The secretary and the sailor had come to say goodbye to the old man - that's how it all started. They saw him enter a police box, although why the Doctor should be inside a police telephone box was itself a minor mystery. They followed him inside. The next time Polly and Ben stepped outside, they were no longer in London. Nor were they in 1966.

This time the Doctor and his disbelieving fellow travellers had arrived in Cornwall, sometime around 1690. The pirate Avery had hidden his plunder somewhere nearby, and Captain Samuel Pike and his crew of cutthroats are after it. The churchwarden Joseph Longfoot knew the location of Avery's treasure, but when Longfoot was murdered his secret had surely died with him.

Longfoot must have known his days were numbered, which is possibly why he had passd on a strange cryptic rhyme to an equally strange traveller he had recently met. Could this be the secret Pike is after? And why would the Doctor want Avery's gold anyway?

The Smugglers earned the lowest viewing figures of any William Hartnell story, but this is not a true indication of its quality. Writer Brian Hayles script is one of Doctor Who's better historical stories. Ben and Polly rapidly form a bond with each other and the Doctor, and the supporting cast give it their all. The story keeps its pace and intrigue until the end.

The Smugglers was the first Doctor Who story to be completely filmed on location, in Cornwall of course. Some silent colour film exists of the making of The Smugglers, taken by a location owner, however none of this footage is of broadcast scenes.

All four episodes of The Smugglers are missing from the archives. When first sold to Australia, the censors took objection to the deaths of Longfoot, Jamaica, Kewper and Cherub, and these four short scenes were excised. It is a supreme irony that the only part of The Smugglers we have today are the very scenes these censors never intended viewers to see. Some of the Australian censor clips can be seen on The Missing Years documentary.

Introduction by Gary Zimmer (GARY.ZIMMER@vortex.me.rmit.edu.au)

Episode 1 based on a transcription by: Lee Horton (LeeH@tcp.co.uk) & Simon Hunt (mailto:exvxo@csv.warwick.ac.uk)
Episodes 2-4 transcribed by: Chris Gibbons
Corrections and reformatting by: Z1R0 (jcurtis@bw.edu)