"Do as ye bid, ye dog, or I'll leave ye in the coffin as a souvenir."
TECHNICAL SPECS: Except for a violent censored clip, the episode does not exist in the archives, so I've used a reconstruction (Part 1, Part 2). First aired Oct.1 1966.
IN THIS ONE... The treasure is found and the pirates get themselves killed.
REVIEW: The Doctor is equal parts rogue and diplomat in the final chapter, as he sells his share of the treasure for his friends' safe passage, but also manipulates Cherub and Pike into helping him figure out Avery's puzzle so he can get the upper hand. Sending Ben and Polly away to safety (and yet not safety, since the pirates have found the TARDIS), there remains the question of why he stays behind. Is he so curious to see how it all ends? Can't he be happy unless he sees if he's right about the treasure's location? Or does he figure he can reason Pike into leaving the village alone? I dare say a mix of the three. Not that Ben will let him face the finale alone. Polly gets the short end of the stick and is told to put the kettle on. While it's a call back to Ben's machismo and what will be remembered as Polly's cliché of her relegated to making tea or coffee, it still speaks to a kind of homeyness between the characters, already present in this, their second adventure.
From the smugglers' loot hidden inside a tomb to Avery's treasure at the intersection of four names of pirates who died at sea and couldn't possibly be buried in the crypt, there are clever plot points in Part 4 that are worthy of the genre. Because this is far more a genre piece than it is a historical adventure, and that's what justifies the colorful language and the brutal violence. At the climax, true natures are revealed. Pike rants and raves, his greed making him clutch at treasure while his men die around him, all pretense of being a gentleman lost. At his end, he's an animal. All the pirates are, really, with Cherub prepared to betray his captain for loot, and the rest of the crew untrustworthy as they come. The Squire, a rogue who nevertheless never killed anyone in cold blood, reveals a noble spirit instead, inspired by the Doctor's selflessness, and it looks like he and Blake make up at the end. There's a lot of heinous behavior in The Smugglers, but at its heart, it is a moral story. Everyone who made the wrong choices is dead by the end.
Consequently, we have a lot of death scene clips (Cherub's from this episode), but it would be interesting to recover the rest of this episode. The large fight between the pirates and the militia was apparently the biggest ever attempted on Doctor Who, but on audio, just sounds like a big mess. Alas, like its characters, it fell prey to Avery's curse.
VERSIONS: There's a Target novelization, of course, but I'm unaware of any major changes to the story.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A big finale (bigger if we had picture) with clever ideas within the trappings of the genre.
STORY REWATCHABILITY: Medium - It's really bloody, isn't it? Doesn't help that the only remaining film is of the various murders. Still, it works as a pirate story where safety is in short supply, and the villains get their just deserts.
TECHNICAL SPECS: Except for a violent censored clip, the episode does not exist in the archives, so I've used a reconstruction (Part 1, Part 2). First aired Oct.1 1966.IN THIS ONE... The treasure is found and the pirates get themselves killed.
REVIEW: The Doctor is equal parts rogue and diplomat in the final chapter, as he sells his share of the treasure for his friends' safe passage, but also manipulates Cherub and Pike into helping him figure out Avery's puzzle so he can get the upper hand. Sending Ben and Polly away to safety (and yet not safety, since the pirates have found the TARDIS), there remains the question of why he stays behind. Is he so curious to see how it all ends? Can't he be happy unless he sees if he's right about the treasure's location? Or does he figure he can reason Pike into leaving the village alone? I dare say a mix of the three. Not that Ben will let him face the finale alone. Polly gets the short end of the stick and is told to put the kettle on. While it's a call back to Ben's machismo and what will be remembered as Polly's cliché of her relegated to making tea or coffee, it still speaks to a kind of homeyness between the characters, already present in this, their second adventure.
From the smugglers' loot hidden inside a tomb to Avery's treasure at the intersection of four names of pirates who died at sea and couldn't possibly be buried in the crypt, there are clever plot points in Part 4 that are worthy of the genre. Because this is far more a genre piece than it is a historical adventure, and that's what justifies the colorful language and the brutal violence. At the climax, true natures are revealed. Pike rants and raves, his greed making him clutch at treasure while his men die around him, all pretense of being a gentleman lost. At his end, he's an animal. All the pirates are, really, with Cherub prepared to betray his captain for loot, and the rest of the crew untrustworthy as they come. The Squire, a rogue who nevertheless never killed anyone in cold blood, reveals a noble spirit instead, inspired by the Doctor's selflessness, and it looks like he and Blake make up at the end. There's a lot of heinous behavior in The Smugglers, but at its heart, it is a moral story. Everyone who made the wrong choices is dead by the end.
Consequently, we have a lot of death scene clips (Cherub's from this episode), but it would be interesting to recover the rest of this episode. The large fight between the pirates and the militia was apparently the biggest ever attempted on Doctor Who, but on audio, just sounds like a big mess. Alas, like its characters, it fell prey to Avery's curse.
VERSIONS: There's a Target novelization, of course, but I'm unaware of any major changes to the story.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A big finale (bigger if we had picture) with clever ideas within the trappings of the genre.
STORY REWATCHABILITY: Medium - It's really bloody, isn't it? Doesn't help that the only remaining film is of the various murders. Still, it works as a pirate story where safety is in short supply, and the villains get their just deserts.
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