The Smugglers

The Smugglers

It's nice to begin the fourth season with a historical. You feel safe and comfortable in that territory. The Doctor is angry at Ben and Polly for following him into the TARDIS, as he has no control over where he lands, and because he apparently thought he was going to be alone again. Even though he clearly didn't want to be at the end of the War Machines. Ben and Polly join the long list of companions who don't believe the TARDIS can travel in space and time. Bizarrely they accept it can take them from London to Cornwall in a matter of seconds, but dismiss the idea it can travel in time. The Doctor’s line, “you may know where you are, my dears, but not when. I forsee oodles of trouble,” is just bizarre. For starters, this Doctor calling anybody his “dears” just sounds wrong.

I like how everybody thinks Polly is a boy. I know it was done with Vicki in the Crusade, but it’s still amusing here. Anyway, essentially, the Doctor is told where some treasure is, and Pike and Cherub try and find out. Along the way they meet a corrupt smuggler, Squire, who isn’t evil, just a git, and an Aztec High Priest, sorry, I mean, a revenue man. To be honest, this story didn’t engage me all that much, and I don’t have all that much to say about it. It may look good, but I didn’t really get any sense of the fun which it’s supposed to have. Polly gets to be scared (that’s not something we’ll see much!), Ben gets to be tough, and the Doctor gets to have fun. However, we get another pivotal Doctor Who moment from this production team, as for the second time in three stories, the Doctor has the chance to get away, but refuses to leave because he feels under a moral obligation to stay. He said he’d feel responsible for all the deaths the pirates would cause if they just ran away. Unlike in the Savages, this moment happens in episode three! Doctor Who really has changed. Very quickly. The Massacre wasn’t so long ago, and the Doctor ran the second he heard what the year was then, and refused to help somebody Steven was attached to. 4/10.