The Pirate Planet [TV/1978.9.30 ~ 10.21]
★★★★★
Douglas Adams, despite having written only a total of three stories for Dr. Who, remains one of its greatest writers, and I'm not just saying this because he's the author of the ever-so brilliant Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. No, it's the fact that the man has such a way with words and a sense of humour and wit which would define several generations of book readers. He is an ideas man at heart and he's got the command of prose ot bring those amazing, imaginative and clever ideas to life with pure style. If you want proof of that, look no further than his very first serial for the show -- The Pirate Planet.
I mean, just watch this marvellous thing if you haven't already. The four parts fly by after a barrage of larger-than-life ideas and even more larger-than-life personalities. The set work is stunning, and the performances even more so. There really is nothing about the production that stands out to me as a negative factor... and in fact, practically every single aspect of this serial is an actively positive one. Tom Baker is on fire as the Doctor, not giving a flying damn about what others may think and totally embodying the character. I know many people bemoan the "non-acting" he does by basically playing himself in the latter years of his tenure, but I simply don't care. If that's Baker's own personality I'm seeing, then... sheesh, he's the perfect fit for Dr. Who! He dominates and chews every scene he's in, and you know who else completely owns the serial? Why, none other than one of the Fourth Doctor's most memorable villains, Bruce Purchase himself as the hammy ham Captain! There is no end to the delicious one-liners and insults the Captain has in store for the viewers, and when he and the Doctor meet and start sparring verbally... it's peak television. For that one beautiful sequence, The Pirate Planet is peak Dr. Who. What helps this serial tenfold is that the ideas are so drop-dead creative -- a hollow planet engineered to materialise around mineral-rich planets so that it could suck the victims dry and enjoy all the fuel and precious gemstones... thus being a pirate planet. Hey, might as well add stereotypical pirate imagery to drive home how boundless Douglas Adams' imagination is; how about a robot parrot on the Captain's shoulder, a hook hand where the hook is not a hook but a machine prong thing, and one of the cliffhangers is the Doctor literally being forced to walk the plank. This is insanity. Can you see why I love it so much?
Dear reader, I'm afraid that I can't begin to describe how much I love this serial. Out of all three TV stories written by Adams, The Pirate Planet is his most razor-sharp in terms of presenting his ideas. They keep coming non-stop, almost relentlessly, and I'm just happy revisiting it and being bombarded by idea after idea. True art never gets old, and I will probably never get tired of The Pirate Planet. It's one of the funniest Dr. Who adventures, and it's also one of the most clever Dr. Who adventures because furthermore, it's one of the silliest Dr. Who adventures. The Doctor entering the control room full of people who've just been ordered to search the entire facility for him, Romana charming the locals without any effort, K-9 having an entire battle sequence with the aforementioned robot parrot... need I go on? Let me just put it like this: if I had to compile a Top 10 list for classic Dr. Who serials, the day The Pirate Planet doesn't have a seat reserved there would be the day the world ends.
Douglas Adams, despite having written only a total of three stories for Dr. Who, remains one of its greatest writers, and I'm not just saying this because he's the author of the ever-so brilliant Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. No, it's the fact that the man has such a way with words and a sense of humour and wit which would define several generations of book readers. He is an ideas man at heart and he's got the command of prose ot bring those amazing, imaginative and clever ideas to life with pure style. If you want proof of that, look no further than his very first serial for the show -- The Pirate Planet.
I mean, just watch this marvellous thing if you haven't already. The four parts fly by after a barrage of larger-than-life ideas and even more larger-than-life personalities. The set work is stunning, and the performances even more so. There really is nothing about the production that stands out to me as a negative factor... and in fact, practically every single aspect of this serial is an actively positive one. Tom Baker is on fire as the Doctor, not giving a flying damn about what others may think and totally embodying the character. I know many people bemoan the "non-acting" he does by basically playing himself in the latter years of his tenure, but I simply don't care. If that's Baker's own personality I'm seeing, then... sheesh, he's the perfect fit for Dr. Who! He dominates and chews every scene he's in, and you know who else completely owns the serial? Why, none other than one of the Fourth Doctor's most memorable villains, Bruce Purchase himself as the hammy ham Captain! There is no end to the delicious one-liners and insults the Captain has in store for the viewers, and when he and the Doctor meet and start sparring verbally... it's peak television. For that one beautiful sequence, The Pirate Planet is peak Dr. Who. What helps this serial tenfold is that the ideas are so drop-dead creative -- a hollow planet engineered to materialise around mineral-rich planets so that it could suck the victims dry and enjoy all the fuel and precious gemstones... thus being a pirate planet. Hey, might as well add stereotypical pirate imagery to drive home how boundless Douglas Adams' imagination is; how about a robot parrot on the Captain's shoulder, a hook hand where the hook is not a hook but a machine prong thing, and one of the cliffhangers is the Doctor literally being forced to walk the plank. This is insanity. Can you see why I love it so much?
Dear reader, I'm afraid that I can't begin to describe how much I love this serial. Out of all three TV stories written by Adams, The Pirate Planet is his most razor-sharp in terms of presenting his ideas. They keep coming non-stop, almost relentlessly, and I'm just happy revisiting it and being bombarded by idea after idea. True art never gets old, and I will probably never get tired of The Pirate Planet. It's one of the funniest Dr. Who adventures, and it's also one of the most clever Dr. Who adventures because furthermore, it's one of the silliest Dr. Who adventures. The Doctor entering the control room full of people who've just been ordered to search the entire facility for him, Romana charming the locals without any effort, K-9 having an entire battle sequence with the aforementioned robot parrot... need I go on? Let me just put it like this: if I had to compile a Top 10 list for classic Dr. Who serials, the day The Pirate Planet doesn't have a seat reserved there would be the day the world ends.
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