Synopsis
With the TARDIS seemingly lost, Rose and the remaining humans are trapped on the base with the possessed Ood, while the planet floats helplessly towards a black hole. Meanwhile, the Tenth Doctor is about to discover exactly what "Beast" is trapped in the heart of the impossible planet…
Plot
The three Ood advance towards Jefferson, his guard and Rose. Jefferson gives the order to open fire on the Ood, killing them. In the control room, Zack announces that the planet's orbit is stabilising around the black hole again. Danny reaches the others, warning them that the rest of the Ood are on their way. The pursuing Ood kill the female guard with a translation sphere before Jefferson opens fire again.
Zack finds himself trapped in the control room, as Jefferson reports that he is low on ammunition. Zack himself only has a bolt gun with a single bolt left. Jefferson recommends "Strategy 9"; Zack agrees, and tells him to get everyone together. To Rose's relief, the Doctor and Ida manage to contact the base. The Doctor reports that the seal is open, but nothing seems to have come out of the Pit, which seems to be bottomless.
Zack orders Ida and the Doctor back up because of Strategy 9, but Ida is reluctant and asks the Doctor what he thinks. The Doctor muses about the curiosity he and humans feel about going down into the Pit, but notes that the Beast said he was "the temptation" — perhaps that curiosity is what the Beast is relying on. The Doctor suggests they retreat.
Jefferson cocks his rifle on Toby, but Rose stops him from killing the now normal-looking and terrified archaeologist. Whatever it was possessing him, they saw it pass from Toby to the Ood. Toby cannot remember much of what happened, but believes it was the Devil.
Down below, Ida explains that Strategy 9 is to throw open the airlocks while everyone else is safe in lockdown; the Ood will be sucked out into the vacuum. However, as they prepare to be brought up in the lift, the power fails. The Beast, speaking through the Ood, takes control of the viewscreens. To the Doctor's question as to which Beast he is, given that there are so many religions, the voice answers that he is all of them. The Beast explains that the Disciples of the Light defeated him and chained him in the Pit for eternity, before the creation of this universe. The Doctor retorts that this is impossible, but the Beast tells them that they know nothing. He begins to speak to each of them in turn, playing on their secrets and hidden fears and insecurities: to the Doctor, he refers to the Time War, calling him the "killer of his own kind", and ominously predicts that Rose will soon die in battle.
The humans begin to panic, but the Doctor tries to calm them by reminding the group of the strengths of the human race, demonstrated by their defiance of conventional belief in even making it to this impossible planet, and pointing out that they are united while the Beast is alone. As if in response, the lift cable snaps, and the Doctor and Ida barely get away before the ten mile-length of it collapses on top of the capsule, severing communications. They are stuck down there, with just fifty-five minutes of air left. Ida decides to rig up the loose cable so she can explore the Pit, but the Doctor tells her that he will go down, not her.
With the power loss, Zack is unable to implement Strategy 9. Meanwhile, the Ood are trying to break through the sealed doors to reach the humans. Rose rallies them, getting them to think of a way out. Zach reroutes energy from the rocket to restore half power. Danny comes up with a way to disable the Ood: broadcasting a telepathic flare that will reduce their telepathic field to zero, disrupting their brains. However, this can only be done from the central monitor in Ood Habitation. The only access from where they are is through the airless maintenance shafts below the base, but Zack can extend the oxygen field to follow them through the tunnels.
Danny creates and stores the flare programme on a memory card and they scramble down into the tunnels just as the Ood break through the door. Zack directs them towards their goal, aerating each section and decompressing the previous one before they can go through. However, the Ood are also in pursuit. Jefferson stays behind to hold them off, but is too slow in reaching a junction before it is sealed. Knowing that there is nothing Zack can do to prevent his death, Jefferson requests that the oxygen be removed quickly so he can die before he is killed by the Ood. Zack does this, and Jefferson's life signs wink out on the monitor.
However, the humans have little time to grieve, as the next section is also filled with Ood, and the others have to scramble up into the corridor above. The Ood almost reach Toby, but suddenly his eyes turn red, like when he was possessed by the Beast before. He places his finger on his lips signalling the Ood not to attack him or reveal his secret. The Ood pause, allowing Toby to be rescued by Rose and Danny, who did not notice the momentary change. As the others reach Ood Habitation, the Ood break through into the control room, and Zack holds the bolt gun on them. At the last moment, Danny manages to activate the flare; the telepathic field drops to "Basic Zero", and the Ood grab their heads and collapse. Zack joins them back at the mine shaft.
Meanwhile, the Doctor continues his journey into the darkness of the Pit. He tells Ida how the Devil crops up on so many planets in so many religions — perhaps that is what the Devil is, in the end: an idea. The line finally runs out, with still no bottom in sight. Preferring exploration to waiting for death, he decides to detach the cable and fall the rest of the way, despite Ida's pleas that she does not want to die alone. Reassuring her, the Doctor falls and vanishes into the shadows just as the others regain communications with Ida. Rose is grief-stricken when Ida tells them that the Doctor has fallen.
Zack tells Ida that there is no way to get to her, and Ida understands. All they can do is abandon the base and make sure no one comes back here. Rose wants to stay as well, but Zack renders her unconscious and carries her along; he has lost too many people. They make their way to the rocket past the bodies of the Ood, which are beginning to stir, their telepathic field reasserting itself.
Down below, the Doctor awakens. The faceplate of his helmet is smashed, but he discovers that he can still breathe; an air cushion must have supported his fall. Rose regains consciousness just as the rocket begins to launch. Despite her protests, and even when she threatens Zack with his bolt gun, Zack tells her that it is too late to turn back. Toby seems unusually amused that they have escaped, and when Rose begins to question the relative ease with which they managed to escape the planet, given the various ways the Beast could have killed them, he reprimands her questions with uncharacteristic viciousness.
The Doctor finds ancient drawings on the walls depicting the story of a battle against the Beast, his defeat and subsequent imprisonment. The drawings also depict two double-handed jars, which are standing on separate pedestals some distance apart in front of him. He touches them and they light up, illuminating a section of the cave. The Doctor comes face to face with a gigantic demon chained to the cavern wall, complete with caprine head and humanoid body.
The Beast who previously communicated with the Doctor was intelligent and vocal, but the creature now towering before him appears to be little more than animalistic in nature. The Doctor deduces that what he is seeing is only the physical form — the mind, the idea of the Devil, has departed. The Doctor also realises, piecing it together from various clues, that the planet was the perfect prison: if the Beast had ever freed itself, the gravity field keeping the planet balanced would collapse, and the planet would fall into the black hole. The air was not provided by the Beast, but his jailors, so the Doctor could stop his escape by destroying the prison and thus the planet.
However, the Beast had prepared for this. The loss of the gravity field would also mean the rocket would fall into the black hole, sacrificing Rose. However, the Doctor tells the Beast's body that the Beast's plan implies that Rose is a victim. The Doctor adds that he has seen a lot of the universe, and various beings calling themselves gods, but out of all that, if there is one thing he believes in, it is her. With that, he smashes the jars, causing the gravity field to collapse. The rocket shakes, turns and begins to be dragged into the black hole along with the planet.
The body of the Beast writhes, flames bursting from its skin. On the rocket, the runes appear across Toby's skin as the Beast takes full possession of him. He breathes fire and angrily defies death, ranting that he can never be destroyed. Rose grabs Zack's bolt gun and aims it at the cockpit's front window. Saying "Go to Hell," she fires, shooting out the glass. As the air rushes outward, she unbuckles Toby, who is immediately sucked into space towards the black hole. Zack raises the emergency shield, but they are still falling towards the black hole. In the base, as the planet now hurtles towards the black hole, the Ood, now free from the Beast's control, huddle together nervously. Near the Pit, Ida slowly falls to the ground, the last of her oxygen exhausted.
As he stumbles away from the Beast's burning body, the Doctor finds the TARDIS in the collapsing cavern. The rocket crew watch the planet vanish, and brace themselves for death. Suddenly, everything becomes still, and to Zack's amazement, the rocket turns and heads away from the black hole. To Rose's delight, the Doctor's voice comes over the speakers, telling them that the TARDIS is towing them away. The Doctor was also able to pick up Ida — who will be fine aside from a little oxygen starvation — but unfortunately had no time to save the Ood.
The Doctor and Rose are joyfully reunited in the TARDIS once the rocket reaches clear space. Back on the rocket, Ida asks the Doctor what the Beast really was, and the Doctor replies that whatever he was, they beat it, which for him is enough. He assures Rose that when the Beast said she would die in battle, he lied. Before the TARDIS dematerialises, Ida asks who they are, and the Doctor tells her, "The stuff of legend."
Heading back to Earth, Zack dictates the final report of Sanctuary Base 6, recording the names of those who died with honours, beginning with Toby and continuing with every Ood.
Cast
- The Doctor — David Tennant
- Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
- Mr. Jefferson — Danny Webb
- Zachary Cross Flane — Shaun Parkes
- Ida Scott — Claire Rushbrook
- Toby Zed — Will Thorp
- Danny Bartock — Ronny Jhutti
- The Ood — Paul Kasey
- The Voice of the Beast — Gabriel Woolf
- The Voice of the Ood — Silas Carson
Trivia
- During the TARDISODE for this episode, the letters "SB6" (presumably standing for Sanctuary Base 6) are seen on a display changing into the numbers "666".
- Zack identifies the expedition as representing the Torchwood Archive.
- The Beast claims that Rose is destined to die in battle. Whilst this did not come to pass in the episode, this could possibly be a clue to the end of season cliffhanger various members of the cast and crew have mentioned. Russell T. Davies mentions this statement from the Beast in the downloadable episode commentary, stating that everything else the Beast said about their fears was true.
- The Doctor says it is "impossible" for the Beast to have existed before the universe. In the Virgin New Adventures, a number of Doctor Who monsters were said to be Great Old Ones from the universe before this one. Like all spin-off media, its canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear.
- Mr Jefferson says, "I was a bit slow," after failing to reach the closing bulkhead in time. Rose said a similar line when trapped between the advancing Dalek and a bulkhead door, closed by the Ninth Doctor in the episode Dalek. Another echo of the first series occurs in the rocket near the end of the episode, where Rose screams "Take me back!" as she did to the TARDIS in The Parting of the Ways.
- Danny says that the broadcast flare will cause a "brain storm" in the Ood. This term was used by the Doctor in The Age of Steel to explain why it was dangerous to simply disconnect the entranced humans from the EarPods that were controlling them.
- When the Doctor abseils into the Pit, he lists some planets and races whose mythologies have horned demons, speculating that they are inspired by the Beast. Among the planets he mentions are Draconia (Frontier in Space) and Dæmos, planet of the horned Dæmon Azal (The Dæmons). In The Dæmons, the Doctor speculated that the Dæmons inspired the stories of demons in Earth mythology. The Doctor also makes reference to the Kaled god of war (The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks). Davies stated in the Doctor Who Confidential episode "Religion and Myth" that they aimed to create a "Russian doll" effect, wrapping this episode around The Dæmons.
- The shot of the rocket flying into space resembles Maitland's ship leaving the planet of The Sensorites, which was the first ever exterior shot of a spaceship in flight in space in Doctor Who. In the previous Doctor Who Confidential episode "You've Got the Look", Davies said that he wanted the Ood to resemble the Sensorites, and that he likes to think that they come from a planet near the Sense Sphere.
- In this episode's Doctor Who Confidential, Davies said that in order to inspire the design of the Beast, he sent the visual designers at The Mill images of paintings by Simon Bisley, a comics artist known for muscular grotesqueries.
- The Doctor said that he believed in Rose. In the serial The Curse of Fenric, the Seventh Doctor was able to psychically repel a force of Haemovores using his faith in his past companions.
- Toby's demise is similar to the ending of the film Event Horizon, also taking place around a black hole, where the villain, possessed by a lifeforce supposedly from Hell, is blown out of the spaceship after a window is broken by a bolt fired from a bolt gun.
- The TARDIS is shown to be capable of towing the rocket by means of some unseen and unspecified force. It is either capable of doing this against the pull of a black hole or of nullifying the hole's gravitational attraction.
- This two-parter had very strong religious overtones and references, in particular to Christianity. Although this is unusual for a Doctor Who story, some writers (such as in an article on religion in the revived series in the Church Times in December 2005[1]) have seen religious overtones in the programme.
- Ida briefly travels in the TARDIS. Her later words imply she was largely unconscious for the duration of her trip, as she is unable to remember the TARDIS's interior.
- The Doctor refers to how his race "invented" black holes. This may be a reference to how the Time Lords achieved the power to initiate time travel, by creating a black hole that became known as the Eye of Harmony.
- Overnight ratings for The Satan Pit came in at 5.5 million viewers. While this is the lowest amount to date, the good weather, combined with the first England game of the 2006 World Cup are factors to be considered. Moreover, The Satan Pit had an audience share of 35%, meaning that its overall share has remained static and it was the third most watched programme of the day, after the England vs. Paraguay game and Casualty.[2] The audience appreciation index for the episode was 86. The final consolidated rating was 6.08 million.
- The scenes with the Beast and the Doctor were filmed at Clearwell Caves, last seen as the Sycorax ship in The Christmas Invasion.
- Coincidentally, this episode was shown in the week of 6/6/06, hence it followed a wave of Devil-related stories in the media.
- In the commentary Davies said that an early draft of the script called for the role of the Ood to be filled by the same species as the Slitheen. Their race would have been enslaved and they wished to awaken the Beast, whom they believed to be a god that could free them.
- Davies also mentioned that one of many unused ideas for a creature in this episode will be used in Series 3 (2007).
- The Sanctuary Base 6 corridor set was recycled to become the entrance to the set for Totally Doctor Who.
- According to Doctor Who Magazine #366, The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit will be released together with Love & Monsters as a basic DVD with no special features.