The Pirate Planet - Classic Doctor Who review

[@neilmcdonald9164]

The late Bruce Purchase was the only actor who could rival BRIAN BLESSED in being BRIAN BLESSED-like❤️👍🎩

[@Concreteowl]

He delivers a very delicate performance in the Thames TV Quatermass story. Blessed is many wonderful things DELICATE IS NOT ONE OF THEM!!!😁

[@paulhammond6978]

@@Concreteowl I'll argue with you about that - have you seen Brian Blessed as Caesar Augustus in I Claudius? That for sure has some quiet moments in amongst all the loud bits.

[@Rik77]

Romana 1 works for me because i find her annoying personality really funny and i like her dynamic with the doctor.

[@Donnagata1409]

Romana I is my favourite. Much better than Romana II.

[@cindydott452]

My favorite line from the Doctor - “I'll never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again!"

[@HBHaga]

As I recall from the first time I saw this episode, I always thought of the Captain and Fibuli's relationship as a sort of Hook and Smee sort of thing.

[@alunrundle162]

Douglas Adams was a brilliant writer who needed either a Radio budget for Radio or a Movie budget for TV.

[@nekusakura6748]

Douglas Adams and Ken Russell would have been a creative match made in heaven.

[@Rik77]

Honestly, this is one of my favourite doctor who stories ever. I saw it for the first time last year, its so colourful fun and weird thoughout.

[@cindydott452]

Has anyone else noticed that Sonic The Hedgehog's Dr. Robotnic seems to have been modeled on The Captain?

[@Fiyero1982]

This was THE literal first Doctor Who story I ever saw. My Dad was also obssesed with Doctor Who and Douglas Adams. It sparked the seed that grew into my obsession with The Doctor

[@weejas]

The Polyphase Avatron was to "The Pirate Planet" as Boobo was to "Clash of the Titans" (1980). If Big Finish do work on a prequel, they absolutely must include him! The Captain's relationship with Mr Fibuli puts me in mind a little of Westley and the Dread Pirate Roberts - the performative aspect, anyway. Douglas Adams never failed at the one-liners. "I'll never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again!" And they were brought to Calufrax after Zanak had mined precisely so that it would be in a suitable state for conversion back into part of the Key to Time. The White Guardian was no fool! :P

[@uapuat]

K9's shootout with the robot parrot lives joyously in my memory!

[@gracol435]

Romana went (very quickly) from an arrogant know-it-all just out of her ivory tower to someone who realised that this old fossil had something to teach her.

[@inionanbas615]

If i remember correctly the wand-thing that goes into the centre of the key to time restores each individual piece to its proper shape. I guess if Kalifrax hadn't been destroyed The Doctor would have just leaned out of the TARDIS and poked the ground with it?

[@slumdogjay]

I love The Pirate Planet. Very entertaining and a very dark sense of humour.

[@alfje5492]

HHGG got me (back) into DW as well: read the books in the 90s and bought a SF compilation CD with the theme as well as the DW theme on it. Listening to that, I remembered seeing some DW in the 80s and became a fan of this series, especially the Douglas Adams years!

[@ftumschk]

The Captain ❤ Mr Fibuli = Pirate Ship

[@nancyjay790]

If you were making an omelette, I'd expect to find several pieces of broken crockery and a cooker on fire. (Apologies. I may be inaccurate on the line.) Edit to add: This is from "City of Death", not "The Pirate Planet." But I do love the line.

[@BadWisdom523]

I’m not the hoopiest frood, but I do know where my towel is. But… what’s it for?!? (And you’re not wrong about City Of Death)

[@lgoamity]

Oh good. Don't Panic. Towel day is tomorrow... So I have time to grab my towel

[@jamesnarbett9387]

As to how they were supposed get this part of the key is easy, as you pointed out earlier, they arrived at the exact temporal co-ordinates. This being the only point in time when they could collect it, when somebody had already crushed the planet down to a more manageable size. Of course, what you have to then realise given the whole story, is that either the Black or White Guardian made sure, by surreptitious nudging, that it was chosen to be crushed at all, allowing the Doctor to collect it.

[@sarcasticvalet1199]

I remembered the K9 Vs Parrot fight, but just couldn't remember which story it came from. Glad to know now!

[@danielwilliamson6180]

The Pirate Planet is of my all time Doctor Who stories. The late Bruce Purchase gave a brilliant performance as the evil cybernetic space pirate The Captain.

[@danielwilliamson6180]

🦜 RIP Polyphase Avatron.

[@neilmcdonald9164]

The most Douglas Adams story of the stories he was involved with and,of course,the second part of the Key to Time season🎩

[@HalfBlindPrince]

16:34 Vera, your Yoda is showing!

[@thesquire9966]

Big Finish did a "Key 2 Time" run with the 5th doctor. It's genuinely brilliant, and one of the stories does kind of answer your question on what if the planet wasn't compressed? Fair warning, I am about to spoil all of "The Destroyer of Delights", a story that you really should listen to instead: The opening hook for the story is that nobody can find the 5th segment. The Black and White guardians both come up empty, and the tardis tracer keeps taking them to seemingly random locations, but a detailed scan of each place reveals nothing. They decide to stick it out and explore one of these locations in more detail, then a story happens. At the end, a crashed spaceship explodes, and the detector starts going off. The 5th segment is a volume of molten metal of a specific composition, a thing that they had to create. The idea being that all of the initial random locations were places the segment had the potential to form, and whichever place they chose to land, this kind of debris would have formed at the end of the story I think the subtle implication for this story is that this segment wasn't just Callufrax, it was specifically the compressed form of Callufrax. This story is what was supposed to happen, there is no "if it hadn't been crushed" That said, on first viewing, when they're doing the "walk the plank" cliffhanger, I was certain the solution was going to be for the doctor to take out the detector and touch the surface of Callufrax with it right before hitting the ground, so it transforms into the segment and the ground effectively vanishes beneath him

[@IronSalamander8]

I'm a Douglas Adams fan as well, and like Terry Pratchett even more thanks to Discworld! A lot of Adams' Doctor Who bits are very much the same in his various books. And this one is obvious. It's a good story, and quite fun if very silly at times.

[@aaronfrey4418]

This is my all time favorite Dr. Who story. I saw it as a kid when it aired and it blew my mind.

[@Yan_Alkovic]

I'm glad you like this one, in my opinion this is the absolute best Key to Time story, for all the reasons that you mentioned, and because K-9 got to ride in one of those flying cars and he was so adorable doing that!

[@happysquirrel]

By the left frontal lobe of the sky demon! This and Stones are easily the best two parts of Key To Time.

[@kemmdog4444]

“What could possibly be worth all this??!!”

[@stephenkay4008]

When I saw this upon original transmission in 1978, I really didn’t like it and because I was totally unaware of Hitchhiker’s Guide (was it even a thing then?, I can’t remember.) I thought it was too talky and silly and the total opposite of all the serious, doom-laden Gothic stories that I loved from a couple of years previously. By the time I had reached the age of 15/16 of course everybody knew and loved Hitchhiker’s and so I cam to reassess this and I got the humour and I got the clever layering of the story and the characters and to this day, I still think this is one of the cleverest Sci-Fi concepts ever, augmented by the fact that there are constant surprises and it’s testament to Douglas Adams’ skill as a writer that all those layers and twists hold together. It should be a complete mess, there’s so much going on, but it isn’t. Sheer genius! Thank you, as always, Vera for a balanced, fair and perceptive review - there’s no one out there like you! x

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

The pirate planet fooled me I did not see the revelation That the (Nurse) was in charge

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

I remember first finding and reading Douglas Adams's Hitchikers Guide books. I really should re read them.

[@Scuzzbopper.]

Definitely need to re-watch this one. Haven't seen it in too long.

[@R.senals_Arsenal]

I love this story. Stand outs for me are the Captain's bluster, the Polyphase Avatron Vs K-9, but most of all : The Doctor's outrage at what the Captain has done. "What's it for!" always sticks out for me, that bellow of indignation. I want a clip for my playlist of great moments in fiction playlist on my channel. As for the whole of Calufrax being the segment, I think of it like the 6th segment, it is only a segment during a certain span of time. It has not always existed as a segment, same as there was a time before Astrid was born. Timing is an element to what makes up the pieces of the Key to Time. My towels are in the laundry or hanging over the shower rod. I like your channels, and you, because, you strike me as someone who really knows where their towel is! City of Death is Peak Classic WHO. Image of the Fendahl is up there for me too. Caves of Androzani, Ark of Infinity, Curse of Fenric, Pyramids of Mars, etc. Good schtuffs. Looking forward to 73 Yards tonight!!!

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

I love this story and I need to rewatch it soon. It's been a while since the last time and that's a good enough reason with something like this :)

[@BrianDavidson-q1j]

I've always loved this one.

[@MalamuteX]

I love this episode. Just pure entertainment.

[@MrDianGamble]

"What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow? In Km/hr."

[@BulbasaurRepresent]

One of my favourite Tom Baker stories! Always have fun with this one.

[@tubian323]

Mr Fibule!

[@kurathchibicrystalkitty5146]

I forgot it was Towel Day. 😆 Oops.

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

I❤ pirate planet

[@Stephen-Fox]

Love this one. Absolutely adore it.

[@meander112]

Engagement for the engagement god!

[@Concreteowl]

Romana is perfect. Park your prejudices. Just enjoy it.

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

Wilful ignorance Is the worst

[@bananasaregood8655]

Easily the best story in the season

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

I love this fight It's awesome

[@matthewbolitho-jones]

I like The Pirate Planet

[@Jesse-mh6hv]

Have have you seen Josh Snares if not I highly recommend them (Particularly the video on fandom cringe)

[@neilmcdonald9164]

Don't worry,Nathaniel,this is largely,the end of snooty Romana...and the next story is my favourite of the season 🎩

[@ImBigDave79]

Vera

[@BreakRoomofGeeks]

Either is ok, both are listed in the credits.

[@ImBigDave79]

@@BreakRoomofGeeks sometimes I'm a bit too quick to get suspicious. My bad.

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

Yesss i ship it too

[@benflay6038]

It's fun

[@MarkWiseTechno]

This is campy Doctor Who at its absolute best. And the fact that all the camp and humor is layered on an addiction allegory with an horrific plot about planetary genocide elevates it to greatness. Not an all-time classic. But definitely great. A- Also, since Chibnall ripped the planetary genocide part of this story's plot for The Battle of Rancid al Klusterfuck, I like to compare the Fourth Doctor's reaction to learning about said genocide to the 13th Doctor's reaction because it exemplifies everything that was wrong with Chibnall's writing. Fourth Doctor, brimming with righteous anger and indignation: Appreciate it? Appreciate it??!! You commit mass murder on an almost inconceivable scale, and you ask me to appreciate it all because you happened to have made a a brilliantly conceived toy?! Thirteen, flatly: Man, I already didn't like you before, but I really don't like you now. 🥱 Lastly, the ultimate resolution to stopping the planet ship and saving the day is amazing. They need to stop the engines, so they hit it with a wrench. 😂😂 The solution is literally "throwing a spanner in the works." Amazing. 😆😆

[@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω]

A yes Romana 1

[@renaigh]

Seed worlds have gotten out of hand

[@Pooter-it4yg]

I always found this one enjoyable but overblown - typical of Adams, just too many ideas. Good ideas mostly, but too many and what gets lost in all this is that the next victim of the planet is to be Earth. Shada I think - now we know it in some form - suffers from the same issue. The only other one attributed after the fact by Hitchhiker fans to Adams was City of Death, for which he did a booze fuelled weekender emergency rewrite of someone else's script to fit a modern Paris setting, so it isn't so full-on. Sorry Adams fans, the core elements of the story weren't his. Incidentally, the amount of actual location filming was very little and only involved Baker, Ward and Chadbon (Duggan). I do really like Adams, don't get me wrong, but his stuff can be extremely relentless. Of course, he left the scriptwriter job on Who just after the incomplete Shada season because he'd got a go-ahead for Hitchhiker on TV. Little fun note - in some scenes Baker has a lump on his lip, caused when he was petting a dog that bit him. Another little fun note if you're into that period. Crowden, who hammed it up as Soldeed in the Horns of Nimon, deliberately went overboard for his death scene thinking it was just a camera rehearsal. He was trying to corpse the others but the take wound up being used.

[@cindydott452]

I always find it hysterical when Soldeed called Romana a "Meddlesome Hussy!" Let's not forget the co-pilot splitting the seat out of his pants when he collapsed!

[@Pooter-it4yg]

@@cindydott452 Little story pertinent to what Crowden did. My mother once got a bit part in a Hammer horror film. The scene involved a beggar forced to dance for food and the old trouper playing the beggar told her he'd get her an extra day's shooting and pay. So he went absurdly over the top to ruin the take. The director said "cut and print" and sent everyone home.

[@Pooter-it4yg]

@@cindydott452 Doesn't matter if you don't believe me, but it's true.

[@Pooter-it4yg]

@@cindydott452 Oh for goodness' sake. I simply added an anecdote because I thought from your full response that you seemed engaged and would find it interesting and amusing. It's only a bit of chat. And FWIW I think costume mishaps are hilarious. Can we please agree that there's been a misunderstanding here?

[@Pooter-it4yg]

@@cindydott452 That phrase is not smarmy and not an insult. But since you seem to think so, I'll remove it.

[@Concreteowl]

One of many stories that could have been a Master story. Imagine if the captain was being controlled not by some vaguely defined evil queen but instead by the crispy Master.