The Satan Pit

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode 'en masse'. The crew and Rose being trapped on the space-station being hunted down by 'Legion' and the fantastic Ood changing from gentile, essentially stupid creatures into these possessed, almost 'demons'. The sight of one on all fours charging through the ventilation shaft was quite disturbing. Indeed, just before they escape the shaft the scene with Toby/Satan telling the Ood to be quiet; the knowing grin coupled with the fact that if he was actually the devil why would he need to tell his minions to hush made it very dark.

As the action was going on above we had a nice contrast with the Doctor and Ida trapped in the cave near the Pit, the Doctor discussing beliefs with her and having to look at his own ideas about the situation and, despite having less than an hour (although by this point, perhaps far less than that) to live he still insists on playing the hero and ventures into the Pit. It's here that we discover one of the failings of a few of the classic episodes in which somehow, everything makes sense. I found this quite hard to grasp as the Doctor couldn't read the writings nor did we see any suggestion of the mechanism in which upon release of the 'Beast' the planet falls into the black hole.

Another failing of this episode, in my opinion, was the Doctor's refusal to believe in the Devil. This is a man who has travelled time and space which has presented him with many adventures where he has seen and overcome many different things. He has fought with Fenrir and Sutekh, both of which are the devils in different pantheons and yet he completely denies the existence of this devil and then, upon seeing he seems to believe in its existence. Did he suffer complete memory loss when he woke up after the fall? Did he completely forget not everything is as it seems in his world and of course, did he forget about his past exploits with demons and 'evil' gods?

This episode was, on the whole, very good and very well done but I felt it was more a chance to show what Rose can do and all the emphasis on character scripting went on her; the Doctor secondary. Perhaps I may be proved wrong in the future. Perhaps we may see Rose doing something on her own which will prove to be her finest hour and this was just a taste but last I checked the programme was called "Doctor Who" and not Rose Tyler.