Doctor Who S02 E09 – The devil you meet.

Previously: A black hole, a satan pit and the TARDIS lost in a really big ditch.
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The Satan Pit

Marines: We had such a lovely time last episode, I’m feeling all giddy about this recap! Shoutout to the, um, science side of that recap (basically Mairead…) for the insight into black holes. (K: SERIOUSLY. I may be shitty at replying to comments, but those comments were the freaking bomb.) Now, let’s all watch as the show ignores all that science and gets to the FEELS shall we?

Oh, we cut from really extensive previouslies to the credits:

 

We pick right up with the Ood cornering Rose, Young Bill Nighy [YBN] and a woman I don’t remember at all.

Kirsti: Thank you for maintaining the nickname Young Bill Nighy. It makes me happy. 

Mari: You’d do the same for me.

YBN says to open fire and they rain bullets on the poor, possessed Ood. In the command deck, the captain is yelling maybe-to-himself that they are stabilizing and back in orbit. Back with Rose, we don’t actually see the dead Ood, but we can assume. She runs to grab a communicator and stars yell-asking if the Doctor or Ida can hear her.

Danny comes through the door, freaking out about the approaching Ood. Young Bill Nighy seems like he’s going to take out all 50 Ood single-handedly. Danny tries to explain that they are using the interface device as a weapon. Young Bill Nighy don’t care. He opens the door anyway and the first thing that happens is that the background lady gets killed. DAMN YOU, YOUNG BILL NIGHY. But thanks for the chuckles when you start shooting your gun. I… don’t know why there is this level of bad special effects for shooting a gun.

The captain runs out of the command deck but there are Ood out there, waiting for him, so he turns right back around. He seals off the door and hears over the com-system that the other group of crew members is doing the same. Young Bill Nighy killed all the Ood. All the line-speaking characters survived. (K: What a crazy random happenstance!) YBN suggests strategy nine in light of the emergency and the captain agrees. Rose says she hasn’t been able to reach the Doctor but after a beat he’s all, “no! We’re here! Sorry about that.”

Dude. She’s been yelling for you for ages! I’m not even going to ask for your excuse, ’cause I don’t want to hear it.

K: I must say, I did giggle when there was a little squeal on the communicator to block out when Rose swore at him. 

Mari: Both the Doctor and Ida are fine, but the Hellmouth 2.0 seal is open and all that’s left is a forever-deep chasm. The captain asks if anything came out. The Doctor says no, there is no sign of the beast. Rose reminds them it called itself Satan and the Doctor tells her to keep it together. She looks for reassurance that there is no Satan, but the Doctor doesn’t answer her.

The captain recommends that they withdraw. Ida’s all, “AW MAN! But we drilled all the way down to this creepy chasm!” The captain turns that recommendation into an order. They are about one inch from falling into a black hole and he’s initiating strategy nine. In response, Ida just turns off her communicator. She asks the Doctor what he thinks. The Doctor takes a step closer to the chasm and repeats some of the beast’s words: I am the temptation. Ida wonders why it hasn’t shown itself. The Doctor wonders if maybe they opened the jail but the cell is still locked. Ida says she’ll go down. The Doctor admires the adventurous human spirit. The impulse to stand in front of a chasm and go over and go on. …but maybe the beast is counting on that. So, for maybe the first time in his life, the Doctor is suggesting they retreat.

K: Does this mean that Team Heartless Cow isn’t human? Because there is literally no way I would go down there. And if that makes me not human, I’m totally okay with that… 

Mari: Yeah, I’m Team Feels and I wouldn’t go down there. I think there is a level of Team Chicken Shit that transcends all.

Also, this little bit here reminded me of how much Sweeney disliked these monologue moments, which tend to be one of my favorite quirky things about the Doctor. He really does enjoying this kind of out loud observation, as if the whole world is there for him to ponder and pick apart and explore. And isn’t it just? I think it is a character quirk too. That may partially be because Tennant does them very well. He plays the Doctor with a certain eccentricity and earnestness that jive with this kind of thing.

The Doctor calls up to Rose and tells her they are coming back. She’s super excited but then jumps up one second later as Young Bill Nighy trains his gun on Toby, he of the A+ creepy smile. Rose steps up and says that YBN is going to have to shoot her too, if that’s the case. Also, she reminds him that the creepy face markings are gone, so clearly Toby is safe. YBN threatens that any sign of trouble is going to result in a dead Toby.

K: Rose. Girl. All of this is a freaking terrible plan. I mean, I’m not saying murdering Toby’s face off is an A+ plan. And I love that Rose is all “You think you’re in charge because you have a gun and a penis? LOL NOPE, you answer to me.” But “NO, WE HAVE TO LET HIM BE AN EQUAL MEMBER OF THE TEAM!” is decidedly not good and doomed to failure.

Mari: It’s a total Rose move, though. Even as she gets better at the whole action-adventure thing, there is a base level of naivety there.

Rose asks Toby if he’s okay or if he remembers anything. All Toby remembers is that it was fury and death and definitely the devil. Rose gives him a hug. I really like this moment. “Oh, the devil? You need a hug.”

The Doctor and Ida are walking back to their… epic elevator (?). He asks what strategy nine is and she explains that they are going to get safe and then open the airlocks, so that all the Ood go flying out. (K: NGL, this episode gives me a lot of Ood feels…) (M: Same.) The Doctor clearly isn’t happy with the mass murder plan.

Ida calls up to the station and tells them to bring their epic elevator up. Young Bill Nighy counts them down and as soon as he gets to 1, the entire station powers down. The screens around the station all flicker and come up with images of the Ood  standing around. Through them, the Satan Beast says he’s the darkness and he’s really going to have stop giving himself titles.

K: I still feel like he’s not quite as gloaty as The First though…

Mari: Who could be?

The captain identifies himself (Zachary!) (also saying he represents the Torchwood archive, so shots!) and asks the creature to do the same. It’s all like, “HELLO? Satan Beast Temptation Darkness. Are you paying attention?” The Doctor says there are a lot of religions. Which Satan is he? Through all the Ood, the Satan Beast Temptation Darkness replies, “all of them.”

K: So he IS Mark Pellegrino? Excellent. 

Mari: The Satan Beast Temptation Darkness recognizes that the Doctor must know him, but it also knows about the Doctor. It knows the Doctor killed all his people. The Doctor wants to know how the Satan Beast Temptation Darkness ended up on the impossible planet. SBTD says the disciples of the light chained him up on this planet back “before time.” The Doctor asks WTF that means (with that exact inflection, I swear) and the SBTD unhelpfully replies, “before time.”

What he means is before this universe was created. The Doctor proclaims that impossible and the Ood Up Front channeling the SBTD cocks its head and asks, “is that your religion?” SBTD says that the Doctor (Snow) knows nothing and they are all so small: the captain afraid of command, the soldier haunted by the eyes of his wife, the scientist still running from daddy, the little boy who lied, the virgin, and the lost girl, far from home. “The valiant child who will die in battle so very soon.” Rose doesn’t like the sound of that one bit.

K: I totally don’t blame her, but at least it gives her another awesome title to go with The Bad Wolf?? 

Mari: Rose Tyler: Lost Girl, Valiant Child, BAD WOLF.

The Doctor tells her not to listen, but she wants to know what that means. Not that it was particularly cryptic with the whole, “you will die soon,” bit, but okay. I understand wanting to be 1000% clear on that point. The Satan Beast Temptation Darkness says she will die and he will live. The screen cuts away from the Ood to an image of a devil-looking thing, growling.

Everyone starts panicking and talking over each other until the Doctor yells for all of them to calm down, because the SBTD is playing on their basic fears. He tries to give them a, “go human explorers go!” pep talk. Right when he gets to the, “we have each other, we are not alone” part, the cable on the epic elevator snaps. The Doctor and Ida are okay, but now they have no way of getting back up. They have less than an hour left on their air supply. We have less than an hour of the episode left, though, so this might work out okay for them.

K: How fortuitous! 

Mari: The Ood are now using bolt cutters to bust their way through the sealed doors. Rose picks up where the Doctor left off with the pep-talk, saying that clearly the SBTD cut him off because he was making sense. They have to think their way through this. First up, they need power. Captain Zach says they got nothing, but then remembers that their rockets have an independent supply. He calls out orders to Young Bill Nighy and before you can say, “open bypass conduits,” they have the power back on.

Lovely, dear Rose keeps conducting affairs like a BOSS. Like she didn’t just hear she’s going to die soon. (K: Seriously. Rose taking charge was amazing and I loved it.) She puts Young Bill Nighy on an escape plan. She asks Toby to take another look at the stuff he couldn’t translate before. She tells Danny to find a way to stop the Ood.

Down with the Doctor, Ida suggest using all the cable they have to abseil into the pit, even if it’s the last thing they do. The Doctor  is like, “SKKRT. Speak for yourself.” Rose is up there and he’s going to get back to her. Ida insists they go down, but the Doctor says he’ll go pit diving, not her.

Upstairs, Danny’s figured out a way to broadcast a flare that will disrupt the Ood’s telepathy. They have to get to the Ood habitation however. Young Bill Nighy has figured out they can escape via maintenance tunnels, except there isn’t any air in there. Captain Zach says he can manually reroute some oxygen. Rose is a little wary of that bit, but that’s the only plan they have.

The Doctor gets ready to abseil. He says he feels that urge again, to go down. Ida says that urge is genetic heritage from back when they were primates living in the trees. The Doctor doesn’t think so. It’s more than the urge to jump; it’s the urge to fall.

    With that, he jumps.

The Doctor notes that there’s a whole lot of nothing down in the pit and tells Ida to lower him down.

Rose, Danny, Toby and Young Bill Nighy all get into a maintenance shaft and start crawling around. They make it a ways but the Ood have made it into the tunnel as well, and are much better crawlers. Kind of graceful, really. YBN stays behind to hold off the Ood with bullets. Captain Zach is manually opening the gates in each section of the shafts, but YBN doesn’t make it in time. The gate closes just as he gets there. Captain Zach can’t open the gate again without cutting off the oxygen supply for the others. Young Bill Nighy understands. He asks if maybe Captain Zach can suck the remaining air out of the room so he can die that way and not at the hands of an Ood. Captain Zach does so and Young Bill Nighy is no more.

K: Goodbye, friend. Welcome to the Snark Squad Nickname Graveyard. But also, why the hell is suffocating better than being electrocuted by an Ood? Don’t get me wrong, but the latter sounds way less horrific to me… 

Mari: Perhaps it was a principle thing. You don’t kill me, I kill me.

The others are at the final junction and Captain Zach lowers the gate, but the Ood are on the other side. They are trapped but dear Rose figures out they can go up and out and punches the grate above her out of place. Rose and Danny get out first. Toby is alone in the shaft with an Ood. His eyes glow red and he makes a little Aria SHHHH sign at the Ood.

K: See, Rose, I told you it was a terrible idea to save him.

Mari: He climbs out and he runs with Danny and Rose away from the Ood and to their habitation. There, as the Ood close in on them, Danny manages to successfully transmit what I’m guessing is like a crippling dog whistle. I’M SO GOOD AT THIS. Anyway, it works. They all hug in celebration, except Toby’s hug looks extra creepy and insincere now.

The Doctor is meanwhile going on about all the different kinds of devils seen throughout time and space. He wonders if maybe it all came from here, an idea hanging out in the back of every sentient mind. Ida asks if that makes the Satan Beast Temptation Darkness the real, real devil. The Doctor says, “well… if that’s what you want to believe.” For the devil might be just an idea. And then he runs out of cable.

There’s no way of telling how much further down he has left, but the Doctor decides to fall and see. It’s a leap of faith, but the alternative is going back up and dying when he runs out of air. Ida says she doesn’t want to die alone and the Doctor simply replies, “I know.” As he’s unhooking himself, he asks Ida if she subscribes to any particular belief. She was raised “neoclassic” but never really believed. The Doctor asks if that religion has a devil and she says not so much. Only the things that men do. She turns the question around. The Doctor says he believes… he believes he hasn’t seen everything yet. My #teamfeels and #teamwanderlust heart squeezes at the sentiment.

K: I’m decidedly not on #teamfeels 99% of the time, but #teamwanderlust? OH DEAR GOD, YES. Always and forever. So yeah. Heart squeeze.

Mari: He says it’s funny the rules you make and the things you believe. For instance, if the Beast Satan had said it was from beyond the universe, he would’ve believed that, but before the universe? It’s against his rule. “Still, that’s why I keep traveling. To be proven wrong.” The Doctor thanks Ida and then passes on a message.

     

With that he unbuckles himself and falls.

K: That line, that pause? THAT puts me on #teamfeels. And then the falling features hilariously awful special effects and undoes all the feels.

Mari: Just focus on the line.

Just then, the comms are back on and Rose calls down to Ida and the Doctor. Ida tells Rose that the Doctor fell into the pit and she couldn’t stop him. He said her name, though. Rose is stunned. Captain Zach takes the comm from her and tells Ida there is no way to get to her. She sits and starts to cry as she says that the cavern is beautiful. Captain Zach says they are leaving. Ida doesn’t want to hear much more than that. She says goodbye.

Upstairs, Captain Zach orders everyone to the rockets, but Rose says she isn’t going. She’s going to wait for the Doctor. Captain Zach carefully says he’s dead and Rose’s voice cracks as she says he isn’t. They don’t know the Doctor so they can’t know that he isn’t dead. And even if he is, how can she leave him? (K: FEELS 2.0) Captain Zach does not accept this and has Danny and Toby hold her down while he sedates her. They aren’t going to leave her behind. Zach carries her over his shoulder and to the rocket and not a moment too soon because the Ood are stirring.

The Doctor is as well. His space helmet has broken open, but it’s okay, because he can breathe. He tries to tell Ida that, but their communicators aren’t working.

When Rose comes to, the rocket is launching. She protests and finds a gun to hold on Zach, but he calls her bluff. She isn’t going to shoot because it isn’t what the Doctor would want. I get why Zach did this but it doesn’t make it less difficult to watch. Because 1- anytime consent is violated EW  b- we know the Doctor just the same as Rose does and  cat- we actually know the Doctor survived.

In the pit, the Doctor finds the Satan Beast Temptation Darkness. On the rocket, Toby laughs creepily. He tries to play it off like, “yay we escaped!” laughter. (K: NICE TRY, TOBY.) Back in the pit, the Doctor tells the SBTD that he accepts it’s existence, at least in physical form, but nothing more than that. It’s super amusing. The Doctor doesn’t understand, though, because he was given air and a safe landing so clearly he’s needed for something. The SBTD just growls a lot. So much so that the Doctor starts to think maybe the beast can’t talk. He starts trying to work this all out in a really kind of scattered, jumpy way. What he’s seeing is just the beast, the animal body. So where’s the beast’s mind gone? The intelligence? Ooooh no.

On the rocket, devil!Toby is really excited about heading toward Earth.

Pit. Oh goodness, I can’t believe that after typing “pit” so many times, this is the first time I’m thinking of this:

K: FOR SHAME, MARI (she says, not having thought of it either…)

Mari: ANYWAY. The Doctor is looking around at the paintings on the pit walls depicting the defeat and imprisonment of the beast. If the prison was ever opened, the gravity field would collapse and the planet would fall into the black hole. If the beast attempted to escape he would die. But that’s just the body. The devil is an idea. The mind of the beast escaped. The Doctor keeps working it out and next figures that the beast didn’t give him air; it’s jailers did. A chance for someone to stop the beast if it ever did escape. If the Doctor destroys the beast’s jail, it will be destroyed. He lifts a rock and prepares to smash the vases that are set up like a gateway before the beast.

He stops though. If he destroys the jail, he destroys the gravity field. The rocket will lose protection. To destroy the beast, he’ll have to sacrifice Rose.

On the rocket, Rose says that it doesn’t make sense that they escaped. Like the beast wanted them to escape. Toby tells her shut up and starts counting down the time until they are beyond the reach of the black hole.

Pit. The Doctor reiterates the trap. If he kills the beast, he kills Rose. He pauses and then: Except that implies in this big grand scheme of gods and devils that she’s just a victim. But I’ve seen a lot of this universe. 

The Doctor grabs a rock and smashes the vase-prison.

K: Let’s just go ahead and add that “I believe in her” to the list of Things That Give Kirsti Feels, shall we? 

Mari: Added.

In the rocket, alarms start going off. Toby asks what “he’s” doing, meaning the Doctor. Captain Zach says they are falling into the black hole.

Pit. The Doctor says the beast is going into that black hole and he’s riding with it. The beast growls and the Doctor for real, for real growls back. The beast starts burning up.

K: Kind of like a Balrog, but not.

Mari: Rocket. Rose is looking at the window at the falling planet. When she turns back to Toby, he’s got the face squigglies again. He starts going on about all his big bad names again and breathing fire. (K: The fire was oddly hilarious.) Rose spots the bolt gun and picks it up. She shoots the windshield (?) and then unbuckles Toby so that he flies out of the rocket. I’m not sure why everyone else in the rocket is okay? Probably they shouldn’t have been? (K:  CONTRIVANCE!) But it’s cool because they have an emergency shield which is back up pretty quickly. Devil!Toby falls away toward the black hole. But also, so does the rocket.

The impossible planet is falling. The Ood are gathering sadly. Ida passes out. The Doctor runs through the collapsing pit. He runs and runs… straight into the TARDIS. The music swells like a true, loving reunion calls for.

On the rocket, everyone braces themselves to fall into the black hole, but suddenly they stop. Suddenly they are turning away and just in the background, you can make out the noise of the TARDIS. Captain Zach is confused until the Doctor’s voice floods the comm system. The Doctor first asks if there is a Rose Tyler on board and her delight and relief and just FEELS are wonderful.

K: YES. SO MANY FEELS. Also, I really like Rose’s jacket…

Mari: The series of emotions in that gifset, man.

The Doctor offers to trade Rose for Ida, who made it as well. She’s a little oxygen deprived but here’s to hoping there’s no permanent brain damage! The Ood, however, went down with the planet. The Doctor only had time for one trip. (K: POOR OOD…)

We cut to Rose entering the TARDIS. These two have another reunion, another run and hug, another so happy to see you. On the rocket, Captain Zach is trying to get a handle on the whole “blue box” thing. The Doctor comms them and says they’ll be on their way now. Ida asks what the creature was. The Doctor doesn’t know. He couldn’t decipher the writing. It’s okay, though, because the day he knows everything he might as well stop. All the Doctor knows is that they beat it. That’s good enough for him. Rose repeats the beast’s words about her dying in battle and the Doctor said it lied.

Ida has one more question: who are the Doctor and Rose anyway? He smiles and replies, “the stuff of legend.”

Lots of you already said last recap that you love this two-parter and I’m pleased as punch that I did as well. In everything we’ve seen so far in Doctor Who there has always been SOME explanation for everything. I mean, maybe not always a very good one, but one. (Think werewolves are actually alien parasites.) That is the world of Doctor Who, where things might be outlandish, but always explainable. Enter this two-parter and what maybe was and maybe wasn’t Satan.

We’ve seen the Doctor solve every problem set before him, including his own (temporary) mortality. Here, though, not so. The Doctor can’t even process the idea that this best comes from before time, and you can almost hear him thinking, “before Time Lords.” It’s impossible for him to believe.

And what does the Doctor believe? That there are things left in the universe to see and things he is never meant to know. And in Rose. They know each other well enough that she was willing to wait for him on an impossible planet and he was willing to smash up the prison because that’s what she would’ve told him to do anyway.

This is not without a couple of hiccups. I found the first HUMANS WOO! speech very cute and even commented on how true-to-character if felt. There was another speech, though and well. That was too much.

But to end on a positive note, I really liked Ida. I also love Rose a ton in this episode as she took control of the situations she found herself in.

K: I love this episode. Like, a lot. It gives my cold dead heart a lot of feels, and the ambiguities in it are fabulous, as Mari said. Now go read Mari’s wrap up comments again because they’re better than whatever I could say. 

 

Next time on Doctor Who: Things get a little…weird. Weirder than usual weird in S02 E10 – Love and Monsters.