5F4 - The Armageddon Factor 4

Ten points to The Doctor for managing to work in the story title into the dialogue early in Episode Four. He also managed to say the title of The Pirate Planet in Episode Two of that story. One thing I kind of regret not doing is going back to see which stories have had their titles spoken in the dialogue. Ah, well. Next time, perhaps.

Despite The Doctor reducing his dramatic impact upon their first meeting in Episode Three, the Shadow is a creepy creation, aided my an unsettling skull mask and the demonic voice stylings of William Squire. One of my earliest childhood Doctor Who memories was of being put off by the Shadow - one of the few times in my life that Doctor Who has actually scared me.

My favourite part of this episode, though, might be the famous outtake of when Tom Baker reacts to K-9's inability to predict when the Zeon computer will self destruct. It never fails that whenever I watch the actual scene in the episode, I'm drawn to YouTube to find the outtake clip. Which I just did. Seeing a Doctor swear on camera takes some getting used to, I have to admit. It's kind of like seeing Paddington Bear drop F-bombs when things go wrong - do we need to see our childhood heroes behave in such a way? However, when Tom Baker swears, it just seems fitting. I haven't quite figured out why.

Anyway, we're four episodes through this story, and while it's not bad, it has a very drab look to it, and countless (and I do mean countless) bland corridors that everyone keeps getting lost in.

5F3 - The Armageddon Factor 3

There is a shocking variance in tone between the two portions of the scene where the Shadow interrogates The Doctor. The initial part of the scene, where The Doctor is trapped in a cell and zapped with electricity when he gives the Shadow the wrong answer, is intense and exciting. We can see that The Doctor is in distress, so we, the viewers, feel distress. It's one of the rare occasions in the later Tom Baker era where it appears that The Doctor is in genuine danger.

But once the Shadow lets The Doctor out of the cell to open the TARDIS and fetch the five segments of the Key to Time, the drama completely dries up in a sea of Tom Baker's usual bluffs and off-key remarks. Funny, yes. Entertaining, yes. But the Shadow has all of two minutes to appear as an adversary worth worrying about, and any threat that we thought he might have is now gone.

Yet more characters - The Doctor, Romana, and Shapp - try and get Merak to keep prattling on about Astra in this episode. "Us-trah!" seems to be the only thing Merak says from Episode Two onwards. Words to live by, Merak. As Shapp says to you, "Merak, if I were you, I'd try to exercise a little more self control".

5F2 - The Armageddon Factor 2

I find it odd, in a way, that the Marshal (under instructions, of course) goes through so much trouble to destroy K-9, then is overtly friendly and accommodating towards The Doctor in the hopes that he can help Atrios. Surely the Marshal would know that The Doctor might not only need K-9 to help him, but that The Doctor would most assuredly be upset when he found out that the Marshal was the one who destroyed the machine?

The clues towards Astra's eventual fate are laid out fairly early here - a little too early, in my opinion. Early in Episode Two, The Doctor almost reveals that he knows what the sixth segment is well before the story is ready to reveal the surprise. Now we all know what to expect, and we're left with what we think is the main thrust of the plot (the Atrios-Zeos war) to keep our attention until the big payoff at the end of the story. At least there's some great banter between The Doctor and the Marshal to help pass the time.

And what Astra sees in Merak is beyond me. Never before has there been a more limp patsy of a man, wandering about corridors shouting plaintively for Astra. Every scene that Romana has to cut him off or shush him, I keep hoping that she'll just clock him one and end all of our miseries.

5F1 - The Armageddon Factor 1

The very first scene of The Armageddon Factor, that of an overacted soap opera on Atrian TV, would seem to be made entirely tongue-in-cheek, complete with the horrible fringing that is so prevalent in 1970s CSO work. But then, given that so much legitimate CSO work on Doctor Who looks like that, anyway, I'm not so sure how where the line is drawn between knowing pastiche and technical limitations.

I don't mean to pick on small time actors in even smaller parts, but poor John Cannon, who plays the guard entrusted with the task of escorting Princess Astra around before he's shot by his own superior, the Marshal, is just not an actor. He mumbles his lines with zero regard for intensity or passion, and I would love to hear what (an unheard) Marshal was saying to him on the other end of their conversation later in the episode, as Cannon leaves almost no time in between his lines to allow anyone to speak. You can almost tell that director Michael Hayes realized Cannon's limitations, as during a conversation between Astra and the guard, Hayes decides to keep the camera on Astra during the entire scene.

On the other side of the acting scale, though, is the incomparable John Woodvine, who surely must have one of the best voices of any actor working in British TV. Woodvine is note perfect as the Marshal, blustery when he has to be, but also intense during his scenes where he's "meditating". My favourite little scene of his in this episode is his gleeful reaction to the supposed destruction of the TARDIS: "We got it! Destroyed it! Smashed it! Vaporized it! Beautiful!". This is a man in love with war and all that comes with it.

And remember when I said that Mary Tamm looked her absolute best in the red dress in The Stones of Blood? I was entirely wrong. Tamm is utterly divine in her white dress and boots in this story. With respect to all those who came before and after her, no companion has ever been able to combine posh class and intelligence with pin-up girl looks like Tamm.

5E4 - The Power of Kroll 4

And thus ends what is one of the weakest scripts from Robert Holmes's staggeringly impressive oeuvre (and, thus, just a standard story for a normal Doctor Who writer). The Power of Kroll isn't that bad, nor is it particularly exceptional at anything. At best, it is merely functional - a fifth segment of the Key to Time had to be found and retrieved, and that's exactly what happened over the course of the four episodes.

However, after three prominent roles in a row for Romana, culminating with a pivotal function to the plot of The Androids of Tara, The Doctor's companion here is as useless as any companion has been for some time. Romana is either the damsel in distress or the cabbage on Tom Baker's shoulder, there to ask questions and have the plot explained to her. It's a rare dip in quality for what has been a strong season for female roles, but it was likely enough to prevent Mary Tamm to want to return to the role the following season.

There's also more unintended hilarity in the scene where Ranquin is sucked into the pipeline by a limp tentacle. The actors try their best, but the scenery flops around alarmingly, and the total lack of mood in the lighting of the scene fails to produce any menace. Once again, the effect of late 1970s inflation can be seen quite clearly in Doctor Who...

But the saddest thing about Kroll is that it would be Robert Holmes's last story for several years after being involved with the program fairly steadily since 1969. With this story, though, the unthinkable was achieved: Robert Holmes wrote an average Doctor Who story. Perhaps it was time for Holmes to fade into the sunset, but perhaps he has at least one more classic in him yet...

5E3 - The Power of Kroll 3

Either vast chunks of Robert Holmes's scripts were being hacked out (presumably most of the humorous scenes), or else Holmes was clearly flagging during the writing of this episode. The total duration for Episode Three is less than 22 minutes long, and the reprise from the previous episode's cliffhanger seems to go on forever.

It's not that this episode, or indeed the entire story, is bad. It's merely becoming the victim of bad circumstances. The model shots of the refinery suffer from being shot from above (and in real time as opposed to the usual slower speed used for such shots), but the water tank that was used for the model was inadequate. The camera operator on location, ill advised, completely masked off the top portion of the location footage to accommodate the model shots of Kroll to be inserted later. The result was a hard, dividing line between the live action shots and the model shot of the giant squid.

Having said that, though, the realization of Kroll, like the CSO in Underworld, is vastly overstated in how poor it is. The matte line does reduce the impact some of the shots used, but the monster is still impressive enough, and Kroll probably has the most realistically moving tentacles ever seen in Doctor Who before or since.

Rohm Dutt's death, though, and especially The Doctor and Romana's reaction to it, further hammer the point home that Time Lords are entirely different to humans when it comes down to it. Rohm Dutt is dragged off by Kroll, and The Doctor and Romana coldly analyze what just happened, and The Doctor even criticizes the gun runner for his foolish actions in getting killed. The scene reminded me of a similar one in Pyramids of Mars when The Doctor discovers that Lawrence Scarman is dead, but than callously brushes Scarman's corpse aside. Sarah is appalled at The Doctor's reaction then, but Romana is completely in agreement here.

This may seem like a minor event, but it serves to point out one of the great failings of the later Tom Baker era. But more on that later...

5E2 - The Power of Kroll 2

I remember reading something about The Power of Kroll a few years ago that astounded me. I've spent some time since reading that information validating wherever I could, double checking it when I could, just to prove it's veracity. When I saw that all the varying sources that carried this information jived, I was only then able to believe what I saw in front of me.

And that is this. On December 23, 1979, 6.5 million people in the UK sat down on the last Saturday night before Christmas and watched Episode One of The Power of Kroll. The next week, on December 30, Episode Two was watched by a staggering 12.4 million viewers. Twelve. Point. Four. Million. Almost double the number of how many people saw Episode One. Things settled down somewhat for Episodes Three and Four (8.9 million and 9.9 million, respectively), but it's that jump from One to Two that still floors me.

What did people see in Episode One that made them tell all their friends to watch the next episode? Was there a snowstorm in the UK on December 30, thus forcing everyone to stay inside and watch TV that night? Conversely, and more unlikely, did half of the 12.4 million for Episode Two want to watch Episode One a week previously, but were just unable to?

Having seen half of this story now, I honestly can't see the reasoning for such an alarming jump in the ratings. Granted, it does feature both Philip Madoc and John Abineri, both in their final Who roles (and both appearing to regret their decisions to not make their previous appearances in Doctor Who their last ones), Glyn Owen in about as laid back a performance of a gun runner that you're ever likely to see, and two (unintentionally) hilarious cliffhangers that need to be seen to be believed. But is it "12.4 million" good? I just don't think so...

5E1 - The Power of Kroll 1

The Power of Kroll is a bit of an unusual story, from the outset. It's written by Robert Holmes, but nowhere is it evident that Holmes has cast his usual bit of brilliance whilst crafting the scripts for this episode. Any humour in this episode is derived almost purely from Tom Baker's (by now rampant) improvisations. This looks like it will be Robert Holmes trying his best to be average.

For starters, we're robbed of any establishing shot of the refinery, thus making the first shot of the episode look like Thawn has returned from a shopping trip at the mall (and is kind enough to buy a treat or two for Harg). Apart from the well shot location footage in the swamp, it generally looks like this is (one of) the "cheap" stories of the season, a designation that Graham Williams's predecessor Philip Hinchcliffe rarely had to bestow upon one of his productions. The sets don't look too stable, and the fact that John Leeson was cast in an onscreen role when it proved that K-9 would be unused betrays the budget a little bit. In all fairness to Leeson, though, he puts in a good performance, and he never once sounds like K-9.

And, if you watch closely at the very end of the episode when Romana is supposedly being terrorized by a Swampie in an unconvincing squid costume, screaming half-hearted the whole time like some damsel-in-distress, you can almost see the exact moment when Mary Tamm decided to tear up Graham Williams's Season 17 contract offer...

5D4 - The Androids of Tara 4

Peter Jeffries's Count Grendel is the perfect, typical, mustache-twirling villain that a story as swashbuckling as this one needs. Jeffries is masterful in the role - just about as ideal a fit as you could ever get. Grendel is super super fun to watch in any scene that he's in, but it's his climactic sword fight with The Doctor and it's resolution that is the highlight of the story.

As good as Grendel is in the scene (and he is 100% playing the straight man to The Doctor's hi jinks), it's The Doctor's character that really comes to the fore before and during the fight. We've seen The Doctor ably participate in swordplay before, so it's easy to be initially baffled by The Doctor's amateur approach to fencing before fighting Grendel. But the scene serves as an example of the Fourth Doctor in a nutshell. This Doctor often uses humour and his eccentricity to deflect attention away from himself, but his behaviour is masking superior skills and intellect underneath. The sword fight does go on for some time, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining, and it contains the single best exit line of any villain in Doctor Who.

The Androids of Tara is a glorious example of everything that was great about the Graham Williams era - romanticism, fantasy, whimsy, and high production values. While not all Williams-era productions displayed all four of these qualities, Tara is a story that comes close, and is most likely my favourite of the whole Key to Time season.

5D3 - The Androids of Tara 3

Mary Tamm is a very busy woman in this story, playing no less than four different roles - Romana, Princess Strella, and each woman's android double. Truth be told, of course, the quartet of performances seldom stray from each other, mostly because Romana, like the Princess, is a posh, privileged princess...or at least acts like one.

The story's only death occurs in this episode when Madame Lamia is shot down by accident by one of Count Grendel's guards. It's the end of what is really a sad subplot. It's established early on that Lamia has feelings for her master, Grendel, and that, at one time, Grendel may have felt the same towards her. Later, when Romana tells her that Lamia will never have Grendel for herself, and that the Count is just using Lamia for her skills with androids, a clearly hurt Lamia replies, "I know. But it is better than nothing."

Even up until just before her death (after the Count gives her a tantalizing, and misleading, kiss), she is tempted to take The Doctor's offer of safe passage for both the Count and Lamia. And then, after the attempt to kill The Doctor fails, Lamia dies. And, by the way the sequence is cut together, I'm not entirely sure that guard wasn't aiming right for her when he fired his fatal bolt.

Finally, in keeping with the little things I'm noticing about this story, keep your eyes fixed on Tom Baker during the scene late in this episode where the Count is offering The Doctor the throne of Tara. The scene lasts at least a minute, and yet Baker doesn't blink once. In fact, he keeps a rigid, wide stare on Peter Jeffries for almost the entire duration. Kudos to Baker for just being so alien, but credit Jeffries, too, for not cracking up during the scene because of Baker.

5D2 - The Androids of Tara 2

Cyril Shaps makes his fourth and final appearance in Doctor Who, playing the Archimandrite, easily his most dignified role in Who after some rather panicky outings in The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, and Planet of the Spiders. Fine performances all, but one thing that I've always noticed about Shaps is this: he rarely looks at the people he's talking to. Watch him in this episode when he's talking to Grendel and how he barely makes eye contact with Peter Jeffries.

It says something about my appreciation of Doctor Who when I notice something like this, when a normal person would have at least made one remark about the Archimandrite's extraordinarily colourful costume. But the truth is, the Archimandrite is just one of the more splendidly dressed characters in this story, and the coronation scene is a fine example of costume designer Doreen James's fine work. Truth be told, there's a few stock costumes amongst the crowd shots, but the eclectic look of Tara means that none of these costumes stand out as being conspicuous.

Grendel's guards also look impressive, both with their costumes and helmets, but also with their crossbows that fire deadly laser bolts. The video effects seen in Doctor Who have taken a remarkable leap forward during the Graham Williams era (just look at the magnificent laser effects in Underworld as proof of that), and the flying bolts in this story are notable for two reasons: they are clearly meant to mimic the lasers seen in the relatively recent film Star Wars, and it will also be the last time such a tricky laser effect will be seen in the series for eight years...

Two episodes in, and this story is just so innocent and delightful, and a real joy to watch.

5D1 - The Androids of Tara 1

One of the things I enjoy about the Key to Time season is the different approach taken to the importance of the segments in each story. In The Ribos Operation, we know exactly what the segment is disguised as, but the key is in how The Doctor is going to obtain it while safely extricating himself from the scenario at the end. We only find out about the true nature of the segments in both The Pirate Planet and The Stones of Blood throughout the course of those respective stories (and, in Stones, at the very end of Episode Four).

Romana finds the fourth segment of the key less than eight minutes into The Androids of Tara, and now the main thrust of the story seems to focus on how she and The Doctor are going to get it back. Romana discovers the segment only seconds before we finally meet the other characters in the story, leaving The Doctor, Romana, and a TARDIS-bound K-9 to set up the story by themselves. This used to be the approach taken in the early William Hartnell days, and it seems to be used with increasing frequency in the Graham Williams era.

Tara is an interesting place, a fascinating mix of old and new. It has the atmosphere and setting of medieval Europe (while Reynart's guards seem to be dressed in costumes more commonly seen in the Middle East), while every monarch seems to have at least one peasant who is highly skilled in the art of creating perfect android replicas. It's a delicious concept, and one of the more unique cultures seen in Doctor Who. There have been stories told in a futuristic setting, especially those that take place on an alien planet, but it's rare to see such a bold clash of styles, and even rarer to see the result as delightfully successful.

I had to laugh a bit at the last scene when Reynart, Zadek, Farrah, and The Doctor share a celebratory swig of wine (before passing out, of course). Farrah is ordered by Prince Reynart to bring the wine and goblets, which he does, and then is honoured when his Prince invites him to join in the celebration. But look how many goblets Farrah brings out - four. Seems like someone was under the assumption that he was going to be asked, regardless...

5C4 - The Stones of Blood 4

I'm such a big fan of the Megara. They're realized quite cheaply, but they look impressive, their bureaucratic nature is amusing, and they are truly some of the most unorthodox aliens seen in the series. Most aliens, even the most ambitious attempts to create something different, such as the Zarbi and the Menoptra, still look like men wearing suits. The Megara are entirely unlike anything seen in the series, and even their speech between themselves is incredibly bizarre.

The trial sequence where The Doctor appeals for his life whilst trying to expose Vivien Fay for who she is seems worlds away (literally, almost) from the mood and theme set up in the first two episodes. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, although it does make the story seem like an amalgam of a pair of two-part stories. Only Doctor Who, however, could make such a staggering switch in tone and setting and get away with it.

Like The Pirate Planet before it, though, the Key to Time segment is given little attention and seems almost like a Draft 4 afterthought. The Stones of Blood is far from perfect, but is so entertaining to watch that any little faults (like why The Doctor has a lawyer's wig in his pocket for just such a scenario where he's having to defend himself in a court of law) fall by the wayside and don't effect the overall enjoyment of the story.

5C3 - The Stones of Blood 3

With Romana first dispatched to the TARDIS to help repair K-9, then whisked off to hyperspace by the villainous Vivien Fay, Beatrix Lehmann as Emelia Rumford steps into the role of de facto companion and forms, with Tom Baker, one of the great, dotty pairings in Doctor Who, and about the only time when someone in Tom Baker's company proves to be even more eccentric than Baker.

The scenes between the two are magical, and it's clear that both actors got along famously off camera. because of the lucid styles of both actors, even in an instance like in Episode Three when Lehmann mistimes her lines, which threatens to throw Baker off his dialogue, both actors recover nicely and manage to salvage the scene if only because Emelia's forgetfulness could be easily used to explain Lehmann's botched lines. It's best to watch scenes in which both actors are present twice just so you can concentrate on each actor's performance during the whole scene, especially when they're not speaking. The little bits of business that Baker and Lehmann create for their characters are signs of true professionals.

As mentioned in the last write-up, the main action switches to a strangely designed spaceship in hyperspace and changes complete focus. Darrol Blake, whose direction has been inspired and his ideas revolutionary, takes the time to mic the sound raised rostrum sets of the spaceship to give the floors a metallic sound as opposed to the standard sound that these sets usually have - wood and polystyrene.

Before things go completely into the realm of space fantasy, there is a brief scene that sees a pair of Ogri drain some innocent campers of blood. It's a tiny scene, lasting less than a minute, and is there purely to show how the Ogri actually feed, but it is absolutely horrific without being gruesome. It's a genuinely frightening scene that even Mary Whitehouse would agree with.

5C2 - The Stones of Blood 2

Darrol Blake's decision to shoot the location scenes on videotape help blur the lines between which is location footage and which scenes were shot in the studio. A key example of this is the scene that almost sees The Doctor sacrificed in the stone circle. It's so expertly lit that it does look like it was shot on location. The only thing letting it down, though, is the obvious use of a day-for-night filter that Blake had to use on location in the absence of a genuine night shoot.

One of my all time favourite Tom Baker moments occurs in this episode. It happens in the scene where Romana is outlining her plan to save the damaged K-9, when, all of sudden, Baker bursts out "Brilliant!!!", then looks almost shocked that he did such a thing. Pure hilarity - I laugh, and have laughed, at it every time I've seen it.

With such a tiny cast of characters, and with two of them (De Vries and Martha) getting killed by an Ogri in this episode, the mystery of who the Callieach really is isn't actually much of a mystery. Thankfully, we're not kept in false suspense for too long before Vivien Fay is revealed as the culprit. It's at this stage that the story looks to be taking a drastic turn from Hammer Horror into the strange, science fantasy world that Doctor Who has found itself in for the past year and a half when Vivien zaps Romana off to wherever with some sort of laser staff...

And speaking of Romana, and forgive me for making this sound like a "rate the female companions base on their looks" contest, but Mary Tamm looks absolutely breathtaking in her red dress and with her hair down in this episode. Romana was my first companion, and she is still, to this day, my vote for the sexiest companion in Who. There - Maxim article over with.

5C1 - The Stones of Blood 1

The Stones of Blood doesn't begin very promisingly, starting with a very unconvincing shot of the TARDIS spinning in the time vortex (which looks 100% like a tiny police box prop bouncing slightly on a string in front of a kaleidoscope). And then there's a scene which is so obviously a late addition to replace the infamous birthday cake scene that most of the dialogue is lifted straight from The Doctor's conversation with the White Guardian in The Ribos Operation.

Once the TARDIS actually lands, though, things settle down quite nicely. It's also slightly heartwarming to see the location work being done on OB (outside broadcast) videotape as opposed to the usual film for the first time since 1976's The Seeds of Doom. Stories like Seeds and Robot before it used OB in order to better mesh with model shots done on videotape in the studio. Here, though, it's purely because director Darrol Blake didn't like the obvious jump between filmed and videotaped material. Given that an entire Monty Python skit was once devoted to poking fun on the differences between video and film, Blake's opinion is one that I heartily subscribe to.

For a Graham Williams-era story, this all begins very much like a Hinchcliffe era story, complete with druidic cults and dark symbolism. Even Dudley Simpson's score evokes the work of Geoffrey Burgon's Season 13 scores with his use of flutes. In fact, The Stones of Blood is one of Simpson's better late 1970s stories.

The episode ends very bizarrely, though, with poor Darrol Blake hamstrung by the fact that Tom Baker steadfastly refused to appear onscreen as an evil personification of himself to push Romana off a cliff. Blake does what he can with what he could shoot, but it still just looks like Romana uncharacteristically stood on the lip of a cliff in bare feet and fell off...

5B4 - The Pirate Planet 4

Douglas Adams's great strengths in his writing are both his use of humour and his limitless imagination. Amazingly, the budget on Doctor Who just managed to realize Adams's vast visions without embarrassing the production crew too much, and the humour was more than ably delivered by the likes of Tom Baker and Bruce Purchase.

However, the final five minutes is a remarkable blur of scientific gobbledygook that is frantically explained to Romana (successfully, it would appear) before the bridge is blown up in a very satisfying visual effects explosion. The sheer volume of ideas that Adams crams into the script is almost staggering, as noted by the fact that all four episodes exceed their preferred 24:30 duration by at least a minute each. Those extra minutes are chock full of pure technobabble, but given Adams's background, you almost half believe it...

The Pirate Planet is a jolly romp, but it's also evident that the Key to Time theme was thrust upon it well after the first draft had been written, as the fact that Calufrax is one of the segments of the Key is barely mentioned, and never is it vital to the plot of the story. Still, if anything, The Pirate Planet opened the eyes of the world to one of history's greatest writing talents.

5B3 - The Pirate Planet 3

The standard third episode lull hits this story hard, as the action comes to a complete standstill at times in this episode to explain the various aspects of the plot. The Doctor, Romana, and the Mentiads take what seems to be half of the episode to dissect what the Mentiads are, how they are gaining power, and just why they have such remarkable psychic powers. No effort is made, however, to explain the Mentiads' jaundiced skin and sunken eyes. Apparently psychic dominance goes hand in hand with liver failure on Zanak.

There's another such exposition scene later when the Captain is explaining how he ransacks entire planets, and Tom Baker turns the scene into much more than a dull presentation of the plot, letting his anger at the Captain's plan boil over into a fit of rage. What makes it all the more special is when Baker stumbles slightly on a line, but keeps going, knowing, along with director Pennant Roberts, that such brilliant hell fire can't be duplicated too often.

The vast amount of exposition scenes in this episode (there's another giant one between The Doctor and Kimus where they talk about Queen Xanxia's perpetual withered state) is somewhat akin to Hitchhiker's Guide, Adams's other project that he was writing at the time, in that the story had to stop for a few minutes while Slartibartfast explained the history of Deep Thought to Arthur Dent. Adams said that the Deep Thought scene was difficult to write without killing the momentum of the story, and one wagers that he had similar reservations about Episode Three of The Pirate Planet, too.

5B2 - The Pirate Planet 2

The Captain is another in a line of wonderfully over-the-top villains in Doctor Who blessed to exist in an era when such personae were keenly encouraged. Bruce Purchase if perfect as the blustering cyborg, and Andrew Robertson is ideal as his snivelling underling, Mr. Fibuli. Whereas the Captain's intentions might be more bombastic, Mr. Fibuli's motivations are purely on his job. He bears no malice towards anyone. He's just doing the job that he's been ordered to do without really thinking of the consequences. He's the perfect middle manager.

The Captain, on the other hand, is a twisted satire on the traditional stereotype of a pirate captain. His eye patch is an electronic eye, his peg leg is a cybernetic arm, and the parrot on his shoulder is a killer robotic bird that seems to manage a quota of killing one ineffectual orderly a day. The Captain controls the bridge, there's a mast or two to lash prisoners to, and there's even a plank to dispose of prisoners. It's an example of what Doctor Who does best - taking an established legend or story and turning it completely around into something new.

Tom Baker is a tour de force in this episode, too, as it is quite evident that Douglas Adams's scripts are to his liking. It's not often that Baker balances the increasing number of comedy scenes with scenes requiring deadly seriousness, but he does it in this episode. His loud bluffing with the Captain in the engine room is nicely countered with an understated gravitas when he's explaining how desperate the situation is to Romana. In a later scene in the mines, Baker ups his game even more when explaining how Zanak works to Romana and Kimus. It's no wonder that I latched onto Baker's performance as a young boy when I first saw this, and I reckon a few thousand more kids at that age could say the same thing.

5B1 - The Pirate Planet 1

If ever I'm trapped in an argument about which science fiction series is better than Doctor Who, the tiebreaker card I always pull out if I need to is this: did your favourite science fiction series have Douglas Adams writing for it? No? Right - Doctor Who wins. Again.

Adams's first of three Doctor Who scripts, The Pirate Planet, can only hope, by popular demand, to be, at best, only the second most favourite story written by the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy scribe, but it's another story that I remember especially fondly from the very earliest days of my fascination with Doctor Who. Episode One is still incredibly watchable, and full of Adams's trademarks - offbeat humour and outrageous science borne out of cold, hard facts.

But one of my favourite little bits of this episode is when Romana finally manages to track down a native of Zanak to ask him where Calufrax is. The man goes on to talk about how Zanak is awash with riches on a regular basis, and all thanks to the Captain. Romana offers the man a jelly baby, but instead of politely taking one and moving on, the man dives into the bag, plucking several out, stopping only when The Doctor's subtle cough reminds him that he's had enough. In that small, subtle action, we get to see the mentality of the people of Zanak and how they're used to being hand fed by the Captain, and how their greed upon being shown further riches is perfectly normal to them.

Unfortunately, there are some unconvincing crowd shots consisting of seven extras who aren't sure when to enthuse, and the helmets that the Captain's guards wear are some of the rudest ever seen in the show...