Doctor Who:
The Pirate Planet
By Douglas Adams
“Appreciate it? Appreciate
it? What, you commit mass destruction and murder on a scale that's almost
inconceivable and you ask me to appreciate it? Just because you happen to have
made a brilliantly conceived toy out of the mummified remains of planets.”
The Doctor and Romana are
off to find the second segment to the Key to Time. They find out that it is on the planet
Calufrax but when The Doctor and Romana arrive they find themselves on
Zanak. Now The Doctor is confused and
blames it on the disturbance they felt while trying to materialize. What has the pair of time travelers confused
even more is that the locator is picking up strong traces for the second
segment.
Up on the mountain is the
Captain. He is a cyborg type pirate
captain who rules by installing fear with the aid of his killer robotic parrot.
There with the aid of Mr Fibuli they have come up with a way of materlizing
their planet among other planets and stealing the minerals of that world for
themselves. This process has killed
billions of species and must be stopped.
With the help of the telepathic Mentiads The Doctor and Romana must
return the destroyed planets stop the Pirate Captain and his weird nurse and
recover the next segment to the Key to Time.
The Pirate Planet is the
first story that Douglas Adams wrote for Doctor Who and it has his trade mark
humor in it. It is a wonderful story
that is zany and over the top plus it is pretty good on the science fiction
side also. I love the fact that he made
an entire planet travel through space by materializing around a planet. Pretty ingenious
and clever and it is something I always remembered when I watched this as a kid
and thought it was pretty neat to see the Captains trophy case with all that
remains of the planets.
The Captain, even though
he looks neat, was one of the most over the top characters in Doctor Who
ever. I mean just watch his performance
and how he delivers all his lines in his robust way. Extremely over the top and comical at the
same time as he is actually a funny character also as you really cannot take
him seriously at all. I guess that’s why he was really a puppet to Queen Xanxia
as she was really pulling his strings.
I really like this story
and most people do mainly for how well Douglas Adams wrote it and the
cleverness with it. Tom Baker is really
good in it and has some really dramatic moments despite the comedic nature of
the story. Mary Tamm gives us a good
performance even though she really is in a secondary role in this story. The Pirate Planet has a lot going on also as
the Mentiads are pretty interesting and if there is a fault is that they were a
little bit too powerful. I mean the part
with the wrench and talking telepathically through the vortex was a bit of a stretch.
The Pirate Planet is a
true classic Doctor Who story and quite possibly the best story of the Key to
Time season but it is not the best Douglas Adams Doctor Who story as that would
come next season.
Grade B +
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