128 The Smugglers: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Smugglers: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 128
STORY NUMBER: 028
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 17 September 1966
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Julia Smith
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 4.9 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes volume 3 (1966-1967)
TELESNAPS: The Smugglers: Episode Two

"Don't you talk to me like that. Oh, Captain, give me the word. Just give me one minute. I'll have the words spilling out of him like blubber from a whale!"

The Doctor is questioned by Pike. Pike reveals that he and his ship mate Cherub, who kidnapped the Doctor and killed Longfoot, were in a crew with Longfoot serving Captain Avery. Longfoot stole Avery's gold which Pike feels is his. The jailed Ben & Polly play on stable boy Tom's superstitious nature to escape. Innkeeper Kewper rows out to the Black Albatross to discuss business with Pike: He, Longfoot and the Squire are part of the village smuggling ring. Pike & Cherub go ashore to discuss business with the squire, leaving The Doctor & Kewper guarded by the crewman Jamaica. Ben & Polly have sough shelter in the church and are attempting to piece together Longfoot's murder when they catch a figure coming out of a tunnel in the crypt. They capture him and Polly goes to see the Squire to tell him they've caught the murderer. The man tells Ben he's Josiah Blake, a revenue officer, having emerged from a tunnel that leads from the Crypt to the sea shore which Ben then investigates, wanting a way back to the Tardis. Pike & Cherub visit the Squire but while they are there Polly arrives. Polly recognises Cherub as the Doctor's kidnapper and is bound & gagged. The Squire, Pike & Cherub go to the crypt and arrive as Ben returns from the tunnel....

Yup, enjoyed this episode too. Very good. Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary but it rattles along at a fair pace and does a lot of explanation on the way so you know what's going on. Yet this story gets a bad reputation in comparison to The Massacre, which everyone bar me loves!

Returning in this episode, as Revenue Office Josiah Blake, is John Ringham who we previously saw in the Axtecs as Tlotoxl and will later see in the Third Doctor tale Colony In Space. As his IMDB entry shows he's been a guest star in practically everything ever to be shown on television.

I've not long ago watched The Mutants on it's DVD release so I immediately recognised the voice of Paul Whitsun-Jones, who plays the obese Squire. Whitsun-Jones made a career out of playing fat men, at one stage (according to Katy Manning on the Mutants commentary) refusing Doctor's advice to loose weight because his livelihood depended on it! If you've not guessed yet, he'll be back for The Mutants where he plays The Marshall.

Both George A. Cooper, playing henchman Cherub, and Michael Godfrey, as Captain Pike, have had long careers without playing anything else significant in a cult television production.

Mike Lucas who is Tom, the boy at the inn, seems to have worked regularly into the 70s before disappearing from the small screen.

I can't be 100% sure but I think that Elroy Josephs, playing Jamaica, is the first black actor to have a credited speaking part in Doctor Who! I can recall Sam Mansray as an Alien Delegate in Mission to the Unknown and a Journalist in the preceding story The War Machines but both roles were uncredited. Roles for black actors are rare in 60s Doctor Who but at the end of Hartnell's period as the Doctor several start to turn up. Mansray was in the background of the previous tale as a journalist in a press conference, you can just about spot him if you look! Jamaica here is a more typical henchman, but a larger role, who the censors kindly preserve us some footage of from episode 3. However in the next story there's a much bigger role for a black actor, and one that could easily have been played by a white actor, so it looks as if there's some positive discrimination going on by the production team of the time. Josephs has several credits as a dancer on his CV and also appears in the Hammer films version of Quatermass and the Pit.