Episode 19
Hipster Klingon
Sunday 28 December 2014
Well, it’s literally the end of an era. In our last episode for 2014, we discuss the last two stories of the 1960s, and the last two stories of the Patrick Troughton era, The Space Pirates and The War Games. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Buy the stories!
The Space Pirates is the last story with missing episodes. Which is quite a relief. Episode 2 is the only one that remains: you can see it on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version exists, with linking narration by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
And Patrick Troughton’s final story, and the last story of the 1960s, The War Games, has been released on DVD in its gloriously restored entirety. It costs nearly $400 on Amazon US for some reason; it’s also available from Amazon UK at a much more sensible price.
The Space Pirates
Fans of slow-moving model spaceships will enjoy Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Fans of Dudley Foster, who plays Pirate Captain Maurice Caven, will enjoy his appearance as Mr Goat in the Avengers episode “Something Nasty in the Nursery” (1967).
Fans of dull James Bond films involving Kevin McClory will enjoy Thunderball (1965) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
Fans of putting cowboys in space operas will enjoy the brilliant and tragically short-lived TV series Firefly. A lot.
Fans of not wasting hours of their lives watching The Space Pirates will enjoy the the cut-down fifty-minute Whoflix version.
The War Games
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) is Sir Richard Attenborough’s musical take on World War I, based on a 1963 stage musical.
Journey into Space by Charles Chilton, who also wrote Oh! What a Lovely War, was a science fiction radio series first broadcast on BBC radio between 1953 and 1958. (Philip Hincliffe mentions it in the DVD commentary for The Robots of Death.) It regularly out-rated TV programmes that were on at the same time. Some public-spirited individual has uploaded much of the series to YouTube.
Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle’s novel October the First Is Too Late was first published in 1966. Its world is splintered into different time zones by the effects of radiation or something, much like the battlefields of The War Games.
As usal, fans of The Avengers should check out The Avengers TV website.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Zoë Heriot’s adventures continue after the Time Lords return her to the Wheel, in the Big Finish Companion Chronicles, particularly Echoes of Grey, The Memory Cheats and The Uncertainty Principle.
Nathan
Matthew Waterhouse’s entertaining autobiography Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Richard
Shockingly, Richard’s been watching things other than Doctor Who, including Catweazle, starring the planet Chloris’s very own Geoffrey Bayldon (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), and The Champions, co-created by Dennis Spooner. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
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