The Smugglers: Ranking - 208

 The Smugglers

(Season 4, Dr 1 with Ben and Polly, 10/9/1966-1/10/1966,  producer: Innes Lloyd, script editor: Gerry Davis, director: Julia Smith) 

'Dead man's secret key

Ringwood, Smallbeer and Gurney

None of them remembered by history

A quest for pirate treasure gold

Just like in the fables of old

Even though the Doctor's never properly told

But why do pirates use such cryptic verse

When they hide their looted purse? 

Especially when they come with a curse

Which end with bodies in quite a state

Those would follow pieces of eight 

And even the Doctor soon forced to regenerate...

Ranking: 208

 

 Have you ever worked at a job where there’s been a merger and everyone promises you everything is going to be exactly the same as before, but nobody coming in has the slightest clue how anything you’re doing works and they’re not interested in you when you try to explain how to do things the way you always did them? That’s ‘The Smugglers’, where new ideas are smuggled in masquerading as old ones, and it must have been infuriating to existing fans of the show. Particularly William Hartnell. During the past year he’s seen companions disappear left right and centre (some of their own accord, some because the characters weren’t working, one because she complained too much), Mervyn Pinfield the associate producer who had a firm hand on the tiller, Verity Lambert the producer who gave him his job and convinced him that he was right for the show and in David Whittaker the script editor who shaped the programme more than anyone. Now it’s being run by people who have been appointed a job they’re not sure they want who talk about things like ratings and demographics that nobody was too fussed about years ago, young men who to do things their way and who have inherited something they want to dismantal. Hartnell is the last of the old guard left and while it’s still blurry when he was officially given his marching orders the likely answer is somewhere around filming this story. It must have been extraordinary lonely and heartbreaking for Hartnell to watch people who didn’t understand DW (at least as it had existed until 1966) in charge of making it and telling him what to do, without listening to the one person who’d been there since the beginning and felt incredibly protective towards it.Change is inevitable and on DW doubly so, as every new Doctor and production team makes clear – the show would simply not have survived had it stayed exactly the way it was at the beginning. However, nobody knew that in 1966 when the only TV programmes that lasted any length of time did so by offering very similar programmes across their run, like ‘Z Cars’ or ‘Dixon Of Dock Green’ or the soaps. Here it looks like sabotage at times as the usual things we get in DW of this period that people had tuned in especially for are turned on their head with a story not quite drama, not quite comedy and certainly not scifi but a Boy’s own comic come to life, more ‘Moonfleet’ than ‘Moonbase’ and more ‘Doctor Syn’ than ‘Doctor Who’. The result is a very odd story quite unlike anything DW had done before even though it pretends to be business as usual. It’s a historical, as every other DW story was back then, but one where the famous historical characters you might have heard of are mostly off screen and where everyone feels more like a storybook villain than people who actually existed once upon a time, with names like ‘Squire’ and ‘Cherub’. Though the best of the three actual pirate stories DW has done over the years (not admittedly a great achievement when the others are ‘Curse Of the Black Spot’ and ‘Legend Of The Sea Devils’ the latter of which makes an even more ham-fisted version of telling what happened to Captain Avery’s gold, arrr!) it still somehow feels less plausible or possible than Douglas’ Adams wildly scifi take in ‘The Pirate Planet’. Michael Craze and Anneke Wills are thrown into the deep end as Ben and Polly on their first full story and are enjoying themselves as with-it sixties teenagers who don’t need rescuing or protecting like the days of old, but even they feel like strangers to us still despite their strong turn in ‘The War Machines’, part of the ‘new’ not the ‘old’. The plot concerns cryptic clues and a giant treasure hunt for money, very different to past DW plots where quests had been made under duress or to save people; this one’s a promise made to a dying man that everyone could easily have ignored or passed on to someone else. Instead of lectures about doing their best not to alter history everyone is in this plot up to their necks and nobody bats an eyelid, while unlike, say ‘The Aztecs’ or ‘The Crusades’ nobody at home is sure enough about this fictional quest for treasure to know how it will end. More than anything else, it’s definitely not educational, the way the historical stories were originally envisioned (not unless you want to learn treasure clues in rhyme or the best place to stab people in the back anyway). Usually in 1960s DW the past feels very very real and very very scary and the whole point of the story is how our friends are going to survive long enough to make it back to the Tardis and sanctuary alive, if indeed they can at all. In this story nobody seems to be in the slightest bit of danger. Which makes it sound as if its all cosy, which it very much isn’t. In many ways it’s the most violent of all the Hartnell stories (the only bits of this story that still exist on film are the parts cut by Australian censors and there are a lot of them, from pirates with blooded hands to knives in the back to swords being pulled out of chests…and not treasure ones either!) and yet there never feels any question that something bad might happen to someone it shouldn’t. The original piratical sources are really quite dark for children’s literature, all about being cut of from safety and not knowing who to trust, which is exactly what other DW historicals have been about too, which makes you long for a version of ‘The Smugglers’ done with the old production team and companions. Here everyone has a bit of fun with pirates and get to go home in time for tea. Only Hartnell makes this seem like it’s DW at all and he’s magnificent here on his last hurrah, alternating between those moments of kindness and grumpiness for which he’s remembered, with no real signs of the illness that was the excuse for pushing him out of his job and actually amazingly together for an actor whose had the lion’s share of dialogue for three very heavy years on a show recorded as close to ‘live’ as they could get away with (sadly Hartnell declines fast during the Summer break and really is as feeble as legend has it by the time of ‘The Tenth Planet’, but then he had effectively been fired from his job which can’t have helped his health; his treatment at the hands of this production team is truly shocking). His acting alone lifts this story several places higher than it would otherwise be, but Ben and Polly too make a more than convincing debut, breezing their way in a very 60s way that brings a bit of Swinging London even to 17^th century Cornwall. I’ll also throw in the fact that the few glimpses of this missing story we get to see look amazing: DW’s first real proper location filming, bar a quarry and a field, makes great use of Cornwall and the costumes and sets are every bit as brilliant as you’d expect from a BBC history project; if any substantial part of this story is ever returned to the archives I suspect it will be a lot better remembered than it is now from the half-hearted novelisation or the TV soundtrack, given how so much of it is action rather than dialogue based. ‘The Smugglers’ is a good little story, with a lot of action and some fun lines, most of them either at the expense of Ben and Polly or the locals not quite comprehending the way the others live their lives and unlike one or two of the wordier, worthier monochrome stories this one is never boring and cracks along at a pace that would wind some modern Whos. There’s a colourful cast of characters, more fight scenes than you can shake a pegleg at and some memorable performances that just stop themselves going all the way to hammy. You have to admit, though, there’s something lacking compared to the many great DW historicals of the past when the stakes were high, the quality was higher and the plot actually made sense. Pirates doing piratey things simply aren’t as interesting as Kings suffering mental anguish, Aztecs questioning their superstitions or even cavemen learning how to be civilised to one another and is something you can get better elsewhere if that’s what you want. DW stories are really about people going on a journey of discovery, be they in past present or future, but perhaps the biggest shame is that nothing really changes here by the time the Tardis leaves except that some guys got richer and have a tale to tell in the public house about some strangers they met in funny clothes. What with the setting and the fact it came at the end of one of DW’s most gruelling filming schedules, it almost feels like the programme is on holiday at times, although it’s more likely that the powers-that-be have inherited a show they don’t know or care how to make any more and everyone else is trying to make do the best they can.

+ Ben is a companion that was badly under-served in Who (not least when Jamie comes along and gets half of his lines), so it’s good to see a story that gives him so much to do. Ben’s a 1960s sailor, which means’ he’s respectful of authority but in a very sixties way, only when it’s earned and not just given to everyone. The contrast here between frightened cabin boys and people out to do anything for treasure puts into stark relief how much of a moral compass he is, brave enough to say yes to the right people and brave enough to say no to the wrong people too (and enough of a fighter to take on two separate bloodthirsty pirates). Michael Craze is great here too, an action hero in a very different, reluctant, survivalist way to Ian or Steven who never gets a hair out of place while roughing people up (on the telesnaps anyway) and who spends most of this story being the practical one who wants to leave while the others push to explore, always believable, always real. Alas without the nautical setting most future writers will end up more interested in writing for Polly and all the promise in Ben seen here gets left behind.

-          The research. If you’re going to have a plot about a pirate’s treasure then it would help to get it right. At the time when this story is set Captain Avery was still alive and very much in charge of his treasure (not poor, mad or drunk as mentioned here), sailed on a completely different ship to the one everyone’s trying to chase and of the pirates we know who sailed with him none of them share the names of the characters in this story. At this rate I’m even beginning to wonder how many real pirates went ‘arrrr!’