Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Darius X-Factor Machine

I wanted to review what was, for the main part, a good episode with one or two excellent moments within, but my unbelievably busy schedule of late (Stephen Fry, I fully empathise!) which would have meant moving to a more distant planet from the sun to buy some extra hours, plus the ridiculous Darius X-Factor Machine conclusion to The Satan Pit made my mind up for me.  If they couldn't be bothered to find the time for a more plausible and less ludicrous and unsatisfactory resolution then why should I be bothered to review it?

I ain't gettin' on no rocket, fule.

I hate football. So, sue me. I realize that this puts me in a smaller minority than the total number of Labour party members who actually still respect Tony Blair, but… Damn it all. There’s nothing more certain to get on my tits than wall to wall bladder kicking. And if it’s not bladder kicking, then it’s analysis of the day’s best plays of bladder kicking. Or post match analysis, or pre match analysis, or interactive match analysis. Press your red buttons now, if you can drag your knuckles up into a position that will enable you to press a button. Who needs opposable thumbs when all Cro-magnon man had to do would be to jab aimlessly at a red arsed nub of rubber.

If I have to sit through another surgical dissection of Rooney’s metatarsal by people who, I believe, aren’t medical professionals, the merits of a Crouch and Owen partnership or even if I have to bear witness once more, to ponderous twats yakking on about the length of Beckham’s pubic hair cut, then I’ll hurl my eyes and ears into the nearest concrete mixer.

Secretly, of course, it’s because I don’t understand the game. I can grasp the fact that 22 grown men spend 90 minutes lobbing this spherical object at each other, but what I don't get is the fact that some people can see where the next play's coming from, can absorb all the other movements that are taking place on the pitch and can somehow figure out what sort of move the players are going to make next. And this is what Doctor Who feels like at the moment…

The Satan Pit

It's all heading somewhere... It has to be. Please say it is. I've not invested this much energy in a show only to have our heroes turn to camera, grin, and smug off into a star turning supernova at the end of episode 13. We know that the title of the last episode is Doomsday, I just hope that it's not the name of a quirky department store chain, where all sorts of household items come alive. God help us if it's got a marital aid department and our heroes have to battle hordes of rampant Anal Intruders.

But I'm drifting, where are we, ah yes... as we all engage simulated night-time, so we can see our teleboxes without blinking in the strong summer daylight we realize the awful, terrible truth that lies at the heart of the sanctuary base. No, not the restless lodger downstairs, but that the crew are librarians from the Torchwood Archive. I suppose if any one group of humanity were dispensable then it's librarians. So lets hurl their duodecimal arses into a black hole.

However, the Torchwood Archive can't be any old dusty repository of books. Oh no! This is Torchwood. So it's the sexiest archive in existence. Boasting a complete run of Razzle and Forty Plus amongst its prized specialest of special collections. The Ood would be in some real badass trouble if Mr Jefferson had glasses on a chain around his neck instead of some heavy artillery in his mits. He could gaze them to death just by looking at them over half-moon glasses. Then the Ood could really piss them off just by messing with their classification scheme. Riveting stuff.

Because of the increasingly desperate situation, Rose's current infection with the virulent smug plague, shows some signs of abating. She actually gets off her fat, winging arse, and does something about the whole situation. Actually getting the chaps sorted out into some sort of A Team to solve their various issues. She's obviously been through some staff development as part of her education with the Doctor as she's suddenly displaying signs of delegation, problem solving, empowering people and time management. If it wouldn't make her even more smug she should be awarded a certificate of some kind.

The Doctor, on the other hand, is stuck right out of the action. He and Ida are staring into the abyss of low, low ratings. At least all his forced bigging up of humanity has some sort of impact at this point on the actual story, as he manages to counteract the voice of the beast, who rattles through the team's deep seated issues quicker than a Blind Date couple bitching about each other after their luxury holiday break on Bognor Sands. The way he says, "the virgin", made me think instantly of Vivian taunting Rik in The Young Ones. And what was all that stuff about the little itch at the back of the head? Has he got lice?

You've gotta love the Ood. Bit useless as monsters, with their glowing balls of vocabulary and dangly bits. And probably just as suggestible as your average Big Brother contestant. Dressed all like a posse of homeboys making their first court appearance for various acts of happy slapping bingo-loving old grannies. At least there's a sense of real urgency and panic about the chase through the ducting.

And once more, the arse plays a leading role in an episode of Doctor Who, from the rear end views of the ducties, to Danny's bilious IBS. And pity poor Jefferson, not realizing that he wasn't in an Eric Saward piece he could have probably escaped but his courageous show of mettle at least meant that he wasn't going to be butt fucked by any one of the Ood. Tangentially, how do they reproduce? Merely intermingle their fronds? And 9 months later one of their fronds erupts into a litter of new Oods? It's all a bit elementary as Danny suspiciously reverses the polarity to send the Ood into paroxysms that look suspiciously like the Peter Crouch Robot Dance.

What's the Doctor up to? Hanging around, literally. Could this be the least active of all of the Doctor's incarnations? He's giving McCoy a run for his money in the unconvincing dangling stakes. And then, just like the ratings, he plummets. And Rose returns to familiar territory, requiring another damn good slap, as she struggles to come to terms with the news that the Doctor's fallen down the pit.

And what is it with Captain Zach? Does he always keep a syringe in the pocket of his cargo pants just in case he needs to sedate a restless passenger? Or was that Torchwood's personal monthly allowance of Rohypnol gone within one single shot? So, with one little prick, Rose becomes BA to their A Team.

Meanwhile, with only a mere 16 minutes left, the Doctor realizes that he's spent far too much time dangling and not nearly enough time haggling, with the lesser spotted Beast. And what a Beast he is.

Imagine Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animating a representation of John Prescott based on a description whispered to him by antelopes. Add in a little bad breath, and you're almost in Satan country. Absolutely stunning work. Which results in the Doctor ranting a little and starting about the jars with the fevered panic of a man who's about to be shagged to death my Michelle McManus

Why Rose doesn't just take the gun and plug some hot B&Q bolt action into Toby's flapping gob hole, instead of defying the laws of physics and blowing the wind shield is something only the censor shall know. I'd have loved to hear the sound of steel shearing through flesh and bone before, eventually, becoming embedded in the upholstery of the chair. I can excuse that and Tennant being flung upon the side of the TARDIS. That was one of those hairs on the back of the neck moments that I've felt all too rarely during this series, almost made me want to "Do The Crouch".

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Satan Pit: Billie Piper's arse was played by John Prescott. The first time a current member of Parliament has starred in Doctor Who since Margaret Thatcher was seen copping off with a Sontaran in The Invasion of Time.

Doctor Who 1 - Satan 0

I watched The Satan Pit with an old school friend. It was the first episode of Doctor Who that I've ever watched with him; over the years he's been nothing but disdainful about my love of the show - I distinctly remember him giving me a withering look ten years ago while I was engrossed in an old issue of Skaro, and him asking me when I'd finally grow up and let go of this "kid's programme".

When the credits to The Satan Pit were rolling I tutted to myself. My friend, on the other hand, thought it was fantastic. When I tried to point out some of my problems with it he quickly lept to its defence. "How can you criticise this - have you seen the old series recently?" he asked, incredulous.

He's right, of course. Nothing's perfect. I don't know why I expect this show to be any different, but I do. When it fails to hit the dizzying heights of a middling episode of Battlestar Galactica I just can't let it slide. Or maybe I can...

Trying to muster up enough enthusiasm to write this review has been hard. If I missed next week's episode I wouldn't kill myself, and if they told me, for example, that the Doctor was about to lose a companion I'd simply shrug my shoulders and sigh.

But the biggest indication to me that my attitude is changing towards this programme is down to this simple fact: I can't bring myself to watch the vast majority of season two episodes more than once.

When season 1 aired I must have watched each episode 3 or 4 times in the week it was transmitted (even AoL and Boom Town). I think Rose was in double figures. Today, I don't think I could watch The Idiot's Lantern or New Earth again if you paid me.

I've finally let go.

Going through a mid-life crisis is bad enough, but losing touch with a childhood hero is breaking my heart...

Don't get me wrong, The Satan Pit has a lot going for it: an exciting (if derivative) duct scene, cinematic visuals, strong performances, impressive direction and a foreboding sense of danger. To be fair, sometimes I feel like I'm criticising Kate Moss for not cutting her toenails properly.

But it all falls apart for me the moment the Doctor meets "Satan". Because he doesn't. Satan has already legged it! While the Doctor comes face to face with the enemy he never actually confronts him head-on. Imagine Tom Baker in Sutkeh's inner sanctum, but instead of facing a power mad Osirian he's left alone to mock a cardboard cut-out!

And if Satan's mind is elsewhere, then why does the big beasty laugh so much?

Tennant has been a big disappointment to me this season. He shows signs of brilliance - the moment before he descends into the pit is electirc - but as soon as he launches himself into Doctor-mode it's, well, embarrassing, frankly. He makes McCoy look like David Duchovny, and that's no mean feat.

I don't love the Doctor anymore. I don't want to be the Doctor anymore. I don't even want to be anywhere near him anymore. Going through a mid-life crisis is bad enough, but losing touch with a childhood hero is breaking my heart. Or is a loveless marriage better than nothing at all, do you think?

And as for the TARDIS ex machina? Of course the Doctor was going to find his ship, but to do so in such a cack-handed, "no time left", get-out-of-jail-free manner was unforgivable.

But it's only a TV show. It isn't my religion.

Not any more.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Satan Pit: the close-up shot of Billie Piper's arse resulted in 17 calls to the BBC Duty Office. All of them were from Janet Fielding.

The Impossible Planet & The Satan Pit

Sorry this is late and rushed. I'm afraid I'm one of those people for whom all else stops for the World Cup. Apparently though the new series of Doctor Who is still on, though, so here's my verdict on the two-parter just gone.

I have to put my hands up and admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this one. Yes, I was very keen to see what the new series made of its first out-and-out alien world – even though New Earth

was in a whole different galaxy, the very fact that it was ‘new Earth’ didn’t make it feel all that alien, did it?

But somewhere along the line this kept getting compared by Russell T Davies to the western genre – pioneers making their brave new way in hostile territory, that sort of thing. I think I probably took his comments a little more literally than they were intended, but neither the idea of this bleak, miserable planet nor comparisons to westerns – a genre that usually bores me to tears – did anything for me. So I had this chalked down as ‘one not to get too excited about’, although of course it’s all relative – an episode of Doctor Who is never anything less than very watchable, even when the show is at its worst.

Of course, I was completely wrong about the whole thing anyway – this two-parter is absolutely wonderful, and easily my favourite story of the second series bar the perfect Girl in the Fireplace. It’s very different in style to Moffat’s effort, however – whereas that excelled because of the emotional resonance and the cleverness of the story, The Satan Pit (as I shall refer to the two-parter) gets by more on action-adventure and oodles of atmosphere.

In fact, there were only a few bits and pieces across the two episodes that I really didn’t like, so let’s get them out of the way first before they spoil things. The opening of the first episode – now this is a debatable one. Is the false threat of the Ood funny and clever because it takes advantage of our expectations that they should be a threat and then subverts them (for now), poking fun at the show’s format? Or is it a pretty poor excuse for a forced cliffhanger, as if the production team realised they needed a bit of excitement to crash into the opening titles on rather unsubtly crow-bared this one into the plot?

I lean towards the latter myself, and I didn’t like it, but mercifully it’s out of the way quickly enough, and from here on in there’s little to dislike. The Doctor hugging Zach, the similarity between the deaths of Scooti and Lynda-with-a-Y from last year with the cracking glass and the nasty death in space… Personal reactions that are probably more down to your own individual opinion than anything wrong with the episode as such.

There’s little that writer Matt Jones or director James Strong can be said to have done wrong here, and both make very favourable impressions on their first outings for the series. Given that this was shot last and thus had the shortest timescale between production and transmission, it’s perhaps impressive that the episodes look as good as they do. There’s only one real visual weakness that springs to mind – again, Scooti’s death, as her lifeless body floats through space. Shooting this underwater was a clever idea and probably worth a go, but the overall effect looks a bit cheap and sadly just doesn’t come off. But if Doctor Who is nothing else it’s a show where new production techniques and ideas have been tried out, so I applaud them for having given it a go.

The look of the sets and the whole design elsewhere is pretty gorgeous. The Sanctuary Base looks a bit familiar perhaps from a million and one Hollywood sci-fi movies, but it more than competes and stands up to such comparisons. The whole thing looks like a big budget version of the industrial zone from The Crystal Maze, and it’s a look that suits the edge-of-the-universe desperation of the situation very well indeed.

David Tennant’s Doctor seems a tad brought down in terms of his usual manic persona for much of this story, which suits the situation well given that he’s supposed to believe he’s trapped on this lump of rock with no TARDIS to give him a way out – not that you suspect deep down the Doctor would ever believe that, and we as the audience know it would never be the case. Nonetheless, the Doctor’s reaction to the apparent loss of his space and time ship is handled much better here than it was back in Rise of the Cybermen, although the fact that such a similar event happens twice in comparatively rapid succession could be regarded as a little unfortunate in terms of the overall planning of the series.

Tennant is particularly good in the scenes in which the Doctor ponders just what this deep, dark menace at the bottom of the pit might be, and his appreciation of and admiration for the humans’ spirit of adventure and desire to seek out and discover new things is also conveyed very well by the Scot. Similarly, Piper rises to the occasion when Rose is left basically marshalling the demoralised survivors of the expedition into some sort of action against the approaching Ood. Although both Piper and her character are good at this, the fact that Rose herself doesn’t have anything constructive to offer does highlight the fact that she can at times seem a little bit useless when it comes to practically doing anything about the situation, although she doubtless has good leadership skills.

It pretty much goes without saying these days that any Doctor Who story is going to assemble a first-rate supporting cast, such is the draw and prestige of the show, but I have to bring special attention here to the cast, especially Danny Webb. Anybody who was in the awesome Our Friends in the North has long-since attained God-like status in my eyes, and it was good to see Webb appearing in the show and putting in a fine appearance as Mr Jefferson. Also worthy of mention is Shaun Parkes as Zach, who was of course David Tennant’s co-star in Casanova and thus it seems almost like a reunion between their two characters in that production at some points.

And then of course there’s your man Gabriel Woolf. Is it Sutekh? Well… no, the little we do learn about the origins of ‘the Beast’ do seem to go against it, but who cares frankly when you’re getting a performance like that out of the man. Despite never appearing on screen he managed to be by far the most disturbing thing about the story, with his highlight coming in the “Don’t turn around!” scene in which he possesses poor old Toby’s soul.

But what was he? Or she, or it? The devil? An Osiaian? Something completely different? Unless this does all very cleverly and unexpectedly link into something we’re going to see at the end of the season then I don’t suppose we will ever know and it will forever be a mystery – which is nice. We could do with a few fewer explanations in Doctor Who, and the dark, enigmatic shadowy nature of this devil made it by far the most intriguing enemy the Doctor has faced this series, and perhaps since the show returned last year.

No God-like evil from the dawn of time is complete without its minions, however. The Beast gets the Ood, a frankly repulsive lot and another score for the design team, although I’m not completely sure about the voices. While I was a little disappointed the whole idea of their slave race nature and their origins and how they fit exactly into human society wasn’t explored just a little more, the idea of this servants-turned-killers plot development was a good, if slightly predictable, one, and echoed The Robots of Death, as cleverer reviewers than I have long since tired of pointing out.

There’s little else I can add without repeatedly going on about how much I enjoyed the story. Another great effort by all concerned, and let’s hope we get a couple more trips to completely alien worlds in series three.

Is it the real thing?

"Off in the future maybe there ain't no heaven
It's just you and me and maybe it's just as well
Cause if there ain't no heaven maybe there ain't no hell"

Flaming Lips

I love this style – Eric Sayward as produced by RTD. Everyone dies, but we’re meant to cry. It’s hard to explain why it’s so likable, especially considering that non-resolution to the cliffhanger and the rather worrisome ending but there are greater powers at work.

It seems we can’t get away from the BIGGEST, the BEST and the ULTIMATE. Sights are being set too high in the scripts, (not artistically, I might add, because they can never aim too high there) which is why the Daleks are gone FOREVER, (yeah, right) we have Britain’s GOLDEN AGE, and the human race’s GREATEST, most BOUNTIFUL empire. Here we have the ultimate destruction of evil. FOREVER. Because if that’s not what the beast was – a power house of evil, a nexus of villainy – then what was it? And does that mean we can cancel the series forever, having wiped out wickedness? With THE DEVIL gone, what’s left?

The plot is a shambles, we’re expected to give a shit about the Oods fer goodness sake!

At least it wasn’t solely his actions that killed it off, although you have to ask, if the Disciples of Light had that ability then why not pop ‘ole Nick in the black-hole in the first place?

The plot is a shambles, (a symptom of the hyperbole-factor) especially at the end, where we’re expected to give a shit about the Oods fer goodness sake! But the direction was brilliant, the CGI was brilliant, the set design was brilliant and the prosthetics were brilliant. This was possibly the best-made DW episode ever and James Strong has been something of a revelation. Those insightful monologues elevate it to something even more. The air in Clearwell Caves seems to have affected David Tennant and he gets back part of that CI mojo. His delivery is spot on and it moves at a stately pace. Perhaps this will mark a new beginning. We probably won’t see the results for some time since this was filmed last. Written away from Rose, the writing gets better and DT nails it. Oh, and I don’t read his reluctance to leave a message for Rose as him saying “I wuv you” more that he couldn’t rationalize his actions, which were, after all, suicidal.

The music during those scenes is one of Mr Gold’s finest achievements. Subtle and subdued. At last, he’s got the message and the whole episode is littered with lovely snatches of music. Unfortunately, the entire sound-mix has been pushed up to compensate. I know it’s realistic, but since when did we have to have realism to the point where the dialogue’s inaudible? I almost missed the line about Toby being... err – fancying Nyssa.

Rose is, unfortunately, no better than last week. All her “Mr Jefferson, suh!” was insufferable and she did that annoying thing, twisting her face around... anyway. At least the reunion is one of the most affecting of the many we’ve witnessed, helped by the direction and music, for once.

It seems to be the episodes which scream “CLASSIC” that we get the lazily written Doctor/Rose relationship. It’s as if without the cosy, protective layer of emotional cladding the writers seize up and panic. Think about it – where were the duo at their most drownable? T&C, the 2-parters and TIP. All in a “classic” style. They worked in SR, TGITFP and this week, (IMO) all of which are tinged with that familiar drama. Either the production team need to play to their strengths and stop mucking about with ye olde stylee DW or – more creatively – they need to adapt themselves and learn not to opt for annoying heroes.

Could we pause for a moment, however and think of the potential that was robbed from this story? If only we could have had the Slitheen shimmying down the ventilation shafts instead of the Ood, and a pretentious little Welsh girl instead of a devil. Ahh...the dreams of what never was. Actually, the idea of them finding the little girl instead is pretty funny, if inappropriate.

An excellent episode with raggedy edges, basically. Next week looks like a sermon of hero-worship – both in reality and fiction – and the biggest load of cack since “YYYY” was broadcast.*

*Monster of Peladon to those of you not following the podcasts.

Bellendzebub

Did Linda Blair 'show her true colours' when possessed by Old Nick in The Exorcist? Did she f**k.

A big backhand slap then goes to the TV listings of the Daily Mail - and no doubt dozens of others - for the same short-sighted point-missing sentiments expressed toward the Ood. They looked 'evil', therefore they were evil and it was only a matter of time before they turned on humanity, despite it being repeatedly made clear last episode that they were essentially genetic robots ('livestock') and didn't possess the self-will to rise up against anything.

The thing is though, I can see where the Daily Mail is coming from, because it completely underpins the production team's propensity for choosing ideas on the basis of being 'cool', rather than adding to a story in any sort of cohesive way. You know how JN-T was routinely criticised for the same thing? Well now, since cheaper CGI means budgetary constraints are all but off, that 'cool' factor is hitting unprecendented levels. By the end of The Satan Pit, nobody seemed to be able to decide any more on what the Ood actually were. Forget about the obvious moral questions about 'slavery' which the previous episode touched upon for, ooh, a whole two minutes. The Doctor expresses regret about failing to save the Ood as he would for any form of life. The surviving crew members are visibly saddened by the waste; after all, you don't smash up a top-of-the-range PC just because some prick comes along a types '10 PRINT "DIE DIE DIE" : 20 GOTO 10' on it. But then when the Captain started on his roll-call of honor, pragmatism went straight out the bloody window. You're giving a postumous VC to a Teasmade that just tried to KILL YOU? What the hell is WRONG with you? Shouldn't you at least have reservations about going back home to MILLIONS of the things, having witnessed first-hand that if they ever get within sniffing distance of a will more powerful than your own, you're TOTALLY SCREWED? What kind of a object lesson is this?

It could have been a dynamite commentary on ourselves and our over-reliance on supposedly 'infallible' technology that could one day spell disaster for us all. The Robots Of Death did it on an Art-Deco shoestring thirty years ago. But it wasn't. They dropped the ball. And how on Earth would a household appliance engineered to look so aesthetically disgusting make it past the test-marketing stage anyway? Chief Mover Poul would have cacked his pants.

And now we know what the supposed 'fall' is going to be; that BIG FAT SPOILER ALERT Rose may (or may not) be destined to die in the season closer. It's a lie, of course. After last season's 'give them enough rope' audience-teasing, it cannot fail in some respect to be a big bag of bait-and-switch bollocks because the human maind is a sucker for that sort of pointless conundrum. (Sudoku. Enough said.) Maybe the big 'twist' will be that there is no twist, and we all hang ourselves with our own conspiracy theories when she snuffs it after all. Or any one of a thousand ludicrous possibilities that RTD could pull out of his arse at the last moment (Doctor God and his magic TARDIS pixie dust being my own current evens-favourite). Whichever, it's a lose/lose situation any way you look at it as Russel delights with childish glee yet again in yanking the audience's collective chains like he's read one too many Harry Potter books. JN-T figured out that 'surprises' work best when you DON'T TELL US ANYTHING, and even the end of Mindwarp was a more sublime 'shock' than this.

So what did the episode get right? A hell of a lot, actually. If the reviews here are sometimes negative, it's because we love the series enough to care about quality storytelling, and when much of a production is 'right', your attention is naturally drawn to the things that are wrong (at least by your own standards; complaining is also FUN, godammit). We had a cast that actually cared about each other's mortality while still acting more or less human for a change (who wouldn't have tried to blow Toby Zed's head off in the circumstances?). Though as soon as the Captain hefted that boltgun with one bolt left, you KNEW that eventually that bolt would be headed in Will Thorpe's direction (though admittedly in a manner that caught me by surprise).

The Torchwood reference was a good or a bad thing depending on how sick of running memes you are by this point; that sudden drop in pressure I felt nine minutes in was all the air being sucked out of the room. I need a new scorecard. And despite the episode showing off its origins and nicked bits to all and sundry, some of the direction was inspired in its own right (such as the lights inside the helmets projecting in such a way as to make the face inside resemble a skull). And FINALLY we had a proper cliffhanger that didn't get pissed on before the opening credits started. I for one liked the way there was no 'proper' resolution, since the old series regularly took half an episode to start tying it together, and frequently not at all. Say what you like, but I thought that the manner in which it turned out the cliffhanger had already been 'resolved' from the Beast's point of view was actually pretty clever.

Which brings us to Satan himself. Now, I was utterly convinced at the episode start that Satan was going to be essentially a cosmic school bully, inspiring fear in the universe to hand over its lunch money from his big red look-at-me CGI stature. Gripper Stebson with horns. That would have been SO crap. What a great twist the Beast's own cunning was, then. Somebody asked why the folks up top were still in danger when all the Beast wanted to do was escape to Earth. Well he couldn't have made it look too easy, could he? That's not how traps work.

Did the rest of it make much sense though? Within its own self-defined two-episode framework, it does if you don't analyse it too hard (that's me screwed then). Aside from one throwaway reference to the planet Daemos, The Satan Pit didn't try to squeeze itself into established continuity (although one still has to wonder why, after Inferno, the Doctor didn't spend the whole of The Impossible Planet screaming at everyone to go home), and though you really expected more explanation than you got, it's a lot more preferable to how JN-T would have jumped through hoops to try and tie it in The Curse Of Fenric.

Did anybody really give much of a toss about the whole 'religious' gumph at the end of the day though? I know I didn't. Life is more complicated than telly, where at the end of the day, 'the evil that men do' remains much the same, whatever belief face you happen paint on it. To borrow from Troughton, sometimes 'there are things out there which must be fought' is all you really need to know.

Open The Satan Pit up to any further logical scrutiny however and it falls to bits. For example, if Satan was so awesome that whole galaxies had created legends about him as the personification of evil, then just how powerful was the race that not only imprisoned him, but did so using black-hole technology and application of physics that would have had Omega reaching for his coat? Somebody, SOMEWHERE, must have heard of these people. Surely they would have been venerated as gods in their own right. The epic conflict that climaxed in the Beast's imprisonment would have been passed down into the bowels of legend. But we WEREN'T TOLD SQUAT. And as for the sheer level of flaky phenomena on display that we were expected to accept as being supposedly 'impossible'; that really is lazy writing when, to use the old Clarkeian phraseology, it's wilfully indistinguishable from the same kind of 'magic' which the series, and the Doctor himself in this very episode, has always done its best to pooh-pooh. Alright, I know it isn't supposed to be a Christopher H. Bidmead physics lesson, but if anything goes in the universe after all, then there's no reason for the Satan being not to be the devil he claims to be, which completely invalidates episode's whole philosophical basis at a stroke.

On the other hand, there are opinions floating around on message boards saying that maybe the story should actually have been a three-parter since it left so much up in the air. Somebody has never seen Planet Of The Spiders then. Jesus Christ, you have GOT to be kidding me; the whole thing would have slowed down to a CRAWL with meandering philosophies about evil amid interminable scenes of Tennant pratting about while indulging in a tete-a-tete about the meaning of existence. Well yes, we actually got that - but isn't it more fun when the monster doesn't bother to answer back? Especially when he's actually a million miles away performing masturbatory gestures while the Doctor hypothesises impotently to himself for half the sequence? I dunno about you, but I always thought the worst thing to do to Jon Pertwee was blithely ignore him. Now there's poetic justice.

In the end, the fairest analysis of The Satan Pit was of 45 minutes of mostly exciting modern telly. Everything it set out to do, it does well; everything it doesn't (but in retrospect probably should have) it thumbs its nose at. From a fan's perspective this is a bit unsatisfactory, but that's what makes us fans. It did pass the new series' own principle test, in that you could set a novice down in front of it and watch him go 'cor' even though half of it goes over his head. There's a big heap o'danger, a universe-shattering threat, some gribbly monsters, everyone acts their little socks off, some wham-bam and it's alright in the end.

And then, having accomplished the required quota of impossible things before breakfast, they fly off for breakfast at Miliways.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about TIP/TSP: The '6 to the 6 to the 6' power index in The Impossible Planet actually refers to the number of punches Peter Kay will receive in the face next week for 'Amarillo'.

The Sand Pit

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit reminded me a little of the Star Trek: Voyager episode A Year of Hell, in the fact that that story also ended very abruptly at the end of the second episode when they realised that they had about a minute to wrap the story up.

I mean how convenient was it for the Doctor to fall in front of the TARDIS just at the moment the planet was going to be sucked into the black hole? I knew that the TARDIS would be found at some point in the episode but right at the end just as a convenient way of the planet and to save Rose? I mean could they not think of a better way of ending the story?

To be honest that was probably the only way that it could have ended as they had really written themselves into a situation that only a really convenient occurrence such as the Doctor finding the TARDIS could resolve. I can’t work out how the TARDIS ended up falling down the Stargate when the Stargate itself didn’t open until after the TARDIS has disappeared, or was it explained and I just missed it?

The cliffhanger resolve was also not particularly good, mostly because there just wasn’t one. The plot just carried on as though nothing particularly exciting had happened. Perhaps the writers just don’t know how to write good cliffhangers any more?

Apart from the god-awful ending to the episode, and the fact that it didn’t really have a proper cliff-hanger, I really enjoyed The Satan Pit. It was a very traditional Doctor Who episode with plenty of thrills and spills. There was plenty of action in the episode and there was a point when I did wonder whether or not they would have time to finish the story before the 45 minutes was up. This episode also had the old sci-fi staple of people crawling through ventilation shafts. How many times in sci-fi films and TV programmes have you seen this happen?

I did feel that Gabriel Woolf was badly underused in this episode especially during the confrontation between the Doctor and Tim Curry from Legend, which just seemed to be the Doctor jabbering away to himself. How good would it have been to have the Doctor and Sutekh, sorry I mean, Satan go up against each other?

Never mind. I suppose it was a shame that it wasn’t Sutekh as if you were going to bring back a really powerful enemy then Sutekh would be one of the ones I would have chosen. I am not sure how the fans would have retconned this if it had of been Sutekh, but the general public, like Neil said, would not have been aware that it was an old enemy, so probably it was best that they just had it being the Devil (plus the title The Satan Pit wouldn’t have worked otherwise).

The direction was excellent and the special effects were very special indeed (most particularly in the realisation of the Devil which looked far beyond the sort of effect you would normally expect from Doctor Who. Just look at Azal in The Daemons).

In fact the last two episodes are really the most cinematic looking episodes of the series so far and you could imagine seeing this episode on the big screen. You can tell where most of the budget for this series has gone. I hope that they get James Strong back to direct some more episodes. Considering that before this he had directed the Robson Green vehicle Rocket Man his direction for these episode far exceeded what a lot of people thought he would have delivered.

I must admit that both Rose and Doctor were pretty smug in the episode, particularly at the end of the episode when the Doctor said that they were both “The stuff of Legends”.

Don’t ask me why, I just have the feeling they are both going to be so insufferably smug in the next few episodes which is not going to be good. I also have a feeling that the line about Rose dying in battle very soon is going to be quite important at the end of season. Of course it could mean nothing and she might very well die of old age in a small town just outside Hastings.

On the acting front Wil Thorpe was very good as Toby as was Shaun Parkes as Zachary Cross Flane as was Danny Webb as poor old Jefferson and Claire Rushbrook as Ida. In fact the majority of the acting was quite good in the episode. I wasn’t to keen on Ronnie Jhutta who was quite annoying as Danny and David Tennant was overacting terribly in the scenes with the Devil.

In fact for parts of the episode he seemed to be channelling Hartnell in his performances with his “Hmm”. I half expected him to grab his lapels until I realised that they don’t have lapels on spacesuits. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he ended the sentence with “young man” or “Chatterton”.

Those are just my little niggles in what was otherwise a very good episode, which showed that the BBC can make proper Sci-Fi.

The Stuff of Legend

That’s how you resolve a cliff-hanger? Oh come on! When I think back at how naive and eager I was last week, looking forward to the exciting resolution to a muli-peril ending I could weep. I was such a trusting fool back then

Let’s see what I listed as needing to be sorted out, shall we?

"The attack of the squid faced people". Easy. Shoot them. Not that we actually saw anything of this of course. In fact the only dead Ood we saw was in the ventilation shafts much later. What was wrong with showing them being shot?

"The planet being sucked into a black hole". Oh never mind, it’s stopped now. Why? How? This was never explained or indeed mentioned ever again.

"The ascent of the devil". Except that he didn’t. At all. Ever. His spirit/essence/voice was already floating about the place so what exactly was rising from the pit with the growly noises at the end of The Impossible Planet? Eh?

And to think that I was worried about a "with one bound, Jack was free" moment but we didn’t even get that. This was the stuff of Saturday morning serials where the hero’s car crashes off the road, down a cliff and explodes in a ball of flames. We were left with a sense of dread and horror. How could he escape from that? Only for us to see in the following episode a new scene wherein, moments before the car leaves the road, said hero threw himself from the car thus avoiding the whole crashing, plummeting and inconvenient burning to death stuff.

We was robbed.

I have to say that this rather soured me toward the whole episode before it had even started.

Still it was nice to imagine the collective cheer from around the country as The Beast told Rose that she would die in battle. And when she told Jefferson that he’d have to shoot her too, if he wanted to shoot Toby who didn’t want him to just shrug and stand them back too back in order to save on the ammunition? Poor love, I’m sure she doesn’t really deserve all this backlash, but on the other hand she has become incredibly annoying of late. So maybe she does deserve it. So, roll on the big battle then I say.

And whilst we’re on The Beast’s little crew deconstruction, I thought it was interesting that they tried to give each of the stereotypes a little background, not that it came to anything. I did like the fact that it was Danny the Ethics Board Representative (or whatever he was) who was the "boy who lied". Although I don’t think that he looked anything like Harry Potter.

Now I know that Alien is currently regarded as a classic movie, but would Mr Jefferson really have picked up on the irony of their escaping from the nasty killing aliens through the ventilation ducts? I don’t remember actually hearing when this story was set, but I’m betting it was a long way into the future and unless somebody did a 3D remake with slime-o-vision I don’t imagine it would still be such an iconic image. Especially since humankind had by this point headed off into the stars and already met lots of Aliens of various shapes and sizes. The idea of encountering an alien life form in space wouldn’t have the same impact. Just another day at the office. Except of course that the humans in the Who Universe (am I allowed to Who-niverse, or is that just a little too much?) would have just wiped the entire species out anyway.

"Run and hide" the Doctor has said before now. "The monsters are coming!" The humans of this future wouldn’t take any nonsense from some sneaky xenomorph killing machine.

Whilst I (and assumedly other viewers) appreciated the pop culture reference, that scene would have been better played out thus –

ROSE: Cor Blimey Guv’nor, escapin’ frew the ventilation ducts eh? That’s a bit o’ irony like innit?

JEFFERSON: It seems like the best option. I fail to see the irony.

ROSE: Y’know ‘cos of that film. Right scary it were wiv that alien fingy.

JEFFERSON: Which alien? You’ll need to be a little more specific. We’ve encountered and eliminated 256 separate species.

ROSE: The one wiv’ no eyes an’ all them teef. It had scarier teef than wot I’ve got, innit? It was forever creepin’ up behind ya’ and rippin’ yer guts out.

JEFFERSON: Sounds like my wife. I wonder if she ever forgave me…

That would have made much better viewing in my opinion. And I apologise if there are any cockernees still reading at this point.

Going back to an earlier gripe, namely the easy cop out of "With one bound, Jack was free" type of script writing, how unbelievably convenient, astonishingly timely and completely implausible was it that the TARDIS happened to land exactly where it did. It had fallen over 20 miles straight down during a landslide. (The mine shaft was 10 miles deep, the cable was 10 miles long and the Doctor played it all the way out whilst dropping into the pit and he then fell an incredibly long way down to eventually land on an "air cushion") And yet somehow it ended up standing the right way up all alone, without any of the debris or huge pile of rocks that it had fallen with, right where the Doctor needed it! The TARDIS collapsed into the ground in a landslide and yet ended up beneath the great seal at the bottom of the pit! How did it get there? If it was that easy to get down to the bottom, why didn’t the exploration team just use one of the convenient holes that kept popping up all over the place? That was possibly the worst case of lazy writing that I have ever seen.

Nasty, lazy, cop-out script writing. He could at least have spotted a rockslide with a small blue corner of TARDIS sticking out.

Okay, now here’s a question that’s bothering me. Why did The Beast even bother with all that extra hassle of taking over the Ood, killing people and generally making a nuisance of himself? He’d already possessed Toby and was out and about anyway. He could have bided his time for a little while longer whilst the team found the big cavern, failed to open the seal, not located the power source and gone home. He would have been able to hitch a lift in Toby and get away Scot-free! Silly impatient Beast. He’d been waiting for all eternity so it wouldn’t have killed him to hang for another couple of weeks, would it?

And shouldn’t that have been "waiting for all eternity so far"? How is it possible to wait for all of eternity? You can start a really long time ago before there was anything else and it might feel like forever, but whilst time is still passing, you’ve not been there for all eternity yet, have you Beast? That’s just a bit of PR to make you sound older than you really are, isn’t it? Were you having trouble getting served in pubs or something?

He was just another ultimate evil wannabe, really, wasn’t he? Okay, so he was old, demonic in appearance, trapped in flames (of hellfire?) and a smooth talker who peddled a persuasive line of self doubt and horror but in the end he was just another Big Bad with an over inflated opinion of himself. This reminds me of Jasper Fforde’s Supreme Evil Beings in his excellent Lost in a Good Book wherein there is an endless supply of SEBs each of whom considers itself to be the only and ultimate evil. This chap was just yet another "ugly, red, source of all evil."

Unfortunately, we didn’t see the Sonic Screwdriver this week, so I can’t make another witty comment about it multi-functionality. I was hoping that it might spray holy water this week. Oh well, perhaps Peter Kay can launch into one of his ever so funny monologues next week and use it as a microphone.

And a Tochwood reference! This is the first one for a few weeks as far as I’ve noticed, the last one being in Rise of the Cybermen. I’d almost forgotten all about them. I know it’s been a little heavy handed at times, but I’m still looking forward to the Doctor’s encounter with them and the return of Captain Jack in the new series.

This may come as something of a surprising revelation, but I really enjoyed this episode. Despite the terrible let down I felt at the beginning and a couple of little niggles I thought it was great. There was more action and adventure and even a few wild things. The acting was great even Billie Piper. It’s not that she’s a bad actress because she isn’t – It’s just that her character is really annoying.

There were some good moments of introspection and dialogue in this one. I especially liked the examination of faith and belief. The fact that the Doctor admitted that he had trouble with The Beast claiming to come form "before the universe" simply because it didn’t fit in with what he believed. The fact that so many faiths are equally blind to those things in which they simply chose not to believe was subtly suggested without ever being shouted out (which made a change for the Doctor).

I did like watching him reason things out for a change, too. Rather than just intuitively knowing what to do, he had to piece it all together like a logic problem. All very good stuff.

And there were parts that I found quite moving, too. I actually felt for Mr Jefferson and his noble sacrifice, quietly accepting his fate with a calm dignity. I’d like to think that if I ever find myself trapped in a ventilation shaft with no chance of escape, being chased by the possessed minions of an evil entity that I too will bow out with a little grace and style. Not that I think of these things that often, just when work gets really slow.

I know it shows how little I delve into these things, but I didn’t expect Toby to still be possessed. I was genuinely surprised when his eyes glowed red and he looked all sneaky there. That was really quite a ‘crikey’ moment for me.

All in all that was a really excellent two-parter. Okay so the cliff-hanger could have been done better and it was a bit convenient that the Doctor just happened to find the TARDIS. But nobody’s perfect and I’m a happy man.

The Pits

And the overnight scores are in: 5.5 million and a 35% share.

Here's how it all breaks down:

            BBC1           ITV              BBC2            C4             C5

19:00   5.0 (33.7%)   3.9 (26.0%)  1.6 (10.7%)   0.9 (5.9%)  0.4 (2.7%)
19:15   5.3 (34.9%)   3.9 (25.6%)  1.5 (10.0%)   0.8 (5.4%)  0.4 (2.8%)
19:30   6.0 (38.1%)   4.0 (25.1%)  1.0 (6.0%)     1.0 (6.4%)  0.5 (2.9%)

I know the share is good. I know we beat everything but The World Cup and Casualty BUT how can you say that a drop of 4 million viewers is acceptable? What's worse? Going up against Coronation Street or sunshine? Discuss.

Handsome Devil

Like I’ve said more than once before, they’re tricky things these two-parters - leave too much to do and you’ve got a rush of exposition and character expendability; leave too little and you’ve got a run-around episode with more padding than ‘World War Three’. Bleeding - as they say - tightrope.

But at least the resolution to last week’s cliff-hanger isn’t a disappointment - because there, um, isn’t one. Just as I was ready to bemoan yet another case of the Doctor whipping out the sonic screwdriver, we’re left instead with him peering into the pit while Danny Webb goes postal with the Ood upstairs. I’ll say that again: nothing bloody happens! Which, as an omen for the episode to come, couldn’t be more appropriate.

So, there are fifty Ood onboard - now that’s going to please Captain Zack, who spends most of his time cataloguing the dead as though he’s some mortality-fixated version of a trainspotter. And he’ll get plenty of chances, as ‘The Satan Pit’ - in typical fashion of many a second-half Who - finds itself with far too many characters with too little to do. In its first few minutes alone it bumps off one so unmemorable that I can’t even recall noticing her in episode one anyway. And soon the wasted Danny Webb is doing the decent thing and sacrificing himself for the good of his shipmates. Not to mention the Doctor Who quota of underwritten-ciphers-with-no-place-to-go-but-the-great-beyond.

All of which would be forgivable if the episode actually paid off all the build-up to its threatened revelation. But it doesn’t. I’m all for enigmatic, take-from-it-what-you-can endings, where not all explanations come with their I’s dotted and T’s crossed; but leaving us with no explanation of the beast and no enigma with which to ponder for years to come is just lazy script-writing to me.

Speaking of script-writing, I also wonder just how much of this was Matt Jones’ work, as there’s a hell of a lot about ‘The Satan Pit’ which has RTD’s malnourished, give-em-spectacle-and-they-won’t-worry-about-the-substance fingerprints all over it. Indeed, watching the following Confidential, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the opening credits had a typo, so much does Davies big-up his ideas and concept for the episode. Are we getting into JNT-style authorial autonomy here?

And again on writing, I still can’t decide whether Rose’s descent from plucky, likable shop-girl to gobby, Catherine Tate-style chav is as a result of being written badly, or if indeed Ms Piper - heavily laden by yet another award this week - is being found out as the show-boating, one-trick pony we always feared she would be. Either way, her increasing amount of work away from Who - coupled with a seemingly truncated stint on Season Three - is looking increasingly welcome.

Still, let’s look on the bright side, shall we. Last week we had an old-style quarry in snazzy, big-budget Doctor Who; this week it’s a freaking ventilator shaft. But wait a minute, has James Cameron suddenly stepped behind the camera, as that’s Aliens in all but name, innit? It’s a good thing the directorial allusions end there, as we wouldn’t want any other homages (like, say, the main character descending seemingly to his death down a long cavern, only to find both air and an extra-terrestrial intelligence waiting for him. As in James Cameron’s The Abyss, perhaps…).

Speaking of Tennant, has the word ‘underplay’ yet reached his ears, as it seems every time he gets to be ‘Doctorly’ he insists on playing the scene as though it’s for the hard of hearing and the soft of brain. And what’s with the gurning? Even Sylvester McCoy - for whom the gurn was more medical affliction than artistic choice - had his quiet moments. But Tennant seems to be taking his cue from Murray Gold’s typically bombastic score; all sound and fury, signifying nothing. That the scene where he asks Ida to tell Rose, well, what she’d know anyway is such a marked contrast says more about how Tennant’s early promise has slipped away into careless frippery and shameless mugging than perhaps anything else.

Which all leaves me with very little else to say - unless you count the latest Torchwood plug, about which I only hope that this is all leading somewhere (and not just BBC3 in the autumn). Oh, I nearly forgot - I can’t currently remember when a Doctor Who ended with such a contrived load of metaphysical and technobabblick bollocks as this one did. Even Rose’s clichéd ‘Got to Hell’ line (copyright every single TV show or film depicting a titanic battle with the Devil or something devilish, ever) is more forgivable than this.

But there’s one moral to take from ‘The Satan Pit’: the higher you climb, the deeper the fall. It’s a lesson that the production team of Doctor Who could do well heeding, as following four or five episodes of increasing consistency, this two-parter set on the new series’ first bona-fide alien world (and if this is indicative, give me bloody Cardiff any day) has seen a marked deterioration, just as this season’s final straight is coming into sight. And it’s gonna take a whole lot more than next week’s ‘Peter Kay Show’ to arrest it…

(‘The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about The Satan Pit: unlike David Gooderson, Gabriel Woolf was - sadly - not busy)