The Creature from the Pit

Spoilers

Onto the third story of Season 17. The Creature from the Pit isn’t anything special, but I enjoyed it non-the-less. The Tardis follows a distress call to the jungle planet Chloris ruled by the ruthless Lady Adastra. She throws people that are against her into a pit to be feed to a creature that is down there. But things might be more complicated than that.

Destiny of the Daleks wasn’t great whilst City of Death was awesome. The Creature from the Pit is somewhere in between. The sets are really awesome especially the outdoor one which was done at Ealing studios.

Another positive point in this story is that K-9 has a major role. As stated in my review of Destiny of the Daleks, he was voiced by David Brierley in Season 17 instead of John Leeson. David’s voice isn’t as good I have to admit. K-9 gets a lot to do in this story, including shooting people. He does gat a bit of abuse from some of the guest cast however and is even consumed by a bunch of sentient tumble-weeds.

Furthermore, this was the first story in production order where Lalla Ward played Romana. As a result, her manner of dress and performance are closer to that of Mary Tamm since Ward was still working out her character. I’m not too keen on Romana’s costume in this story.

The Lady Adastra is the main antagonist of the story, played by Myra Frances. She is quite ruthless, especially since she keeps a creature within a pit and has anyone that doesn’t meet her demands thrown into it. Shockingly, the Doctor jumps down the pit, presumably to avoid Lady Adastra’s wrath.

Once in the pit, the Doctor learns a more about what goes on. After a while of trudging past dead bodies, he comes across an astrologer named Organon has been down the pit for a long time and survived. Organon was played by Geoffrey Bayldon of Catweazle fame.

Eventually, the Doctor finally comes face-to-face with the creature. It is a green shapeless blob and has a rather dodgy looking attachment protruding out of it. I actually didn’t notice that until I watched Behind the Sofa and the making of featurette for this story. The cliff-hanger for the end of episode 2 has the creature rolling over the Doctor.

But thankfully, the creature turns out to be friendly, as well as a herbivore which produces metal from within itself. It even has a name, Erato. Erato came here in a craft (the egg that the Doctor and Romana encountered in part 1) as the Tythonian ambassador to negotiate a treaty to exchange metal for chlorophyll.

However, Lady Adrasta put herself above him and imprisoned him in the pit so that she could keep control of the metal supply and stay in power. Erato had been in the pit for fifteen years by the time the Doctor found him. Meanwhile, Adrasta along with Karela (her lady-in-waiting), her guards, Romana and K-9 manage to enter the pit.

Once they have gone, the local scavengers manage to raid the throne room and uncover a large amount of treasure, including an alien shield. They bring it down into the pit, much to Adastra’s rage. It is placed on Erato which allows him to communicate with everyone else and explain what I have just have in the previous 2 paragraphs.

Upon hearing this, Adatra’s Huntsman turns on her. Shockingly, she is then consumed by Erato who only leaves her webbed corpse. Karela then uses this opportunity to seize the power for herself, but the Doctor and K-9 manage to foil her plans.

The Doctor then has Erato lifted from the pit. They got him out in the nick of time because it turns out that Tythonus are aware of their missing ambassador and have dispatched a neutron star to destroy Chloris. They have 24 hours to stop it.

The Doctor, Romana and Erato are able to work together in this. Erato weaves a metal covering around the star in order for the Doctor and Romana to use the Tardis gravity beam to divert the star off course. The Doctor is for a while unsure if it will work, but it does and Chloris is saved.

The Doctor’s last act on Chloris is to convince the Huntsman to negotiate a trade deal between Chloris and Tythonus. The story ends happily for all the good guys with Organon making it out of the pit and bidding the Doctor farewell.

The Creature from the Pit was an ok story from Season 17. It’s pretty much middle of the road, not as good as City of Death, but better than Destiny of the Daleks. My next review of this part of the Fourth Doctor’s journey will not be of Nightmare of Eden, but of the audio adaptation of the Romance of Crime.

Rating: 6/10

Take care, WF92.