We now have two rollicking tales of smugglers and pirates.  Our first occurs on the Cornish coast as the Doctor, Polly and Ben arrive in a cave, meet a pirate-turned-churchwarden, stumble upon a mystery, outwit pirates and greedy smugglers, discover some treasure and slip away whilst corpses pile up around them.


The Smugglers has never been a story I’ve had much of an opinion of.  It’s one of fandom’s forgotten lost stories.  It isn’t Power of the Daleks.  It isn’t Fury from the Deep.  It’s falls in the slightly odd Season 4 which is neither one thing or the other.  As a season opener it certainly doesn’t feel like what we’re used to now with modern publicity and big, brazen launch stories like Asylum of the Daleks or The Impossible Astronaut.  But it doesn’t even feel like what the classic series usually gave us (at least in its later years) such as the first story of a new Doctor or new companion.  The Smugglers just happens.  No fanfare.  No returning monster.  We sort of have new companions in Polly and Ben, being as this is their first trip in the TARDIS after the events of The War Machines, but this story demonstrates how, in it’s early days, Doctor Who was a serial.  Audiences didn’t really know how many episodes a story would last for.  I’m not even sure they would have known that The War Machines was the ‘end’ of Season 3.


The Smugglers is a genteel story, aside from the bloody violence, which meanders through its plot with very little drive or determination.  There are no real surprises and a couple of the characters are fairly bland – Blake, the King’s Revenue Man played by John ‘Tlotoxl’ Ringham being the worst offender.  Pike is a cut price Captain Hook and the other pirates are fairly clichéd although there is fun to be had with Cherub and the greedy Squire.  Cherub is a vicious piece of work, knifing people in the back and betraying Pike.  The Squire is an interesting character who is quite happy to fall in with the pirates for monetary gain but baulks at the prospect of violence and bloodshed.  The part at the end where the Doctor determines to ensure the Squire is safe is an interesting character beat for the Doctor.
What is enjoyable about this story is how strong the three regulars are.  Hartnell shows no signs of the fatigue which was supposedly setting in leading to his departure from the series in the next story.  He is wonderful in the scenes where he and Kewper are outwitting Jamaica with fake fortune telling and his enigmatic hints that sometimes superstition may hold a grain of truth is another interesting slant on the Doctor’s character.Anneke Wills and Michael Craze as Polly and Ben are two of the most underrated companions the series has had, although I think that in recent times there supposed blandness has been massively re-evaluated thanks to the availability of the audio soundtracks for their largely missing episodes and for fandom’s growing ability not to rely on the ‘wisdom’ of its elders who were always quick to tell us that The Tomb of the Cybermen was an absolute classic and that The Underwater Menace was an embarrassment simply because no one could refute their views.Ben shows instant loyalty to the Doctor (he says ‘you’re the guvnor’ more than once) and has a great rapport with Polly.  Polly, for her part, shows brain to match Ben’s brawn and her idea of using fake witchcraft to escape from captivity is inspired.  She does, unfortunately, slip into distressed damsel a few times although some of these occasions are believable character traits such as her fear of rats.


As historicals go, this one is more about style than substance.  As we know, historicals were being phased out around this time due to their unpopularity with the viewers and this was the penultimate trip into pure history only to be followed by The Highlanders three stories later (which ironically introduces one of the series best loved companions).  We don’t meet any historical figures in this story and it isn’t set during any significant historical event.  The two historicals prior to this were The Gunfighters (dramatising the Gunfight at the OK Corral and featuring historical luminaries such as Wyatt Earp) and The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve (again dramatising a true event and featuring historical figures).  The Smugglers isn’t even very specific with its dating, preferring to have a vague ‘17th Century’ setting.  It is far more concerned with the romantic notion of smugglers and pirates popularised by tales such as Treasure Island and Doctor Syn.  (I have an interesting personal relationship with Doctor Syn as it is a series of books my father tried to encourage me to read when I was younger but they never appealed and just sat on my bookshelf until given away to a jumble sale.)


The Smugglers’ link to The Curse of the Black Spot is its other interesting aspect.  I had some debate with myself as to when this story should be placed in relation to the Series 6 adventure.  Lance Parkin has dated The Smugglers to c1696 (based presumably on the last known sighting of Captain Henry Avery).  The Curse of the Black Spot is dated, very specifically, to April 1st 1699 by the prequel released on the BBC website (and subsequently on the DVD box set).  As AHistory had been released prior to Series 6, Black Spot is obviously not included and I had assumed (without researching the actual history) that The Smugglers must be set after Black Spot to allow for the pirates to be searching for Avery’s lost treasure.  However, as Avery disappeared from historical record in 1696, it is quite feasible that The Smugglers is set in 1696 or maybe 1697/98 prior to Black Spot with Pike’s crew searching for the treasure and us merely learning about Avery’s true fate three years later in 1699.

The parallels between the two pirate crews are also quite interesting.  They are all fairly generic and faceless – two of the pirates in The Smugglers don’t even get names until late into Episode 3 and 4; Avery’s crew are only really named in the credits.  There is a bald headed pirate in both crews and a black pirate in both.  The portrayal of Jamaica is of its time, but it can’t be said that Dancer in Black Spot is any more politically correct as he is dispatched fairly early in the episode after Amy’s swashbuckling catches him on the hand and he succumbs to the Siren.


I enjoyed The Smugglers, but more in a gentle Sunday afternoon teatime drama than any edge of seat dramatic tension.