The Creature From The Pit

Adrasta: We call it "The Pit"
Doctor: Ah, you have such a way with words.

I've heard very little about this story other than the creature is supposed to be one of the casualties of the lowering of the budget. I've also heard that one of the by-products of this shortfall is that one of the results of this is that a certain portion of the creature ends up looking a bit "naughty" and that the mind can get rather dirty with this one. I know it's not generally regarded well but at the same time, it's not openly derided the way some others are, so I'm curious to see how this one falls.

Plot Summary

Romana is cleaning out some of the storage areas of the TARDIS and comes across a distress beacon receiver. The Doctor had removed it as it was used by the Time Lords to summon him back too often for his taste. Romana reinstalls it and the TARDIS lurches forward and lands in the middle of a jungle.

They step out to explore and come across a living, metallic structure. The Doctor determines that it is the source of the distress signal and that it is likely the shell of an egg. While examining it, the Doctor is attacked by rolling plants called wolfweeds. They are called off but the Doctor and Romana are taken captive by the caravan escorting Karela, minister to Lady Adrasta, the ruler of the land.

While in route to Adrasta's palace, they are ambushed by bandits who steal several metal objects and take Romana captive. Karela orders the caravan onward while the huntsman sends the wolfweeds out to track the bandits. The bandits take Romana back to their lair where they have a vote on whether to kill her or not. Romana however imposes her will on the bandits, making them untie her and summoning K-9 with a dog whistle. K-9 arrives stuns the head bandit, Torvin. Romana then leaves with K-9 while the others watch her go.

The Doctor and the caravan arrive at the palace where Adrasta welcomes the Doctor. She hears his theories about the structure and then introduces him to two of her own scientists, Tollund and Doran. Interrogating the Doctor about his thoughts, she then turns on Doran for not reaching conclusions like the Doctor. She orders him arrested and then the whole group heads into the jungle.

They arrive at a pit and Doran is thrown in where he is attacked by a glowing creature. Adrasta threatens to throw the Doctor in if he does not tell her everything he knows. Before he can answer, Romana and K-9 appear. Adrasta orders a guard to seize her but K-9 stuns him, causing him to fall into the pit. The wolfweeds attack K-9. He destroys a couple of them but they swarm him, rendering him inert. Another guard seizes Romana and she becomes Adrasta's new bargaining chip. Caught in the situation, the Doctor grabs the bucket rope and leaps down into the pit.

The Doctor grabs a ledge just below the surface, intending to climb out once Adrasta has left. Adrasta seizes Romana and orders her and K-9 to be taken back to the palace. She then kicks dirt into the pit which gets in the Doctor's eyes. He loses his balance and falls into the pit. At the bottom, he finds Doran and the guard who was stunned by K-9 dead. The Doctor then explores the tunnels, seeing a glowing green tendril extend down one passage.

The Doctor is grabbed and hushed by a man named Organon who leads him back to his cave. Organon reveals that he was an astrologer who made a prediction that Adrasta didn't like. He managed to avoid the creature and has hidden himself away. The conversation between the two attracts the attention of the creature and it sticks a tendril in the cave. Organon and the Doctor press themselves against a wall and Organon holds a candle under the tendril and the creature retreats from the flame. Curious, the Doctor follows.

Back at the palace, Adrasta interrogates Romana about both the egg shell and the TARDIS. Upon learning about the TARDIS, she plans to take it and make herself more powerful. Romana convinces Adrasta that K-9 is the only one who can operate the TARDIS and she is the only one who can control K-9, making themselves useful to her. Romana cleans K-9 and tries to use him to escape, managing to stun several guards. However, another guard seizes Romana and threatens to kill her unless K-9 stops.

With the potential power of the TARDIS in her grasp, Adrasta decides to destroy the creature in the pit as it will no longer be needed. Adrasta has had a heavily secured door put into the palace that connects it to the mine where the creature lives. Romana, under guard, goes first along with K-9, while she and Karela bring up the rear.

In the cave, the Doctor and Organon find the creature and the Doctor goes up to try and communicate with it. The creature extends a tendril, nearly smothering the Doctor. Two of Adrasta's guards rush in, startling the creature and it knocks the guards back, along with Organon, through the tunnel opening and seals it with a strange material.

The Doctor gets up and follows the creature, finding it hiding in a further recess. He attempts to communicate with it and show that he is friendly. The creature seems to accept the Doctor and also tries to communicate by drawing a picture of a piece of metal with a symbol similar to one hanging in Adrasta's throne room. He also sees the symbol on bits of metal left behind by the creature. He promises to try and get the object from Adrasta's throne room and slips back up the tunnel.

The thieves become convinced that with Romana's depature, Adrasta will be sending out her guard to find them. Torvin suggests they raid Adrasta's palace for metal since most of the guards are out. They do find most guards gone, but they are down in the mines, not looking for the bandits. They kill two guards and raid the throne room of metal, including the object the creature wanted, which has now started to glow. An alarm is sounded and more guards come, causing the bandits to retreat into the mines.

Adrasta comes upon Organon and her two guards trying to open the passage. She orders K-9 to shoot through the barrier. He fires on the blockage but is unable to cut through as the material regenerates itself when damaged. They ponder how to break through when the Doctor knocks the barrier down with an easy push, owing to the creature letting him go. Adrasta immediately seizes him and orders guards down the passage to find the creature.

In the tunnels, the bandits examine their haul. Torvin is especially drawn to the large object which is starting to glow once more. It glows stronger and he and another bandit named Edu become entranced. They pick the disk up and carry it through the mines towards the creature.

The guards return, having been unable to find the creature. She prepares to send them back and is intent on having K-9 kill the creature. To conserve power, Romana has picked up K-9, allowing him to recharge. The Doctor slips out a shiny pieces of metal he took from the creature's cave and orders K-9 to shoot. K-9's laser reflects off the metal, knocking out a guard. He shoots down two others, leaving Adrasta alone. The creature then comes down the passage, seeming to be in a fury. She grabs a knife and holds it to the Doctor's neck, ordering Romana to have K-9 shoot it.

Before Romana can react, Torvin and Edu arrive, carrying the glowing disk, which they give to the creature. Distracted, the Doctor disarms Adrasta and then approaches the creature. By touching the disk, the creature can communicate using the holder's voice. It reveals that it's name is Erato and it came to Cloros fifteen years ago as an ambassador for the Typhonians, offering to trade metal for chlorophyll, which the Typhonians feed upon. Adrasta trapped Erato into the pit to keep her monopoly on metal.

Adrasta denies the story but her guards don't believe her. They force her hand on the plate and Erato confirms the story using Adrasta's voice. Angered, the head of the guard sics the wolfweeds on Adrasta. Erato then lurches forward and eats the wolfweeds, it's first real meal in fifteen years, but also crushes Adrasta in the process. The Doctor orders the head of the guard to get the engineers and hoist Erato out of the pit.

Back at the palace, the Doctor reveals to Romana that he suspects Erato of concealing something and has stolen the drive system of his ship to ensure his cooperation. Erato comes to the palace and confirms that because of his distress call, his people have assumed that Cloros has declared war. In response, they have launched a neutron star at the sun of Cloros that will destroy the it and the planet. The Doctor discovers that Erato can weave aluminum with it's body, as that is how it intends to rebuild his ship and the Doctor convinces Erato to help move the neutron star on a different path.

The Doctor goes to recover the photon drive, which he left with Organon, but finds Organon knocked out and the drive stolen. The drive was stolen by Torvin and his men to ensure their wealth. However, Torvin is killed by Karela and she moves to take over the band, having hidden the drive. The Doctor arrives and has K-9 destroy the collected metal. With the wealth gone, Karela give the drive back.

With Erato's ship rebuilt, the Doctor, Romana and K-9 follow it out to the neutron star in the TARDIS. The Doctor extends a gravity field around the star while Erato weaves an aluminum shell around it. The shell allows the Doctor's gravity field to get proper conductance on the star to move it, but the console fuses and the gravity beam pulls the star directly at the TARDIS. The Doctor dematerializes, disengaging the beam and the neutron star heads away from the Clorosian sun.

Erato continues back to Typhon and the Doctor returns to Cloros with a full trade treaty. He gives it to the head guardsman who has become the new administrator with Organon as his advisor. The Doctor and Romana then disappear in the TARDIS.

Analysis

I think disappointing is the best way to describe this story. Episode One kicks off with a high joke density, some nice repartee between the Doctor, Romana and other characters, and also some nice camera work. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there. The budget limitations start to show and the script loses it's comedic edge. The acting also starts to decline, especially from Adrasta, who goes from having a villainous edge to just beyond over-the-top. This does not even factor in the complete and totally random filler that is Episode Four.

Both the Doctor and Romana aren't too bad in this, although the heavy hand of Douglas Adams is very evident, especially in Episode One where there are a lot of puny jokes being tossed back and forth between them. But those jokes go away pretty much after the Doctor hops into the pit. Instead you get the Doctor being a bit silly with Organon, although they do have a nice play between them and then a few jokes between him and Romana in Episode Four when they are reunited. But nothing really stands out in between that. This story is clearly meant to be a comedy, but the comedy seems to go away after Episode One and what is left doesn't elicit much laughter.

Organon is an unfortunate waste of a character. I looked up the actor and found out that he had actually been offered the role of the Doctor at one point and I think he would have made a decent one. Organon keeps up a bit of the comedy and he has a nice relationship with the Doctor. In fact, I think you could easily have made a buddy story involving the two of them and it probably would have been more entertaining than this story. It's such a shame that after about halfway through Episode Two, Organon is sidelined and is nothing more than a random interjection here and there.

Adrasta is also such a terrible waste of a villain. She starts off well and while she is just a hair shy of mustache twirling, she is still enjoyable as a villain up until Episode Three. After that, she loses her wit and starts becoming just bossy and angry. It all really falls apart at the Episode Three cliffhanger where she goes wayyyyyy over the top in her hysterical screaming about Erato going to kill her, for which is actually right. But why is the fate of the villain given to the cliffhanger? That makes no sense as we would actually want the villain to be in peril and eventually defeated.

But for all the problems of the first three episodes, they do make a somewhat passible story. I get can get by some of the bad acting and shoddy effects (including those that have slight sexual overtones) because there are good moments and it runs fairly smoothly in terms of pacing and character development. Where the poop really hits the fan is in Episode Four which is nothing but nearly twenty minutes of nonsensical filler.

As poor a turn as she took at the end of Episode Three, Adrasta was clearly an engaging villain. However, she is killed off in the first five minutes of Episode Four leaving nearly a full episode where a random peril has to be raised. Thus we are given the new problem of Erato's people deciding to destroy the planet and a runaround to repair Erato's ship so the problem can be dealt with. This is the sort of extra conflict that would have popped up in the First Doctor era, but there it would have placed in a six-part story where extra conflict would have been needed. Here, it's blatantly bad padding.

What makes this padding even worse is how little sense it makes. Erato's ship has been sending a distress signal for fifteen years. So rather than investigate it, his people automatically assume that war has been declared? What's more, how does Erato know this? He either senses it or has been in contact with his people and found they have launched an unstoppable attack. That's rather stupid given that one of their own people is still on the planet. They are needless condemning one of their own to death over a distress signal.

Even worse is the nature of attack. Erato states that they are running out of food on Typhon. So why are they launching an attack that will completely destroy the planet which has more food than they could want? If they believe that Cloros has declared war, why not send an invasion fleet. They know that without metal the Clorosians have no advanced technology and could be beaten easily in a fight. They could have conquered and colonized the planet without much of a second thought, getting revenge and assuring themselves of abundant food. Instead, they are going to burn the lot? Even within the story this makes no sense.

Even the Doctor and Romana's attempts at banter in Episode Four fall flat. While they came off as playful and easy in Episode One, they seem forced and out of place in Episode Four. It's like they are trying to return the story to a proper comedy but know it's a hopeless cause. In a way, their banter makes things worse because playing it straight would have at least added to the dramatic tension (miniscule as it was).

In so many ways, this story was such a let down. I think I could have actually forgiven it some if it had been bad from the start. But you are given some real potential in Episode One and even into Episode Two with fairly interesting characters, decent atmosphere and some proper wit between the Doctor, Romana and the rest of the cast. But it goes downhill so fast and then to have the turd that is Episode Four to round it out just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Episode One would be interesting to watch it isolation as it makes for an interesting set up and is worth a look at. But I would not recommend the rest of the story to anyone. It's just not good and such a follow on disappointment.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5