I is for... Issigri, Dom & Madeleine

Dom Issigri was one of the founders of a hugely successful mining operation in the outer galaxies. He set up business in partnership with another miner named Milo Clancey, basing themselves on the planet Ta, which was rich in a metal called argonite.

A few years later Issigri and Clancey had a falling out, which led Clancey to set up his own operation on the planet Lobos. Issigri disappeared soon after and his daughter Madeleine, who took over the running of the business, suspected Clancey of being involved. She was encouraged in this belief by a man named Caven, who led a ruthless pirate gang. Ta was beginning to run out of argonite supplies, but Caven proposed to Madeleine a scheme whereby they could capture and break up space navigation beacons, which were constructed from the metal. To anyone on the outside it would simply look like new seams of argonite were being mined.

Madeleine was happy to form a partnership with Caven, and go along with efforts to have Clancey framed as the pirate leader.

The Doctor and Clancey, along with Jamie and Zoe, were captured by the pirates and locked up in an ornate room in the bowels of Ta. Here they found an old man also being held prisoner, and he was recognised by Clancey as his one-time partner Dom Issigri.

Caven had abducted him as he knew that would never cooperate with piracy, whilst his daughter might be duped into doing so. Once she discovered that her father was still alive she turned against Caven and helped the Space Corps defeat him. She then accepted arrest and whatever punishment might follow for her collusion with the pirates.

Played by: Esmond Knight (Dom) and Lisa Daniely (Madeliene). Appearances: The Space Pirates (1969).

• Very few images exist for The Space Pirates. There are only a handful of publicity stills, and no telesnaps covering the five missing episodes have ever come to light. Dom Issigri only features in the latter part of the story, for which no images exist.
• Esmond Knight was a sailor on HMS Prince of Wales when it was attacked by the Bismark. He was hit in the face by shrapnel, losing one eye and badly damaging the other. For two years he was totally blind, yet continued his acting career. In 1943 he underwent an operation and regained partial sight in his surviving eye. He carried on working right up until just before his death in 1987.