant owl-like stare.> A LOT more stories. With them.
H: Suuuuuure.
K: Yeah. 10 more. Somethings.
Sp: Let me down gently guys.
K: So. Ketina? Oh wait. I’m Ketina.
Sp: Ugh!
K: <sigh> All I can say, is, from what little I can remember it, the next story is better. Really long. But better. Although I’m worried about too much filler.
R: Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty.
K: I think everyone else covered my final thoughts. Historian?
H: Well, I will have the story wrap up post to talk about stuff. So I will only say this – I still liked it more than “Love & Monsters.”
K: Damning with the faintest possible praise in Doctor Who there is. So, you seriously consider this story, the Space Pirates, the second worst story of Doctor Who?
H: I’m not sure. I don’t think so. But we’re getting off topic.
K: Okay. To sum up audience…
Sp: It stinks!
—-
And there we have it, the end of the Space Pirates, thank goodness. Watch for a story wrapup coming soon and join us next week for the true beginning of the end of the TARDIS Project, as we begin our final story! (And hey, wouldn’t this be a great time to start commenting and let us know how we’ve been doing all these years?) Until then, I remain
THE HISTORIAN
NEXT WEEK: THE WAR GAMES EPISODE 1
