The Creature from the Pit - Episode 4

Thankfully its not just good things that have to come to an end, its also not so good things or in the case of this story things that are just boring. Thankfully this isn’t the last story that Fisher would right as it would have been terrible if this were his last offering. It’s unfair to blame some of the writing at Fisher’s door because Douglas Adams should have reigned back some of the humour and put more of an effort into telling a good story.

Erato gets to speak for the first time when he is speaking using the Doctor’s voice. In just a few moments we learn a lot about the creature. He was about to offer a trade agreement and he met Astrada who threw it straight into the pit. This suddenly makes the story worth all the silliness that we have had to be put through. This explanation makes Astrada seem a much better villain than she was perceived to be in the previous three episodes. If only this had been mentioned earlier then I might have reacted much more fondly. The death of Astrada would normally indicate that the story has ended but quite cleverly this isn’t the case in this story because there is still some more action and its that the planet is about to be blown up because Erato’s people took its silence as an act of war and retaliated. I like how Erato isn’t too keen to help the people that imprisoned her/it for 15 years. Though despite its imprisonment it does the right thing and by the end of the story that trade agreement is still on.

The humour is still misplaced in this episode with a moment where the Doctor is saying goodbye to Organon before he is killed. There is also a repetitive yes answer between the Doctor and Romana which does get a bit tiresome. This is about as much as I am prepared to go on about the humour for this story.

I think that this episode saved this story for me. There wasn’t much time really for any of the humour that has bogged down the previous episodes. Tom Baker was far more his old self rather than the new even lighter humoured Doctor that we have had during this season. I still think his line to Organon was a bit out of character and perhaps was the most obvious clue so far that Tom Baker’s influence in the show was starting to have a detrimental effect on the show. I am now half way through the two stories that I thought were going to cause me problems and it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be but I am still dreading the next story.