Season 16, Story 2/6: 4 x 25min episodes, 30th September to 28th October 1978, Writer: Douglas Adams, Director: Pennant Roberts, Script Editor: Anthony Read, Producer: Graham Williams
Tom's starting to look too different to his face in the titles. Or rather, the other way round.
Lee Mahon @Lee_JM75 Lots to like about The Pirate Planet but lots to dislike too. The boring natives are high on the list to dislike. What a bunch of wets!It's only a model.
It looked like a city from the outside but now we seem to be on the bridge of a ship...
...where a piratical cyborg captain is bellowing a load of nonsense about sky demons.
The Captain's declared a new age of prosperity. Well that's a relief. The crowd goes wild. Well, mild, anyway.
Although these robed types look a bit miserable.
The city doesn't look half bad from within. Great costume design in this one.
Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor is still congratulating himself on finding the 1st segment of the Key to Time.
The saferoom is a bit... empty. Tom looks odd without the scarf.
K9 assumes all pieces of cake are radial. Wrong.
Romana is a butterfly nerd.
Romana takes a bit of getting used to.
The Doctor's annoyed to find their next destination is the very boring Calufrax.
The hippies are moaning about the lifeforce dying. Can't it die quietly?
The Captain's really going to shout like that through the whole thing, isn't he? Mr. Fibuli's great though.
The Captain wants Mr. Fibuli to find him some precious minerals.
The TARDIS makes a rather wobbly landing. The Captain's engines don't like it either.
The Doctor lets Romana park the TARDIS, and she does it by the book. It still makes the vworp vworp sound, Moff.
All the scenes of Balaton & Mula just remind me of Bob & her Dad in the Blackadder II episode "Bells".
The Captain's guards killed her father to save him from the Mentiads.
They've landed on the wrong planet.
Nula's boyfriend turns up; Kimus isn't as afraid of the Mentiads as Balaton.
The locals ignore the Doctor, so K9 suggests letting Romana take care of the PR.
"Never trust gimmicky gadgets." That's no way to talk about K9.
A local tells Romana that the lights in the sky change and they all get rich. That's just the way it is.
She offers him a jelly baby. "Where did you get them?" "Same place you get them - your pocket!"
The red ones are the rubies and the clear ones are the diamonds.
Has anybody seen a planet called Calufrax?
The Mentiads are on the move...
...and the Doctor makes a house call.
The guards tell Romana that the tracer is a forbidden object, and "why" is a forbidden question.
This is a forbidden tweet.
She sends K9 to fetch the Doctor.
The Captain orders the telepath they've detected to be found and destroyed...
...but the Mentiads make short work of his guards.
The Doctor starts to put 2 & 2 together regarding Pralix having fits every time a new age of prosperity is declared.
The Captain's detected K9, and his Polyphase Avatron is spoiling for a fight.
Kimus says the Mentiads are zombies with terrible powers...
"You look like a right shower of Mentiads to me."
Takes them a couple of goes to get that cliffhanger down.
The Doctor is only stunned, but the Mentiads take Pralix.
The Captain finds failure hard to accept.
That parrot's bloody awful. Thanks a bunch, Star Wars.
Lee Mahon @Lee_JM75 It could have been worse. Wasn't this around the time Tom wanted a talking cabbage in the TARDIS?!He only ever says "not now, K9" when K9 has something important to say.
It's only now that the Doctor realizes Romana isn't there. Whoops.
The Doctor agrees to save Pralix but wants to go after Romana first, as she's in the greater danger. Plus Pralix is a wet lettuce he hardly knows.
The Doctor and Kimus nick an air car from one of the guards. It takes allsorts.
Romana arrives on the bridge. The Captain's nurse tells him his blood pressure's up. Coincidence?
"I save planets, mostly. But this time I think I've arrived far, far, too late..."
"Time Lord? Common space urchin." Great dialogue from this Adams chap.
All the stuff on film looks absolutely spectacular. Amazing restoration work.
The Captain hopes Romana can fix his engines. The salty old pirate.
The Doctor claims he'll never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again. We'll see.
Romana doesn't think big enough when she theorizes that the Captain makes the whole mountain move...
The Doctor makes it to the bridge, so the Captain now has two space urchins at his disposal.
The Captain takes the Doctor to inspect the engines in the mine workings.
The Captain's smarter than he looks.
Tim @parks8472 Be difficult to dumber!Oh yeah, the second segment of the Key to Time. Forgot about that...
The Doctor claims it takes the two of them to open the TARDIS. What a liar.
Luckily Kimus is waiting outside to stun the guards and save them.
The Doctor, Kimus & Romana break into & enter a forbidden mineshaft, the penalty is death. More stunning location work.
The Doctor realizes the truth: the planet is hollow, and the whole thing materializes around others, draining them of all their minerals before moving on to the next victim.
Lee Mahon @Lee_JM75 If only the Daleks had known this. Would have saved them (and Bedford) an awful lot of trouble.Mentiads! "Doctor, we have come for you!" Crikey. Should that be flattering?Kimus promises to avenge Calufrax. Let's see you, then.
As the guards close in, they run straight into the Mentiads!
Nice close up on Tom's dog bites for the end of part 2 there.
Michael Bater @GreenLeftie Bloody K9! 
The Mentiads turn out to be friendly; Pralix is amongst them.
Mula is forced to re-evaluate everything she's been told about the Mentiads.
The Captain amuses himself by having the bearer of bad news killed by his Polyphase Avatron. Pretty Polyphase.
The Mentiads are those that feel the psychic effects of the deaths caused by the planet's jumps.
The Captain plans to block the Mentiad's psychic field with some of the precious minerals of Calufrax.
The planet's troubles started with the reign of the evil Queen Xanxia & the crash landing of the pirate ship.
The Captain survived but was injured; hence his cyborg spare parts.
"Devil storms, Mister Fibuli, you are a callow fool!" The Captain's dialogue is outrageous fun.
The Doctor is recaptured.
Mr. Fibuli has identified the next target... Earth!
"No more Janus thorns!" the woozy Doctor misremembers companions.
K9 to the rescue!
The Doctor goads the Captain into explaining how clever he's really been. To the trophy room!
The Captain has engineered the planet remains to balance perfectly and harness the power of a black hole.
"You commit mass destruction and murder on a scale that's almost inconceivable and you ask me to appreciate it?"
Beautiful rage from Tom. "What's it for? Huh? What are you doing? What could possibly be worth all this!"
Romana, Nula and the Mentiads make their way to the entrance.
The Captain decides it's time for the Doctor to walk the plank, and unleashes the Polyphase Avatron...
...only for K9 to arrive ! It's robot dog vs. robot parrot now! Average.
Lee Mahon @Lee_JM75 To think we got robot dog vs robot parrot decades before we got Daleks vs Cybermen. 
The Doctor & Kimus discover another secret at the heart of the pirate ship; the "dead" queen Xanxia.
She's suspended in the last few seconds of life, her mind wandering...
K9 is victorious!
The Captain doesn't take the news that his Avatron has shuffled off its mortal coil too well...
There's no escape from the plank this time!
And the Doctor falls!
Except it wasn't really the Doctor that fell, but a hologram of himself that he projected.
Someone else in the room is holographic, but the Doctor can't turn the nurse off...
The Mentiads save Romana and Mula from the guards with a handy psychokinetically induced rockfall.
The Nurse/Xanxia is a really underrated villain.
Xanxia orders the jump to Earth. 9 minutes till dematerialisation - desperate measures are called for.
K9's battery being low makes him talk like Yoda for some reason.
"I think the conservation of momentum is a very important law in physics, don't you?" Splat.
"Who's Newton?"
"I'll tell you when we get to Cambridge. If we get to Cambridge. Shaaaaadaaaaa!"
The Doctor & Romana make it back to the TARDIS, & dematerialize at exactly the same time as the planet. Wibble!
They need to drop the TARDIS forcefield to get a message through to Pralix.
They don't need to open the door, just put a spanner in the works!
"Oh, boo hoo, a CGI spanner, all of Doctor Who is irreversably destroyed for me. etc. etc."
Mr. Fibuli is killed in the explanation; the Captain vows vengeance...
The Captain's been planning to destroy Xanxia all along; he's almost got enough power to tap into her time field.
The *whole planet* of Calufrax is the segment!
The Captain fails & Xanxia kills him, but she's now vulnerable in the nurse's body & Kimus shoots her down.
The Doctor rigs things so that he can control the Captain's machine from the TARDIS & return the planets.
With the segment found, the only thing remaining is to blow up the bridge.
"It's a bit crude, but immensely satisfying!"
Lee Mahon @Lee_JM75 What a wonderful line that is!That's what you call going out with a bang! It's the end of The Pirate Planet!
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Stones of Blood
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