Baldrick plan" made its first appearance in the pilot episode, but it is not regularly used until the third series; Blackadder had mentioned the phrase twice in the first series and Baldrick once. Baldrick had also claimed to have "a plan" in a "cunning" voice on one occasion in "Blackadder II". In the final episode of the last series, "Blackadder Goes Forth", Baldrick announces that he has a cunning plan to save the main characters from "going over the top", although it is never revealed what this plan might be (other than that it is "as cunning as a fox who's
Blackadder essentially to play himself. Political commentator Vincent Hanna played a character billed as "his own great-great-great grandfather" in the episode "Dish and Dishonesty" of "Blackadder the Third". Hanna was asked to take part because the scene was of a by-election in which Baldrick was a candidate and, in the style of modern television, Hanna gave a long-running "live" commentary of events at the count (and interviewed candidates and election agents) to a crowd through the town hall window. Howard Goodall's theme tune has the same melody throughout all the series, but is played in roughly the style of the period