"The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" writer Douglas Adams' first contribution to the Whoniverse, with a wacky pirate story in some places, but boring political drama in others.

The Doctor's very unlike himself in this. At the start, he's rude and argumentative - as he usually is, but then he turns quite aggressive, electing to blow up the villains! Very strange. Yeah, not overly impressed with the Doctor's characterisation, and there are some brutal murders in here that they disguise as just being "stunned", with K-9 saying they're out indefinitely...Sure. I really liked the scene, however, where the Doctor's trying to get directions, but they'll only talk to Romana because she's pretty - It's sexist, for sure, but amusing nonetheless. The way this story is resolved is too technobabbly, which is disappointing and we didn't even see them get the second segment.

There are so many villains in this, it's hard to keep count - the Captain is probably the best out of all of them, being very pantomimey, which works in a silly romp like this. He's powerful, often showing off and being too confident. His plan reminded me of what people were saying about Ranskoor Av Kolos being unoriginal, and I totally agree! Unfortunately, he just gets murdered after all that build-up. His parrot is very strange, but I'll talk about why later. The Queen was an interesting character for sure, but she was too shouty for me to appreciate her character fully.

The effects for this story are really poor. The model shots are interesting, but the way the parrot kills people is extremely silly, and the flying ship in front of the models was way too disproportionate - there have been far better effects in previous stories, I'm disappointed. Even more mines and caves... dull, dull, dull. I liked the city, though.

Magic people were used for convenience. They were cool, but they didn't have any character except "we can move things". At least that soldier dude was a fun solo companion, I guess.

When I watched this story, I enjoyed it, but there was a lot of lacklustre parts to it that stops the adventure from holding up under scrutiny.