No.

No no.

NO NO NO.

Dick was unconscious last week as the zeppelin hit the ground. Now we find he’s used the two and a half seconds between the shot of the unconscious Dick and the crashing of the airship to wake up, get his bearings, run into the cockpit, grab hold of the generic European spy and jump from the zeppelin to safety.

Not, of course, that jumping from this height with a parachute would be any use – I don’t know much about stuff but I wouldn’t have thought there was time for it to open and save you from an impactful death.

These two fishermen watch the zeppelin crash. The calmly decide that anyone still aboard the ship would surely drown. Because, obviously, it is very unlikely that a boat would be nearby or that it would be able to get to the crash scene on time.

But when a parachute lands a few feet away, even the crew of the SS Apathetic have no choice but to leap into action. They drag the generic European spy from the water and then yank the wet Dick aboard too.

Once again, Dick gets the headlines when all he did was get in the way and barely escape with his teeth.

Meanwhile, back at FBI HQ, this man brings news that a million dollars worth of gold has gone missing.

It turns out that a ship crossing the ocean had the gold in a secret compartment. At the end of the voyage, the compartment was still sealed but the gold was gone. All luggage was searched and no trace was found. Dick puts his hands in his pockets and has a good hard think.

But lo! There is a small, tiny, insignificant snippit of information which Dick and only Dick can decipher. One of the crewmen on board the ship went missing during the voyage and a note was found in his locker telling him to await further instructions. No one saw the significance of this until Sherlock Tracy was called in.

The woman has been examining the note for clues. Luckily, it turns out to have been written by the same person as several other Spider Ring notes. Gosh darn it – there is always something the criminal forgets.

But wait! There’s more. The handwriting is the same as on a photograph from Gordon Tracy to his brother, Dick.

The woman refuses, almost on the brink of tears, to believe that Gordon is working for the Ring.

Dick agrees that Gordon can’t possibly be on the side of evil – the Ring was operational before Gordon went missing. This logic is flawed for two reasons – firstly, Gordon could’ve been pulling the strings while under Dick’s very nose and secondly, Dick has seen Gordon working for the bad guys on at least two occasions. These two facts, the latter in particular, seem to have passed Dick by.

Meanwhile, the Spider Ring are meeting to plan some evil. Gordon has a map of the boat which I thought the gold had already been stolen from. But the Ring are planning to steal it. Something isn’t quite right here. Maybe it isn’t just Dick Tracy who misses the blatantly obvious.

At the quayside, Dick is investigating some boat or other while the idiot persuades the small boy to tie him up. It’s either high comedy or seedy perversion and nothing in this serial so far makes me think they are capable of high comedy.

Another day, another radio operator operating another radio.

In the Lame One’s office, some candles are flashing. Wasn’t that reused in Allo Allo? Now there was a series which understood high comedy.

The idiot can’t escape from the small boy’s knots. I told you it was seedy perversion.

This the vault where the gold was stored. It’s clever the way it blends in with the rest of the ship.

Dick looks round the vault and concludes that the gold was stolen shortly after all the boxes were opened.

A fight nearly breaks out but is averted at the last minute when the bad guy tells some inept lies and Dick Tracy pretends to believe him. The man is a maintenance man and has been sent to do some repairs. Dick goes with him and, while the man is doing something working class with his oily chums, Dick has another think.

Dick figures out that the blueprint he’s been given isn’t the same one he saw earlier in the episode – the first one had ink marks on it while this one is clean. He goes to confront the man who gave him the second set of plans but is attacked with a spanner. At least we know where the ink stains went – right on the film stock.

Dick recovers very quickly from what was clearly a glancing spanner blow to the back of the head and a fight breaks out.

Damn – his antagonist has only gone and picked up a blow torch. That’s not fair.

Dick responds by picking up a handy table and the fight resumes.

The maintenance crew – who were dispatched to remove a faulty plate from the side of the ship – open a hole in the wall of the room in which the fiery contest is being fought.

The fight moves out to the maintenance scaffold.

And down to the dock side (you thought they’d end up in the water didn’t you? Well I did so there). Unbeknownst to them, the plate that has been removed is hanging down (where did all the maintenance guys go?) Unfortunately, the blow torch is still on and is at this very moment cutting through the rope.

Dick looks up in horror as several hundred tonnes of metal (or whatever – I’m not doing any more research for this drivelling part work) falls on top of him.

Harbours don’t move very quickly – this will be an easy piece of pursuit.