Inspirations - The Creature from the Pit

The Creature from the Pit was the third story to be broadcast in Season 17, even though it was the first to be produced. As such it was the first time that David Brierley voiced K9, whilst Lalla Ward loathed her costume as it had been designed with Mary Tamm's version of Romana in mind.
David Fisher had written two well regarded stories for the previous season, and was commissioned to provide a further two stories for this one. Whilst this one made it to the screen, the second script ended up being rewritten by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams - as we saw last time.
As far as this commission was concerned, all Fisher had to go on with Creature, as I'll call it from now on, was that he should include a monster unlike any that had been seen before.
We've previously said that Fisher disliked his aunts, and often included villainous women in his scripts, and Creature is no exception. As well as Lady Adrasta, the ruler of the planet Chloris, we have her sidekick Madam Karela - who proves to be more sadistic and bloodthirsty than her mistress.
Fisher decided that the story's monster would not be evil - just misunderstood. It would kill people by accident. He then came up with the notion of the creature being a huge blob, trapped in a mine.

Fisher looked at some of the Greek myths and legends for inspiration, and these provided some of the names. Adrasta comes from Adrastos - meaning "inescapable", referring to her imprisonment of the creature in the Pit. It is called Erato. She was one of the Muses, whose name meant beautiful or lovely, which contrasts nicely with the creature's apparently hideous appearance but hints that it isn't the monster everyone thinks it is.
Erato is a Tithonian. This apparently derives from Typhonian. The Typhonian Beast comes from Egyptian rather than Greek mythology. It was a chimera (composite animal) associated with the god Set.
I wrote a whole post a while ago about how all the stories where the TARDIS was fitted with the Randomiser featured the ship going exactly where the Doctor wanted it to go. Its jackdaw meanderings were far more random when the device wasn't fitted. Here, the ship picks up a faint distress signal which takes it the densely-jungled planet of Chloris. (This is the Terry Nation school of planetary nomenclature - where a planet is named after a distinctive feature. Lots of plants means lots of chlorophyll). Chloris also comes from Greek myth, being a flower-loving nymph.
The distress signal is traced to a large structure which looks like a giant egg-shell. Romana gets abducted by a bunch of metal thieves, whilst the Doctor falls into the hands of the aforementioned Lady Adrasta. Chloris has very few metal deposits, so anyone owning any significant amount of metal gains political power. Adrasta disposes of her enemies by casting them into an abandoned mine-shaft - which is known as the Pit. There, they are killed by a monster which lurks there - which the call The Creature.

Unfortunately, the metal thieves are portrayed as stereotypical Jews, with the actor playing their leader, Torvin, attempting to play the part as Fagin - at least the Ron Moody Oliver! version. You half expect him to burst into a rendition of "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" at any moment.
Romana is able to call upon K9 to come and rescue her, and she quickly gets the better of the thieves, who are all a bit dim anyway.
Adrasta has two supposed experts on the Pit and its creature. One of these is played by Morris Barry, who once directed The Moonbase, Tomb of the Cybermen and The Dominators. He had returned to acting late in life. The other is played by Pertwee / Baker stuntman Terry Walsh. You can guess which one of them gets thrown into the Pit. The Doctor decides to throw himself into the Pit to escape Adrasta - leading to a sequence which fans either love or loathe. The Doctor has managed to grab onto the rock face and he produces from his pocket a book on Teach Yourself Mountaineering. This proves to be written in Tibetan, so he next produces from his pocket another book - Teach Yourself Tibetan. All very Douglas Adams.

Once in the Pit, the Doctor comes upon an old astrologer named Organon, who had been cast into the pit years ago but has managed to survive being crushed by Erato. Organon is Greek for instrument or tool, and is where we get the word "organ" from - as in part of the anatomy which fulfills a particular function. He is played by Geoffrey Bayldon, who had been approached back in 1963 to play the Doctor. He turned the role down as he was fed up playing "old man" parts. He would later portray an alternative version of the First Doctor on audio.
(Other links to the earliest days of the programme include Eileen Way playing Madam Karela, who had played the Old Woman in the very first story, and this story's director - Christopher Barry, who had helmed most of the first Dalek story - Parts 1,2,4 & 5).
The Doctor quickly works out that Erato isn't intrinsically hostile. It tends to smother and crush people by accident, due to its great bulk. Attempts to communicate with it fail, however, as it requires a shield-like communications device which Adrasta has retained.

The monster was a source of great amusement when it was first brought into the studio, resembling a huge balloon with a rather rude appendage. Things were not helped by Tom Baker blowing into the appendage when the Doctor tries to communicate with it. Not only did it look like a balloon, it was a balloon, as the body was made from meteorological balloons. Designer Mat Irvine had hoped that it might resemble the Rovers from The Prisoner. Some changes were made between the two studio blocks to lessen the phallic appearance - but it was too little too late.
A postmortem was conducted after the production wrapped, in which Graham Williams backed the director against the VFX team, who had argued that the producer, writer, script editor and director should shoulder most of the blame between them for agreeing to something which would be impossible to realise effectively in a studio.
The Doctor discovers that Erato is a Tithonian ambassador, from a metal-rich planet, who had come to set up a trade deal with Chloris - swapping their metals for its chlorophyll, which Tithonians eat.
Not wanting to lose her monopoly over the scant metal supplies, Adrasta had tricked Erato into entering the mine where she had sealed it up.
The story seems to run out of steam when Adrasta gets killed in the first 5 minutes of the final episode.

A new plot is introduced, however, as it is revealed that Erato had sent out a distress signal to its own people decades ago, and they had sent a neutron star on a collision course with Chloris in revenge. The Doctor has to force Erato to help in deflecting this star using its newly rebuilt spaceship - the egg thing from the jungle - and the TARDIS. These model shots led to further friction between Mat Irvine and Christopher Barry, as the director ordered shots of the TARDIS to be remounted (supposedly because the string holding the model up could be seen). Irvine has since insisted that he would never have passed inferior model shots anyway. Erato's ship spins an aluminium shell round the star which reduces its gravity, or something. Apparently the science is a bit rubbish, despite Fisher claiming to have approached real scientists when preparing the story.
Creature would be Christopher Barry's final Doctor Who assignment, after many years of involvement on the show - save for the 1995 video spin-off Downtime production. He had worked on The Daleks, The Rescue, The Romans, The Savages, Power of the Daleks, The Daemons, The Mutants, Robot and The Brain of Morbius. He later said that he had not enjoyed working with Tom Baker on this story, noting how much the actor had changed for the worse since they had last worked together.
Next time: There's more drama going on behind the scenes than there is in front of the cameras. It's a nightmare for everyone...