The Tenth Planet of malevolent cyborgs that became a recurring adversary in later "Doctor Who" stories. The "tenth planet" in the title makes reference to a fictional lost planet in Earth's Solar System; at the time of production, the Solar System was generally held to consist of nine planets, prior to the redesignation of Pluto as a minor planet. "The Tenth Planet" is an incomplete "Doctor Who" serial – one of many serials that were affected by the BBC's policy of wiping archived programmes in the 1960s and 70s. Only three of the four episodes are currently held in the BBC archives; the
Gustav Holst likens to "unresolved timelessness ... never ending, since space does not end, but drifting away into eternal silence". Apart from his concession with "I Vow to Thee..."', Holst insisted on the unity of the whole work, and opposed the performance of individual movements. Nevertheless, Imogen wrote that the piece had "suffered from being quoted in snippets as background music". During and after the composition of "The Planets", Holst wrote or arranged numerous vocal and choral works, many of them for the wartime Thaxted Whitsun Festivals, 1916–18. They include the "Six Choral Folksongs" of 1916, based on West Country tunes, of