10.10: The Satan Pit
In which things get a bit beastly.
Broadcast: June 2006
Watched: August 2021
I think the greatness of Impossible/Pit comes entirely from two things:
1) a space adventure in which the baddie is the actual Satan;
2) base under siege but for once everyone’s nice? You actually feel the losses, at least a bit.
So: you’re rooting for Zack to find his nerve. Danny shows genuine joyous relief when he learns that Ida’s alive. Jefferson is an interesting inversion of the traditional paranoid security chief: clearly got some dodgy stuff in his past, but he’s brave and decent and self-sacrificing. The way Zack calls him “John” at the end is oddly touching. (Hilariously, his middle name is “Maynard” which suggests he’s named after the founder of Keynesian economics.)
The best bits are the regulars, though. The Doctor dropping into the pit (“Tell her... oh, she knows”) is a brilliant scene; I’d forgotten the fact he wants to retreat, for once, and only does it because he has no other choice. Billie’s delivery of, “You don’t know him, cos he’s not” is amazing. Before that, Rose gets to show her steel, being calm and competent when everyone else is panicking... even if she should probably have let Jefferson kill Toby. Though to be fair she eventually does it herself, so fair play.
The finale, with the Doctor jumping about working stuff out, is a bit too static. And I am already getting sick of Tennant’s “Humans! Brilliant humans!" shtick. Tennant isn’t quite there yet. But otherwise it’s lovely.
Other things:
This is a *huge* influence on Waters of Mars, by which I mean RTD rips himself off lot: the crew, Strategy Nine, the idea of a monster trying to escape to Earth.
Again, the extra who isn’t given a name dies. Shocking.
The beast calls Toby “the virgin” which is a weird psychosexual flex. Are we meant to think his repression is what has left the beast in? (He later over compensates by perving on Rose’s bum.)
The prediction Rose will die is immediately annoying, but perhaps this is because I already know it’s bullshit.
The Doctor’s rejection of “Before the universe” doesn’t fit with the cosmology of the New Adventures THIS IS NOT CANON.
When Rose kills Toby/beast (wow, Rose is a murderer), he screams and we can hear him in the void. Tch. Slippy.
The shot of the frightened ood just before the planet gets pulled into the black hole is weirdly heartbreaking.
An odd thought from Ida’s bit about evolution... Were there Gallifreyan apes or what?