Tony Fyler has sympathy
for the Devil.
Impossible
Planet broadcast 3rd June 2006
The
Satan Pit broadcast 10th June 2006
Religion and Doctor Who
have a long and tempestuous history. The Doctor himself has never especially
ascribed to a religious path, but he’s always been open to wonder, to new
things and new knowledge to challenge what he already knows. That said, he’s come
down like the proverbial ton of bricks on what he describes as ‘fake gods, bad
gods, mad gods and would-be gods,’ possibly because they all seek to funnel
wonder and worship towards themselves, and stop people seeing all the amazing
things in the universe as they are, denying the genuine sources of wonder their
rights. He’s been a friend to monks (like the Abbot of Det-Sen and
Cho-Je/K’anpo), but had run-ins with angels like Light and Daemons like Azal.
He’s at home in worlds where the gods are important (The Crusaders, The Romans,
The Fires of Pompeii), and where the power of faith is what gets people through
(Gridlock), but equally comfortable in situations where religion is prohibited
(The End of The World). What he’s always avoided though is confirming any
particular set of religious beliefs as having more to them than can be
necessarily explained in scientific or socio-political terms.
Welcome to Doctor Who
Versus The Devil.
Beyond the cheap shot of
that reductive line though, The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit have so
much to recommend them, it’s a challenge to say something new about them. When
confronted by the creature behind the universal memory of a fallen creature of
incredible power and ungovernable malignity, writer Matt Jones maintains the
longstanding Who tradition of not giving this particular Big Bad any claim of
superiority – the Doctor happily chats to it about all the devils there are,
and even when it emerges that this might be the thing that inspired them all,
coming face to face with the Beast, the Doctor maintains the best traditions of
scepticism – ‘I don’t have to accept what you are, but your physical existence,
I’ll give you that much.’ Along the way, The Impossible Planet and The Satan
Pit go further than has ever been gone before in terms of probing what the
Doctor himself actually believes, in some kind of religious context. His answer
to those questions is refined as he goes. When Ida Scott asks him what he
believes, and he’s forced to think about it on an intellectual level, his
answers are valid but vague – ‘I believe I haven’t seen everything. That’s why
I keep travelling.’ He’s also honest enough to include himself in the totality
of the universe when he says ‘If that thing had said it was from “beyond time”
I’d have believed it. But “before time,” no. Doesn’t fit my pattern.’ It’s a
ridiculously brave and dangerous path to take the Doctor down, and all credit
is due to Jones and the Production Team for deciding to tread it, and for
eventually doing it with the delicacy
that The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit display, because while his
intellectual answers might be vague and considered, when the Doctor is faced
with an ‘impossible’ choice, between destroying the Beast and in all likelihood
destroying Rose Tyler too, his emotional response comes roaring to the
forefront of his mind, and he takes the gamble that all love demands. In all
the universe, if he believes in anything, he believes in her. That’s a powerful
statement, and it’s both personal and what we would egotistically call
humanistic. He believes in the potential of people of all species to be a
positive influence on the universe, irrespective of race, creed, colour or any
of the other divisions we see. He believes in people. And most
specifically right now, he believes in one tiny little Earthling who’s shown
him a way to heal, a way to be the Doctor he always was, before the great Time
War made him something he can’t think about if he wants to be that sort of
positive force himself. Rose Tyler is an avatar of the Doctor’s faith in good
people, absolutely, but she’s earned that status by her own character and
actions, bring the war-scarred Ninth Doctor back to a way of thinking and a way
of behaving that’s in sync with the Doctors of old. Her character has redeemed
him, and as much as a Time Lord can, beyond the messy nonsense of biology, he
loves her for it. He believes, very distinctly, in Rose.
So…there’s that. And the
thing is, that barely scratches the surface of The Impossible Planet and The
Satan Pit. Let’s talk design. Rewatching the stories ten years on, it’s one of
the first things that strikes you that the Sanctuary base feels real,
and grimy, and like a hard but honest-to-goodness, rivets-and-grease place to
live. That was hardly ever a factor in the 21st century show in its
first season, that sense of grimy hard realism, which is why, though it was a
look that was re-used and copied in stories from here on out, The Impossible
Planet and The Satan Pit look very different to everything that’s come before.
Let’s talk about facing
Doctor Who’s own demons – the show has had a long history of preferring
imagination to physics as we strictly know it, but Jones skilfully takes that
and turns it on its head, making the very impossibility of his stories’ set-up
the core of their mystery, and never wavering from the rules he both invents
for himself and that physics imposes on him.
Let’s talk the literary
epic status of a journey down into the pit, resolved through a leap of faith,
and a difficult choice for the best of causes. This is Doctor Who in broad
storytelling strokes invoking every great myth you choose to name, from Orpheus
and Eurydice to Paradise Lost to Dante’s Inferno to Harry Potter.
Let’s talk realistic
characters and the challenge to be the best they can be. Certainly in the 21st
century, Doctor Who had invested more in giving its characters some solid
backstories and realistic motivations as people, beyond the narrative needs of
the story. But Series 2’s fourth (and most intensely true to form) iteration of
the base under siege format was one of the show’s first 21st century
forays into the ensemble piece where each of the characters seemed to have a
genuine life outside the confines of the story (honourable hat-tip to Bad
Wolf/The Parting of the Ways notwithstanding). Each of the Sanctuary base’s
officers had signature strengths and weaknesses, and each of them played their
roles with a lightness of touch that meant they were entirely believable as
human beings. Danny Webb as Mr Jefferson, Claire Rushbrook as Ida Scott, Shaun
Parkes as Zachary Cross Flane, Ronny Jhutti as Danny Bartock, MyAnna Buring as
the beautifully underplayed Scooti Manista, and Wil Thorp as Toby Zed each
bring a unique combination of those positives and negatives to bear –
insecurity, arrogance, hard-headedness, fear, but also ingenuity, wonder,
self-sacrifice, calm under pressure, we see them both as flawed, when the Beast
mercilessly catalogues their secret shames, and impressive as the Doctor sees
them, and as Rose is able to motivate them to be.
Oh, did we mention the
Ood? Sure, why not, throw the Ood in too – one of New Who’s most visually
striking ‘villain’ species, the story both has its cake and eats it with the
Ood, making them lost signally disturbing, then turn out to be not only
perfectly calm and pleasant, but actually something of the victim of humanity’s
enslavement. And then of course, with a change of eye colour, a deeply
unnerving uniformity of movement and speech, make them a force for evil, while
still maintaining their status as helpless telepathic slaves.
And then of course there’s
the Beast itself. There are many ways to go in terms of voicing Satan. You only
need to look at the history of movies to see that – Al Pacino, Sam Neill,
Gabriel Byrne and more have all taken different stabs at the fundamental character.
But if he’s available, in terms purely of a vocal performance, you could do
much, much worse than Gabriel Woolf. That combination of seduction and power,
in a voice so dark and commanding, brings a real presence to The Impossible
Planet and The Satan Pit that turns it from merely a very good story into
something that still feels special ten years on. The visual of the Beast
creature itself is still impressive too, even if, ten years on, there’s a
slight sense of CSO in the separation between the Doctor standing on his
platform and the Beast in its ‘cage.’
Overall, if you’re looking
for highlights of the Tenth Doctor’s time on screen, there are plenty to choose
from. But still, ten years on, you have to go pretty darned far to beat The
Impossible Planet and the Satan Pit to find stories that are more compelling or
more rewarding of a rewatch.
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