Return to the Forbidden Planet silvered space suit costumes and space ship sets concealing keyboards and drums. The robot, Ariel, is performed by an actor on roller skates, with a costume reminiscent of the original movie's Robby the Robot. The show's dialogue is largely adapted from well-known passages from Shakespeare. There is a part for narrator on pre-recorded video which was played in the original production by Magnus Pyke and in the London production by the astronomer and TV personality Sir Patrick Moore. A West End cast album was released in 1990 by Virgin Records. Act One Act Two Return to the Forbidden Planet Return
Planet of the Dead the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word—"joyous"—was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since 'The Fires of Pompeii' [had] a bittersweet quality" and his subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme. The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel "The Highest Science". Davies liked the image of a train on a desert planet and rewrote the train as a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as