Doctor Who/Recap/S28/E09 The Satan Pit

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< Doctor Who‎ | Recap‎ | S28
But I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be gods. And out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing… I believe in her.
—The Doctor

"The Impossible Planet"'s cliffhanger leaves the Doctor stuck at the bottom of a very deep hole, and Rose stuck at the top surrounded by murderous Ood. The Doctor decides that if he can't go up, he might as well go down. The Beast possessing the Ood starts to telepathically taunt the group, bringing out their fears, doubts, and guilt. The Doctor tries to get the others to ignore the Beast... Until the Beast starts talking about killing his own race off in the Time War. He announces that he'll be free before the transmission cuts off. The crew is now forced to go through the ventilation to escape the Ood, to get to the main gate.

The Doctor gets to the bottom and finds The Beast himself and sees its real face. However, he notes based on his unintelligible grunting, The Beast is quite literally a shell of his former self... With his former self possessing Toby and the Ood. The Doctor realises the planet was set up as a trap that will stop The Beast from ever escaping by immediately consuming him (and the unlucky schmo) inside the black hole...

Back on the base, Rose and the other members of the group managed to make it alive, save head of security Mr. Jefferson, who dies defending the group from the Ood. The group are finally calling it quits and decide to leave, with Doctor or no Doctor. Meanwhile, the Beast, aware that forcing his entrapment could mean certain death for Rose, laughs at his presumed victory. Until the Doctor goes through with his bluff and breaks the urn.

On the ship, Toby who has been acting not only strange, but very rude (to Rose) reveals himself as the Beast, declaring that he cannot die and will escape... It's too late though, Rose shoots the window with a nail gun, opening the seat belt and sealed airlock for Beast!Toby to get thrown into space...

The Doctor conveniently finds the TARDIS behind him, saves Ida as well as Rose and a couple remaining crew members by towing the spaceship from the black hole with his own TARDIS! The group wonders what the hell the Beast actually was, but the Doctor seems unwilling to answer, and says whatever it was, it's now gone...

Meanwhile, Rose herself is curious as to what the Beast meant by her death, but the Doctor assures her he was wrong (Turns out this was one thing the Beast was telling the truth about). As the TARDIS disappears, Zack (the head of the expedition) starts reading out the names of the deceased in the mission, including the Ood as they return home.

Tropes

  • Actor Allusion: Mr Jefferson (played by Danny Webb, who appeared in Alien 3) appreciates the reference to air-vent escapes.
  • Air Vent Passageway: When Rose hears about the maintenance shafts, she's the first to point this out, getting a "I appreciate the reference" from Mr Jefferson (whose actor was in Alien 3). Unfortunately, they were designed for maintenance robots instead of people, so Captain Zack has to remotely fill them with air section-by-section.
  • Arc Words: Zack mentions that his team represents the Torchwood archive.
  • All of Them: The Beast's reply when the Doctor asks which specific Devil it's supposed to be.
  • As Long as There Is Evil: The Beast's big "I won't die" speech.
  • Big Red Devil: With a scary face.
    • It looks kind of like Eddie, actually.
  • Badass Boast: The Beast.
  • Body Surf: The Beast to the Ood and Toby.
  • Call Back: "Regret to inform, sir, I was a bit slow" as Jefferson gets trapped behind a sealed door in the air vent. Almost exactly what Rose said when she was in the same situation.
  • Chekhov's Bolt Gun: With all of one bolt.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Doctor. Although he's well known for challenging 'gods' and OTHER 'demons'.As he himself noted, this one is special because he claimed to be from "before time". Hmm. Seems less The Bible and more of H.P. Lovecraft.
  • Devil but No God: Averted. The Doctor isn't convinced he's literally Satan. But he is scary. And in any case, there's a reason he's been imprisoned in a pit for all eternity, and the Beast himself references God and the Disciples of The Light.
  • Devil Is a Loser: Somewhat. When The Doctor confronts The Beast in its prison, he finds a giant towering red horned monstrosity that roars at him and shoots fire. He realizes this Beast is just that...a simple beast, with its spirit and sentience gone elsewhere. The physical body of the Beast suddenly becomes a lot less scary. There's also the fact the Doctor went through sending The Beast into the black hole despite minimal chance of survival.
  • Doing In the Wizard: An explicit subversion of the series' tendencies to offer a (quasi-)scientific explanation for various supernatural or mythological phenomena. While the Doctor clearly doesn't believe that the Beast is the actual Devil of mythology or it's claims, he gets quite cagey when pressed on what he thinks it actually was and can't dismiss it with a scientific explanation as easily as he normally would.
  • Dug Too Deep
  • Dying Alone: Ida asks the Doctor to come back up from the Pit because she doesn't want to do this.
  • Eldritch Abomination / Cosmic Horror Story: A pretty much textbook example.
  • Empty Shell: The Beast's body.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Beast underestimates the Doctor's drive at saving the universe, especially when it believes the Doctor won't risk losing Rose in the process.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The title.
  • Face Death with Dignity

Mr Jefferson: Might I ask, Sir, if you can't add oxygen to this area, could you expedite its removal?

  • Flip Personality: Toby. When he's possessed, his eyes turn red, his body is covered in arcane writing, and he shouts imprecations in a gravelly voice. It turns out, however, that the times when he appears and acts normally are actually a ruse.
  • Foreshadowing Possibly unintentional, but the concept of the Beast existing as consciousness beyond time bears disturbing similarities to Rassilon's ultimate plan to survive the Time War, as revealed in The End of Time
  • Ghost Planet
  • Hannibal Lecture: The Beast induces this on the crew.
  • Human Notepad, Mark of the Beast (literally) variety: Toby
  • I Uh You Too: The Doctor does a one sided version of this whilst descending down the pit.

Doctor: Listen, tell Rose... *pauses and shrugs* Oh, she knows...

Rose:"Go to hell."

  • The Devil: The Beast claims to be this.
  • The Dead Have Names: Since the Ood were treated as livestock rather than people, they don't have individual names, but Zack lists them all "with honours," one by one, when reciting the death toll.
  • Time Abyss: The Beast claims to be older than the universe itself.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The Genre Savvy Doctor mentions this when Ida says there's no turning back, because that's one of the worst thing you can possibly say in this situation.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While this trope is played straight for most of the serial, it is ultimately subverted, as the captain lists the names of all 50 Ood individually among the deceased, including "with honors" after each name.
  • You Cannot Kill an Idea: Referenced by the Doctor when he monologues to the mindless-Beast and realizes the Beast is trying to send his mind out inside someone. And while the mind may not be as powerful as it would be inside the Beast, the Doctor knows it could easily spread the idea of EVIL throughout the universe and how hard it is to defeat any idea.
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