One of my favourite episodes of all time. So peak.
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Absolute favorite two parter!
It’s late, but I’d feel bad saying nothing! One of the rare 5/5s for me! Possibly the only story to do a plotline with The Devil From The Bible that I enjoy. Incredibly hard to pull that off.
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Great story. Tense and scary. The Ood are probably one of the best NewWho monsters (especially the design). I think this is a really good example of how the Whoniverse can dip its toe into fantasy.
Nitpicks:
- it would be great if extraneous crew member #1 and extraneous crew member #2 had some lines so their deaths had a bit more impact
- I always find it annoying when the Doctor takes losing their tardis to mean being trapped in whatever time he’s in. He’s well aware of other methods of time travel like vortex manipulators.
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Well, I don’t have a lot to add to what’s been said above. This is a solid two-parter!
The Impossible Planet = 8/10
Review of The Impossible Planet by MrColdStream · TARDIS Guide
Tennant & Piper are great with the guest cast, but their smugness when together annoys me (much less here, though). The Ood are a brilliant new creation; Gabriel Woolf is an all-time great in another superb voice performance; the stuff with the old text and Toby’s possession is genuinely scary, and the setting and atmosphere are effective. This also feels like it’s trying to be properly scientific, with some of the dialogue and the way it handles black holes.
The Satan Pit= 8/10
Review of The Satan Pit by MrColdStream · TARDIS Guide
The second part is almost as good. There’s some melodrama between Ten and Rose, but Ten gets some of his strongest moments here, during the scene where he ascends to the pit as well as during the long monologue he has to the Beast. Dome good action with the Ood. The resolution feels a bit rushed.
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Didn’t they have that in the Tardisode for The Impossible Planet? Or am I way off? 
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Oh, finally the first “Masterpiece” for the Tennant Era, honestly it’s been a while since I watched it, but I can’t think much of the issues I have (besides the lovey-dovey of 10Rose, but the Story is so good, I don’t really care much about their banter). Having Woolf return to voice the Beast was just a clever Choice, his Voice fits the role so well and while the Beast with its effects aged a bit poor, I still find it quite impressive and especially ambitious. The Soundtrack is great and well the Story does so much right!
Suspense? Yes there is!
Great Designs? The Oods are probably one if not nuwho’s best alien design we got, so good!
And a great side cast? Definitely, which can be quite rare for NuWho
Dare I say, this also has one of the very great Cliffhanger of NuWho!
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This is definitely one of the best tenth doctor stories. It’s just great. Spooky, with the build-up to the beast, the possession of Toby and the ood and the cave being very well done. The atmosphere sells it very well. I also like how sad it is, often taking a moment to mourn characters, that are mostly well fleshed-out and especially the scene at the end, when they acknowledge the ood. I love Rose in this story, especially in her interactions with/about the ood, I think her kindness is really beautiful. And the doctor has wonderful, very ‘doctory’ scenes too, in his deliberations on faith.
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But, and here’s the BIG question, are they monsters? Are they really? 
I have my own thoughts on this matter (I mean, of course I do. How could I not?) and will probably have to delve into the Ood sooner rather than later.
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Here it is, one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. A real classic. This is so atmospheric, the production design is fantastic, the characters are all distinct (apart from a couple ‘red shirts’), the threat is very real, it dips into some philosophical musings & both Piper & Tennant are great. One I haven’t watched in a while but so glad to return to. I wish we had more 2 parters.
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Ruddy adore it. One of the best. It’s even finale-worthy, with the stakes it has. So many great characters and moments. Vastly underrated too. It sucks that it aired during the height of summer, but I love that it aired the weekends either side of 6/6/06.
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I’d never considered the Ood balls [1] going “boing!” and now I can’t unhear it 
that sounds so wrong… ↩︎
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I don’t really consider the Ood enemies…
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Owns bones.
These episodes actually do own all of the bones.
You there reading this, your fibia belongs to this episode, your tibia too. In fact your whole skeletal structure is property of the Beast and company.
Honestly, I’m pretty tempted to just leave that as my thoughts. But I guess I’ll give some reasons why I like this story so much.
- The premise is immediately intriguing
- The setting of a planet that orbits a black hole instantly makes the episode feel dangerous
- Losing the TARDIS at the start only adds to the sense of danger
- One of the best supporting casts in the show. I like all of the Sanctuary Base crew
- The Ood are such a striking alien design. It’s easy to see why they became probably the most iconic new aliens from the first RTD era
- One of my favourite cliffhangers in the modern era
- An exciting Ood chase in the second part
- The way the team all work together to solve problems under Rose’s leadership
- The Doctor musing on the nature of belief
- David Tennant is great at monologuing, which is handy because for a lot of the second episode he’s basically talking to nobody
- The way Cap’n Zach lists all of the Ood seperately when logging the deceased, and gives them all honours
There’s a whole lot to like in this story, and not a lot to dislike. I’d give this story two thumbs up, but unfortunately I can’t. Not because it doesn’t deserve it, but because the Beast has taken back possession of my thumb bones. I’ll never play tiddlywinks again.
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This is the superior two-parter of Series 2 for me, no question. It’s a base under siege story and it’s great. I loved the character dynamics between all of the crew, and by extension their interactions with Rose and the Doctor, like how Rose takes on a leadership role in the Doctor’s absence or Ten’s conversations with Ida. I thought the religious imagery was a neat element, if a tad overbearing at times. The Ood’s appearance here is an interesting introduction but the slavery aspect is a bit downplayed, which is a shame. However, the score for this story is fantastic.
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Not much to say on this, but having rewatched it the other day, it did occur to me how The Beast now only follows up on Sutekh in being voiced by Gabriel Woolf, and prefaces where we teasingly go in The Legend of Ruby Sunday… But, actually, the story is very careful about not saying whether or not The Beast is an actual mythic deity, or an alien imprisoned by other aliens. Rather like how Series 14’s going for some sort of blurry line on magic and science & mythical and extraterrestrial.
It’s hard now to look at The Beast and not think of Sutekh - not out of fannish desire to connect things, but because it kinda makes a bit of sense out of Russell’s claim that he thought ever since he was a child that Sutekh had survived and become something actually genuinely god-like. This story plays with belief just as much as that later stuff will, and well, that’s just Russell through and through anyway… but it’s interesting how much the Beast and Ood now feel like the direct precursor to Sutekh and the Skullfaces.
Probably not the first to observe all of this, but it fascinates me.
@InterstellarCas On the Ood slavery angle, there was a bit more to that as scripted, by the way. There was a whole backstory even then about them having a hivemind, but the idea was that human colonists had landed and accidentally disrupted it such that the hivemind no longer worked properly. I actually have been pondering that given the upcoming novelisation… It could be reinstated, and tweaked slightly to allow for the idea that that’s just the ‘public version of events’ to then tie to Planet of the Ood.
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Gotcha, that’s neat. I didn’t know that, thanks for the tidbit. That would totally be interesting to see in a novelization.
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