The Creature from the Pit (TV story)

The Creature from the Pit was the third serial in season 17 of Doctor Who. This was the last story directed by Christopher Barry, who had first worked on the show since 1963. It was the first story produced, though not the first broadcast, to feature Lalla Ward as the Doctor's companion.

The Creature from the Pit

Novelised as:

Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit

Doctor:

Fourth Doctor

Companion(s):

K9 Mark II, Romana II

Main enemy:

Adrasta

Main setting:

Chloris

Key crew

Writer:

David Fisher

Director:

Christopher Barry

Producer:

Graham Williams

Release details

Story number:

106

Number of parts:

4

Premiere broadcast:

27 October - 17 November 1979

Premiere network:

BBC1

Format:

4x25-minute episodes

*Doctor Who* television stories
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City of Death	Nightmare of Eden

Production order
← Previous	Next →
The Armageddon Factor	City of Death

This story was one of the season's "downsized" stories. This meant that the Doctor would be working on a smaller scale rather than saving the universe as he had been throughout the past season.

The serial made use of complicated model work to achieve the space scenes; the original scene had to be filmed again. The Erato prop was also a major problem. A puppet version was unavailable for rehearsals and there wasn't time for a redesign.

Synopsis

The Fourth Doctor and Romana II receive a distress signal and arrive on Chloris. It is a lush and verdant world with only small quantities of metals, all of which are controlled by its ruler, Lady Adrasta. Adrasta keeps order with the aid of her Huntsman and his Wolfweeds - mobile balls of vegetation. A band of thieves, led by Torvin, organise raids on her palace to steal whatever metal they can. But in the mines of Chloris is something huge, a creature thrown into the pit to be forgotten... and the Doctor is about to join him.

Plot

Part one

An MK3 Emergency transceiver on the TARDIS identifies a distress signal and brings the craft to the lush jungle world of Chloris, where metal in all forms is a rare and prized commodity. The Doctor, Romana and K9 venture out to discover the remains of an enormous egg in the jungle. The Doctor is immediately beset by Wolfweeds under the control of the Huntsman, who then releases the Doctor and orders his death. Karela countermands him and has the Doctor and Romana taken prisoner instead.

The Doctor is paraded in stocks.

As they travel through the jungle, bandits attack them and Romana is taken prisoner by them. The Doctor is taken to the palace of the Lady Adrasta, who rules the planet by controlling all the metal. He examines the throne room and takes particular interest in a plate upon the wall.

Elsewhere, Romana uses a dog whistle to summon K9. With his help, she escapes the bandits.

Adrasta takes the Doctor is taken to a pit to witness the execution of one of her men, an engineer who failed to make some of the observations the Doctor made. He is thrown to a creature that lives within the vast caverns below. Romana arrives and tries to help the Doctor escape as K9 attacks the guards. However, the Wolfweeds quickly surround and disable K9. The Doctor then jumps into the pit.

Part two

Romana notices that the Doctor is still alive, clinging to the side of the pit. He signals to keep silent as to his survival. Adrasta decides that Romana may be of use, as will the metal K9. The Doctor loses his grip and falls into the pit.

Meanwhile, Lady Adrasta tries to get information out of Romana as her guards slowly hammer away at K9. Eventually Romana tells her that only K9 has the answers what Adrasta is looking for.

In the woods, the bandits decide to attack the palace, believing that the guards will be searching for them.

Adrasta threatens K9.

Within the Pit, the Doctor encounters Organon, an astrologer thrown down there by Adrasta. The creature attacks but they manage to escape from its tentacle and then burn it to deter it from attacking again. They then begin exploring the caverns.

K9 tells Adrasta about the TARDIS. Realising that, with such a machine, she no longer needs the creature, she decides that K9 will kill it for her. They venture through a passage and into the caverns of the pit.

The Doctor, Organon and a number of Adrasta's guards come across the creature. The guards attack it, to no effect, and the creature squashes the Doctor.

Part three

The guards and Organon retreat and the creature forms a barrier to prevent their return. Within the cavern, the Doctor awakes, seemingly unharmed. Outside the palace, the bandits make their attack and quickly gain access to the throne room. In the pit, Adrasta decides that K9 will destroy the barrier.

Torvin and Edu fall under the plate's hypnosis.

The Doctor tries to befriend the creature but it has no way to communicate with him. The creature draws a picture of the plate that the Doctor noticed in Adrasta's throne room. At that moment, the bandits are stealing the plate. They are interrupted by the guards and retreat into the cavern. The plate activates and Torvin and Edu fall under its hypnotic effect.

K9 is unable to break down the barrier, as it gets stronger with each blow. From the other side, the Doctor bursts through. Adrasta questions how the Doctor did this and he replies that he "asked very nicely". Adrasta admits she knows more about the creature than she has previously let on. It is a Tythonian. The Doctor uses a mirror to reflect K9's attacks, killing Adrasta's guards and scaring off Karela. The Doctor holds Adrasta despite her pleas. She orders Romana to have K9 kill the creature. The hypnotised Torvin and Edu approach, still carrying the plate, which they place on the creature.

Part four

With the plate, the creature is able to speak through the person touching it. The Doctor uses the plate and discovers that the creature's name is Erato and is the Tythonian ambassador to Chloris. It came fifteen years earlier to negotiate a treaty exchanging metal for chlorophyll. Its craft was the vast egg in the jungle. However, Adrasta, knowing her power depended on control of the planet's metal supply, imprisoned Erato. Knowing the truth, Adrasta's people turn on her and Erato his revenge by crushing Adrasta to death.

In the woods, Karela meets the bandits and kills Torvin. She tries to convince the others to join her in taking the metal. The Doctor arrives and has K9 destroy the metal the bandits stole. With nothing to lose, the bandits and Karela give up.

The TARDIS holds the neutron star as Erato weaves a web around it.

The Doctor has rescued the Tythonian just in time. Tythonus has declared war on Chloris over the missing ambassador and has dispatched a neutron star to collide with Chloris' star and destroy the system. It will collide within the next twenty-four hours. Working desperately, the Doctor uses the TARDIS to stabilise the star while Erato weaves an aluminium shell around it. The danger is neutralised. The Doctor's last act on Chloris is to push Organon, now one of the de facto rulers, toward a mutually beneficial trade agreement with Erato and the Tythonians.

Cast

Crew

Assistant Floor Managers - Kate Osborne, David Tilley
Costumes - June Hudson
Director - Christopher Barry
Director's Assistant - Carol Snook
Designer - Valerie Warrender
Electronic Effects - Dave Chapman
Film Cameraman - David Feig
Film Editor - M A C Adams
Film Sound - Doug Mawson
Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
Make-Up - Gillian Thomas
Producer - Graham Williams
Production Assistant - Romey Allison
Production Unit Manager - John Nathan-Turner
Script Editor - Douglas Adams
Senior Cameraman - Rodney Taylor
Special Sounds - Dick Mills
Studio Lighting - Warwick Fielding
Studio Sound - Anthony Philpott
Title Music - Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Theme arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
Vision Mixer - James Gould
Visual Effects Designer - Mat Irvine
VT Editor - Rod Waldron
Writer - David Fisher

Uncredited crew

Film Camera Assistant - Tony Bragg (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Make-Up Assistants - Tina Baker, Sally Milligan, Lisa Pickering, Sandra Powell, Janice Sewell (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Design Assistant - David Laskey (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Film Sound Assistant - Stuart Moser (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Technical Manager - Mike Chislett (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Props Buyer - Eric Baker (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Grips - George Rose (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Assistant Floor Manager - Kate Osborne (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Floor Assistant - Edward Bye (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Film Operations Manager - Ian Brindle (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Film Lighting Gaffer - Des O'Brien (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)
Show Working Supervisor - Chick Hetherington (INFO: The Creature from the Pit)

References

The Doctor

The Doctor jokingly claims that Time Lords have ninety lives (and that he has used one hundred and thirty of his).

Culture

The Doctor and K9 are reading Peter Rabbit. Romana has read a few of the series herself.
The Doctor claims a ball of string Romana finds in the TARDIS helped Theseus and Ariadne out of the Minotaur's maze.
The thieves operate as a democracy.

Species

Erato is an ambassador from the planet Tythonus, a world rich in metal, but rapidly depleting its vegetation.
Tythonians consume chlorophyll and mineral salts.
Tythonians can only communicate via a pentagonal device which allows them to utilise another being's larynx.
Tythonians live for 40,000 years.

Spacecraft

Erato travelled to Chloris in a spaceship that was an egg woven from living metal.
Erato's spaceship is powered by photon drive.

The TARDIS

The TARDIS has a tractor beam.
A MK3 Emergency transceiver can be plugged into the TARDIS console.

Weapons

A neutron star is propelled towards Chloris by the Tythonians after the treatment of their ambassador.

Story notes

This was the first story for Season 17 to be produced, though it was the third to be broadcast. This makes it the first story produced with Lalla Ward as Romana II, replacing Mary Tamm, and with David Brierley providing the voice for K9, replacing John Leeson.
In David Fisher's original script, Lady Adrasta was Queen Adastra, whose name meant "to the stars" in Latin. This was changed by Douglas Adams.
Christopher Barry is said to have had differences of opinion with both Tom Baker and Lalla Ward regarding their characters and dialogue during filming of this story. This plus frequent technical problems led to his departure from directing on Doctor Who.
This is the last story that Terry Walsh worked on. His first being The Smugglers in 1966.
The phallic appearance of Erato's proboscis caused uncontrolled laughter in the studio, forcing the producers to add a pair of pincers to the creature overnight. (DOC: Team Erato)
Lalla Ward disliked how her dress echoed that worn by Mary Tamm in The Ribos Operation and felt that the story was tailored for that incarnation.
A clip of this story was used in the documentary "Synth Britannia", first broadcast on BBC 4 on Friday 16 October 2009. (The clip seems to be from part two or three.)
A working title for this story was "The Creatures From The Pit".^[1]

Ratings

Part one - 9.3 million viewers
Part two - 10.8 million viewers
Part three - 10.2 million viewers
Part four - 9.6 million viewers

Filming locations

Ealing Studios, Ealing Green, Ealing
BBC Television Centre (TC6), Shepherd's Bush, London

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

to be added

Continuity

A number of the Doctor's old costumes appear on the TARDIS hatstand. His coats from The Seeds of Doom and The Talons of Weng-Chiang are two of these.

Home video and audio releases

DVD releases

This story was first released on DVD in the UK on 3 May 2010. The one disc set includes a restored version of the story, as well as the following special features:

Commentary by Lalla Ward (Romana), Myra Frances (Lady Adrasta), Christopher Barry (Director) and Mat Irvine (Visual Effects Designer)
Christopher Barry: Director - documentary that examined the career of Doctor Who director Christopher Barry
Team Erato - documentary that examined the special effects group tasked with bringing Erato to life and the problems they encountered.
Animal Magic
Extended Scene
Coming Soon Trailer
Radio Times Billings
Production Subtitles
Photo Gallery