4.32: The Creature from the Pit

In which a matriarchy fears the giant green scrotum.

Broadcast: October-November 1979

Watched: October 2020

The Creature from the Pit, Part One

“If I were you I’d introduce her to geraniums before it’s too late.”

The wordless opening scene of some poor sod being thrown into the pit sets the vaguely gothic tone. Once again it’s surprisingly well made – some nice design work; the bit with the wolf weeds attacking the Doctor is quite fun, in a menacing-but-silly kind of way.

One problem is that the lead bandit is playing it as Fagin, which means he’s accidentally doing a massively racist performance. The other is that the regulars, except Tom, are shite. Romana is so annoying in her “Don’t you know who I am” routine that she deserves shooting, and her mourning when she thinks K9 is dead is bloody awful. Brierley is noticeably worse as K9 than Leeson was, far too OTT. [For this season only, the robot dog has been recast] The TARDIS scene at the beginning is long, smug and dull.

“The Lady Adrasta”, coming three stories after the Princes Astra, suggests a serious name shortage.

Huh, I hadn’t even twigged this was meant to be a matriarchy until I looked on Wikipedia. Can’t work out if that’s the show not communicating properly, me not concentrating, or me just not registering that a woman being in charge was in any way A Big Deal.

There’s an extra doing VERY SERIOUS FACES in the background who I’m quite compelled by.

The Creature from the Pit, Part Two

“What is that thing in the pit?” “We call it... the creature.” Do you now.

One of those that I perversely ended up rewatching, because it’s so boring I didn’t really watch it the first time and so missed most of the actual plot. The cliffhanger to part 1 – which was surprisingly good – reminded me of The Satan Pit, when the Doctor cuts the line and lets himself drop. The cliffhanger to part 2 – in which the Doctor is squashed, Prisoner-style, by a giant green penis is less good – so bad, in fact, I’d forgotten it until my rewatch.

Anyway, the monster is hilariously bad. There’s some nice direction, where Adastra is looking at herself in the mirror while talking to Romana. The astrologer very nicely played... oh that’s why, it’s Geoffrey Bayldon.

Brierley makes K9 peevish. Leeson wouldn’t have made him sound audibly annoyed when being interrogated, he’d have been far more subtle

The economy of this planet makes no sense. No metal, no tools, no cultivation... so why do you have buildings or a ruling class, hmm?

The matriarchy is more obvious in this episode than the last (“For a man” etc).

The first time I watched this I wrote that it was hard to follow. Turns out it’s not, at all, it’s just so boring your mind slides off it. There’s nothing wrong with it, exactly, monster aside, it’s just... there.

The Creature from the Pit, Part Three

“Why haven’t you died?” “I’m sorry, my lady, it was an oversight.”

I also enjoyed, “You’ve got beautiful skin.”

Anyway, this story is really challenging my self-imposed “actually pay attention rather than just having it on in the background” rule. It’s just quite boring and, except for Bayldon, no one in it is interesting to watch. Myra Frances is too hammy as Adrasta to be convincing, but not hammy enough to be entertaining (though I do like the make-up job).

So the second cliffhanger was completely meaningless and the Doctor just stands up. Righto. In the third one, with Adrasta shouting “No, no, no!” it’s not clear what is at stake. Oh, and the anti-semitic bandits being hypnotised by some flashing metal is weird.

The plague doctor masks some of the guards wear are wild.

I am not surprised that, despite having seen this, I remembered literally nothing.

Only nine episodes of this accursed era to go. [Shada, which has now been completed too often for us to refer to it as the incomplete story, doesn’t count as Graham Williams didn’t successfully produce the final product. Sorry, I really hate the Williams era.]

The Creature from the Pit, Part Four

“I most emphatically do not eat people.”

I can’t really work out why this one doesn’t work. It has some stuff going for it – ideas and morals and a twist and so on – but the whole thing just oscillates between boring and embarrassing.

Okay, good things: Erato using the cast’s larynxes to communicate is cool. There’s a moral complexity to it – the fortune teller is annoyed the Doctor will sacrifice him for the greater good, Erato isn’t just a lovely harmless rill-type creature but still has his own agenda. (Oooh, that’s two stories about matriarchies being mean to massive monsters, whatever could it mean?)

But it’s sort of better in theory than in practice. It’s just quite lame, isn’t it? The lead huntsman suddenly has a personality and agency without any warning. The timing, that Erato is freed mere hours before his people bomb the planet, is an annoying coincidence. The whole neutron star bit feels like fake peril. It’s just not very good.

The bit where Romana names a probability and the Doctor says it’s his lucky number at the end feels very Adams. The fact they pop back to the planet to say goodbye feels unusual, too.