Dr. Who The Pirate Planet Revisited (was: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-08 (Saturday))

This all started because Ubi watched The Pirate Planet
and complained that Tom Baker's cold sore distracted him
from the story.

I have the DVD for The Pirate Planet, so watched the
episode to see what was going on. The injury was written
into the story with the Doctor having a face-plant into
the Tardis console when he and Romana went through some
temporal turbulence.

Since the DID was already in the player, I decided to finish
watching the rest of the episodes this afternoon. Afterward
I noticed that there was a commentary track, so restarted the
first episode with commentary on.

The commentators were the director and the actor who played
the pirate captain.

The mystery of the facial injury of Tom Baker was explained
by the director. YAY!

It seems that Baker was playing with a friend's dog, and the
naughty dog bit him on the mouth, leaving the two cuts around
the corner of his mouth. (Didn't the dog know that he was
playing with a big celebrity?) The director and writer
came up with the cover-up scene of the face-plant that gave
a reason for the cuts for the rest of the four episodes.

The intro to the initial scene on the Tardis where Baker's
mouth was unhurt was taped after the cuts healed and was
edited in to lead into the face-plant portion of the scene.

So for all of you who have been losing sleep wondering about
the Doctor's mysterious injury can now get some sleep.

Nyssa, who probably could have found more productive things
to do this afternoon, but at least she finally got the answer
we've all been wondering about Doctor Who and his blemish