The Pirate Planet

I found it in the workshop propping open event.

Is that the same one from Pirate Planet? Do you remember when Romana had it?

Probably, yes.

Oh, what is Nicola wearing? I wish they didn't put her in these leotards.

Starting way back in the time monster, he played a unit soldier.

He was in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Genesis of Daleks, another unit soldier in Terror of the Zygons, Mask of Mandragora, Sunmakers, Pirate Planet, anything else interesting there? He played one of the Famasi in The Leisure Hive as well, of course.

You recognise him from there.

Yes, there you go.

Uh, here's a notable date in history.

October 20th, 1977, Douglas Adams is commissioned to write The Pirate Planet.

Little known Douglas Adams, who at the same time was writing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this crazy little radio play.

I don't know what ever became of that either.

I think he invents modern Doctor Who, arguably.

You know, when I think of the energy of those tenant shows, they're, they're very Douglas, you know? It's almost like that idea that, of that, that sort of witty, zany, not quite all there Doctor from The Pirate Planet onwards is kind of the idea of the Doctor that sticks with the public, I think.

And it certainly had a lot, a huge impact on me.

So, so yeah, he, he invents Doctor Who, or reinvents Doctor Who, and that's the invention that sticks.

So I like it for that.

That finality feels savage, but it's pretty good.

And yeah, if it's Doctor Who, it's the Pirate Planet.

Mm.

John says, "Of course, how could I forget the testosterone-laden Mission to the Unknown as another prime example of blokey Doctor Who?" That is because episode three, uh, has no female cast members, as discussed there, uh, having been pointed out by John.

"And on the subject of other Doctor Who stories without any explicitly human cha- human characters, that chap was right about, that the Pirate Planet was the next one after Deadly Assassin.

It's established multiple times that the Seventeam, Seventeam from Face of Evil are descendants of a human colony.

Something of a pity that, as it knocks Invasion of Time out of the running.

Anyway, after Pirate Planet, we have Androids of Tara, The Armageddon Factor, Creature from the Pit, The Horns of Nimon, Full Circle, and Keeper of Traken as human-free stories.

Since from Logopolis to the present, the Doctor always has one or more human companions with him." Oh, we, we do go off into funny little tangents of trivia, don't we? Uh, you, you, you wait.

If you haven't heard the Tenth Planet, there's a lot about jumpers.

That obviously, I guess, Martin, A, when did you first encounter Douglas? But also, how much of that style have you put into the comic, that sort of Hitchhiker's TV series computer graphics?

To answer your first question, it would have been, although I wouldn't have been remotely aware of it, it would have been the Pirate Planet because I'd watched Doctor Who Unbroken since, I think, something like season 11, start of season 11, but caught bits of season 10.

So it was the Pirate Planet, but I was...

i had no interest in who was producing it i didn't know who produced it i didn't know who wrote it these were just names that appeared on the screen um flashed up on the screen i was just like get to the action you know i want to see monsters i want to see spaceships honestly people or as my dad would have described actually did describe bruise purchase look at that bloody idiot so that was that was my dad for you um so yeah that was and obviously um the subsequent stories and like i like i said i didn't i wasn't aware of who had written it until i did come across um hitchhikers a tv series and the books were everywhere the books seemed to be all over the shop in the shop window was at that time um it was one of those huge best best sellers that you think i'll probably not like that um and uh i kind of retcon that then I thought oh hang on I recognise that name because it was starting we'd got Doctor Who magazine had started and that was starting to go into a at that time not quite a deep dive but certainly talking about production personnel um and i started connecting the dots then um and i thought oh you wrote those i really like i really like those um i mean it was working uh it was writing at a time when the production values had taken a hit because of the um i think it was a rate of inflation was it the They didn't have as much money per episode.

So there was a slight hit in the production values, but that just made all the stories he did and script edited more Monty Python than they would have been if they'd have been really polished, like something like Nightmare of Eden or...