P is for... Pangol

Pangol was the hot-headed son of Morix and Mena, leaders of the Argolin people. They lived within the confines of the Leisure Hive, a hermetically sealed complex which acted as an educational scientific holiday resort. The surface of the planet had become heavily irradiated, and this had caused the Argolins to become sterile. 

The attractions were based around Tachyonics, which allowed matter to be copied and manipulated. The highlight of the tourist visits was the Tachyon Recreation Generator, demonstrations of which Pangol presented himself. Despite the Hive's reliance on visitors from other worlds, chiefly from Earth, Pangol harboured a hatred towards any alien influence on his planet. He had been carrying out secret experiments with the Generator. 

Mena took over control of the Hive on the death of Morix, just as it came under attack by the reptilian Foamasi through a series of acts of sabotage. They sought to lower the value of the complex in order to buy it cheaply. The Argolins and Foamasi had fought a brief but devastating nuclear war some 20 years before - the cause of the radiation which blighted the planet.

Fronting the purchase was the Hive's Earth agent, Brock, who was being impersonated by a disguised Foamasi. 

When Mena then fell terminally ill, Pangol made his move. He wanted his mother's body thrown outside, even though she was not yet dead, and he destroyed an Argolin spacecraft as it tried to leave with the now captured saboteurs. He had set up the Generator so that it could duplicate himself thousands of times, to create a huge army that would wage was against the Foamasi. He had learned that he was not a natural born Argolin - being younger than the war which had caused his people to become sterile - but was the result of an earlier experiment to use Tachyonics to create new Argolin offspring.

The Doctor interfered with this process so that it was he who was copied instead of Pangol. The dying Mena was placed in the Generator by an Earth scientist named Hedin, who hoped that the process could reverse aging. Pangol attempted to stop him but got trapped inside with his mother. When they emerged, she had been rejuvenated whilst he had been regressed to babyhood. Mena promised to bring him up better next time.

Played by: David Haig. Appearances: The Leisure Hive (1980)

• Baby Pangol was played by a girl - Alys Smith, daughter of Production Unit Manager Angela Smith. She also played a child in The Mysterious Planet.
• Haig is probably best known to British TV audiences for his role in Rowan Atkinson's police-based sitcom The Thin Blue Line.
• In 1997 he wrote the play My Boy Jack, about the relationship between writer Rudyard Kipling and his son, who was killed in WWI. In 2007 this was filmed by ITV, with Haig playing Kipling and Daniel Radcliffe playing his son John. 
• He has also appeared in Blake's 7 and was one of the grooms (No.2) in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
• He was made an MBE in 2013.