A cheap shot, I know, but David J Howe and Stephen James Walker’s take on this story in Doctor Who: The Television Companion annoyed me so much that I can’t resist a brief rant.
It starts fair enough – ‘It is a standard approach in science-fiction storytelling for the writer to posit a world possessing one or two distinctive features’ – but the clear assumption here is that this is what ‘The Creature from the Pit’ is doing. It’s not. This becomes clearer as Howe and Walker continue by stating this standard approach allows a writer to ‘by logical extrapolation from those features, develop a culture similar to and yet fascinatingly different from our own’. Again, I’m sure they’re right that this happens, though I can’t think of any examples of the top of my head. What I can think of, though, is lots of example of science fiction which use those extrapolated features to comment on the society of the writer and reader, which is what ‘The Creature from the Pit’ does.
Even I’m not enjoying the smug tone I’m developing here, so let’s switch to bullet points and get this over quick:
‘there is nothing here to suggest what the ramifications of the scarcity of metals might be for the wider community on Chloris’ – no. Why would there be? Chloris isn’t real.
‘Had he made Chloris short of one particular metal - copper, say - he might have had a reasonable chance of exploring the implications of this by researching all the things in which that metal is normally to be found and then speculating as to the effects of its absence in each case’ – it wouldn’t be much cop as a stand in for capital though. Also, frankly, how exciting does a well-researched investigation into the importance of copper transfigured into children’s fiction sound?
‘It is highly unlikely, scientifically speaking, that any animal or plant life existing here would even remotely resemble that of Earth; and it is questionable whether or not a planet could ever have formed in the first place without at least a certain quantity of metals having been present’ – Chloris has metal. There’s an old mine. The bandits repeatedly go on about their stash of metal. Adrasta’s status is all about her near monopoly on metal. There was definitely a ‘certain quantity of metals’ present in the formation of Chloris.
‘A possible alternative approach for Fisher to have taken would have been to have made Chloris a planet on which metals were present in normal quantities but unobtainable due to the indigenous population's failure to discover mining skills - an idea with obvious potential for further development’ – perhaps. But that would be a story about metal, which this isn’t.
‘the wolfweeds are just plain silly’ – how dare they!
‘the Doctor seems to lose his senses altogether at the end of Part One as he leaps into the Pit of his own accord, knowing full well that to be consigned there is regarded as tantamount to a sentence of execution (another example of the 'anything for a cliffhanger' syndrome)’ – or a measure of his desperation to save Romana’s life, something Adrastra even explicitly and vocally recognises in the broadcast episodes, made even clearer in the novelisation: ‘He had outmanoueuvred her, it was true, but at the cost of his own life and in order to preserve Romana. A quixotic, sentimental fool of course, but it showed a certain courage. Such a man could have proved useful in her search throughout the universe’
And now I sound like I think ‘The Creature from the Pit’ is really good. It’s not, but not for any of the reasons given in Doctor Who: The Television Companion. They wanted something worse. They'd have been rid of the wolfweeds.
Anyway, unlike ‘The Creature from the Pit’, Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit is a joy. Come, behold…
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