Episode #49 : The Space Pirates

Zoe : "Milo, there's one thing I don't understand."

Milo Clancey : "Well you're very lucky, girl. There's about a hundred thousand things I don't understand but I don't stand around asking fool questions about them, I do something useful. Why don't you do something useful? Why don't you... um... make us all a pot of tea or something?"

 

Episode 49:   The Space Pirates.
Companions: The 2nd Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot.
Air Date:       Six episodes. 8th March to 12th April 1969.

 

The TARDIS materialises in Earth's future on a space beacon just before it is attacked by pirates. The travellers find themselves trapped in a sealed section of the beacon. It is blown apart and flown to where the pirates will plunder it of the precious mineral argonite.

 

I have never seen this story. I'm not even sure whether it exists in it's entirety or it is missing one or two episodes. Maybe one day I'll get to see it.

 

The synopsis that I have read puts the story across as a strange mixture of science fiction and wild west. I sort of pre-runner to Firefly perhaps? The frontiers men have a stronger western miners appearence (see above) and mentality. All in all, not a mixture of genres I would expect to see back in the 1960s.