Why I like Mister Fibuli
Every good Supervillain needs a good Henchman, someone to see to the prisoners, to appreciate your maniacal laugh, to blame for your mistakes, to handle the logistics of running your evil empire so you can get on with the scenery-chewing and megalomania. Tobias Vaughn has the incompetent Packer. Davros has Nyder. The Graf Vynda-K from the previous episode has General Shellak. But the greatest ham in the series, the larger-than-life Captain of the titular Pirate Planet - why, he wins the henchman jackpot with the incomparable Mister Fibuli.
"MISTER FIBULIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" is the first spoken line in "The Pirate Planet," the second part of the Key to Time. And it really sets the tone of the story. Bright colors, loud noises, over-the-top melodrama, and of course, Mister Fibuli himself. What a good name, by the way. Douglas Adams, who once named a character "Slartibartfast" just to spite his typist, has hit upon almost the perfect name for imperious bellowing: enough syllables to make a real go of it (and the final one nice and open for extended bellowing), not so many syllables that you'll stumble over them, no awkward consonant clusters, but that really nice assonance in the first set of vowels (MISter FIBuli) - oh, it just makes you feel good inside. And when he appears dutifully upon being so summoned, Mister Fibuli himself is everything you'd expect from a man whose name is full of palatals and high vowels: slight, nasally, sharp-featured, bespectacled, slightly fawning, eloquently obsequious - but topped with an excellent mop of curls. In all ways the very model of a modern henpecked henchman. He looks exactly like my buddy Chris.
Apart from his wonderfully shoutable name, the first thing to appreciate about Mister Fibuli is that he is staggeringly competent. Nyder and Packer are little more than thugs, but Mister Fibuli is an accountant. The Captain has thugs aplenty of his own, of course, presumably drawn from the local population - it's hard to say, but there's a sense that Mister Fibuli might be the last remnant of the Captain's original crew. He's intelligent, he handles all the organization, he ferrets out and plots the courses to the next victim planets, he analyzes the data, he comes prepared with star charts and reports and analyses of the sector and long-term projections, and he follows orders. But he doesn't follow them blindly - he knows how to gently "remind" the Captain of the relevant data to ensure that the orders he gives are good ones - but whether he is heeded he obeys them with absolute loyalty. And the Captain is usually wise enough to heed him. In fact, he treats Mister Fibuli as something of an external brain, the better to maintain his own cover of an ineffectual blowhard. It's unclear if Mister Fibuli is in on it or not, but the two of them definitely have an understanding, and are, despite the shouting on the one hand and the fawning on the other, undeniably on the same side. It's not the case of the henchman who is too dull or caught up in some ideology to realize that his boss is a madman, but neither is he the scheming power behind the throne. (Honestly, the Captain is the power behind his own throne). Mister Fibuli is fully complicit in his Captain's schemes (although, again, maybe not his Scheme) and they work as a surprisingly well-oiled team. He even gets to participate in the Evil Laugh at one of the cliffhangers.
What is perhaps doubly surprising is that the Captain knows and appreciates this. All while hurling invective at him. The first very telling scene goes like this:
Captain: Then you have failed to find [the cause of the malfunction], Mister Fibuli! Failed, failed, failed! And when someone fails me, someone dies!"
...and this is all very standard supervillain You Have Failed Me For The Last Time schtick, such as Darth Vader might we well proud of. But then comes the twist - the two "someones" do not coindex! The Captain has his parrot murder some other poor schmuck, then finishes with:
Captain: I hope you find the cause very soon, Mister Fibuli. I hope you will not fail me again.
It's... it's theater. It's all theater. The Captain knows better than to waste his resources, and he knows Mister Fibuli is the most valuable resource he has. Petty thugs are a dime a dozen - Mister Fibuli is irreplaceable. And, of course, as it transpires the Captain would never harm a hair on Mister Fibuli's curly head. He bellows and storms, and the dutiful Mister Fibuli flinches at all the right places, but it's all for show - it's all for the benefit of the pretty young woman standing just behind him, who needs at all times to believe she is running the show. The actual villain of the piece. And it is because he has such a treasure in Mister Fibuli that the Captain is able to dedicate himself fully to his charade. He knows the operation is safe in those hands, leaving him free to play the biddable blowhard who seems to live on bluster and murder and no deeper understanding of the work he is undertaking. He relies on Mister Fibuli explicitly and implicitly. And again, if it were just a "you live so long as you are useful," type thing, as we are clearly meant to believe, you'd think the Captain would be looking to replace him with the clearly more technically advanced Romana. But no. Mister Fibuli's job is never on the line. Rather, the Captain confers with him to plan out to what extent Romana can be used to help solve their problem - Mister Fibuli remains the trusted expert, and all shouts of "imbecile" and "nincompoop" are long gone, since the audience for which they are intended is concerned with other matters.
When his enemy is offscreen (and sometimes when she isn't) the Captain treats Mister Fibuli as an equal, someone to discuss and plan with, someone to open up his true self to, part of the tribunal that sentences the Doctor to the plank. The Captain loves only three things in this universe: his ship (long gone), his parrot (killed in honorable combat with K-9), and poor Mister Fibuli. And he loses them all. The final push to Earth wrecks the Bridge and crushes poor Mr. Fibuli. Despite the fact that these are villains doing villain things and trying to destroy the Earth for its precious Quartz, it's heartbreaking.
Captain: Mister Fibuli, dead. Dead. He was a good man.
Nurse: Pull yourself together, Captain. We can still defeat the rabble out there.
Captain: Somehow, somehow, Mister Fibuli, my friend, you shall be avenged.
Guys. Guys. He says "my friend." He even takes his glasses as a grief memento. And there's no bluster, no shouting, no BY THE BLOOD OF THE SKY DEMON, just this quiet moment of absolute devastation. Mister Fibuli's death leaves the Captain a broken man with no hope left but revenge. He loves him so much guys. I think I'm gonna cry. He was a good man.
...except, of course, that he wasn't. Mister Fibuli is a villain in his own right. He's the Captain's right-hand man, he shares in his triumphs and his failures. He is wholly on board with the operation, and while he does bring up that Terra is a "highly populated planet" he's not too worried about the Captain's decision to mine it anyway. He's not particularly torn up about the various guards getting murdered for incompetence. He's just as intvested in taking down the Mentiads, even without getting to shout the word "OBLITERABLE!" He's proud of the amazing feat of engineering the Brige represents and genuinely admires the Captain for it. You get this wonderful evil triumvirate of the Captain, Mister Fibuli, and the "nurse," - and they're all complicit in the heinous crime that is being committed.
Lastly, perhaps, Mister Fibuli is the exposition man extraordinaire. He and the Captain have this absolutely wonderful patter that is half Mister Fibuli explaining the entire plot of the episode to the audience and half the Captain shouting things like "MOONS OF MADNESS!" It works brilliantly. Mister Fibuli produces all the technical specs on the various minerals that are being mined on various planets, what they're for and how they work, he keeps us and the Captain up to date on the progress of our heroes, he gives us some of the backstory on why the Mentiads haven't been dealt with before now, he's the reason we know all the plot twists before the Doctor does, and he does it all in wonderfully crafted sentences that are both flattering and kinda snarky. "Your goodness confounds me" indeed :p Honestly, they're both such an absolute delight to listen to. Often "as you know," type exposition can be really tedious, but the two characters are crafted in such a way that it works. Much of Mister Fibuli's job is to tell the Captain things he presumably already knows (or at least, has been told by Mister Fibuli before). Mister Fibuli is the voice of exposition, the voice of reason, a voice speaking truth to power and never getting murdered for it, and the only friendly voice the Captain ever hears. Even if it's a voice that's nasally sycophantic or quaveringly obsequious. Mister Fibuli gets a lot done, and keeps the plot and the planet chugging along with only the occasional explosion.
I dearly love Mister Fibuli. I love his affect, his curls, his overwhelming competence, his bizarre but ultimately bizarrely touching relationship with the Captain, his diligent cold-blooded villainy, his practiced semi-sarcastic obsequiousness, his habit of coming in at exactly the right time to say exactly the right thing, his lovely little round glasses, his ability to stay alive in the most hostile work environment imaginable, his unwavering but in no way myopic loyalty - I love saying his name. How can you not? Just do it, right now, shout MISTER FIBULI at the top of your lungs - and then be sad that he doesn't come tottering in saying "yes Captain." He's the best darned henchman anyone could ever hope for, a top-notch evil lackey and a good friend.
"MISTER FIBULIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" is the first spoken line in "The Pirate Planet," the second part of the Key to Time. And it really sets the tone of the story. Bright colors, loud noises, over-the-top melodrama, and of course, Mister Fibuli himself. What a good name, by the way. Douglas Adams, who once named a character "Slartibartfast" just to spite his typist, has hit upon almost the perfect name for imperious bellowing: enough syllables to make a real go of it (and the final one nice and open for extended bellowing), not so many syllables that you'll stumble over them, no awkward consonant clusters, but that really nice assonance in the first set of vowels (MISter FIBuli) - oh, it just makes you feel good inside. And when he appears dutifully upon being so summoned, Mister Fibuli himself is everything you'd expect from a man whose name is full of palatals and high vowels: slight, nasally, sharp-featured, bespectacled, slightly fawning, eloquently obsequious - but topped with an excellent mop of curls. In all ways the very model of a modern henpecked henchman. He looks exactly like my buddy Chris.
Apart from his wonderfully shoutable name, the first thing to appreciate about Mister Fibuli is that he is staggeringly competent. Nyder and Packer are little more than thugs, but Mister Fibuli is an accountant. The Captain has thugs aplenty of his own, of course, presumably drawn from the local population - it's hard to say, but there's a sense that Mister Fibuli might be the last remnant of the Captain's original crew. He's intelligent, he handles all the organization, he ferrets out and plots the courses to the next victim planets, he analyzes the data, he comes prepared with star charts and reports and analyses of the sector and long-term projections, and he follows orders. But he doesn't follow them blindly - he knows how to gently "remind" the Captain of the relevant data to ensure that the orders he gives are good ones - but whether he is heeded he obeys them with absolute loyalty. And the Captain is usually wise enough to heed him. In fact, he treats Mister Fibuli as something of an external brain, the better to maintain his own cover of an ineffectual blowhard. It's unclear if Mister Fibuli is in on it or not, but the two of them definitely have an understanding, and are, despite the shouting on the one hand and the fawning on the other, undeniably on the same side. It's not the case of the henchman who is too dull or caught up in some ideology to realize that his boss is a madman, but neither is he the scheming power behind the throne. (Honestly, the Captain is the power behind his own throne). Mister Fibuli is fully complicit in his Captain's schemes (although, again, maybe not his Scheme) and they work as a surprisingly well-oiled team. He even gets to participate in the Evil Laugh at one of the cliffhangers.
What is perhaps doubly surprising is that the Captain knows and appreciates this. All while hurling invective at him. The first very telling scene goes like this:
Captain: Then you have failed to find [the cause of the malfunction], Mister Fibuli! Failed, failed, failed! And when someone fails me, someone dies!"
...and this is all very standard supervillain You Have Failed Me For The Last Time schtick, such as Darth Vader might we well proud of. But then comes the twist - the two "someones" do not coindex! The Captain has his parrot murder some other poor schmuck, then finishes with:
Captain: I hope you find the cause very soon, Mister Fibuli. I hope you will not fail me again.
It's... it's theater. It's all theater. The Captain knows better than to waste his resources, and he knows Mister Fibuli is the most valuable resource he has. Petty thugs are a dime a dozen - Mister Fibuli is irreplaceable. And, of course, as it transpires the Captain would never harm a hair on Mister Fibuli's curly head. He bellows and storms, and the dutiful Mister Fibuli flinches at all the right places, but it's all for show - it's all for the benefit of the pretty young woman standing just behind him, who needs at all times to believe she is running the show. The actual villain of the piece. And it is because he has such a treasure in Mister Fibuli that the Captain is able to dedicate himself fully to his charade. He knows the operation is safe in those hands, leaving him free to play the biddable blowhard who seems to live on bluster and murder and no deeper understanding of the work he is undertaking. He relies on Mister Fibuli explicitly and implicitly. And again, if it were just a "you live so long as you are useful," type thing, as we are clearly meant to believe, you'd think the Captain would be looking to replace him with the clearly more technically advanced Romana. But no. Mister Fibuli's job is never on the line. Rather, the Captain confers with him to plan out to what extent Romana can be used to help solve their problem - Mister Fibuli remains the trusted expert, and all shouts of "imbecile" and "nincompoop" are long gone, since the audience for which they are intended is concerned with other matters.
When his enemy is offscreen (and sometimes when she isn't) the Captain treats Mister Fibuli as an equal, someone to discuss and plan with, someone to open up his true self to, part of the tribunal that sentences the Doctor to the plank. The Captain loves only three things in this universe: his ship (long gone), his parrot (killed in honorable combat with K-9), and poor Mister Fibuli. And he loses them all. The final push to Earth wrecks the Bridge and crushes poor Mr. Fibuli. Despite the fact that these are villains doing villain things and trying to destroy the Earth for its precious Quartz, it's heartbreaking.
Captain: Mister Fibuli, dead. Dead. He was a good man.
Nurse: Pull yourself together, Captain. We can still defeat the rabble out there.
Captain: Somehow, somehow, Mister Fibuli, my friend, you shall be avenged.
Guys. Guys. He says "my friend." He even takes his glasses as a grief memento. And there's no bluster, no shouting, no BY THE BLOOD OF THE SKY DEMON, just this quiet moment of absolute devastation. Mister Fibuli's death leaves the Captain a broken man with no hope left but revenge. He loves him so much guys. I think I'm gonna cry. He was a good man.
...except, of course, that he wasn't. Mister Fibuli is a villain in his own right. He's the Captain's right-hand man, he shares in his triumphs and his failures. He is wholly on board with the operation, and while he does bring up that Terra is a "highly populated planet" he's not too worried about the Captain's decision to mine it anyway. He's not particularly torn up about the various guards getting murdered for incompetence. He's just as intvested in taking down the Mentiads, even without getting to shout the word "OBLITERABLE!" He's proud of the amazing feat of engineering the Brige represents and genuinely admires the Captain for it. You get this wonderful evil triumvirate of the Captain, Mister Fibuli, and the "nurse," - and they're all complicit in the heinous crime that is being committed.
Lastly, perhaps, Mister Fibuli is the exposition man extraordinaire. He and the Captain have this absolutely wonderful patter that is half Mister Fibuli explaining the entire plot of the episode to the audience and half the Captain shouting things like "MOONS OF MADNESS!" It works brilliantly. Mister Fibuli produces all the technical specs on the various minerals that are being mined on various planets, what they're for and how they work, he keeps us and the Captain up to date on the progress of our heroes, he gives us some of the backstory on why the Mentiads haven't been dealt with before now, he's the reason we know all the plot twists before the Doctor does, and he does it all in wonderfully crafted sentences that are both flattering and kinda snarky. "Your goodness confounds me" indeed :p Honestly, they're both such an absolute delight to listen to. Often "as you know," type exposition can be really tedious, but the two characters are crafted in such a way that it works. Much of Mister Fibuli's job is to tell the Captain things he presumably already knows (or at least, has been told by Mister Fibuli before). Mister Fibuli is the voice of exposition, the voice of reason, a voice speaking truth to power and never getting murdered for it, and the only friendly voice the Captain ever hears. Even if it's a voice that's nasally sycophantic or quaveringly obsequious. Mister Fibuli gets a lot done, and keeps the plot and the planet chugging along with only the occasional explosion.
I dearly love Mister Fibuli. I love his affect, his curls, his overwhelming competence, his bizarre but ultimately bizarrely touching relationship with the Captain, his diligent cold-blooded villainy, his practiced semi-sarcastic obsequiousness, his habit of coming in at exactly the right time to say exactly the right thing, his lovely little round glasses, his ability to stay alive in the most hostile work environment imaginable, his unwavering but in no way myopic loyalty - I love saying his name. How can you not? Just do it, right now, shout MISTER FIBULI at the top of your lungs - and then be sad that he doesn't come tottering in saying "yes Captain." He's the best darned henchman anyone could ever hope for, a top-notch evil lackey and a good friend.