I feel that I’m being a bit mean by saying that this is one of the weaker TV Comic. As we all know, these stories were written with young children in mind. They were intended to be disposable little stories that would entertain its young audience for a few minutes each week. I don’t think anyone at the time would have imagined that these stories would be read, dissected and reviewed by grown adults some 60 years later.

Even taking all this into consideration, though, this is still the weakest of the TV Comic stories to date. Now, the previous two stories might not have been stone-cold classics but it feels like a lot more thought and imagination went into those stories than this one.

It’s a shame as things start promisingly enough. We’re in Earth’s not so distant future where spaceships carrying supplies are mysteriously disappearing shortly after launch. It turns out that the ships have been hijacked by space pirates, captained by the villainous Thrax. Just in case you weren’t sure that he was a pirate, the visuals make it very clear – all he’s missing is a parrot on his shoulder and a wooden leg. There’s also some unintended humour as Thrax channels his inner Doctor Evil and ransoms the contents of the spacecraft for…”ten thousand earth pounds.” Sadly that figure doesn’t sound quite as impressive now as it did back in 1964.

For such supposedly fearsome villains, the pirates are defeated remarkably easily by a combination of soap and potatoes and everything is wrapped up in just six pages.  In fact it’s not even a full six pages as the last panel is used to promote next week’s story: Return to the Web Planet.

Sadly, that’s not really anything to recommend in this strip.  There’s a real sense here that no one was really all that bothered about this story, possibly because the focus was on the imminent appearance of the first monsters from the TV series in the strip.  Hopefully the next story will see a step-up in quality.