It could be Doctor Who: Exploring the strange background to The Energy Pirate
A Doctor Who-like children's book from Ladybird was written by an actual scientist and his novelist son.
Hello again! Welcome to the first of this week’s articles, which you may recall are divided up in some arbitrary manner that neither of us can quite recall.
(Quick check: Tuesday, something I quite like and want to share; Thursday, that’s a roundup of stuff I’ve spotted and what’s new in our podcast; Saturday, I send something about family TV or movies at around teatime. There we go…)
This week, I want to introduce you to a Ladybird book called The Energy Pirate. This is a science fantasy story (with a bit of a grounding in the science) written by an actual scientist, Fred Hoyle, and his son, Geoffrey.
Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle
Knighted in 1972, Sir Fred Hoyle was a well-regarded and highly honoured scientist, whose most significant contribution is probably his theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. However, he also coined the term “Big Bang” to refer to the theory of a creative explosion at the beginning of time (which he rejected, preferring the "steady-state model").
Also, he was from Yorkshire. ‘Appen.
Geoffrey Hoyle’s first book was written with his father; Fifth Planet was released in 1963, and kicked off a run of releases which petered out in the mid 1980s, before concluding in 2010.
However, The Energy Pirate and its three sequels are what interest me in particular, featuring as they do a mysterious scientist called “Professor Gamma”…
Rediscovering The Energy Pirate
I know I read the book a few times, but it was only on the most recent read (apparently back in 2018?!?!) that I noticed it (shall we say) owed a lot to 1960s Doctor Who.
In fact, this came as such a surprise that I tweeted a full long about it. (A version of that is presented below.)
Years later, I have no idea if my mum saw this book and thought “it’s a bit like Doctor Who, he’ll like it” or simply (and more likely) saw a book aimed at my age range, my interests, and stuck it in a basket on a last minute runaround before Christmas.
Either way, she won’t remember either, and that’s okay because it’s ultimately unimportant. What matters is that I own this book, and despite its now-obvious similarities to a once-popular television franchise (let’s not delude ourselves), I still love it.
Actually, I suspect I got the book about the same time as I got a telescope and a book about Halley’s comet, which would place this about 1986. That was my 10th Christmas, and I have a theory about the 8/9/10th Christmasses which I’ll save for a later date.
Probably Christmas.
My Energy Pirate tweet thread
Tweets get lost in the scroll, so I thought I might present my thoughts on the book here, in a sort of digest form. (You can still read the original thread on The Energy Pirate, which is almost identical.)
Ladybird didn't do much sci-fi as I recall, but The Energy Pirate is particularly wonderful, feeling like a Doctor Who Season 17 reject
(That’s the fun 1979/80 run, produced by Graham William and script edited by Douglas Adams.)
It begins with an empty sweet shop, the perpetrators of the theft being sentient alien hats, who we meet in inside the cover...
Yes, I said hats. Rather Dalek-esque, too... Look at the door on the right.
A boy tells his best friend Kirryl about the theft, and she resolves to tell... Her grandfather! Oddly, he lives in a strange blue house with an indeterminate front door.
Meet Kirryl's grandfather, Dr Who. Err, I mean, Professor Gamma.
He even has a sonic screwdriver! (Well, a pipe. That isn't sonic.)
After intercepting an attack by the alien millinery on a chocolate factory, Gamma decides that it is time to investigate.
On the trail, they meet Hi-De-Hi's Felix Bowness, who moonlights as a sugar farmer.
Beaming to Hat World (whatever), Gamma and Co discover that the Sinister Sombrero and friends strip every planet of its sugar for energy (edutainment alert!)
After discovering (in true Doctor Who manner) that the aliens have local opposition, Gamma teams up with the rebels (whose appearance reminds me of the Vardans, Doctor Who villains from 1978’s “The Invasion of Time”).
After the rather quick dispatch of the sugar thieves, our heroes are given a Vardan-esque goodbye.
In my favourite scene, Kirryl berates William for trying to repatriate chocolate.
What the hell is wrong with her?
It's a barmy book, but I bloody love it.
Other books in the “Professor Gamma” series are available by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. I’ve been keeping an eye on these on eBay and Amazon, looking to find some that are in what I would call “matched” quality to my own volume.
The other books are:
The Frozen Planet of Azuron (1982)
The Giants of Universal Park (1982)
The Planet of Death (1982)
Hopefully I’ll have all four in relatively decent condition one day!
That’s all for this time. I’ll be back later in the week. Thanks for reading!