Doctor Who: Series 16, Episodes 5-8 – “The Pirate Planet” (1978)

Douglas Adams and Doctor Who.  It’s a beautiful, inventive, absurd combination.  So much love for this serial.

In their season-long quest to collect the six segments of the Key to Time, the Fourth Doctor, Romana I, and K9’s travels lead them to Calufrax.  Unfortunately, upon landing, the Doctor is convinced that this isn’t the planet it ought to be, and Romana’s handy-dandy segment-detector is reading faint but distinct traces of their prize everywhere.  As they get to the bottom of it, their investigation reveals a psychic cult, precious stones falling from the sky, and a cybernetic space pirate.

Let’s start with that last point, because that’s really the only way to begin talking about this story.  Cybernetic space pirate.  Robot parrot.  Sci-fi plank.  Huge chunks of scenery dangling from the corners of his mouth.  Colorful oaths like, “BY THE BEARD OF THE SKY DEMON!!” and “MOONS OF MADNESS!!”  This character is everything.  I’m pleased to live in a world where such colossal ridiculousness exists.

That, and the story’s nothing to sneeze at.  At first, it feels a little disjointed, what with the planet that shouldn’t be there, the over-the-top space pirate, and the psychic cult, but everything coheres in a way that, while not exactly making sense, still holds together well (it doesn’t make sense because it’s crazy, not because it’s bad writing.  It’s an entirely good kind of senseless.)  There are some really creative ideas, nice humor, and good twists going on here.

All our heroes acquit themselves pretty well.  You just know that Four is gonna be a blast playing opposite someone like the Captain, and there’s a fine mystery here for him to sink his teeth into.  Not to mention, there’s a creepy-but-misunderstood fringe group wanting to rise up against their evil overlords, and the Doctor is all over that.  Also, he calls K9 his best friend, which makes me “aww.”

Romana does nicely, too.  After some first-adventure rough patches in “The Ribos Operation,” she’s in fairly good form here.  And not just at the science stuff/deductive reasoning that we already know she’s good at.  Her ingratiating-herself-into-an-alien-culture skills are coming along well – she makes nice with the locals immediately, even beating the Doctor on that front (to be fair, K9 puts that down to the particular assets she has that the Doctor doesn’t, but even though Romana doesn’t actively deploy any wiles to get what she wants, she certainly makes the most of the opportunity that comes her way.)

Also, there’s an instance of Romana getting captured that is pretty much everything I want from a companion-capture scenario.  Yes, I know that sounds weird, but I’ve long since made my peace with the fact that a huge part of the companion’s job is to get captured/endangered (and it’s not just a gender thing – Jamie can get captured with the best of ‘em!), and if they’re going to get captured anyway, I like to see them do it right.  In this case, Romana immediately feeds K9 a message to send for help, and once she’s at the mercy of the guards, she treats them to some first-class withering snark, acting like they’re her personal chauffeurs.  Cool as a cucumber, that one.