The Creature from the Pit - Episode 1

I have never been a big fan of this story although I have noticed that this story was written by David Fisher so it might not be as bad as I thought. This was the first story that Lalla Ward recorded as Romana but its been shown third for some reason. David Brierly is makes his first appearance in the show and this is the first time that K9 has been involved in a story since ‘The Armageddon Factor’ and to be honest I haven’t missed him. One thing that this story does have in its favour is that most of it is filmed at Ealing studios which gives it a different feel. It makes it feel like they are on a different planet and not a studio.

The Wolfweed look quite impressive and normally when they cover the Doctor it would be a moment of danger but sadly due to the fact that Tom Baker is using a more comedic style in his performance nowaways means that he treats it as a comedy moment. Speaking of Baker’s comedy it seems to span the whole episode because he spends a long time in some stocks which just seem silly

This episode sees Eileen Way return after appearing in the first story as the Old Mother I belief. She is very good in the role and I could belief that she is the ruler of the planet and not Lady Adrasta. This might be a problem in future episodes but its good that the main villain is a woman. There are two aspects of this story. The first is with Lady Adrasta who is the ruler of Chloris and the second is with a bunch of rough looking people who are obsessed with finding metal and wrongly think that Romana is Adrasta’s lady in waiting. Romana does have to try too hard to outwit her captures but she doesn’t really have anything memorable to do.

The only exciting thing that happens in this episode is the cliffhanger which sees the Doctor swing down into the pit. That shows the problem with this story when the only exciting thing to happen is the thing that is used to entice you to come back the following week is the best thing. Sadly despite the best efforts of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, the rest of the performances (except Eileen Way) are a bit below par but that’s partly due to Fisher’s script.

I am willing to accept the fact that this could change in the rest of the story but at the moment my original thoughts about this story seem to be spot on. My friend came up with one word to describe this episode and it was simply……bland.