The Mentiads learn that their psychic powers are strengthened by the destruction of entire worlds beneath their feet: As the people on the planets die, their combined psychic force boosts the Mentiad's power. Despite the Captain's apparent insanity, he is a calculating person who plans to destroy Xanxia. Her physical body sits between Time Dams, devices that hold back the ravages of time, as she is old and near death, and a younger version of her is projected via a solid 3D device. The Doctor finds the true menace controlling the Captain is the ancient tyrant Queen Xanxia, disguised as the Captain's nurse, who uses the resources mined from planets in an attempt to gain immortality. After meeting the Captain on the bridge he learns that they are actually on a hollowed-out planet named Zanak, which has been materialising around other planets to plunder their resources.Īfter repairing Zanak's engines, which were damaged when the planet materialised in the same place as the TARDIS, the Captain plans to take Zanak to Earth. He instead fears the Captain, the planet's leader and benefactor.

A strange band of people with mysterious powers known as the Mentiads are feared by the society, the Doctor discovers that they are good people but with an unknown purpose. The Key to Time tracer points the Fourth Doctor and Romana to the cold and boring planet of Calufrax, but when they arrive they find an unusual civilisation living in perpetual prosperity. The tyrant Queen Xanxia (a dual role played by Vi Delmar and Rosalind Lloyd) and the Captain ( Bruce Purchase) use the hollow planet Zanak as a spaceship that surrounds smaller planets, including Calufrax, the second segment of the powerful Key to Time in disguise, to plunder the planets' resources that help keep Xanxia alive. It was written by Douglas Adams and features some of his humour.

It forms the second serial of the Key to Time story arc. The Pirate Planet is the second serial of the 16th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 30 September to 21 October 1978.

The Doctor by James Goss