A review by iphigenie72
The Pirate Planet by Douglas Adams, James Goss
4.0
I came to this as fresh as can be if you have seen this serial, I saw it for the last time more than 10 years ago; I know I've seen it because I saw the key arc in chronological order at the time.
This book takes more than one sources of Douglas Adams' material as it is explained by James Goss at the end in a nice afterword; I always find it fascinating to know how things became what we know. The first draft is a more complex than the broadcast episodes ever could be, the budget of imagination knows no bound, 1970s television had its limitation in budget and other matters; even the rehearsal draft seems to have a lot more going for it than the final product for television.
The story starts this way: in their search for a segment of the key of time, the Doctor, Romana and K-9 arrive on Calufrax, or do they? It seems the TARDIS has again gone haywire even though it has that nifty new gadget to track down the segments... What is wrong: how come everything says they are on Calufrax and yet they are on Zanak?
I think the title of the piece gives away what is really going on... and I'm thinking the majority of the readers interested in this book will have seen the serial beforehand. I would recommend not seeing the serial just before reading the book though, it gives you a chance of reinventing the Captain and the different characters.
Like I said earlier, this story is more complex than the episodes: Romana's subplot of the rebel army if full fledged, K-9 has is own story (I'm thinking Douglas Adams really loved him too because he made him funny and even more resourceful that we know him to be normally), the Mourners (Mentiads in the broadcasted serials) are interesting and their background is explored plus they are important members of the team, the Captain can be quite scary... there's so much there and yet the bare bones are still very recognizable.
I think James Goss did a very good job incorporating the different ideas that were not used or had to be scissored; he did a good job with hints from our current world and they did not jar in the story. Douglas - if it were possible... - might have rewritten this in a lot of places (or not) and that's the prerogative of a creator; but I sincerely believe he would have liked this book and be proud of it.
This book takes more than one sources of Douglas Adams' material as it is explained by James Goss at the end in a nice afterword; I always find it fascinating to know how things became what we know. The first draft is a more complex than the broadcast episodes ever could be, the budget of imagination knows no bound, 1970s television had its limitation in budget and other matters; even the rehearsal draft seems to have a lot more going for it than the final product for television.
The story starts this way: in their search for a segment of the key of time, the Doctor, Romana and K-9 arrive on Calufrax, or do they? It seems the TARDIS has again gone haywire even though it has that nifty new gadget to track down the segments... What is wrong: how come everything says they are on Calufrax and yet they are on Zanak?
I think the title of the piece gives away what is really going on... and I'm thinking the majority of the readers interested in this book will have seen the serial beforehand. I would recommend not seeing the serial just before reading the book though, it gives you a chance of reinventing the Captain and the different characters.
Like I said earlier, this story is more complex than the episodes: Romana's subplot of the rebel army if full fledged, K-9 has is own story (I'm thinking Douglas Adams really loved him too because he made him funny and even more resourceful that we know him to be normally), the Mourners (Mentiads in the broadcasted serials) are interesting and their background is explored plus they are important members of the team, the Captain can be quite scary... there's so much there and yet the bare bones are still very recognizable.
I think James Goss did a very good job incorporating the different ideas that were not used or had to be scissored; he did a good job with hints from our current world and they did not jar in the story. Douglas - if it were possible... - might have rewritten this in a lot of places (or not) and that's the prerogative of a creator; but I sincerely believe he would have liked this book and be proud of it.