Doctor Who and the Pirates

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Jubilee

A fantastic story, Jacqueline Rayner's last pure historical with Six and Evelyn was incredible so it makes sense this one would be aswell. The way this story is framed is absolutely my favourite part about it, I visualised it as a theatre performance and I think that fits really well.

I love the down-to-earth feel, after fighting all sorts of aliens, the Doctor and Evelyn return home and prevent one of Evelyn's students from killing themselves. While it's not directly stated, it's heavily implied and there's definitely a sense that something's wrong right from the start. I find the way this is handled at the end to be really touching, with brilliant performances from Colin Baker, Maggie Stables and Helen Goldwyn.

I couldn't write a review for this story without mentioning the music, it blends in perfectly with the very stereotypical and exaggerated pirate world. I was surprised at just how many songs there actually were and it was cool that the whole cast were involved. I think it makes for one of the most unique experiences I've had on audio to date. Another excellent story for Six and Evelyn.

Next Story: Project: Lazarus

The Monthly Adventures #043 - “Doctor Who and the Pirates" by Jacqueline Raynor

It’s always hard when you run into a popular story you just can’t get it into. No point in avoiding what will be the main talking point of this review, I don’t like Doctor Who and the Pirates. I think it is some novel concepts that forgot the basic tenets of scriptwriting and, as a result, came out lacklustre. It’s not a story I’m particularly fond of and not one I have a large amount to say on, it simply is a story that is not for me, one that was created with a different target demographic in mind that I just can’t seem to connect with. A swashbuckling adventure with an intrusive sense of humour and an annoyingly eccentric style.

Who doesn’t love a good story about pirates? Evelyn thinks the answer to be no-one, so when she takes it upon herself to cheer up one of her students, she tells the story of the time she and the Doctor were taken prisoner by fearsome pirate king Red Jasper.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

When looking at an episode that seems to fit normally into positive public perception and giving it a low score, one first must consider its positives and why it is so beloved. I think the main reason for Doctor Who and the Pirates’ success are elements that simply do not appeal to me but I can take part in admiring a few of its factors. At its heart, it is a story based on the gimmick of it being told by the Doctor and Evelyn, and not in the Companion Chronicles way of every companion having script level accuracy storytelling but in the way that they keep misremembering things or skipping over boring bits or making it more exciting for whomever it is they’re talking to. This gimmick is done really well, I have to say, and the ways it’s implemented are all pretty fun, from Evelyn not being able to think of enough names for the characters to giving Red Jasper countless anachronisms to shy away from his actual cutthroat nature. It’s a good idea done with a great amount of creativity that could only really, truly work on audio. As for the rest of the story, I think it pretty much fails on all fronts but one. When Raynor dials in the campiness and the pantomime-esque shenanigans, she can deliver some really solid scriptwriting. For one, Evelyn has some really great character development here, with the whole framing device of her trying to soothe a grieving student, whilst dealing with her own guilt over a character in the story’s death. It’s a great little setup through which we see more of her than we have before and really get a glimpse into the things that’ll make her one of the greatest companions in Doctor Who, at least in my opinion. In fact, every single plot beat that is separate from this story’s wall of noise is leagues greater than the rest of the narrative, and the tone probably should’ve been somewhat closer to that.

But, alas, it was not. I’m not denying that Doctor Who and the Pirates is a story with a lot of merits, I’m just saying that I don’t like it personally. I think this might be the first score I’ve given that’s based mostly on my own personal feelings rather than what I consider outright criticism, even the best bits (like the surprisingly solid musical Part 3) were just part of a story that doesn’t appeal to my personal tastes, and that’s fine, you don’t have to objective on everything. But do I think Doctor Who and the Pirates is a perfect story that I’m just baselessly against? No. No, absolutely not. I find that Doctor Who and the Pirates is a story that had a great idea, spent all its energy on realising that idea, and then forgot to write a compelling story around it. A gimmick is fun and all, but a story should take precedence in any work of fiction, which it doesn’t here. The story is basic and derivative: a nasty pirate wants to find a mystical treasure, throw in a bunch of one-dimensional, faceless characters and you’re done. The villains are tricked easily and the plot is moved forward by fantasies, it’s not very interesting and is paced poorly. And then there’s the cadence of it all. I guess it’s based on old Gilbert and Sullivan musicals so I don’t know if it’s reflective of them but the whole thing feels so ridiculous, like a really bad pantomime. Again, this might be a matter of taste but little to none of the humour landed for me and all the characters felt more like caricatures.

I’m not sure how many more ways to say “this wasn’t for me” there are, so I’ll stop this review here. Doctor Who and the Pirates is a fun audio with some good ideas, but I just can’t bring myself to like it. It’s a cacophony of loud voice acting and musical numbers that can never seem to stick the landing, no matter how hard it tries. I think it probably is a good story, or at least a passable one, but I wouldn’t know.

5/10

Pros:

+ Has good ideas and uses them well, in increasingly creative and unique ways

+ Some really nice character growth for Evelyn

+ Portrays emotional beats with a surprising amount of tact

Cons:

- A really simplistic and dull story with little forward momentum

- Has practically no good characters besides our regulars

- Irritatingly hyper and quirky

- On a personal level, does not work for me

16.09.2022

I love it. Love it, love it, love it. It hits perfectly, at least for me. An apotheosis of goofiness that is not ashamed of itself, a musical episode in the middle for some reason?? AND meta jokes? Was this written specifically for me?

Unfortunately it does have some major flaws. First of all, the tonal dissonance between two great ideas with similar concepts in common, but totally dissonant with each other. I can't imagine a rework where it would work. For the record it goes like this:
- The Doctor and a pirate first mate sing a song about who's a better pirate
- Oh God, this man died and it's all my fault. I killed this man. I have to live with this for the rest of my life.
- The treasure is on an island that looks like a donkey 😆😆

The musical part also leaves a lot to be desired. It's clear that 2003 Big Finish wasn't ready for musical productions. Still, I quite like it in tone, even if it's unlistenable at times.

3/5

MR 043: Doctor Who and the Pirates or The Lass That Lost a Sailor

Once again Jacqueline Rayner knocks it out of the park. It makes sense that she'd do so well with Evelyn because she wrote the first story and originated the character. She understands Evelyn more than most and it really shows here. Besides Jubilee, this is Evelyn's best story since the very first one. What a long way Evelyn has come too. She has nine stories in the first fifty main range. NINE! That's wild. Early Big Finish knew they had a good thing going with her. She was probably popular and with good reason.

This story feels like it's emulating Robert Shearman, in a good way. It's being hilarious and witty while at the same time being about something much more dark and painful. But there's hope in the end too, like the best of Robert Shearman's work.

There's a general framing device to this story. Evelyn, and then later the Doctor as well, are telling this story to one of Evelyn's students, Sally. Sally absolutely does not want to hear the story. She at first gets bowled over by Evelyn and then the Doctor who completely ignore her and then she tries to get them to leave and tell them that she doesn't care about their story. To which they completely ignore her and continue.

The framing device works to tell the broader story, but it also works to inject comedy into the story. Evelyn and the Doctor fudge some of the details or have the characters say things differently. The Doctor has the pirate captain call him well dressed and well spoken. While Evelyn tries to liven things up and deliberate steers the narrative to ignore the existence of a person who is too painful for her to acknowledge.

And it's with this narrative device that the story later turns into a musical where Colin sings not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different songs. Evelyn even gets to sing a song herself. This being a musical is brilliant. As the Doctor says, nothing even goes wrong in musicals. To which Sally helplfully points out a bunch of musicals where people die.

The actual story here is that long ago a pirate crew was infiltrated by a British spy. When the pirate captain found out about the spy, he hid his treasure on land and then had everyone in the crew marooned or killed to avoid the spy. But got got anyway by the last member of the crew, who was presumably the spy. That spy had a child who is now on the ship that the Doctor and Evelyn are on. He has a compass with a map. It feels very Disney Pirates of the Caribbean which came out in the same year as this one. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

The pirate captain boards the ship and goes about torching it but the captain, Evelyn and son, Jem, survive while the Doctor basically just hangs out on the pirate ship and hears the backstory. And then gets into a song contest with the pirates. It all ends in finding the treasure and the pirates marooned while the sailors on the ship that was captured sail back on the pirate ship.

None of that really matters, though. The pirate romp story is just set dressing to the real story here. In the process of interogating Jem for the treasure map, the pirate captain kills him. Evelyn blames herself for mentioning the islands that they're looking for and it deeply affects her. It's wild because usually in Doctor Who we just see death as a matter of course. It's a Doctor Who story, of course people die that the Doctor can't save. But here we actually stop to examine it and what it means to the people involved. The Doctor shrugs it off, of course. He says sorry but it doesn't really affect him the way it affects Evelyn. This sort of thing is why being a companion changes you as a person permanently. You get desensitized to death, your own or other people's.

Evelyn relates her trauma in maybe causing a death to the trauma of her student, Sally. The reason why Sally doesn't want them there is becasue she accidentally killed her lover in a car accident where she was driving. She was trying to drive fast to get to where she was going and didn't see them before hitting them. And this is the night where she left a suicide note for Evelyn and went to kill herself.

In a rare turn of events for the Doctor, he actually lets Evelyn go back in time and save Sally from killing herself. Normally in a situation like this he'd say something like "we're a part of events now, we can't go back" to avoid creating a paradox. They see the suicide note, go back in time to stop it, and so she doesn't leave a note and so they don't go back in time to stop it. But that kind of time travel explanation would defeat the entire point of the story, and ruin it, so we're ignoring it. It makes for a very good ending. That's the reason why Evelyn refused to leave and bowled her over to tell her pirate story. She won't leave Sally alone because she knows what Sally will do and she needs someone to sit with her and show that she cares. The night is darkest just before the dawn. And in the end Sally makes it to that next dawn.

That framing story is ultimately what makes this story so strong and so impactful. The pirate romp is delightful and fun, but at the center of it is an evil/mad pirate kind who will stop at nothing to get his treasure, killing everyone along the way. It's an over the top cliche, but it relates to the much more real story of someone dying in a car accident, something that is all too common. It gives Sally some really strong, emotional songs in the middle of the silly ones as well.

You'd think something like this would be mood dissonance, but it works quite well. Rayner weaves the comedy in with the tragedy so expertly, as if she's been writing stories like this all her life. She knows when to play up the tragedy or when to play up the comedy for full effect. It works particularly well when Evelyn is trying to ignore her trauma and bury it by covering it up with comedy. Evelyn uses comedy as a coping mechanism while the Doctor helps her heal. Indeed the Doctor says that he brought her back and did this for Evelyn. He's desensitized to death, but not Evelyn. Not yet. After all the death she's seen in the previous seven stories with her before this one, THIS is the death that impacts her the most. A young man who just wanted to sail the seas.

Having this story related by Evelyn Smythe and The Sixth Doctor relating one of their adventures to another person was fun. It allowed for backtracking and corrections in the retelling as their listener pointed out flaws in their narration. The musical bits were a fun addition as well, though perhaps there was a song of two too many. While Evelyn’s character was frustrating at times with her mysteriousness in the retelling (to serve the overarching story), the ultimate payoff was perhaps worth it.

I didn't seem to take to this one as much as others, but I still very much enjoyed it and had a bit of fun along the way. It's certainly the best Doctor Who pirate story I've stumbled upon and has some good moments here and there. I do love the creativity and boldness of this one, though, and hardly hated my time listening. I'm just not sure it was quite my cup of tea. I do enjoy the sixth doctor here and it really sold me on him in the early days, so I will always appreciate that about Doctor Who and the Pirates.