Review - The Satan Pit

We continue on with classic Sci-Fi survival horror as The Doctor opens The Satan Pit.

Season 2, Episode 9 - The Satan Pit

This episode picks up where The Impossible Planet leaves off, with The Doctor and Ida at the mouth of the pit and the rest of he company fleeing the newly possessed Ood. I think the crew's acceptance of Toby was a bit too quick though. It's a tough one, but I'd like to think I'd be wary of the guy. As it is we focus just on the physical threat of the Ood. The red-eyed menace starts off almost as another zombie horde, only with more tea-bagging.

I'll let you join the dots on that one.

As a threat, the Ood soon move past the "advance slowly and be creepy" phase and become a bit more of a fast swarm kind of threat. Once the group escapes into the tunnels, the parallels to Aliens really gel. Wave after wave of monsters scrambling unflinchingly forward through tight ducting into machine gun fire. I don't think I'm drawing a long bow there. I'm pretty sure the production team said they got inspiration for the base from the Nostromo too.

They're all around us, man!

The pit itself is just a flat black nothingness. There's something really awesome about this scene, The Doctor hanging there in the nothing, pontificating. I even liked the whole awkward message for Rose thing. It worked well.

"If you talk to Rose, just tell her... Just tell her... Oh she knows." 

Once The Doctor takes that leap of faith and lands in the lair of The Beast, we get some more exposition and a full look at our erstwhile enemy. After working out that The Beast is just an animalistic body lacking a mind, The Doctor chooses to destroy everyone rather than let it get free. Of course we get some rather convenient Deus Ex Machina as The Doctor stumbles across the TARDIS in time to escape and save the others from the now collapsing gravity well. We have to give The Doctor credit for making the hard choice here. He didn't know he had to live for the next episode.

Happy birthday to me... Wait, I'm only two?

The Doctor's lament at not being able to save The Ood seems a bit weak though. I know he can't cross his own time stream (unless he can) but surely he could have done something once he had the TARDIS. It somehow feels like a distinction was still made between the humans and the Ood, despite all of the equality subtext of this and the previous episode. I mean he managed to pick up Ida on the way. Why was she more important?

All up, the survival horror theme worked well, and this story is quite rewatchable for me.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Again, not really much to do here. It was a nice suspenseful episode that played out well. As I said, it was a bit talky, and the whole Doctor loves Rose thing could have not been there, but it wasn't as sappy or drawn out as it could have been.

The only minor tweaks I'd have made would be first to have the Ood all die when The Beast was destroyed. This would mean The Doctor wouldn't have had to drop a weak line about not being able to save them.

It would also have been good to bring in a bit of paranoia at the start when the team escaped into the ducts. This could either have been directed solely at Toby, or more broadly at the whole team. If The Beast had possessed Toby and the Ood, maybe he could take any one of them at any time. That would have made the escape through the tunnels just a bit more tense as they all worried about each other.

Not too much to add though because it's a solid episode.

Oh, and I just had to share this one. I did a double take at this point...

Vashta Nerada anyone?

Review - The Impossible Planet

We get set for a nice little trip to Hell in another top two-parter as The Doctor and Rose visit Krop Tor, The Impossible Planet.

Season 2, Episode 8 - The Impossible Planet

The cold open of this episode was quite delightfully handled, with the Ood set up as a monster in the cliffhanger before the opening titles, only to reveal it as a fake-out. The introductions after The Doctor and Rose's arrival were well handled, with the research crew filling all basic tropes nicely, and the basic exposition felt reasonably natural. In particular the Ood and their plot-integral empathic field. I suppose this is a benefit of the two-parter, in that you can take a little longer setting things up, thereby avoiding the whole Go, Go, Go, Geronimo! thing.

It's always fun when The Doctor loses the TARDIS, as he inevitably needs to do things a little differently. The unique situation had he and Rose assuming it was all over, which we, as the audience, know is not true (regardless of how contrived the scenario in which it eventually returns). But instead of lamenting her lost life on earth, Rose seems more interested in locking in a new one with The Doctor.

I think this episode is where we really start to see the solidification of the relationship between Rose and The Doctor. It wavered a lot until this point, most likely because Mickey was technically still around. Now that he's supposedly stuck in a parallel dimension, that frees Rose up to love The Doctor without guilt. You know, if she'd had any guilt to start with.

This story is essentially classic survival horror along the lines of Alien and The Thing. An isolated team being slowly picked off by an insidious threat from within. It could be part of why I quite liked this episode. Our resident archaeologist Toby doesn't take long to get himself possessed, and start wreaking havoc through the facility. You can tell he's possessed because he's got red eyes and crazy tattoos.

Damn it! I said one small butterfly on the neck!

We see possessed Toby fairly early, and he fits my profile of an Agent Boss, even though he's not consciously aware of his involvement with the Monster Boss. The real Big Bad is revealed in a neat series of flickering images on background monitors. As brief and subtle as the flashes are, it's pretty clear what we're dealing with.

Santa!

No... Wait... The other guy.

In a way, the possession of the Ood throws in what could almost be seen as an unnecessary extra monster type. Of course, the possessed Ood have a significant role in part two once the party is split, so we couldn't really drop them, could we?

Overall, this was a well paced opening to a good story. It used a tried and true horror structure and pulled it off nicely. This one's definitely up there.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Interestingly, I think this story could have worked reasonably well without the possessed Ood. The Beast would end up possessing different people. This would have provided some good tension, as the characters didn't know when they may turn on each other. Of course that could have been difficult to handle without it being an obvious "I win button" for The Beast.

That said, because of how the Ood fit into part 2, this would require more rewriting, and would probably just be change for change's sake.