Pocket Full of Argonite

We have no limes!

The Space Pirates is another missing story. A six-parter and the penultimate TV story of Troughton's era on the show, only the second episode survives and the missing ones haven't been animated. Ergo I returned to my Target library for this one. It wasn't novelized until 1990, a few years after writer Robert Holmes had died, so Terrance Dicks had the honor of writing it up.

In order that interplanetary commerce remain free flowing and unhindered (or some such thing), beacons are placed in the blackness of space to help spaceship pilots navigate the space lanes. Or something like that. These beacons are made from a rare and precious mineral called argonite. They are also prefab and consist of 8 ready-made sections that are held together magnetically.

A group of space pirates, led by the lowdown, dirty, and mean Caven is going around and blowing up these beacons into their consituent sections and sending them back to their base to be processed and sold for a tidy profit. The Space Corp seeks to stop them. V-41, one of their flagships, patrols the space lanes and is commanded by General Nikolai Hermack.

Hermack learns that Beacon Alpha One had sent a distress call that suddenly stopped. Being a veteran of the Corps, his gut tells him that the beacon was a victim of piracy. So he stations small crews on some of the beacons in a bid to catch them in flagrante delicto.

The TARDIS lands on Beacon Alpha Four unbeknownst to the handful of Space Corp security officers stationed there. Caven and his men, including his right-hand one, Dervish (great name), enter the beacon and make short work of the Space Corp guys except for one named Lt. Sorba. They spare the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie but seal them in a section of it. When the pirates blow the beacon into its parts, our heroes are left tumbling through space in one of them.

Fortunately, they are rescued by one Milo Clancey - what's with that name? - an old duffer (I think he's a sexagenarian) who still cruises around in a vintage ship from the days of his youth called the LIZ-79. The section of the beacon with the TARDIS continues on with the pirates.

I pictured Clancey as a combination of Monty Python's Mr. Neutron and Dastari from The Two Doctors with slicked back grey hair, though his personality was more like Zaphod Beeblebrox in that he was a bit full of himself but not evil.

Hermack suspects Clancey is behind all of the argonite piracy and pursues the LIZ-79 with the TARDIS crew still aboard. The veteran pilot decides to hide where the Space Corp would never think to look for him - a planet called Ta.

We learn that the pirates are in league with the CEO of the Issigri Mining Corporation, Madeleine Issigri, which is headquartered on Ta. Madeleine's father, Dom, was friends with Clancey but he has gone missing, presumed dead at the hands of his old pal by many.

Madeleine tells Caven to take a running jump when she discovers that her father is still alive, imprisoned in his old office. The pirate captain doesn't take this well and wires an atomic something or other to blow and take Ta with it. Now that it one ginormous chain reaction! Of course the Doctor saves the day by disarming the bomb mechanism. And Hermack is finally able to send Caven and company the missile he's been waiting to give them right up the jacksie.

The book is only 132 pages yet this was a six-parter. Did Dicks leave a lot out? Perhaps I am just miscalculating things.

While on Ta, Jamie shows some derring do and kills a few pirates allowing everyone else to flee. And he twists his ankle at one point but it mysteriously gets a lot better a bit too quickly. Zoe's math skills are put to good use when she calculates that the pieces of a broken beacon were on a trajectory for Ta. Beyond that, I don't recall her doing any other computing and, instead, she was relegated to running and pointing things out for the reader, in the main.

The Doctor here is basically what you'd expect. A little bumbling, some flashes of genius, handy with a sonic screwdriver. And he seems to really be able to hoof it when he needs to.

Clancey is like a space cowboy who seemed to be straight out of a comic book and I am looking forward to watching the lone extant episode to hear if he has an English accent or American. He'll say "laddie" and then turn around and utter "Tarnation, someone’s shooting at us!" Do Englishmen actually say "tarnation" or just Yosemite Sam?

Caven is a true scoundrel and a suitable pirate captain. Like any boss, he expects the impossible of his underlings and for them to accomplish it in record time. He's always threatening poor Dervish if he doesn't do something quicker than any human being has done before and, when Dervish protests, Caven threatens even more violence that's inherent in the system. Near the end, he moves to destroy Ta even if it means he dies too. If not for the Doctor, he'd have sent everyone to their doom.

I wonder what the pirates' outfits look like as I'm unsure if the guy on the cover is a pirate or an agent of the Space Corps. With that snarl, I assume he's a pirate but you never know with these things. It'd be cool if they had hi-tech peg legs or electric parrots or something fun and piratey.

All in all, I found The Space Pirates to be pretty bad. Granted, it's a fun little premise and the scene where our heroes find themselves trapped in a section of a beacon while the TARDIS is floating away in another was really neat. But there's so little dialogue of interest. Clancey chews the scenery well but, while Caven could do some fine mustache twirling, he mainly issues bland threats. The Space Corp folks, especially Hermack, sound so incredibly earnest that they come off almost as parody. It's as if the dialogue was ripped right from an English officer corp training film.

When people talk to one another, it feels like it's mostly threats and barking orders with some technobabble thrown in for good measure. Caven is too vile to engage in some badinage with Dervish whereas an older Holmes would have made them a fine double act. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are usually too busy running and evading to do anything fun. Plus, I feel that our heroes got precious little time on the page. You've got the Space Corp, the pirates, Madeleine Issigri, Clancey - a lot of characters to deal with besides the TARDIS crew. I wonder if it was the same on the screen.

The story, at least as Dicks told it, was just rather clinical and lacked warmth. Clancey was a funny character but he stands alone here.

OK, I am off to check out what Tony Whitt and friends have to say about this book on the Doctor Who Target Book Club Podcast.

I want to say one word to you, Jamie. Just one word. Plastics.

Another lost story. Two of the six episodes remain but it has not been given the animation treatment so I read the novelization.

I got some Ark in Space vibes early on as the Doctor and Jamie land on a seemingly abandoned rocket ship. Would a dead Zarbi fall out of a closet as the Doctor opens the door?

Wait.

I am getting ahead of myself.

The story opens with our time travelers in the TARDIS. (Recall that Victoria left at the end of the last TV story, Fury From the Deep.) The ship lands and the scanner briefly shows metal, metal everywhere before switching to a series of idyllic scenes that may be from the Eye of Orion or perhaps the most beautiful parts of Bethselamin.

It turns out these bucolic sights are the TARDIS' attempts to get our heroes to go elsewhere for safety's sake a la Edge of Destruction which, like this tale, was also written by David Whittaker, I see here. I rather like these early instances where the ship is shown to be sentient.

Alas, the fluid link bursts into flames compelling the Doctor and Jamie to abandon ship as the console room fills with mercury vapors but not before they grab the vector generator rod hoolie. Scrambling out of the TARDIS doors, they find themselves on that seemingly abandoned rocket ship.

Only it isn't. Abandoned, that is.

There's a little droid roaming the joint doing this and that and just whatever it needs to do to carry out its mission. The Doctor and Jamie are a bit peckish and they fortuitously happen upon a food dispenser. After placing his order for roast beef with all the trimmings, Jamie is appalled to be given a plate of gelatinous cubes. This reminded me of the TV dinner trays of colored paste eaten by Dave and Frank in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

At one point, the droid cranks up the thrusters to move the rocket which catches the Doctor off guard and he bangs his melon on a metal truss or whatever it is. The upshot is that the Doctor, after being all woozy for a bit, goes unconscious and MIA for an episode or so. Presumably Patrick Troughton went on vacation.

The rocket heads towards the titular wheel that again brought 2001 to mind with its own round space station. The Wheel is manned by a multinational crew which seemed to mirror Star Trek. They don't need a rogue rocket in their backyard so they prepare to destroy it. Aboard the rocket, Jamie notices a big cannon pointed at him. A little quick thinking later, he brandishes the vector generator and uses it to basically send an SOS which saves the day. He and the Doctor are rescued and brought to the Wheel.

There the Doctor recuperates for a spell as Jamie is interrogated. They also meet Zoe, the elfin savant whose training has left her short on emotion. Our Scottish hero learns that the rocket ship is to be destroyed and again he leaps into action. This time he sprays quick seal plastic into the guts of the x-ray laser thusly rendering it inoperable.

Meanwhile the Cybermen are executing their cunning plan. Ha! I really mean one of the most convoluted, Rube Goldbergian stratagems ever devised for television, Doctor Who or otherwise. The Cybermen on the ground, so to speak, consult with a Cyber Planner who is bravely out of range dispensing strategy. I figured he was simply a regular Cyber Joe who was a good illustration of the Peter Principle. He killed a bunch of Cryons and was promoted until he was completely out of his depth.

But I watched the remaining episodes and it turns out the Cyber Planner isn't humanoid at all and is more of a ChatGPT installed into this oval thing that looks like the body of a wood tick with Cyber head handles and is mounted onto a frame.

It devises a plan that goes something like this: they commandeer a rocket, stow a platoon of Cybermen and a smattering of Cybermats aboard, and send it to the Wheel. Then a crack team of Cyber engineers force a star to go supernova which sends debris towards the Wheel. At about the same time, Cybermats are sent from the rocket to the Wheel where they eat all of the bernalium which is needed by the x-ray laser that would otherwise be used to destroy the incoming rocks and whatever other debris you get when your local star explodes. This shortage would force the Wheel's crew to zip over to the rocket to scrounge where they'd miraculously find a supply of bernalium in crates. But, those crates have a false bottom that conceal Cybermen. These Trojan crates would be taken back to the Wheel and voila! The Cybermen would commandeer the space station so that it can be used to direct a Cyber invasion fleet to Earth. Or something like that, anyway.

Why they can't just go to Earth without some kind of radio beam as a guide as they've done before (see Moonbase) is never explained. Also, why the Trojan horse ploy? We see Cybermen floating through space to the Wheel later in the story so why the subterfuge? Why not just zip over, rip open an airlock, and take the Wheel as if they were a horde of marauding Vikings at Lindisfarne? Oh, and the scene where they float over has survived and it's a doozy. They awkwardly wave their arms like a group of ballerinas who've just plundered a stash of Quaaludes found in one of their mother's dresser drawers.

Outside of the convoluted Cyber scheme, I rather liked The Wheel in Space. It marks the debut of referring to the Doctor as "John Smith". At one point, Jamie is being questioned while the Doctor is out cold. When asked his companion's name, he does a bit of quick thinking and seizes upon the name on a nearby container and blurts it out. There is a scene at the end of the story where the Cyber Planner is reading the mind of a crew member as images of the other people on the Wheel cycle through the man's mind's eye. We hear their names and ranks and get, "Tanya Lernov. Astrologer, second class." I chuckled. I also noticed the the Wheel's computers are giant lava lamps, a nice late 60s quirk.

Watching the surviving episodes, you see that the Cybermen are very tall which adds more than a bit of menace to their appearance and helps solidify their status as being scarier than and superior to Daleks.

Highly imperfect but Jamie really earns his keep here and I think that he and the Doctor are now a classic pairing. They work very well together. Zoe joins the TARDIS crew and I am looking forward to seeing how she fits with the burgeoning bromance.

And thus ends season 5, a.k.a. - Patrick Troughton's second season.

It's beginning to a look a lot like fishmen

"The Underwater Menace" is a semi-lost story with only 2 of the 4 episodes known to exist. The book's cover is highly misleading as it features the Fish People - some of the cheesiest Doctor Who costumes, perhaps second only to the Menoptera - who, while underwater, are not the menaces of the story.

Along with new companion Jamie, the Doctor, Polly, and Ben find themselves in the lost city of Atlantis. The senescent King Thous has been bamboozled by Professor Hermann Zaroff who is so comically villainous that he makes Snidely Whiplash seem like a character from the pages of a James Joyce novel. Zaroff is a complete psychopath who has a Dalek-worthy plan to destroy the Earth by drilling a hole in the crust to allow the oceans to drain into the core. There the water would be turned to steam and cause the planet to burst into pieces from the pressure.

"Prepare to witness the power of a fully-armed and operational mega-drill!"

Zaroff gets in a few jabs at religion, which I didn't expect from such an early story. His evil plans are thwarted in large measure by a labor dispute instigated by Ben and his new-found pal, Sean, who convince the Fish People to go on strike. You see, they harvest plankton for the inhabitants of Atlantis to eat but no one has come up with a way to preserve the fine seafood stew so a fresh supply must always be available.

There's a lot of running down corridors, or cave tunnels, rather, and a distinct lack of interesting characters beyond Zaroff and his caricatured villainy. The Doctor does go into disguise again, though, and I am wondering just how long this trope lasts. Sadly, the humor of "The Highlanders" is gone. At one point, the Doctor concedes that Zaroff has won, which seems rather out of character as he should be instilling hope.

Thankfully, Jamie's dialogue is not written in pidgin Scottish but he doesn't do very much nor is he given much of a change to build a rapport with the Doctor.

This is a minor and rather bad Doctor Who story. But I am looking forward to seeing the remaining 2 episodes anyway. Anyone expecting the fish people to be these hideous homo-ichthy hybrids with narrow heads, flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes will be disappointed and scoff at the costumes but I find that, as I get older, I enjoy the show's cheesy elements more. The Menoptera, Fish People, the Myrka - some of the lowest fi costuming ever to grace a TV screen but I love them all the same.

ADDENDUM:

I have watched the 2 extant episodes of this story. A few thoughts.

I like how Zaroff is splayed out on the stairs as he fakes his heart attack.

The priestly headdresses are pretty hoopy as are the fish masks used in religious rites.

The Doctor's disguise in the marketplace is really hip, daddy-o. Groovy, man.

And I rather liked the Fish People underwater waltz.

Watching these episodes reminded me of how much I like the show's early electronic scores and just how they stand in such stark contrast to the rather rote orchestral music of the show today. The Fish People get a surreal waltz and listen to the eldritch choral pieces sung in the temple during rites. And then there's the scenes in the mine which have this weird and very dissonant sound.

Also, Zaroff's Austrian accent was perfect.

The story is still awful but there are some wonderfully creative little moments.

Och!

 

I am creeping ever closer to actually watching a Second Doctor story. It's been 16 written stories since one that was televised.

"The Highlanders" is notable for being a lost story as in no complete TV episodes are known to exist and for introducing Jamie McCrimmon, loyal piper for the clan McLaren, to the TARDIS crew. This is a pure historical with no sci-fi trappings beyond the presence of our heroes and the existence of the TARDIS.

I suspect that, if the story weren't lost, it would be regarded as very middle of the road. I got some "The Smugglers" vibes from scenes when Ben and Jamie are trapped on a slave ship. Polly spends a fair amount of time with the Laird's daughter, Kirsty, who is rather pathetic at first. Our liberated, mini-skirted blond heroine is having none of this weaker sex stuff and is rather viscous towards the red-headed lassie. "You're a weeping ninny." "...you're just a wild wailing peasant."

I noted how the Doctor dressed as a woman in The Murder Game and he does so here - the little auld lady, presumably setting the precedent. There's a lot of comedy here which stands in stark contrast to the tone of the stories that are set chronologically between "Power of Daleks" and this tale. The scene where the Doctor poses as a German doctor and treats Perkins by slamming his head into the table was rather funny on the page and no doubt funnier onscreen.

Despite being famous for introducing Jamie, he does very little here and I highly suspect his Scottish dialogue is not particularly Scottish.

At one point, the Doctor just goes to sleep leaving Polly to make excuses for him. Och!

Overall, I found "The Highlanders" to be on the mediocre side. While I liked the funny bits, the story was, on the whole, very rote with little sense of our heroes confronting genuine menace.