Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Yes, yes, I know, at this rate I have no hope whatever of re-watching all of Ten between now and the regeneration.
I rewatched Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit back-to-back, unlike the original experience of seeing them, when I distinctly remember waiting the intervening week almost literally chewing my knuckles to see What Was Down There...
Who does H. P. Lovecraft. Wheeee! (Not that I've ever read any Lovecraft to speak of, you understand, but I know a good Lovecraftian oh-look-a-horror-from-before-the-dawn-of-time-imprisoned-in-a-pit-until-some-bunch-of-idiots-lets-it-out* trope when it's waved under my nose... ) * © the Resident Geek , June 2006
And a good dollop of Firefly to boot, with the crew of misfits all pulling together in the clunky creaking ship.
I remember thinking at the time that I wasn't sure Satan Pit quite lived up to the knuckle-chewing suspense of IP, but that may be an almost insurmountable inherent difficulty of those cliffhanger-in-the-middle two-parters; as a viewer you're left at the end of Part I with all sorts of fabulous speculations and possibilities roiling round in your head, and during Part II the writers have to display their hand and show you what they've chosen, thereby inevitably ruling out some of the myriad possible threads as they go. IIRC, the first time round I was rather disappointed with the physical appearance of Satan/the Beast, which felt too cliched/cartoon-y to be scary and was also entirely predictable - maybe I wanted him/it to be a void, or a despair-inducing darkness, to gesture towards the idea that the Devil resides in the evil that men do... but this time perhaps I picked up better on the clear prior hints that I should expect a truth underlying the allegedly universal mythic image of a horned red thing with a tail. Also got my head better round the fact that its mind has gone with Toby, so it's no good expecting intelligent dialogue with the Beast that the Doctor ends up confronting (shame, because that's a conversation I'd have loved to see...)
And there is so much that is fabulous. All the it's-behind-you jumpy stuff in Toby's room leading up to his initial possession couldn't be quite as scary this time, when I knew what was coming, but it was still pretty effective; I vividly remember actually whimpering from behind a cushion the first time round “OK, I'm scared now” at that point, transported back to my eight-year-old self watching Fourth Doctor stories. The ancient writing appearing on Toby's skin is fantastic, terrifying. As is the moment when Scooti sees him outside on the planet's surface, with no suit - because it's just so wrong; it makes your skin crawl with the knowledge that this has to be really, really bad...
There are some really arresting visual images all the way through, that keep floating back across my eyeballs. Toby, white-faced and red-eyed, with that ancient script covering his skin. Scooti's frozen body drifting, one hand raised in apparent farewell, gently towards the black hole as the crew all gaze up horror-stricken at her through the window. The Doctor, the red and yellow of his spacesuit lit with hallucinatory brightness against an utterly black background as he drops into the void, still talking (of course!)
I like the way the Doctor is pinned against a wall and forced by circumstances to examine his fundamental beliefs (while managing at the same time to sound rather English and embarrassed about the whole conversation) - articles of faith presumably being somewhat rare when, like the Doctor, you know just about everything about everything. The interplay between him and Ida Scott - who's a wonderfully rounded and realised character in a relatively small space - while they're wandering around the vast cavern and the lip of the Pit is great; both of them displaying that fundamental human (and Time Lord) urge to know. As the Doctor says, it's the temptation, that little voice in the back of your head as you stand at the edge of the Void saying, “Go on. Oh go on, go on...” (I tried not to think of Mrs Doyle in Father Ted...) There was something rather funny, and really rather cute, about the Doctor in a spacesuit. Maybe because (and he refers to it himself) he so rarely has need of such things; it just points up the absence of the TARDIS, making him look that bit more isolated and vulnerable. (Rose picks up on it, too, giving him that last little kiss through the helmet visor before he goes.)
I'm sure that peck-on-the-helmet, and the conversation between the Doctor and Rose where they imagine having to get a mortgage, and the Doctor's “Tell Rose... tell her... Oh never mind; she knows” brought the anti-Doctor-and-Rose segment of the viewership out in hives, but of course it just made me come over all soppily happy. Though even I could have done without the Doctor's declaration to the Beast that Rose is the Most Important Thing In the Universe being quite so clunkingly spelt out. The “I believe..in..her!” line is so RTD. Yes, I know he nominally didn't write these episodes, but I bet he wrote that line.
There are some good supporting characters sketched out quite effectively in the limited time and space available; Jefferson (I cried when he died, again! And it's exactly what nearly happened to Rose way back in Dalek!), Ida, the nervy, insecure (not much liked?) and susceptible Toby. Good old Acting Cap'n Zach.
Corridors! Lots of corridors! (Lots of cliches generally, actually, but the episodes get away with them because a) they're done well and b) they get some good lines out of knowingly referencing the cliches - Rose: “Ventilation shafts! Wow!”)
And, of course, the Ood. I never dreamt at this point we'd see them again.
I enjoyed that, lots. Next up... [checks episode listing] Oh. Bugger. Maybe I could skip it, on the grounds that that'll be 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back... or would that be cheating? Should I give Love and Monsters one more go?
I rewatched Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit back-to-back, unlike the original experience of seeing them, when I distinctly remember waiting the intervening week almost literally chewing my knuckles to see What Was Down There...
Who does H. P. Lovecraft. Wheeee! (Not that I've ever read any Lovecraft to speak of, you understand, but I know a good Lovecraftian oh-look-a-horror-from-before-the-dawn-of-time-imprisoned-in-a-pit-until-some-bunch-of-idiots-lets-it-out* trope when it's waved under my nose... ) * © the Resident Geek , June 2006
And a good dollop of Firefly to boot, with the crew of misfits all pulling together in the clunky creaking ship.
I remember thinking at the time that I wasn't sure Satan Pit quite lived up to the knuckle-chewing suspense of IP, but that may be an almost insurmountable inherent difficulty of those cliffhanger-in-the-middle two-parters; as a viewer you're left at the end of Part I with all sorts of fabulous speculations and possibilities roiling round in your head, and during Part II the writers have to display their hand and show you what they've chosen, thereby inevitably ruling out some of the myriad possible threads as they go. IIRC, the first time round I was rather disappointed with the physical appearance of Satan/the Beast, which felt too cliched/cartoon-y to be scary and was also entirely predictable - maybe I wanted him/it to be a void, or a despair-inducing darkness, to gesture towards the idea that the Devil resides in the evil that men do... but this time perhaps I picked up better on the clear prior hints that I should expect a truth underlying the allegedly universal mythic image of a horned red thing with a tail. Also got my head better round the fact that its mind has gone with Toby, so it's no good expecting intelligent dialogue with the Beast that the Doctor ends up confronting (shame, because that's a conversation I'd have loved to see...)
And there is so much that is fabulous. All the it's-behind-you jumpy stuff in Toby's room leading up to his initial possession couldn't be quite as scary this time, when I knew what was coming, but it was still pretty effective; I vividly remember actually whimpering from behind a cushion the first time round “OK, I'm scared now” at that point, transported back to my eight-year-old self watching Fourth Doctor stories. The ancient writing appearing on Toby's skin is fantastic, terrifying. As is the moment when Scooti sees him outside on the planet's surface, with no suit - because it's just so wrong; it makes your skin crawl with the knowledge that this has to be really, really bad...
There are some really arresting visual images all the way through, that keep floating back across my eyeballs. Toby, white-faced and red-eyed, with that ancient script covering his skin. Scooti's frozen body drifting, one hand raised in apparent farewell, gently towards the black hole as the crew all gaze up horror-stricken at her through the window. The Doctor, the red and yellow of his spacesuit lit with hallucinatory brightness against an utterly black background as he drops into the void, still talking (of course!)
I like the way the Doctor is pinned against a wall and forced by circumstances to examine his fundamental beliefs (while managing at the same time to sound rather English and embarrassed about the whole conversation) - articles of faith presumably being somewhat rare when, like the Doctor, you know just about everything about everything. The interplay between him and Ida Scott - who's a wonderfully rounded and realised character in a relatively small space - while they're wandering around the vast cavern and the lip of the Pit is great; both of them displaying that fundamental human (and Time Lord) urge to know. As the Doctor says, it's the temptation, that little voice in the back of your head as you stand at the edge of the Void saying, “Go on. Oh go on, go on...” (I tried not to think of Mrs Doyle in Father Ted...) There was something rather funny, and really rather cute, about the Doctor in a spacesuit. Maybe because (and he refers to it himself) he so rarely has need of such things; it just points up the absence of the TARDIS, making him look that bit more isolated and vulnerable. (Rose picks up on it, too, giving him that last little kiss through the helmet visor before he goes.)
I'm sure that peck-on-the-helmet, and the conversation between the Doctor and Rose where they imagine having to get a mortgage, and the Doctor's “Tell Rose... tell her... Oh never mind; she knows” brought the anti-Doctor-and-Rose segment of the viewership out in hives, but of course it just made me come over all soppily happy. Though even I could have done without the Doctor's declaration to the Beast that Rose is the Most Important Thing In the Universe being quite so clunkingly spelt out. The “I believe..in..her!” line is so RTD. Yes, I know he nominally didn't write these episodes, but I bet he wrote that line.
There are some good supporting characters sketched out quite effectively in the limited time and space available; Jefferson (I cried when he died, again! And it's exactly what nearly happened to Rose way back in Dalek!), Ida, the nervy, insecure (not much liked?) and susceptible Toby. Good old Acting Cap'n Zach.
Corridors! Lots of corridors! (Lots of cliches generally, actually, but the episodes get away with them because a) they're done well and b) they get some good lines out of knowingly referencing the cliches - Rose: “Ventilation shafts! Wow!”)
And, of course, the Ood. I never dreamt at this point we'd see them again.
I enjoyed that, lots. Next up... [checks episode listing] Oh. Bugger. Maybe I could skip it, on the grounds that that'll be 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back... or would that be cheating? Should I give Love and Monsters one more go?