Arrr, matey! The one where the Doctor accidentally becomes a pirate’s least favorite houseguest.
Short Synopsis
The Doctor tries to give Ben and Polly their first TARDIS trip to the beach. Unfortunately, he lands them in 17th-century Cornwall, where pirates, smugglers, and one very unlucky churchwarden are waiting to turn a seaside holiday into a blood-soaked treasure hunt.
Extended Storyline
Fresh off of losing Dodo (who basically just wandered out of the TARDIS mid-plot never to be seen again), the Doctor finds himself saddled with two new stowaways: Ben the sailor and Polly the fashion model. Their first adventure? Cornwall in the 1600s—because nothing screams “gentle introduction to time travel” like pirates, buried treasure, and casual murder.
The Doctor and his new friends stumble into a plot involving a hidden stash of gold left behind by the notorious pirate Avery (who, if you’re keeping track, also gets name-dropped again later in The Curse of the Black Spot—clearly this man’s accountant was terrible at record keeping).
The treasure’s location is hidden in a riddle only known to a churchwarden, who, in true Doctor Who fashion, is promptly murdered before anyone can ask him for clarification. Classic.
From there, it’s all downhill—or uphill, depending on how much you enjoy watching pirates backstab each other. There are smugglers pretending to be respectable, pirates pretending to be smugglers, and people double-crossing each other so often it’s a wonder anyone remembers whose side they’re on. The Doctor, naturally, survives by doing what he does best: acting mysterious, spouting cryptic nonsense, and somehow tricking hardened criminals into obeying him.
Ben and Polly get their trial by fire, finding out that time travel mostly involves getting captured, tied up, and menaced by men with bad teeth and worse wigs. By the end, Avery’s treasure remains undiscovered (because sequels), the villains are either dead or arrested, and the Doctor whisks his new friends away before they can ask too many questions about whether this is what “sightseeing” always looks like.