What's Wrong With... The Creature From The Pit

Maybe quicker to write about what was right about it...

For the sake of completism, let's start with Erato.

Mat Irvine carried the can for the poor realisation of the titular creature, but he - quite rightly - said that the blame really ought to lie with the script editor and producer for having approved the story as it stood in the first place.

This was a time of high inflation, and this story was supposed to be a lower budgeted all-studio serial - so why agree to a gigantic monster under these conditions?

The writer assumed that some sort of model would be used, and indeed there is a model of Erato - but it only features briefly.

We get a huge green balloon (literally - weatherman Michael Fish spotted its weather balloon origins). To make it more interesting, and because the script called for it, at least one appendage was required.

Unfortunately, this made the monster look like massive green male genitalia...

Often a bad VFX can be carried by the performances of the actors interacting with it - but here things aren't helped at all by Tom Baker. Season 17 was when he was at his most out of control, fighting directors and refusing to take things seriously. Graham Williams had given up the ghost with his star by this point, casting longing glances at the Exit, but Baker was being encouraged to go over the top by his co-star and the script editor - one Douglas Adams.

The scene everyone mentions is when Baker appears to fellate the creature (see above).

One of the VFX assistants claimed that they took their stanley-knife to the prop as soon as recording ended, but this can't be true as it featured in the Blackpool Exhibition.

On to the story. 

Just how did they get Erato out of the Pit in the fourth episode?

Why has Erato not realised that it's killing people when trying to communicate with them. It's a bit slow on the uptake.

The society on Chloris is obviously matriarchal, yet the Huntsman ends up in charge at the conclusion. Adrasta is killed and Karela locked up, but what happened to the younger woman? She just vanishes from the story.

Isn't giving the Huntsman the top job a bit like making the guy who walks the White House dogs the President of the USA? What exactly were his qualifications for being placed in charge?

If you are not a fan of under-graduate humour (like JNT, Barry Letts and Chris Bidmead) then the whole "Everest In Easy Stages" section simply isn't funny, and undermines the drama.

The Doctor simply walking through the supposedly unbreakable wall is embarrassing.

I'm no physicist, but I'm told that the whole wrapping of the neutron star in aluminium would never work. Neutron stars are a lot bigger than what we see here, so you couldn't weave a coating that quickly anyway.

(And why couldn't Erato have woven something useful that might have helped it escape from the Pit).

Why did the Tythonians not bother to check and see what happened to their ambassador. Launching a star at Chloris when it's imprisoned there is going to kill it as well as its captors.

The other thing everyone talks about is the unpleasant anti-Semitism of the stereotyped bandits, though this needs to be considered in the context of the period in which the story was made. Various versions of Oliver Twist were available, and productions of The Merchant of Venice being staged, at the time.