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 the
mining station.. while 10 miles underground, The Doctor descends into a
gigantic pit...
The Satan Pit continues the excellent work begun last week in The Impossible
Planet, with telepathic slave race The Ood now being controlled by a demonic
entity beneath the planet's surface - and under orders to kill the crew. As
Rose and the crew try to defeat them, The Doctor makes a descent into the
pit.
After a shaky start, in which a lot of last week's tension and expectation
is extinguished, only to be replaced with tired sequences of people
scurrying around inside air vents, The Satan Pit soon regains momentum to
deliver memorable scenes and fine examples of Doctor Who morality.
There are emotional death scenes sprinkled throughout the show, although the
writing often embraces the sci-fi clichés of deaths that involve slow
stragglers, hatches that can't open for the good of the majority, and verbal
obituaries from the Captain.
Still, for every moment of laughably forced humanity delivered with total
seriousness, there are some decent monologues to keep the balance right,
particularly when The Doctor discusses the human impulse to explore
dangerous 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 a
futuristic crew rings totally false. No matter, as Piper gives her best
performance of the year upon hearing The Doctor's supposed death/loss. As an
actress, she can definitely rise to the challenge of big emotions (and death
doesn't come much bigger), so I only hope the writers create more situations
for Rose to show her mettle in a believable manner, instead of flashing a
toothy grin every five minutes and delivering misplaced gags.
The visual-effects are just as strong as last week, with the new space
sequences and a rocket take-off being fine additions to the Who canon. But
the most striking and accomplished visual (perhaps of the entire show up
till now) comes in the form of The Beast itself - a gigantic horned demon
chained inside the titular pit (right).
A combination of Lord Of The Rings' Balrog
and The Darkness from Legend (with a hint of Jason & The Argonauts), it's a
stunning CGI achievement that increases the sense of grandeur further,
making The Satan Pit particularly epic. Of course, the downside is that it
illustrates just how comparatively pedestrian and childish the rest of the
series has been (New Earth and School Reunion the biggest offenders).
Overall, this is a strong continuation that only falters with some sloppy
clichés in the first ten minutes. By the time the action has built up its
momentum 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 a
neatly-explained denouement from The Doctor, who instead admits some of the
mysteries will never be solved (well, I'm sure the religious connotations
also had something to do with it…)
If you also forgive an extremely unlikely plot contrivance with the TARDIS
in the closing moments, you can't deny The Satan Pit offers a level of
competence and scares rarely seen in Who these days…
NEXT WEEK: A man called Elton Pope becomes obsessed with finding The Doctor...
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Series 1 Boxset:
Synopsis:
A demonic being controls The Ood, willing them to kill the crew of the
mining station.. while 10 miles underground, The Doctor descends into a
gigantic pit...
The visual-effects are just as strong as last week, with the new space
sequences and a rocket take-off being fine additions to the Who canon. But
the most striking and accomplished visual (perhaps of the entire show up
till now) comes in the form of The Beast itself - a gigantic horned demon
chained inside the titular pit (right).
