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Series 2 Episode 9: “The Satan Pit” (Part 2 of 2)Broadcast on BBC1, Saturday June 10th, 2006
Series 1 Boxset:
Series 2 Part 4:
Series 2 Boxset:
Director:
- James Strong
Screenplay:
- Matt Jones
Cast:
- The Doctor: David Tennant
Rose Tyler: Billie Piper
Mr Jefferson: Danny Webb
Zachary Cross Flane: Shaun Parkes
Toby Zed: Will Thorp
Ida Scott: Claire Rushbrook
Danny Bartock: Ronny Jhutti
Scooti Manista: Myanna Buring
The Ood: Paul Kasey
Voice of The Beast: Gabriel Woolf
Voice of the Ood: Silas Carson
Synopsis: A demonic being controls The Ood, willing them to kill the crew of themining station.. while 10 miles underground, The Doctor descends into agigantic pit…
The Satan Pit continues the excellent work begun last week in The ImpossiblePlanet, with telepathic slave race The Ood now being controlled by a demonicentity beneath the planet’s surface – and under orders to kill the crew. AsRose and the crew try to defeat them, The Doctor makes a descent into thepit.
After a shaky start, in which a lot of last week’s tension and expectationis extinguished, only to be replaced with tired sequences of peoplescurrying around inside air vents, The Satan Pit soon regains momentum todeliver memorable scenes and fine examples of Doctor Who morality.
There are emotional death scenes sprinkled throughout the show, although thewriting often embraces the sci-fi clichés of deaths that involve slowstragglers, hatches that can’t open for the good of the majority, and verbalobituaries from the Captain.
Still, for every moment of laughably forced humanity delivered with totalseriousness, there are some decent monologues to keep the balance right,particularly when The Doctor discusses the human impulse to exploredangerous environments out of sheer curiosity.
Matt Jones’ writing affords David Tennant some jucier moments to relish;likewise Billie Piper, although the latter’s assuming command of afuturistic crew rings totally false. No matter, as Piper gives her bestperformance of the year upon hearing The Doctor’s supposed death/loss. As anactress, she can definitely rise to the challenge of big emotions (and deathdoesn’t come much bigger), so I only hope the writers create more situationsfor Rose to show her mettle in a believable manner, instead of flashing atoothy grin every five minutes and delivering misplaced gags.
The visual-effects are just as strong as last week, with the new spacesequences and a rocket take-off being fine additions to the Who canon. Butthe most striking and accomplished visual (perhaps of the entire show uptill now) comes in the form of The Beast itself – a gigantic horned demonchained inside the titular pit (right).
A combination of Lord Of The Rings‘ Balrogand The Darkness from Legend (with a hint of Jason & The Argonauts), it’s astunning CGI achievement that increases the sense of grandeur further,making The Satan Pit particularly epic. Of course, the downside is that itillustrates just how comparatively pedestrian and childish the rest of theseries has been (New Earth and School Reunion the biggest offenders).
Overall, this is a strong continuation that only falters with some sloppyclichés in the first ten minutes. By the time the action has built up itsmomentum again, culminating in the excellent Beast sequence with The Doctor,then The Satan Pit is a guaranteed favourite.
It was also interesting to see an episode conclude without aneatly-explained denouement from The Doctor, who instead admits some of themysteries will never be solved (well, I’m sure the religious connotationsalso had something to do with it )
If you also forgive an extremely unlikely plot contrivance with the TARDISin the closing moments, you can’t deny The Satan Pit offers a level ofcompetence and scares rarely seen in Who these days
NEXT WEEK: A man called Elton Pope becomes obsessed with finding The Doctor…
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.