The Pirate Planet Part Two

The one where the full horror of Calufrax's fate becomes apparent...

If only Bruce Purchase could retain his performance at the level he gives it at the top of this episode. In the scene where his lackeys are lined up on the Bridge, the Captain prowls around them menacingly, uttering veiled threats into their ears, and he has a suitably intimidating presence because his subtler performance nicely counters his dominant physicality. But then he goes and ruins everything by exploding into a torrent of bluster and shouting, like Brian Blessed on amphetamines. Ah well, it was good while it lasted. Plus, the Polyphase Avatron - the Captain's rubbish robot parrot - kills ubiquitous supporting artist Cy Town, who I must say is looking very handsome this week.

Introduced in this episode is the Captain's mysterious Nurse. She looks quite willowy and weak, but there are intriguing hints that there's more to her than meets the eye. See how much notice Mr Fibuli seems to take of her as well as the Captain, and during the Captain's interrogation of Romana, it's quite clear that the austere Nurse has some form of advisory influence over him. There's steel beneath that feeble exterior. She's one to watch.

Romana is wonderfully naive in this episode, bracingly so when climbing enthusiastically into the air car and reminiscing about how she was given one for her 70th birthday! Romana is enjoying herself, and quite endearingly oblivious to the fact she's in danger. Romana is an inexperienced traveller, so doesn't automatically expect everyone she meets to want to kill her, which is a nice outlook to have, but one which gets you into sticky situations. I love how she merrily explains who she is and how she travels in time and space, and then happily starts tinkering with the Captain's macromat field generator, which she sees as an antique!

Meanwhile, the Doctor has had to make a choice between saving Romana from the Captain and saving Pralix from the Mentiads. He deems Romana to be in more danger (but also probably thinks he'll learn more by going to the Bridge), so tells K-9 to go with the suddenly very headstrong Mula to see the Mentiads, while he and Kimus go after Romana. Balaton opts to stay at home, and who can blame the old feller?

It is strange that Douglas Adams goes to all the trouble of introducing Balaton and his extended family in part 1, then pretty much ignores them in part 2. Only Kimus gets worthwhile screen time, becoming the Doctor's temporary companion, but even he is quickly sidelined when the Doctor tells him to stay behind because there are "so many things" he can't understand! What sort of excuse is that to leave someone behind? It never stopped him taking Leela round the universe with him, or indeed any other companion who's never encountered an anti-inertia passage or a linear induction corridor before.

Balaton is grounded (never to be seen again), Pralix - who seemed so integral to events in part 1 - completely disappears, while Mula gets to be in her own version of K-9 and Company, striding over lush green fields toward the Mentiads' lair, her new robotic canine friend in tow. She gets pretty much nothing to do in part 2, but looks fabulous doing it.

The location filming gives the story a wonderful lift, adding to the radiance of this story as a whole. When the Doctor and Romana go down to the Engine Room, it's actually Berkeley Power Station in Gloucestershire, and as with every other time Doctor Who has filmed at a power plant, it looks amazing. Pennant Roberts shoots down from high gantries to capture the scale of the place, and the transition from the studio Bridge to the filmed Engine Room isn't jarring at all (unlike so many other video-to-film cuts). The clarity of the film stock does accentuate the awful state of Tom Baker's lip, however. It was explained within the fiction when the Doctor bashed his face on the TARDIS console in part 1, but in reality, his lip was bitten by a terrier when he offered it a sausage in his mouth. Tom was in the pub at the time, so it figures!

The Doctor tells Romana he believes they are in terrible danger from the Captain (who Romana amusingly dismisses as a "terrible old bully"!). I really like the vibe of the scenes between Tom Baker and Mary Tamm, they work so well together and are obviously on the same page. Tom doesn't seem as frustrated with the character of Romana (an "equal") as he was with Leela, and responds well to Mary's confidence.

It all goes a bit rubbish when the guards accompany the Doctor and Romana out of the mountain and encounter an armed Kimus waiting there. Suddenly an all-out laser fight erupts between at least three guards and one Kimus, but somehow, despite the fact the guards would be far better trained and skilled in battle, Kimus fells them all. Kimus is a wishy-washy citizen with absolutely no background or experience in armed combat, so this does not ring true for me at all. The Pirate Planet is very much post-Star Wars Doctor Who, but I'm sorry, Kimus is no Luke Skywalker!

Our heroes then make their way to another beautifully rugged location, the Big Pit in Gwent, doubling for Zanak's own mine workings. It feels quite unusual to see the Fourth Doctor and Romana running around a muddy colliery, rather than some leafy location, and as I watched these scenes at Big Pit (now the National Coal Museum) and Dan-yr-Ogof Showcaves it felt like I'd never seen them before at all!

The scenes in the caves, three miles below the surface of Zanak, are wonderful, both in how they look and what's revealed there. The magnitude of Douglas Adams' famously limitless imagination becomes apparent as the Doctor realises that it's not the Captain's Bridge that moves from planet to planet, it's the entire world of Zanak, which is a vampire, materialising around other planets like a clenched fist and mining them of all their minerals and wealth. Sadly, the horror of it isn't quite captured by Kimus's clumsy: "Bandraginus Five, by every last breath of my body, you'll be avenged"!

The concept is staggeringly epic, and typical of the sort of ideas-led science-fiction that runs through all of Adams' work, and where Doctor Who itself would ultimately be headed under its next producer.

As they stand on the buried surface of the icy planet Calufrax, the last thing our heroes need is to be chased by gun-toting guards, and then cornered by pallid-faced Mentiads. "Doctor, we have come for you," says the Mentiad leader, bringing a close to what has been a thrilling, mind-expanding 25 minutes.

First broadcast: October 7th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The idea of a vampire planet (much better than "pirate planet") which devours entire worlds is some epic SF!
The Bad: Kimus versus the Captain's guards.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 18 - the Doctor uses his bag of jelly babies (and liquorice allsorts) to distract the air car guard, but as he doesn't offer them to anyone, I won't add it to the tally.

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-pirate-planet.html

The Pirate Planet is available on BBC DVD as part of the Key to Time box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Key-Time-Re-issue/dp/B002TOKFNM