January 20: "The Satan Pit"

Not only is today Tom Baker's birthday, but it's also my brother's 30th!  Happy birthday!  I...have no way to tie that into "The Satan Pit", so let's just move on...

The TARDISode for this episode appears to take place between the last TARDISode and the start of "The Impossible Planet", as someone looks through Captain Walker's effects, sees that book burst into flames, and then is found with sigils all over his face.  This might be fine if these events or either of these two characters were ever seen or even mentioned again.

So here's the thing about "The Satan Pit": director James Strong almost gets away with it.  His direction is very dynamic, filling the screen with tons of energy as Ood charge down ventilation shafts and the Sanctuary Base crew start to lose it as the pressure on them builds and builds.  But he also gives us quiet moments; Ida's conversation with the Doctor, as he's dangling inside the pit, is really beautiful -- all subtle and calm.  And his (seeming) last words to the outside universe -- "If they get back in touch...  if you talk to Rose... just tell her...  Tell her...  ...Oh, she knows" -- are far more lovely than they have any real right to be.

But the problem lies in the script.  "The Impossible Planet" builds really well, and the cliffhanger, with the Beast escaping and the Ood turning into killers, is very well judged.  But then "The Satan Pit" just sort of...sits there, working through its running time until it gets to the points it wants to explore, which basically starts with the Doctor dangling in the pit.  Try to imagine this as an old-school four-parter, and then picture part three, and you'll see the problem.  As I said, Strong makes all the ventilation shaft sequences look tense and compelling, but they don't really contribute to the plot, and the way in which the Ood are dealt with by the halfway mark only makes this clear.

The Doctor confronts the Beast. ("The Satan Pit") ©BBC

No, Matt Jones is clearly more interested in exploring the nature of the Doctor's beliefs and faith.  It does come across as strange to long-term fans though, as the Doctor struggles with the idea of something existing "before time" (so presumably from before this universe began) -- even though he had no trouble with the concept in Terminus.¹⁷⁵  (But hey!  Support for my "previous universe" theory in "The Impossible Planet"!)  Even independent of Terminus, though, it's not clear why the idea of a universe before this one would freak him out -- it's treated as if the idea is enough, without any real exploration of it.  Then there's also the problem with the Doctor's theorizing about the Beast having an influence on all the civilized races in the universe -- no problem with this per se, but one of the planets the Doctor mentions is Dæmos, which only serves to point out the conflict between what this story states and what we hear in The Dæmons.  Did the Beast make the Dæmons look (a bit) like himself?  Did he inspire them to go manipulate other races because he was their devil figure?  Or is it just a coincidence?  And finally, there's the minor issue of how the big climax of the story is that Rose isn't a victim, and that he believes in her.  It's a good moment, but we already saw it in The Curse of Fenric, so it's not the huge revelation the script wants it to be.

In fact, there's more than a little of The Curse of Fenric in this story's genes.  Here it's evil from before the dawn of time instead of the dawn of time itself, but the idea is still the same -- and Fenric as a creation was a lot more subtle than a huge growling dude chained up underground.  We still have the Doctor's belief in his companions as a motivator, and we have the evil being manipulating events to bring about its release, but less interesting discussions about faith here than there.  The idea that the Doctor keeps traveling to be proved wrong is nice, but it's less interesting than Reverend Wainwright confronting the loss of his faith in God, or Captain Sorin's faith in the Russian Revolution.  Instead of evil in human form, with all the guile and cunning that entails, we get a giant mindless shouty thing -- which sums up the two different approaches toward the same basic point, really.

Look, this is another series 2 story that just about works on balance.  "The Impossible Planet" is really really good, and a lot of that goodwill translates over to "The Satan Pit".  That, combined with Strong's direction and some good performances (Billie Piper continues to be a lot more likeable here than she has been, even if this seems to be the story that starts to see her actively transform into the Doctor), makes this worth watching.  The main problem is that "The Satan Pit" is a lopsided episode, exploring questions already examined more intriguingly in earlier stories.  To be honest, it's not clear how they could have done better, other than restructuring/rewriting "The Satan Pit" to ramp up more smoothly -- but the minute they decided to include a huge CGI devil, there was no way this was going to be as interesting as "The Impossible Planet" promised.  As I said, it just about works (and it still carries that New Adventures feeling over both episodes, right down to exploring the idea of ancient gods), but it's James Strong's win, not Matt Jones's.







¹⁷⁵ Well, maybe.  One reading of Terminus suggests that Terminus is from this universe, traveled back in time to the beginning of the universe, jettisoned the fuel that caused the Big Bang, and traveled forward in time as a result of the shockwave (thus creating a paradox).  This rather lessens the impact of Gallagher's ideas (admittedly not well-realized on screen) about the original crew of Terminus being like giants who have been long since gone (except for the Garm) by the time mankind finds the place, though.