The Smugglers is the completely missing first serial of the fourth season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 10 September to 1 October 1966.

Pirates led by Captain Samuel Pike (Michael Godfrey) and his henchman Cherub (George A. Cooper) are searching for a hidden treasure, while a smuggling ring masterminded by the local squire Edwards (Paul Whitsun-Jones) is trying to off-load contraband.

They meet a worried churchwarden named Joseph Longfoot, who lives in fear of "Avery's boys" and, in thanks for the Doctor's kindness in relocating a dislocated finger, imparts a cryptic message he calls "Deadman's secret key": "Smallbeer, Ringwood, Gurney".

The smuggling alliance has by now fallen apart: the Squire has realised he is dealing with a ruthless pirate who will not honour any bargains while Cherub has decided to locate Avery's gold for himself.

He works out the names Ringwood, Smallbeer, and Gurney pertain to graves in the crypt but before he can find the treasure, the other seekers arrive.

The Doctor bargains with Pike for the lives of the villagers if he shows him the treasure and, with this agreed, they find the gold at the intersection of the four graves.

It would remain the least-watched Doctor Who serial for twenty years, until The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet aired in 1986.

[citation needed] In 2002, Interzone's Paul Beardsley reviewed the CD release as "an amiable but unremarkable purely historical yarn set in 17th century Cornwall" but remarked "[Anneke Wills]'s very good, and I hope she'll return to do The Underwater Menace.

"[7] In a review for the Radio Times, Patrick Mulkern praised the "excellent cast", though noting that the character of Jamaica was "a dodgy caricature that would be inconceivable in modern drama."

[9] Several brief clips cut by Australian censors for violence were recovered in 1996 and were released on the Lost in Time DVD box set in 2004.