242 The Space Pirates: Episode Five

EPISODE: The Space Pirates: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 242
STORY NUMBER: 049
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 05 April 1969
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Michael Hart
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 5.5 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume 5 (1967-1969)

"No! I will not be party to murder. When all this started it was going to be a salvage operation. Space flotsam, you said. But then piracy and now murder?"

The Doctor, his friends and Clancy are flung into an old fashioned study by Caven. Inside they find Dom Issigri, Madeline's Father who Caven has been holding prisoner. Caven sabotages Clancy's ship and fits it with a remote control device. Madeline Issigri, finding that Caven intends to kill the prisoners, calls General Hermack for help with dealing with the pirates, but Caven coerces her into keeping quiet when he reveals he has her Father. The Doctor, Clancy & Dom Issigri and Jamie & Zoe escape, but the Doctor is separated from his friends and is caught in the blast as Clancy takes off.

So...

Episode 1: Tardis crew turn up at the end
Episode 2: Stuck in the space station segment
Episode 3: Stuck in Milo's ship
Episode 4: Stuck in a cell, then escape
Episode 5: Stuck in a study

Having spent 5 weeks of keeping the Tardis crew separate from the most of the rest of the cast you'll be holding your head in your hands when you hear what happens in the next episode...

Following on from last episode's revelations that Madeleine Issigri is working with the pirates we discover this episode that the long thought dead Don Issigri is actually still alive!

MILO: Well, I thought Madeleine blamed me for her father's death. Poor old Dom. He just disappeared. Years ago now. I wasn't even here at the time. And then all this piracy started and Madeleine started to find argonite in workings that Dom and I had abandoned years ago. Well, it all seemed to fit together somehow.

So has he been kept prisoner in his study on Ta, right under Madeleine's nose all this time?

Dom Issigri is played by veteran actor Esmond Knight. He'd had a long screen career stretching back to the 1928 film The Blue Peter where he played a Radio operator. He appeared in the 1958/9 adaptation of H. G. Wells The Invisible Man, where he plays Wilson in Flight into Darkness and also is in The 1984 version playing the Blind Man in Certain First Principles. Like Gordon Gostelow, Milo Clancy, and Jack May, General Hermack, he appears in the acclaimed An Age of Kings where he plays Jack Cade, a Rebel in Henry VI Part 3: The Rabble from Kent. He appeared in the early sixties science fiction series A for Andromeda as Professor Ernest Reinhart and later appear in I, Claudius as Domitius in Waiting in the Wings. Dom Issigri is the second character in this story, like Lt Sorba played by Nick Zaran, that we have no visual record of. You can see pictures of the actor who played him at Aveleyman.com

Dom Issigri's daughter Madeleine was in episode two so we know what she looks like. She's played by actress Lisa Daniely, who was one of the stars of the 1959 Invisible Man that Esmond Knight appeared in playing Diane Wilson. The same production also features former Doctor Who companion Deborah Watling as her daughter Sally Wilson! Lisa Daniely also appeared in the now missing first season Out of the Unknown episode Andover and the Android as Eleanor.

Playing Madeleine's secretary is Valerie Stanton who was previously in The Massacre: Priest of Death as a Parisian in Rue des Fosses St. Germain.

IMDB has Ron Conrad as an Extra for this episode only. He'll be back as A German / Roman Soldier / Alien Student in The War Games and a Soldier in The Ambassadors of Death episode 3.

So back to Phil's 2011 listen to this story for blogging purposes. If you recall I was binging the last four episodes on a train journey from Swindon to Richmond to get them out the way:

Right, I'm now at Reading boarding a rail replacement bus. Ah the joys of bank holiday rail travel.

Nowadays I avoid Rail Replacement Buses as you don't know what will be provided. Quite frequently it's a coach and the steep steps are beyond me now!

Yes the entries for this story have been brief. I'm struggling to find things to say about it, it just doesn't work.