(719) The Satan Pit

Something I didn’t mention yesterday was the voice of the devil. Gabriel Woolf did the voice of Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars thirty one years before this story was transmitted. Woolf has a great voice for the role and that is one of the successes of the story. Another thing is that this was the last story that was recorded and so this is the last episode that Billie Piper actually recorded although there are four more episodes left to transmit.

The episode pretty much hits the ground running from the very beginning and doesn’t stop until the episode ends. That is one of the few aspects of this episode that has improved in watching this episode again. Although it doesn’t take too long for me to remember why I have never rated this story very highly and that’s because it deals with faith and the devil. It’s not that I dislike this stuff or don’t believe in it but I just think that its not very interesting stuff to deal with in a 45 minute or two 45 minute episodes.

The Ood being possessed tells Rose that she will die in battle and it’s the start of Rose’s end in the show. The Ood are really good in this episode because they are creepy from the very beginning and seeing them scuttle around in the ventilation tunnels. It’s a shame that they all get wiped out because they were a slave race and they got possessed. I know they make a return but I think that this was their best story.

The Doctor doesn’t do a lot for most of the episode. It’s Rose that gets to do all the dramatic stuff and this is the best that Rose has been for quite some time. There were some moments where she was a bit cocky but not over the top. The Doctor spends most of the episode literally hanging around. His time doesn’t come until he meets the Devil. It’s very hard to act convincing against something that isn’t there but David Tennant is one of those actors that can do this very well.

The effect of the Devil is one of the most impressive that there has been in Doctor Who. It’s the sort of thing that would look good in a Hollywood picture. Goodness knows how much money was spent on this. I love to think about what this would have looked like in 1976 or 1986, I think that it wouldn’t have looked as good.

This has been a good episode to watch and the two episodes together worked quite well. The characters were all interesting but I think that it was the setting that really got me hooked and the Ood that kept me interested. This isn’t as good a two parter as the Cyberman one but its not as boring or bland as I have previously thought. It goes even more in my estimation when I think about tomorrows episode. Tomorrows episode is one that I have been dreading since I started the new series era of this marathon.