What's Wrong With... The Space Pirates

For such a poorly regarded story, there isn't actually all that much wrong with The Space Pirates.

This is the last story which is missing from the archives. We have a single episode (2), which doesn't actually feature the titular pirates. There aren't any telesnaps, and only a handful of publicity photographs were taken, to let us see what the rest of it looked like.

 

Throughout the Troughton era we have been presented with a number of people in senior positions, where you have to wonder how they managed to gain - let alone keep - this position.

General Hermack might fit into this category, as he doesn't seem to be very bright. 

He decides early on that Milo Clancey must be the leader of the pirates, seemingly on the sole evidence that he is in the vicinity of a beacon theft. 

The pirates are using extremely expensive Beta Dart spacecraft, yet Clancey is flying around in the old battered LIZ 79.

Instead of going to Clancey's base on Lobos to look for evidence such as the beacon parts or Beta Darts, Hermack takes his ship to Ta in search of Clancey - the planet belonging to the old man's biggest enemy. He's hardly going to be given a hiding place there.

Ta has lots of Beta Darts, but Hermack fails to put two and two together. Madeleine Issigri's ships have a distinctive nose cone fitted, but it doesn't dawn on Hermack that these could be easily changed. Wouldn't checking out who owns Beta Darts in this region of space have been a good starting point for Hermack's investigations?

Ta doesn't have a breathable atmosphere. All we see are tunnels apart from the mining complex but Hermack thinks it's a good place for his men to have a break.

Dom Issigri has been held captive in his old office for the last ten years, yet Madeleine hasn't noticed the food and power that must be getting diverted to keep the old man alive. He's burning lots of candles, so the ventilation must be going full blast. 

Why does Caven keep Dom alive after so long? It may have been a good idea initially, in case Madeleine didn't play ball, but that point must have been passed a long time ago.

Why do the prates split up the beacons into their component sections if they're all going to the same place anyway? If it's because a full beacon is big enough to be detected by the Space Corps scanners, whilst smaller bits aren't, then this is never stated.

You would expect a beacon called Alpha-One to be sited close to a planet - the first one you'd come to on an outbound journey - yet this one is out in the middle of nowhere.

Lastly, Zoe hasn't got a clue about candles. She has to ask what they are and how they work - despite having seen lots in the labyrinth in The Mind Robber. (This has been used as evidence that the events of that earlier story never took place, but were all in the Doctor's mind).