‘Doctor Who: The Satan Pit’ – Matt Jones (BBC Books)

 


Page Count: 206 Pages

Regular visitors to the blog (and casual visitors too, this blog has been around for a little while now…) will know that this ‘Doctor Who’ fan loves the show even more when things suddenly veer into horror territory. It’s not ‘cosmic horror’ in the truest sense of the word but definitely a reminder of just how alien aliens can be when you’re discovering them for the first time. ‘Image of the Fendahl’, ‘Full Circle’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’ spring to mind. Anyway…

It’s no surprise then that ‘The Impossible Planet’ and ‘The Satan Pit’ were two early favourites in the new series (although I say that, how old are those episodes now?) and when I realised that they were getting their own novelization? I settled down to wait, not for that long as it turned out ;o)

Again, regular visitors will know that I’m always keen to settle down with one of the new ‘Doctor Who’ novelizations; books that are happy to expand on things rather than just relay what happened on the screen. ‘The Satan Pit’ was certainly prepared to take things in a slightly different direction to the TV episodes. I’m not sure how well it worked, luckily the book already had a decent plot to work with…

The Doctor and Rose travel to Krop Tor – an impossible planet orbiting a black hole, defying the laws of physics. With the TARDIS lost to them, trapped with a crew of human explorers and their alien servants, the Ood, they find ancient ruins… and something far older and darker stirring beneath the surface.

Whispers speak of a malevolent force imprisoned since before time – something that even the Doctor fears. As seismic horrors rise and minds begin to fracture, one terrifying question remains: what if the Devil is real?

I’ve got a lot of time for how Matt Jones chooses to tell the tale here, with the Sanctuary Base survivors forced to tell their tale to a committee while the only people who can corroborate their tale are nowhere to be found. Travelling in time and space will do that…

It felt like a really fresh approach to telling a ‘Doctor Who’ tale as well as offering a little closure for three characters who deserved it. More importantly, it really captures a lot of those chilling moments, that you see on the screen, as well as inviting you to consider some of the stuff that the Doctor comes out with while fighting to keep morale up. Here’s a book that immerses you, in much the same way that the TV serial does, and that was exactly what I was after. Yep, definitely happy on that front.

It’s a bit of a shame then that although this approach doesn’t exactly hamstring the plot, it does cause it to stumble a bit. When you’re telling a tale from certain perspectives, you automatically limit just how much story you are able to tell and that sense of limitation does come across here. The one character whose story would have been really interesting to hear dies at the end so doesn’t get to be part of the testimony, of the survivors, and that was a real opportunity missed to see him fall to the villain of the piece. And there comes a point where it feels like Matt Jones realised that if none of the three narrators actually saw the Doctor face off against the ‘Devil’, that confrontation technically can’t be included (which is a huge problem for obvious reasons). It is included but it really feels shoehorned in and almost going directly against what Jones was aiming for. Like I said, it’s a shame the book ends on that note as it was shaping up really well up until that point.

‘The Satan Pit’ has the fortune of having a decent plot for its foundation; that counts for a hell of a lot here and like I said, the book really draws you in. While I enjoyed the execution of that plot for the most part, the books very structure took it up a blind alley that robbed the ending of the impact that it deserved. ‘Six of one’, and all that… ‘The Satan Pit’ was still a decent way to spend an evening though.

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