The Pirate Planet

The Doctor and Romana trace the second segment of the Key to Time to the cold, uninhabited planet Calufrax. Only, when they arrive, they find that the TARDIS has actually materialized on the planet Zanak. Zanak, a populated world teeming with advanced technology and an overabundance of precious gems, appears to be lorded over by the tyrannical and partially mechanical Captain. But Zanak also holds a dark secret and only by teaming up with the Mentiads, a mysterious group with psychic powers, will the Doctor and his companions be able to uncover the mystery of Zanak and find the next piece of the Key to Time. The Pirate Planet is probably most famous for being the first contribution to Doctor Who by Douglas Adams. Adams would go on to write two more stories for Doctor Who as well as being the script supervisor for the show's following season. There is some overlap, both in concepts and characters, between Adams' work on Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is hardly surprising given that he was working on both around the same time.

Rating: Don't panic%

Pump Up the Volume

Mark Hunter. By day, he's a painfully shy high school student. By night, he's Happy Harry Hard-on. An obscene pirate radio DJ entertaining the youth and exasperating the administration of Hubert Humphrey High. Much like Heathers, Pump Up the Volume is a perfect vehicle for Christian Slater's talents. It gives him an opportunity to portray a wide range of emotions, from shy sensitivity to snarky bravado. He gets long, ranting monologues and a shirtless scene where he makes out with Samantha Mathis. Pump Up the Volume also has a great soundtrack: Pixies, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Leonard Cohen, Richard Hell, Ice-T, and so on and so on and so on. If they remade this movie today, Mark would probably be a podcaster.

Rating: 72%

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Space Pirates

I wasn't looking forward to watching The Space Pirates. Despite knowing that it would be the last time I would have to sit through some grey market episode reconstructions, which I have done many times already, I was dreading getting started on this serial. Now, having seen it, I'd have to say that my fears were warranted. The Space Pirates isn't a particularly good serial, even if it did stray from the typical "base under siege" story format. I had issues with the costumes, the production designs and the acting, especially after just having seen The Seeds of Death. But perhaps the biggest factor working against The Space Pirates is how inconsequential it makes the Doctor and his companions. The story seems to unfold all around our heroes without them ever playing much of an active role. Other than an escape plan that the Doctor hatches using some marbles, candle wax and a pile of flaming rags, the bulk of the story just kind of pushes him along from A to B.

Rating: Zoe, don't be such a pessimist%

The Smugglers

The First Doctor's penultimate adventure finds him in Cornwall in the seventeenth century. The TARDIS arrives on a beach outside a small village that is seemingly populated exclusively by scoundrels. Seriously, every person that the Doctor and his companions meet in the first episode is connected to smuggling in some way. It's not until late in the second episode that they meet someone who isn't trying to capture or kill them. Though they were introduced in the previous serial, this is Ben and Polly's first real adventure as companions to the Doctor. Before they stepped into the TARDIS, these new companions really had no way of knowing what they were getting themselves into. And since there are no experienced companions aboard the TARDIS, it's clear that the writers had to cut a few corners in order to get the new companions up to speed. The Doctor is often quite curt with Ben and Polly and they're left on their own for most of the adventure. This serial is particularly violent, containing quite a few murders. Ironically, the only clips of these episode that have survived are from scenes that were cut by overseas censors for being too violent.

Rating: ___% (Rating Missing)

(Image from themindreels.com)

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Gambit"

Picard goes undercover as a space pirate but I feel like Starfleet should have one or two other operatives who may be better suited for this mission than their most famous starship captain idk.

RATING: 68%

Star Trek - "The Pirates of Orion"

Spock gets a lethal case of the space sniffles so the Enterprise must get him some medicine that has, unfortunately, been stolen by Orion pirates.

RATING: 65%

SFW-porn.com

SFW-porn.com basically takes porn images and edits them with MS Paint so that they're no longer x-rated (some of them are still kind of gross so be careful with that link). Maybe everyone else has seen this already, but I hadn't and I think it's hilarious, despite the fact that the porn industry is 88% boring or gross and 95% degrading to women.

RATING: 80%

(Image from www.sfw-porn.com.)

Real Pirates

Whereas fictional pirates are fun for kids and occasionally kind of sexy despite stupid facial hair and general dirtiness, real pirates are actual lame criminals who hold boats and people hostage and drive up the cost of shipping things. They are also a bit baffling, making the whole world question, why doesn't someone drive a lot of boats/submarines/stealth bombers over there to the Indian Ocean and blow their asses up? (Well, according to this handy Q&A they are hard to find or something.) In sum, if your citizens are in such dire straights that they start resorting to PIRACY you may need to think about cleaning up your damn country.

Rating: 5%
(Crappy, but still gets a bit of credit for making the newspeople talk about something other than Britany Spears.)