Matt Jones has Doctor Who in his DNA. His first work in words was in Doctor Who Magazine, and he went on to write novels in the Virgin New Adventures series during Doctor Who’s hiatus years before moving into television. 

He’s a writer who knows his stuff when it comes to the Doctor Who universe. 

Which is probably at least one of the major reasons why his Series 2 two-part story, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit stood out then and stands out now as a significant highlight of the year. 

Sure, the main thrust of the second series was to introduce David Tennant’s Doctor, bring back the Cybermen, embody Torchwood, and bring us into a full on-screen conflict between the Daleks and the Cybermen. But as a mid-series highlight, Jones’ two-parter remains eminently rewatchable, rich in character, and at least a little terrifying.

A Tricky Transition

Here’s the thing, though. Many fans will tell you that the story has an epic first episode, revealing a ridiculous planet held in gravitational orbit around a black hole, and an apparent slave-class of creatures called the Ood working for the intrepid explorers who  have come to watch star systems tear themselves apart in the black hole… and then falls into the Doctor Who trope of a whole lot of crawling through ducts and abseiling into holes to fill time in the second half. 

They’ll tell you that, and they won’t be entirely wrong. A little uncharitable, to be sure, but not absolutely, categorically, 100% all the way… wrong.

And while we’re at it, a lot of the reasons the story worked on screen are factors of its omnipotent point of view. We see archaeologist Toby Zed being terrifyingly possessed by a malevolent entity, though we only initially hear its voice. We see Toby go on to cause the death of engineer Scooti Manista. We eventually see Rose Tyler save the universe by jetissoning the actual Satan of myth and legend into the heart of a black hole. And so on.

So it would seem to be logical for Jones, in writing the novelization of his story, to take the same tack, so as to be able to deliver these key moments of drama, peril and impact that made the TV version work.

He’s Better Than That

Jones absolutely doesn’t do that here.

And the book is so much better than it would have been as a result.

Jones takes us into the lives of the three human survivors, Zachary Cross Flane, Danny Bartock, and Ida Scott, and has them giving evidence to an inquiry agent (voiced by former Doctor Who companion actress Maureen O’Brien), explaining the events of the impossible planet, the Ood possession by the Beast, and the eventual escape thanks to the Doctor as they understand it, which is to say imperfectly and missing a lot of the detail that made the TV version such a dark and spine-tingling joy.

A bold move. But a foolish one? 

In other hands, probably. 

But this is Jones’ playground, and we’re just invited guests in it. 

The Rich History of the Ood

One of the joys here is that while when it was written and broadcast, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit was a one-off story, by the time Jones came to novelize the story, the Ood’s second act, Planet of the Ood, telling the story of the Doctor’s subsequent involvement in their being freed from a horrific state of slavery to a human corporation, had been broadcast – as had their eventual involvement with the events leading to the Tenth Doctor’s death and regeneration in The End of Time.

That gave Jones a lot of additional room to expand the story of The Satan Pit, and he uses it here to something like the best effect in the recent history of Doctor Who novelizations. 

First of all, Jones gives all the characters a lot more backstory than they ever had the chance to show on-screen. Young, seemingly cocky Danny Bartock is revealed to be an insecure and slightly incel-adjacent virgin, who only joined the team as a way to meet girls (and then was infuriated when Scooti Manista spotted him a mile off and got together with someone else).

Ida Scott is shown to be running away from the reality of her brilliant father’s dementia, and the hollowed-own diminishment it brings. And Zachary Cross Flane lives forever in the shadow of the dead captain he idolised, feeling ill-prepared and psychologically ill-suited to sitting in her chair in her absence.

While the on-screen version alluded to some of these things by having the voice of the Beast taunt them all obliquely with knowledge of their secrets, here, things are brought out into the light as they only would be when our three survivors are trying to prove their version of events, to prevent themselves being carted off to prison and sued back to the Stone Age for the apparently wanton destruction of a perfectly serviceable Sanctuary base.

Of course, the Doctor could straighten everything out with a judicious appearance. Buuuut he’s not about to do that.

The Satan Plot-Hole?

That leaves a potentially problematic huge hole in the story – we want our heroes to receive a fair hearing and the justice they deserve, especially after the harrowing events of tangling with the Actual Devil and his Ood army. 

But as the book goes on, using its testamentary format to show us the same events from three different points of view, you’ll grow increasingly certain that the aftermath of events on the impossible planet are going to be worse for the survivors than any death they could have met while on or beneath its surface.

You grow genuinely concerned for them, and you actively worry that the moral of the story will end up being one of those rare but salutary lessons in how things fall apart in the Doctor’s wake once he’s flown off to his next adventure.

But it’s there, in that seemingly huge plot-hole (or indeed, plot-pit) that Jones plays his most audacious hand, bringing a post-Planet of the Ood solution seemingly out of thin air with such a symphonic, soaring sense of rightness, you might actually shed a tear or two while you punch the air. 

Meeting The Doctor Challenge

The challenge of writing Doctor Who, to paraphrase later showrunner Steven Moffat, is that you have to be at least as clever as the cleverest life form in the room. 

That challenge has rarely been met as well as Matt Jones meets it here. No, we’re absolutely not going to spoiler it for you, because the ending is so good, it would be practical heresy to do so. Just take it on trust – if you’ve read this far into an audiobook review, you probably want to listen to the book, and when you do, you’ll be grateful that the ending comes as such a glorious, shimmering surprise to you. 

When it comes to the voices, The Satan Pit is something a little out of the ordinary. Most recent BC audionovelizations have one, usually impressive, anchoring voice to guide you through the story. Having Claire Rushbrook and Ronny Jhutti give voice to the memories of their TV characters (Scott and Bartock respectively), while Silas (Voice of the Ood) Carson adds texture as Cross Flane and Mr Jefferson, gives the audio version of the story a rich sense of connection to the broadcast version. 

Kafka’s Satan Pit

But it also gives it a licence to be grittier than that TV version, revealing their characters not just as they appeared on screen, but as they each react to the situation in which they find themselves, facing incarceration and hefty fines, and being interrogated by inspectors who know how to look for insincerity in their statements.  

And adding in Maureen O’Brien as a fourth voice, that of the state that’s aiming to punish these survivors with the improbable story, makes this audionovelization feel especially broad and particularly intimate at one and the same time.

That allows an additional strand of the expanded story to come fully to the fore – will any of our heroes crack, take the easy option of claiming the others are lying, and so get a lighter sentence? Having been tempted by the Beast, lost friends and colleagues, and having no evidence of the presence of this mysterious ‘Doctor’ that features in their memories of events, will any of them crumble, or will they stay true to what they know happened, despite both its fundamental improbability and the weight of interrogation and consequence they face?

Think The Satan Pit, but with added Kafka.

Again, the solution that Jones delivers here elevates the book beyond the already high standards of the TV version, and Rushbrook’s reading of Ida Scott’s reaction to the solution in particular will be where you start to tear up and punch the air.

The point is that however hard-bitten and cynical you are, you probably will do both of those things. 

So even though this is a version of The Satan Pit that excises all the chills of Toby Zed’s early possession by the Beast, and focuses as it must on the experiences of those who survive the story, the ending will make you feel like you got surprisingly more than you bargained for – in the best of all possible ways. Tony Fyler

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