The Creature from the Pit Part Four

The one where a giant egg weaves a metal shell around a neutron star...

It's all coming out now! Now that the Tythonian beast has got his little appendages on the weird shield thing, he's able to take control of the larynx of whoever holds it and communicate with everybody. The big green blob is actually named Erato, High Ambassador from the planet Tythonus, who came to Chloris 15 years ago to strike a trade deal. But instead of been welcomed with open arms by the people of Chloris, Erato was unlucky enough to bump into the self-serving Adrasta first, who tricked him into falling into the pit and skulking around in her spent metal mine.

It's all about economics and greed, you see. The Tythonians live on chlorophyll and mineral ores, but that's all running out on their planet, so when they heard there was a world virtually made of chlorophyll (the clue was in the name) they thought it would be a good idea to trade Tythonian metal for Chlorisian vegetable matter, so that the big blobs could eat well and the people of Chloris could use the metal to fight back the suffocating plant-life. But Adrasta, being owner of the only metal mine and most of the metal on Chloris, saw the trade mission as a threat to her wealth and supremacy, so chucked Erato into the pit and fed astrologers at him (great line from the Doctor, that!).

Erato is a well-spoken blob, regardless of whose larynx he invades. He (she? it?) appears to mean well, and isn't happy about being imprisoned in a pit for 15 years. The Doctor isn't happy either, and Tom Baker plays a blinder as the Doctor demolishes Lady Adrasta for her blatant greed and selfishness. When Adrasta orders the Huntsman to set the wolfweeds on him, the Doctor hits back: "That's all you've got on this planet, isn't it? Weeds, weeds, forest and weeds. You scratch about for food wherever you can, but you can't plough the land, can you? You can't do anything until you've mastered the forests and the weeds. And you can't do that without metal." Baker is magnificent here, balancing wisdom, energy and barely suppressed anger in equal measure (anger that is not suppressed at all later on when the Doctor furiously sweeps a bunch of "scrap metal" off the bandits' table in a right temper). It feels like the Fourth Doctor of old, of the Hinchcliffe era, when he was so much more than witticisms and boggly eyes. Baker is showing that he can still do it, and it's bracing to watch.

As Adrasta and the Doctor exchange insults - she calls him a "demented space tramp" and he calls her a "pathetic woman" - it's clear the Lady is quickly unravelling, demanding people are killed left, right and centre, but never getting any results, mainly because the Doctor has succeeded in convincing the Huntsman that she's been cheating the people all these years. It's a pity the Huntsman doesn't get a name, because he becomes quite an important character by the end of the story in that he inherits Adrasta's power. It would be nice to know him by his real name rather than his job title.

Less than a third of the way through this final episode, the bad guy is killed, which is a bit of a surprise. The Huntsman vengefully sets the wolfweeds on Adrasta, and then the vengeful Erato sets upon the wolfweeds (the sight of the polythene Erato prop toppling forward is embarrassing). The result is that Erato eats the wolfweeds, but not before the wolfweeds kill Adrasta, leaving her a cobwebbed corpse on the ground. It's an ignominious end for a deliciously pantomime villainess, but I like the fast-one David Fisher pulls by killing her off so early in proceedings. So what will the remaining 15 minutes be all about?

Well, it all feels a bit tacked on to be honest. Erato's corpulent body has to be hauled out of the pit so that he can go back home, but he drops another fly into the ointment (which he reveals to everyone while "waiting at the side door"!). His fellow Tythonians have set a neutron star on course for Chloris's sun, and when it plunges into it, the entire solar system will be destroyed (that's one hell of a retaliation). Firstly, I didn't know neutron stars could be manufactured and navigated so easily, but maybe the Tythonians have technology on a par with the Time Lords. And secondly, this star is set to hit Chloris's sun in exactly 24 hours, which is a huge coincidence after 15 years. It's a damn good job the Doctor's here, isn't it?

The Doctor convinces Erato to help save Chloris, setting in motion a bat-shit crazy sequence where a giant green blob weaves himself a new egg-shaped spaceship (if the moon can be an egg, why can't a spaceship?), then spins an aluminium shell around the neutron star while the TARDIS yanks it off course using its tractor beam (that tractor beam must be amazingly powerful; it's the same one that hauled Earth across the universe in Journey's End). The neutron star careers off into deep space and Chloris is saved, hooray!

A few other observations:

• I love the 'Yes' exchange between the Doctor and Romana, it's beautifully played out by Baker and Ward, and nicely structured by Fisher. You don't notice that the Doctor is answering only "yes" at first, but when you do, it builds to an inevitable: "Can't you say anything but yes the whole time?", to which he replies: "Yes!" And then the pattern is reversed, with the Doctor speaking and Romana replying in the affirmative. It's a lovely scene, very reminiscent of the recurrent nature of the dialogue in the Prime Computer adverts Tom and Lalla did at this time ("Clever Prime"; "You can say that again"; "Clever Prime").
• The Tythonians measure time in ninods (that's a very Douglas Adams word), and 26 ninods equals one hour seven seconds, which means one ninod equals roughly two minutes 18 seconds. Just so you know next time you visit Tythonus.
• In the Iris Wildthyme book From Wildthyme with Love, Erato and astrologer Organon visit Iris's party and are noted as "Catweazle and his giant green ball bag"!
• The bandits continue to irritate in this episode, and remain utterly unnecessary. They steal Erato's photon drive, but the Doctor just goes and gets it back. The saving feature of it all is that Karela stabs the annoying Torvin to death with a six-inch blade (and yet again John Bryans manages to collapse very carefully to the floor). It also proves that Time Lord Talor was not the first buffoon to die identifying the weapon with which he's been killed (Arc of Infinity), as Torvin does just the same here ("Is that really tempered steel?").
• I like Karela's last ditch attempt to seize power from the dead hands of her mistress by teaming up with the bandits, but it's too little too late and the hateful hag is trumped by the Doctor. It's a shame Eileen Way wasn't given more like this to do.
• Season 17 seems to have a preoccupation with K-9's larynx. First he gets laryngitis and his voice changes, now his voice is taken over by Erato.
• The graphics used to show the TARDIS under tremendous strain near the end are straight out of a Top of the Pops studio, or a New Romantic music video. Gorgeous!
• The Doctor's lucky number is 74,384,338. Or it is this week, because he said his lucky number was seven in The Power of Kroll. The Doctor's lucky number changes according to which body he's in, because the Twelfth Doctor claims it's 12 in The Doctor's Meditation (spin-off fiction states the Ninth Doctor's is nine).

The final scene is generously handed to dear old Organon, and Geoffrey Bayldon (criminally wasted in parts 3 and 4) affords himself a splash of Catweazle when he strokes his whiskers with crossed fingers, just like the 11th century wizard might do! Wouldn't it have been wonderful for Organon to make a return appearance at some point? The character has a lot of untapped potential, and could have popped up on different planets every now and then throughout the 1980s, meeting the Doctor on places like Manussa, Karfel or Lakertya!

The Creature from the Pit has really surprised me. It has a poor reputation among fandom, but this is largely down to the realisation of Erato, which is admittedly atrocious, and which works hard to undermine everything else that's good about the story. David Fisher also seems to lose interest in characters such as Organon and Karela, and the whole neutron star ending feels last minute. But on the plus side, it's written wittily, particularly the first two episodes, and Tom Baker is great throughout. I really enjoyed it! Still don't like Romana's awful frock though.

First broadcast: November 17th, 1979

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Tom Baker is marvellous in his scenes demolishing Adrasta and Karela.
The Bad: The brief shot of Erato collapsing forward onto Adrasta and the wolfweeds is urgh!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 6.5 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 20

NEXT TIME: Nightmare of Eden...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-creature-from-pit.html

The Creature from the Pit is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Creature-Pit-DVD/dp/B003DA60C6