The Pirate Planet

Mr. Fibuli!

The Pirate Planet is a story that starts rather poorly, but it grows on you towards the end. It's a comedy that is looks cheap and is over the top at first, but the depth of the performance matures as the story progresses and starts to offset the cheaper effects.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Romana land on what they believe to be the planet Calufrax where the second piece of the Key to Time is located. However they find themselves on the planet Zanak instead, despite the Key locator telling them they are in the right location. The Doctor stumbles across a family who's son has been selected by the Mentiads, a telepathic sect that is fighting the Captain, the leader of the planet. Allying with the Mentiads, and following the locator, the Doctor and Romana break into the Captain's castle with the intention of stealing the Key segment.

Inside the castle, they discover that Zanak is a mobile planet that consumes other worlds. The Captain is being directed by Queen Xanxia, who has her old body held in stasis while actually posing as the Captain's nurse. The Captain is also subtly fighting her, planning to use the destroyed planets against her. The Doctor and Romana escape the castle. Romana and K-9 rally the Mentiads against the Captain's troops while the Doctor uses the TARDIS to disrupt Zanak's attempted materialization around Earth. The Captain, realizing that the Queen is being attacked, turns on her but she kills him first. This is distraction enough for the Mentaid army to sabotage the planetary engines, destroying the bridge and Xanxia. The Doctor and Romana then recover the remains of Calufrax and convert it into the second segment.

Analysis

As I mentioned earlier, this episode starts off on the wrong foot. The Captain is very over-the-top and his costume does no favors in allaying fears of low budget. The "crowds" addressed by the Captain involve about seven people standing in an empty courtyard while the Mentiads and the manifestation of their powers look very hokey. Add some bad blue screen effects when using air cars and the first episode and a half will make you feel like you are watching something pretty awful.

However, once the Doctor and Romana break into the castle, things improve. The Captain is still over-the-top but a subtly comes into his performance, especially when his nurse is introduced. His interactions with Mr. Fibuli also add a bit more depth and will remind many of the interactions between Captain Hook and Smee in the Disney adaptations of Peter Pan.

The scaling down of the setting also helps. When confined to the castle the lack of extras is diminished and by the time the Mentiads make their assault on the castle entrance, things are starting to look decent. It's still typical mid-70's television fare, but it doesn't look bad anymore.

The Doctor also getting into direct interface with the Captain and Queen Xanxia helps a great deal with landing the jokes. The three of them (with Romana playing the straight man) offer more puns and intelligent humor that we expect from Douglas Adams' style. By the time episode four rolls around, it's either interesting action or well landed jokes and the story starts flowing bay. There is a real cheap effect that sours things at the end, but if you can keep the context of the time, it is tolerable to watch.

The Pirate Planet's biggest problem is that it follows the very intelligent The Ribos Operation. With that episode in mind, this clear play at a younger audience falls flat. It gets its legs under it eventually, but the beginning is a hard price to pay for only a good payoff at the end. I'll watch it again, but it's lower on the priority list.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5