The Pirate Planet - Episode 4

The cliffhanger was quite good because it appeared to show the Doctor falling to his death. The way that it was resolved was quite clever because it was a projection of the Doctor. This was demonstrated in quite a good way with a nice bit of split screen. The nurse’s truth is quite good as well because we know about the connection between her and the old woman we saw in the previous episode. She is behind the planet swallowing just to save her own life but like most hair brained schemes it’s doomed to failure.

The Captain becomes a puppet in this episode once the Nurse’s truth is revealed. Though he does get better towards the end of the episode when its revealed that he has had a cunning plan to try and get rid of the Nurse/Queen. I haven’t been a big fan of the Captain during these four episodes but I think that Bruce Purchase gave 100% for the role. I thought that the way the Nurse/Queen Xanxia was defeated was quite good and I thought that in the end the character of Nurse was well written and played by Rosalind Lloyd. Mr Fibuli’s death was quite sad but that was because the Captain managed to make it seem much more emotional. The Captain’s death also had some emotion to it because he died trying to kill the Nurse.

Tom Baker and Mary Tamm have been perhaps the only consistent thing in the entire serial. Tom Baker has had a noticeable bite mark on his top lip and sometimes that has been a bit distracting but on the whole it wasn’t too bad. It’s nice that Mary Tamm got to be quite active. Romana has grown on me over the course of the four episodes and think that a bit of the snobbishness has gone since the previous story and the relationship between the Doctor and Romana is better now than it was when Leela was on the show.

The idea that a planet is actually the second segment of the Key to Time is quite a bold one and one that clearly came from Douglas Adams. The fact they don’t pick up the shrunken planet until after the episode ended does feel like a bit a bit of a shame because we are deprived of that moment where the segment changes into that crystal like segment. I don’t know what happened but I suddenly started liking this story. It seems that everything fell into place and made sense. It’s a shame that it took until now to get to this stage. I think that out of the two so far, The Ribos Operation has been the better of the two. That’s not saying a great deal but I think that this stories saving grace has been the final episode. Things made sense and it was a better written and better performed piece as a result.