SCOPING ‘THE PIRATE PLANET’

Having spent years toying with the idea of working on Dr Who, in summer 1977 Douglas was finally commissioned to write for the series a four-part story that became known as The Pirate Planet. In Douglas’s vision, the story saw a half-robotic Pirate Captain piloting his hollow planet to surround other planets, plundering their rich mineral deposits and destroying their populations, all to appease his Queen Ixoxaxox (later simplified to Xanxia).

The people of his own planet (‘The Mourners’, later changed to ‘Mentiads’) were becoming aware of the toll. The Doctor and an apprentice Time Lord called Gravity (eventually known as Lady Romana) arrive to investigate. The story eventually aired on BBC One in September/October 1978. The many notes in Douglas’s archive (opposite, above and over the following two pages) show the thought he put into the complexities of the plot, before setting it out scene by scene (see pages xx–xx).