| Production Code: 5B
First Transmitted
The Key to Time tracer points the Doctor and Romana to the cold and boring planet of Calufrax, but when they arrive they find an unusual civilisation that lives in perpetual prosperity. A strange band of people with mysterious powers known as the Mentiads are feared by the society, but the Doctor discovers that they are good people but with an unknown purpose. He instead fears the Captain, the planet's leader and benefactor. 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. After 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. 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. Despite the Captain's apparent insanity, he is a calculating person who plans to destroy Xanxia. The Mentiads learn that their psychic powers are strengthened by the destruction of entire worlds beneath their feet. Throughout Zanak, the Key to Time locator has been giving odd signals that seem to indicate that the segment is everywhere. Once the Doctor and Romana see the Captain's trophy room of planets, they conclude that Calufrax is the segment that they are looking for. They use the TARDIS to once again disrupt Zanak's materialisation around Earth while the Mentiads sabotage the engines. Xanxia kills the Captain when he finally turns against her. The Doctor, Romana, and the Mentiads destroy Zanak's bridge and Queen Xanxia, ending the devastation caused by Zanak's travels.
This was Douglas Adams’s first script for Doctor Who. As such it is spoken of in awed whispers, Adams being the genius behind Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, the other great science fiction hit of the late 1970s. Adams was a genius with offbeat ideas, and this episode reflects that. One thing I disliked when it was first broadcast, and dislike now, looking back, is that the producers seemed to want to parody Doctor Who within Doctor Who. There were far too many examples of playing for laughs in this episode. A mixture of dark and light is all very well, but this was too much of a contrast to the gothic stories of the Phillip Hinchcliffe era. The last thing I wanted to see was Doctor Who becoming a joke. That being said, there were some good ideas in this story. The best of them is the sinister idea of a hollow planet that used something similar to TARDIS technology to materialise around other planets and squeeze them dry until all that remains is a sphere the size of a beachball. That was a stroke of genius. The fact that the next planet to be pirated in that way was Earth gave a good impetus to the fight against the Captain and the real force behind him, the undead Queen Xanxia, suspended in the last seconds before death, bleeding the planets dry in search of the energy to give herself life. These were both concepts that could have made stories on their own. Together, and interwoven with the psychich Mentiads, and the pursuit of the second segment, which turned out to BE one of the shrunken planets in the end, made for a watchable story, but the flippant treatment of the issues spoilt it for me.
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