The arrival of Douglas Adams as script-editor pushed Graham Williams' penchant for humour to the forefront of the series, and as such Season 17 is still a very divisive era. One of the key factors to enjoying these stories is to appreciate the fine relationship between the fourth Doctor and the second Romana. It's not so much the romantic undertones (I personaly believe they were involved in some sense of the word, but that's hardly important), as their whole attitude. It's rather reminiscent of the atmosphere in the Avengers episodes where Emma Peel and John Steed just seem to be an autonomous pair of soul-mates out for adventure, taking risks in their stride and remaining largely unflustered, just out for fun and keeping themselves enterained. Of course, the parallel does fall down a little due to the decision to make sure Romana gets terrified, in a very un-Emma way, at least once per story, which is a shame as it interferes with the feeling of fun.

Along with "Destiny of the Daleks", "The Creature from the Pit" is probably one of the most evident examples of Adams' style of humour seeping into the script (excepting his two credited stories; oddly, "City of Death" is low on Adamisms). The two most obvious manifestations in "Creature" are Organon, every inch Slartibartfast aside from the different occupations, and the use of prosaic dialogue (such as the "place of death", so-called because "anyone found there is put to death"). There's also a glorious part where The Doctor falls partway down the titular pit. Hanging from a rope, he rummages in his pocket, and produces a book named Everest in Easy Stages. But it's in Tibetan. Another rummage, and he finds a copy of How to Learn Tibetan. Illogical, for sure, and it contradicts minor continuity points, but it's very, very funny.

Another Williams staple is present, the straight, joyless villain to contrast with the smiling, fun heroes - in this case Lady Adrasta. The character is given a decent motive (decent as in believable), and Frances Farmer gives a good, strong performance, putting in just the right amount of pantomime-villain touches without losing any of her menace. The dangerous villain, and her similarly nasty side-kick Karela, do well to avoid sending up their roles, which works nicely when played against Tom Baker (on his usual fine form). Geoffrey Bayldon is on very fine form as the sweet Organon, and his scenes with Baker are a joy. Bayldon plays the character as a slightly dazed old man, channelling Terry Jones rather well. The support cast are only really let down by the cheesy bandits, who serve little purpose after capturing (and losing) Romana. While the decision to play Torvin as Fagin does keep up the literary refencing of the Williams era (as opposed to the cinematic totems followed by Phillip Hinchcliffe), it does come across as a little artificially silly, and John Bryans isn't able to make the character cunning, as opposed to stupid.

Even K9 is fairly well used, on David Brierly's debut. While there's, as usual by this stage, a device to keep him knocked out for a fair portion of the story, at least this time it's more intentive than his batteries just going flat. The Wolfweeds are rather good - the idea of mobile tumbleweeds is novel, and really shouldn't have worked, but it does - it's an interestingly different monster. It might just be me, but the production values for this story really aren't that bad at all. The sets are decent (notably the jungle on Chloris), even if the pit itself looks a little artificial. Costuming isn't bad, and even Erato (another decent attempt at creating a novel monster) is much better than his reputation. The communications scenes are ripe for innuendo, but don't really get in the way.

The script, aside maybe from the superfluous bandits, is pretty good, and the plot has a decent twist (the Tythonians' retaliation) that the conclusion is kept interesting even after Adrasta's relatively early departure. The embellishments to the dialogue get it through any slow moments, and the story is a pleasant slice of fun.

Review written: 09/07/2006
"Nightmare of Eden" VHS @ Amazon.co.uk