Day 487: The Pirate Planet Part 4

The main villain of the piece is, oddly enough, not the Pirate Captain. For all the shouting, bluster and generally acting like a Doctor Who villain, he is not in fact the person in charge. Instead, he acts as a front for his nurse, secretly the evil Queen Xanxia, a woman who is generally kept to the background in scenes, but slowly throughout the story moves to the foreground until the audience begins to realise that she may have more power than she seems. Again, this shows that Adams is familiar with the way in which the series works in that we know how to spot villains in stories, and thus by adding this small plot development, the story becomes massively more interesting.

Indeed, it also makes the Pirate Captain more interesting as well. It is slowly revealed through this part that he is not an entirely willing sub-ordinate to Queen Xanxia, and indeed the reason why he has been collecting the planets and storing them is to form a massive trap for the Queen. It's disappointing that much of this is revealed in exposition between the Doctor and Romana though, as it feels like it needs a scene where the Captain reveals his true colours to our heroes and we can feel more sympathy for him.

But that doesn't mean that the story doesn't do this in other ways. The Captain has had, throughout the story, one man at his side, his assistant Mr Fibuli. The Captain appears to dislike Mr Fibuli throughout the story for various reasons, such as things not running as efficiently as they could have been. But when Mr Fibuli dies halfway through this part, we see a moment of sadness on the Captain's face. He acknowledges him as a good man, and then proceeds to attempt to take down Queen Xanxia single handedly. It's a simple quiet moment that reveals much about this previously one-dimensional character.

And this is really only scratching the surface when we come to The Pirate Planet. Through various time constraints I haven't been able to talk about things like the Mentiads, the Polyphase Avatron or the vast array of Physics jokes throughout the story that made me laugh far too much. This is actually a fantastic story, and thankfully it won't be the last work we'll see from Douglas Adams in Doctor Who.