This morning I started on The Space Pirates, which is the last Doctor Who story with episodes that are completely missing. By extension, this means that it is the last Loose Canon reconstruction that I will be watching in this project. There are a couple other notable things about today's episodes, as well.

Let's talk about that.

The Space Pirates - Episodes 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The first episode of this story is particularly notable as being the last one ever filmed at Lime Grove Studios, where the show had been based right from the beginning. By all accounts it was a terrible space to work in, both in front of the camera and behind, and so the cast and crew were delighted to finally make a permanent move to BBC Television Centre.

As a corollary to that move, the second episode of the story was the one to be filmed in the studio on 35mm film. As a matter of fact, that is the only reason that the second episode still exists - it was deemed historically significant by the BBC and thus retained when all the others were being purged.  The rest of the episodes only exist in audio recordings, telesnaps, and brief snippets of video.

One last first that didn't seem the least bit notable at the time, but is quite significant in retrospect: this is the first story which included the involvement of John Nathan-Turner (albeit as just a lowly floor assistant). He would eventually go on to be the show's producer from 1977 right up until the end of the original run, and was very much the public face of Doctor Who in the media precisely during the time that I first discovered the show and became a lifelong fan. Prior to starting this project, the only two Doctor Who producers I could have named off the top of my head from the classic series were Verity Lambert and John Nathan-Turner, that's how large he looms in my own personal history as a fan.

As for today's story, the thing I found most interesting about it is how little involvement the show's leads have. I would be shocked if they were onscreen for more than ten minutes out of the fifty in the first two episodes. Even then, they don't play any real active role. There is a lengthy setup involving pirates breaking up and plundering several un-manned space beacons, due to their primary construction out of a rare and valuable material called Argonite. On the opposing side of the story we have a ship of military/police types led by General Exposition (who takes every possible moment to feed relevant back story to the viewers) and his faithful second-in-command Major ConvenientFollowUpQuestion, who provides well-timed interjections to expand the exposition whenever necessary. They are out trying to catch the pirates in a came of cat-and-mouse that thus far has not been successful.

Most of the way through the first episode the TARDIS materializes inside one of the space beacons. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe exit their ship only to be caught in the crossfire between the pirates and the police. Not long after that they are completely cut off from the TARDIS when the pirates successfully blow apart the beacon into eight different sections, at which point our three heroes are left with a diminishing supply of air and no means to escape.

Fortunately, their section is picked up by a Space Prospector just before the air runs out. Unfortunately, said Space Prospector is startled by their presence on board and he promptly shoots Jamie while Zoe screams "You murderer!"  Roll credits.

It's not a bad story so far, and it really does have some interesting spaceship designs and special effects. Also, as an added bonus Zoe has changed out of her flight suit from the last episode and back into something that shows off her lovely legs, which I always appreciate because I am a sexist pig.

Hello, gentlemen.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Second
Companion(s): Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot
Episode(s): The Space Pirates - Episodes 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 6,080 today, 814,081 total
Distance Walked: 2.98 miles today, 394.26 miles total
Weight: 272.36 lbs (five day moving average), net change -34.94 lbs