Doctor Who (2005) 2-09: The Satan Pit

Episode:

719

|

Serial:

174

|

Writer:

Matt Jones

|

Director:

James Strong

|

Air Date:

10-Jun-2006

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the second half of the second two-parter of the second series of Doctor Who, The Satan Pit. Just in time for its 20th anniversary today.

Both parts were written by Matt Jones, and this turned out to be his only work for the series. On the plus side, this meant he never wrote a bad story. In fact if you average his IMDb scores he's one of the best writers Doctor Who ever had with 8.7! He's right up there with Paul Cornell (8.8), Steven Moffat (8.4), Phil Ford (8.2), Neil Gaiman (8.1) and Jamie Mathieson (8.0).

(If you're curious, Russell T Davies averages 7.7 for his Doctor Who episodes and Chris Chibnall has 6.4.)

Speaking of ratings, this episode apparently had the lowest viewer count of the Russell T Davies era, and wasn't beaten for 9 years, until The Witch's Familiar, when the series' ratings finally began falling for whatever reason. Other low points for viewing figures include: Bad Wolf, Blink and the Silence in the Library two-parter. Seriously.

I heard a pretty convincing explanation for why this happened though: they all aired around the same point in June, the same time that I'm publishing this in fact. So it was probably a really nice day outside.

Okay, there will be SPOILERS below, but nothing for later stories. In fact I can't even remember what episodes came after this! Hang on, I remember what they are now. Oh no.

Doctor Who (2005) 2-08: The Impossible Planet

Episode:

718

|

Serial:

174

|

Writer:

Matt Jones

|

Director:

James Strong

|

Air Date:

03-Jun-2006

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about another Doctor Who two-parter, starting with The Impossible Planet! They didn't give us much of a break after the Cybermen two-parter, all we got was The Idiot's Lantern and then they went right back into another epic story. I guess they wanted to get this out just before the 6th of the 6th, 2006. For... reasons.

The season's basically structured the same as last year though, and the series is going to continue giving us three two-parters a year (more or less) until a couple of seasons into Steven Moffat era. After that point they threw the idea of a regular format out the window, with some seasons having no two-parters, some being all two-parters, and one being a six parter! Honestly, it's very true to the original series, which was also all over the place.

Anyway, this is the first episode to be written by Matt Jones and also the first to be directed by James Strong. So next time I write about one of their episodes I can mention that they did this too. Though Matt Jones had written a Doctor Who novel, Bad Therapy, plus some articles for Doctor Who Magazine, so he wasn't completely new to the universe.

There will be SPOILERS below for the episode, but it's actually June 2006 for me right now so I can't give away anything that happens next. Just ignore all that stuff I just mentioned about future two-parters.