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Doctor Who - The Creature from the Pit [VHS]

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Landing on the planet Chloris, the Doctor and Romana discover a giant egg shell-like structure in the middle of an overgrown forest. They later find out that the planet Chloris is low on metal and has an over abundance of foliage, and the completely insane and greedy Lady Adrasta has a hidden agenda and a hidden horror trapped in a pit! The Creature From the Pit is another silly installment from Season 17, where humor and sillieness is rampant, and production values have dropped. But apart from Erato himself, the production of this underrated serial is very good. The forests scenes are very well realised on film. Tom Baker excells in one of his funniest outings. Line after line after line! Geoffrey Balydon as Organon, Court Astrologer, is another highlight in an amusing role. And David Brierley filling this season as the voice of K-9 gives him some humor, as well. Though, Tom Baker's communication with Erato for the first time is very phallic indeed! There's a reason why there's so much sillieness. David Fisher's scripts are filled with great Tom humor and Douglas Adams' script editing gives it that final absurdity. Though most discriminating Who fans might not give this serial the time of day, it is surprisingly enjoyable. Especially with a few bottles of beer!

To which the Doctor responds to the despotic Lady Adrasta of the planet Chloris, "Ah, you have such a way with words." The pit refers to an opening where people who displease Adrasta, perceived incompetents, are thrown down and meet their fate to a horrible monster.

The Doctor and Romana respond to a distress call on Chloris, where they are caught up in Lady Adrasta's dictatorial ways. On Chloris, metal is needed to contain the increasingly fecund jungle. Adrasta has the monopoly on metal--she owns the only mine, and that is the source of her power. She also employs the service of the Huntsman and his band of Wolf Weeds, which resemble green tumbleweeds. However, there are some rebels under Torvin, former miners, who are staging ambushes to steal anything metal.

The Doctor meets Organon, Adrasta's former astrologer, a bearded talkative soul who introduces himself thus: "astrologer extraordinaire, seer to princes and emperors. The future foretold, the past explained, the present apologized for." Together in the pit, they discover the nature of the title creature, which is huge and glows an eerie green colour.

Myra Frances plays Adrasta as a cruel despot--she even slaps Romana in one scene! Eileen Way, who is Karela, Adrasta's vizier, appeared in the very first Doctor Who story as the Old Mother. Karela is indeed someone just as ambitious and cruel as her mistress. Geoffrey Bayldon is good as the chatty but clearly sign-obsessed Organon. However, John Bryans plays Torvin as a hammy East London Jew, complete with accents and bushy beard: "My beautiful boys," he calls his subordinates, who are just as hirsute and bearded as he.

The Doctor has a funny line when he asks Adrasta to spare Doran, a court engineer-scientist who displeased her: "He may be an idiot, but he is a conscientious idiot, and engineers are hard to come by."

Romana's aristocratic bearing is apparent when she is captured by Torvin and his rebels. She is hardly scared when they threaten to kill her. Indeed, she keeps calm until K9 comes along, and then walks off. Dressed in her white robe, it's no wonder, as Lalla Ward's full name is Lady Sarah Ward, who is the daughter of Lord Bangor (Edward Ward). Ward really plays it straight here.

Some of Douglas Adams' silly humour is apparent in the story following the classic The City Of Death. One of the funniest moments involves the Doctor who's clinging along the side of the pit and is reading a book on mountain climbing, only to find out the book is in Tibetan. He then pulls out a book, Teach Yourself Tibetan. Unfortunately, it's established in other stories that the Doctor already knows Tibetan, so either the book is highly technical or this was just a scene done for laughs. And when going through some of the Doctor's old junk, Romana asks him if he really needs the jawbone of an a**, to which the Doctor retorts, "Don't be a philistine." That's a biblical joke, for those who don't get it.

Not a bad story, but seeing as how this came after the top-rated City Of Death, something of a comedown.

The most underrated of Doctor Who is season 17. It may not seem beleivalbe or realistic, but it is darn fun to watch, and this one more than most of the others. Though Nimon can get a little bland and Nightmare of Eden(except for Dakar's performance) is a bit dull too, this one is very good, like a classic storytelling drama that plays out good/evil to the bitter end(of Adrasta). Most, if not all of the actors here are guest star quality. And it plays out and grabs your attention like nothing made to day could hope to do. The writing may not be perfectly acceptable in realism but it is a strait foreward plot(that I love) the sets are good for 1979, and far as I'm concerned with this performance, today, as in a play. Because Doctor who was not about what was/wasn't "cardboard" it was like watching a theater in your set. If you think of it that way, it is better than the gloss glitz and stupid headed rushing around witlessly talking down to your audience like Doctor Who of today(Ecleston/Tennent and presumabley Mat2).
The charm also is the light, tonuge/cheek humor by Tom Baker and of course Adresta's rediculously(creative) references to everything in non-proper nowns and lack of agjectives.(ecept her agjective of K-9 and her contept of "princess" Romana's meddling).
though nimon/eden could get pretty bland, Creature of the Pit, and City of Death were very entertaining and stylishly gothic. Both had serious actors and I am to assume serious directing too.
only complaint, Lalla wore far too much lip stick, she -is- a child though.lol(and it is that funny)

This story gets unfairly criticized by Doctor Who "fandom" for being to silly. But humor has always been a major characteristic in Doctor Who 1960s and 70s. One of the best Doctors, Patrick Troughton, was endearingly known as the clown. Humor separates Who from Star Trek. The next time someone in Star Trek cracks a joke will be the first time. It's so drab. Humor spices up Doctor Who. That fact is what JNT failed to comprehend when he extracted all the jokes out of Doctor Who and destroyed Tom Baker in the 80s. He turned Who into Trek.

Creature From The Pit sports some tremendous jungle sets and some of them most clever, witty dialogue of the series. The double entendres fly out of the mouths of the characters. Who can forget Lady Adrasta screaming, "It's gonna eat me", as the big green phallic blob approached her? Or how about Madam Karela's "here's another six inches for you" as she stabs Torvin in episode four? Early in episode one, the most witty of all the episodes, Romana confronts the Doctor as to why he needs the jawbone of an a**. The Doctor quickly retorts, "Don't be a Philistine". Those versed in the Old Testament understand the humor in that line. The story even features a stereotypical band of Jews (the bandits. I don't get it either, but those "intelligent" experts in Who fandom who have been lucky enough to get Doctor Who reference books published say so. And if they say so, who are we, the mere fans, to dispute them? They surely know more than us right? And these bandits remind me more of muslims than Jews, given their hirsute nature and penchant for slicing anybody who stands in their way.) Speaking of those "experts", I haven't read one that actually likes this story. Let them watch Trek...or worse, the McCoy years.

The Doctor and Romana traveling inside the TARDIS are making some repairs when Romana turns on the distress locator function. It homes in on a distress signal on the planet Chloris. A world where metal is so scarce that whoever control the metal controls the planet. For without metal the planet vegetation will just take over what has been cut down. The Doctor and Romana follow the ditress signal to what looks like the remains of a giant egg. The Doctor realizes that it can't be an egg and begins to wonder if its a ship. Before he can look into it Romana and the Doctor encounter the Lady Astra. Current ruler and holder of the only mine left on the planet. She sees the Doctor as a threat and wants control of his knowledge and the power that K-9 has. Meanwhile a local band of thieves whose goal it is to steal all the metal they can and make a fortune to the highest bidder. They get wind that Lady Astra is out and wants to rob her of her metal. Meanwhile deep within a now useless mine lives the creature. A being so deadly and so dangerous that the Lady Astra throws those who displease her or breaks the law into the pit. She has already threaten the Doctor and decides to throw him in. She'll keep Romana and K-9 and use them to make her even more powerful then before. Can the Doctor find out what is really going on and figure out who sent the distress signal in the first place?

I was going to lay off this one since I've given my opinion on the other season 17 monstrosities but since Amazon went out of their way to invite me to review it, here we go....
As I've stated before, in my opinion (and many others') season 17 was one of the worst seasons of Doctor Who and definitely the worst of the otherwise excellent Tom Baker. The only truly good story was City of Death Doctor Who: City of Death (Story 105). The rest of the stories from that year ranged from shoddy to god-awful. Creature from the Pit is not the worst of these (Horns of Nimon wins that prize, closely followed by Destiny of the Daleks) but it's not really good either. Production values are poor (even by Who standards) and Tom Baker is let off the leash to over-indulge in silliness and over-the-top breaking of the fourth wall. The fabulous Douglas Adams was the script editor and managed to keep it under control and focused for the story he penned (City of Death) but pretty much everything else in that season devolved into intentional and self-mocking "look at me, I know this is ridiculous!" camp (the worst kind).
If you are already a Doctor Who fan and have a firm grounding in the show, you may want to look at this just to see what the fuss is about but you may regret actually having paid to do so.

NOTE TO AMAZON---This review was actually written on 8/20/10. I'm not sure why the date of July 17th is attached

Following on the heels of "The City of Death," arguably the greatest Doctor Who story ever written, "The Creature from the Pit" suffers by comparison. That's unfortunate, because the story holds up surprisingly well and is full of genuinely funny dialogue, a defining characteristic of Douglas Adams' tenure as script editor.

The Doctor and Romana are forced by a distress signal to land on the planet Chloris, where they discover a giant, egglike structure that seems to be the source of the signal. Overgrown with vegetation and short of metals, Chloris is home to an essentially medieval society ruled by women: Lady Adrasta, who controls a monopoly on the planet's metals, and Karela, her vizier and commander of her all-male guards. Meanwhile, the planet's inhabitants live in terror of a giant, amorphous blob creature who dwells in the Pit, a network of tunnels below the planet's surface.

David Fisher's smart script employs several well-worn science-fiction cliches only to turn them on their head. The blob creature, for instance, is not at all what he seems. The problem is, the creature sports a large proboscis in front that protrudes like a giant green phallus as he pushes his way through the narrow tunnels.

I thought I was imagining this at first, but then I thought perhaps it was intentional: an allegorical battle of the sexes between a matriarchal society and a giant phallus creature. Chloris, for which the planet is named, was a nymph from Greek mythology who represented spring and was abducted by Zephyr, god of the west wind. The guards wear BDSM masks. The "wolfweeds," aggressive plant creatures Lady Adrasta uses as hunting dogs, look like rolling balls of pubic hair. The blob creature, we later learn, is a diplomat named Erato (pronounced "eroto") from the planet Tythonus, similar to "pythonus," again conjuring snakelike, phallic imagery. There's even a really unfortunate scene in which the Doctor blows into the tip of the proboscis to try to make contact with the creature.

"Team Erato," a short documentary on the creature's design and construction found in the Special Features menu, reveals that the show's designers were only too painfully aware of the penile appearance of the monster but that it was entirely unintentional. They simply tried to accomplish too much with too little money. The creature's design was also a source of embarrassment and minor scandal among BBC administrators at the time.

All of this sexual subtext, if indeed there is any, will of course be completely lost on younger viewers. When the story was first broadcast, the BBC received letters complaining only that the creature was "too scary" for children, which is precisely what the show's designers were aiming for in the first place.

tom baker as the doctor, Geoffrey Bayldon (catweazle & a doctor who almost)
what more can you ask for. Bad special effects aside, this is just good fun!