Adventures of Don Quick, The
Entry updated 24 August 2026. Tagged: TV.
UK tv series (1970). London Weekend. Directors include Mike Newell. Writers Kenneth Hill, Keith Miles, Charlotte and Dennis Plimmer, and Peter Wildeblood. Cast includes Ian Hendry and Ronald Lacey. Six 50-minute episodes. Colour.
Only the opening episode of The Adventures of Don Quick is known to survive. Two hundred years in the future, Captain Don Quick (Hendry) and Sergeant Sam Czopanser (Lacey) are maintenance engineers, responsible for repairing Spaceship guidance beacons set up on – to use Czopanser's words – "backwater planets" inhabited by "things" (see Life on Other Worlds). Quick bemoans the lack of official interest in these planets and sees himself as an ambassador, obliged to right whatever wrongs he believes he has identified and advise cultures on how to improve themselves (see Cultural Engineering), using Earth's civilization as the ideal template. Czopanser just wants to get the job done and depart.
Episode one ("The Benefits of Earth") has the pair arrive on one such world, home to two humanoid species: one dressed as a stereotyped savage tribe, the other peace-loving and called "Dreamers" (recalling hippies). Though there is antipathy between the two, they by and large ignore each other. Quick initially attempts to teach the Dreamers to make Weapons to defend themselves ("What weapons have you got?" His response to the answering blank look is, "Aren't your people civilized at all?"). On discovering the other group is Technologically advanced (though not placing much value on life), Quick decides to hold a conference, with him as chair, to persuade both sides to work together – but is met with disinterest.
The Dreamers mostly live in a dome made from bubbles blown by an insect colony, safe from any casual attack by the other group. Though Quick describes the relationship as symbiotic, it is not clear whether there is any benefit for the insects (see Parasitism and Symbiosis). On their arrival the technology tribe had treated Quick and Czopanser as gods (see Gods and Demons): when Czopanser befriends one of their mechanics he asks why, as this seems an unscientific approach, but is told, "When something comes along that we don't quite understand ... we assume it's not a scientific phenomenon but a supernatural one: in that way we don't have to worry about not having the answer to it." This group has built a sexy female Robot for Quick and Czopanser: as her programming is based on radio broadcasts from Earth two centuries ago, she talks like a guidebook for housewives (see Feminism). Unfortunately, after Czopanser teaches the robot to flatter him she goes on to flatter a Dreamer and then the mechanic, creating jealousy: the Dreamer injures the mechanic, and his people want revenge. As Quick and Czopanser are about to leave, a delegation of Dreamers begs for protection from the other tribe's "giants": Quick looks in the distance and sees only giant windmills, so laughs, reassuring them they have nothing to fear and departs. Shortly after we see mobile windmills blowing away the bubbles that form the Dreamer's dome.
The other episodes follow the same format: Quick encounters new cultures and, full of benevolent moral superiority, interferes, oblivious to the disastrous consequences. Colin Baker, who would play the Sixth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963-current), appeared in the second episode, "People Isn't Everything". In the third, the inhabitants live in 2,000 floor tower blocks with the rich at the top and the poor at the bottom. The fourth is set on a planet of beautiful women; however, one astronaut who arrived there some years previously is now only six inches tall (see Great and Small). The sixth sees the pair arrive on a paradisal world where night and winter have been abolished (see Utopia).
The title and main characters (and windmills) of course reference Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605), with Don Quick sharing Don Quixote's tendency to misunderstand what he sees. The Adventures of Don Quick is of its time and initially a little clunky, perhaps reflecting how first episodes often suffer from the production still finding its feet, with the need to explain the set-up and introduce the main characters. Nonetheless it is an interesting Satire of Imperialist attitudes and Western paternalism; indeed, the focus is more on the satire than Humour (though Lacey is amusing), which might account for its lack of commercial success. Some of the scientific practicalities are acknowledged, such as a planet's Gravity and atmosphere being potentially a problem (though they turn out to be conveniently Earth normal). It is to be hoped that the other episodes will be found. Angela Carter wrote an episode titled "It Was Such a Nice Little Planet" which, due to the show being cancelled, was never produced. [SP]
links
- Internet Movie Database
- Wikipedia episode list
- British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue – record for Angela Carter's script
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