The Smugglers

The Smugglers is a period drama in the style of a historical that has some fun ideas but doesn't quite hit the mark. A pirate adventure for Ben's first trip in the TARDIS is a nice tie in to his naval background. Outside of that there isn't too much tying this one to the characters.

The story is hurt by a few extremely flawed premisses. First, a treasure hunt is exciting but there's no reason the churchwarden would have shared the secret clues with the Doctor upon first meeting him. Without that act the whole story falls apart. Second, it's pretty unlikely that everyone she meets would be tricked into thinking Polly is a boy just because she's wearing trousers. It may defy the customs of the time but people are not that oblivious.

Beyond those problems it's a fun enough romp. The Doctor has some pretty good speeches and Hartnell gives one of his better, more theatrical performances. Polly and Ben are okay but come to terms with travel a bit too quickly and seem oddly familiar with the Doctor for having barely met him the story before this. It's an okay story but nothing spectacular.

This 4 part adventure on the coast of 17th Century Cornwall takes Doctor Who into a Jamaica Inn type world with a tale of smuggling and hidden treasure.

It could easily be a reasonable quality 1960s BBC production of that kind of period drama but with the interesting addition of the Doctor and his new companions. These new companions (Ben and Polly) perform well providing exactly what is required from companions creating added drama, action scenes and nice dialogue between them and the Doctor. William Hartnell, in his penultimate story before being retired off and replaced with Patrick Troughton, is still on good form.

All the acting, the direction and the general values on show from Brian Hayles' story and its presentation are of a fair standard but are not great and unlike many historical adventures the TARDIS crew's presence is not interacting with events in an intriguing way they are just caught up in events without any great importance. Basically it is just a fairly entertaining romp with some colourful characters. A solid effort but an unexceptional adventure in which the time travel element is too unimportant.

My Ratings: Episode 1 - 6.5/10, Episode 2 - 6/10, Episode 3 - 6.5/10, Episode 4 - 6/10

Overall: 6.25/10

The first story of Season 4, it the episode in which Ben and Polly take their first trip in the TARDIS, as well as the penultimate story for William. It’s a quite enjoyable historical adventure and Ben Jackson is great in a story that calls on him to be an action hero. The story has a great period feel with pirate treasure, mysterious crypts, and a corrupt town full of smugglers.

The supporting cast is strong, which allowed an ailing William Hartnell to perform well as the Doctor comes off as very cunning. Also his efforts to save the squire shows how far the character had come since, “An Unearthly Child.” The only fault I found is that at a couple points, writer Brian Hayles seemed to forget that Ben and Polly had just joined the Doctor and wrote dialogue that didn’t make sense in that context. Overall, the story is an underrated delight and it’s a pity that this is only exists in audio form.

Not much to this at all. The doctor vs pirates. No aliens, barely even a historical.
I picked the soundtrack up from AudioGo so I could listen to it before the Tenth Planet.
Annette Wills narrates it quite well, but there isn't enough of a story to care about.
One particular moment I found rather interesting was when the Doctor and companions could have fled in the TARDIS, but the Doctor explained to Ben why they had to stay and fix things.