Doctor Who – The Satan Pit – Review

The Satan Pit by Matt Jones

Let’s face it, last week on the Impossible Planet the Doctor was left in a pretty precarious position.

He and Rose had landed on an incredibly distant planet, “impossibly” orbiting a black hole. The TARDIS had not only been unable to translate the key glyphs that would have made short work of the mystery, but had then been lost forever in a seemingly bottomless gorge. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that the planet is the prison of no less than Satan himself, and that he is now awake and through possession has taken control of one of the crew and a legion of mindless drones, the Ood, who are now marching on the crew to destroy them. Meanwhile, the Doctor has travelled to the center of the planet only to discovered the Pit itself, which slowly opens…

After last’s week’s episode, the Satan Pit was a bit of a let down. It was still an excellent episode, which a tense and well realized plot of Rose and the crew escaping and defeating the possessed Ood, but the Doctor’s part down at the pit was slow, plodding, rambling and just generally worked against the episode.

Another problem was that, in the Impossible Planet, nothing yet had been resolved, so illogical plot points weren’t yet so obvious as they came to be in this episode. Most notably, when all was revealed, the villain’s plan to escape was overly-complicated, and could have been accomplished much more simply and no one would have been the wiser till after he’d escaped.

The Doctor’s waxing philosophical about faith and challenging his understanding of the universe were just plain dull.

Overall, it was a great two-parter, but the first part really shines with the promise of the second, and the second, on some level, fails to deliver.

Another point that was a bit down on this two-parter was the music. Doctor Who has never been known to have very good incidental music. The revival series’ scores have been (as far as I’ve noticed) all penned by Murray Gold. While the music hasn’t been bad, per se, through the new series, it’s always intrusive, and for the most part, derivative. It’s like listening to the soundtrack for the first episode, Rose, over and over again, week after week.

In The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, for the first time that I’ve noticed, the score is completely different with a cliched “apocalypse movie” sound, but it’s no less intrusive. I almost feel as if, perhaps, this score was done for the remake of the Omen instead.

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