"Impossible Planet"/"Satan Pit" reaction

[ghost2]

Decided to set down my thoughts on this two-parter. They are not positive.



I wanted to enjoy these episodes a lot more, but I just didn't. Frankly, I thought "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" were boring. And I feel like one of only about five people in the world who holds this opinion. Virtually everyone else is raving about how great they thought the episodes were. I. Don't. Get. It. At all.

I didn't have any interest in the members of the base crew. Other viewers have compared those characters to the ones on "Firefly," which for me is a bad thing. IMO, "Firefly" was an intensely mediocre series that deserved to be short-lived, and it would have died quietly if it hadn't had Joss Whedon's name attached to it. (Blasphemy, I know. Strike me down now, because I have spoken out against the greatness that is "Firefly." /sarcasm)

I'm not even sure which part I liked less. Possibly "The Satan Pit," though, since it featured long, dull, talky sections with Rose stuck in the base and on a rocket with a bunch of characters we will probably never see again, and long, talky sections with the Doctor in a pit with a creature we will also probably never see again. At least David Tennant did his best to make his scenes interesting, and didn't completely fail. But I could *really* do without any more of the "human race is so remarkable" speeches.

Another dialogue lowlight: As the Doctor prepared to descend into the pit, he asked Ida to tell Rose... and then there was that awful pause before he added that Rose would know what he meant. Cue shippers squealing, "He meant that he WUBS Rose!" Ugh! Sorry, I don't want to be hit over the head with it. Subtlety is so much more, you know, SUBTLE than that.

Even the action sequences with Rose, the crew, and the Ood left me cold. I knew Rose wasn't going to die in this episode, and I didn't care if anyone else did.

Speaking of Rose, I really think that reading other people's opinions has negatively colored my feelings about her. There is a lot of backlash against this character, so I went back and re-watched "Rose" just to help myself remember that I liked her back then and I still do, most of the time. Unfortunately, there wasn't much she could do to make me like these episodes. I simply thought that the plot was a bizarre bore and the base characters were an uninteresting bunch who hogged too much of the screentime.

Summation: After watching "The Girl in the Fireplace," I didn't think I would dislike another episode of this series quite so much. I was wrong. My list of Ten episodes, in order of preference, goes as follows:

School Reunion
Christmas Invasion
New Earth
Tooth and Claw
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel (tie)
Idiot's Lantern
Girl in the Fireplace
Impossible Planet
Satan Pit

Here's hoping that next week's episode is a great one, to make up for the disappointment of this week.

Fortunately, my "Who" viewing experience this weekend was not a total wash. I saw "Logopolis" again for the first time in about 18 years and that was lovely. Then I caught the first part of "Castrovalva" as well.

Comments

[livii.livejournal.com]

I didn't like the comparisons to Firefly either - I thought that was an intense letdown that they would copy that style so closely. No Firefly fan here. Still, Danny and the captain who I want to call Rocco from Casanova managed to catch my attention, independently.

Your list is interesting; I liked these two a lot, so they're higher up; the only one I disliked this year was GitF, but New Earth I wasn't too keen on either. I don't know which one I'd put first, though!

[ghost2.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have been more positive about the episodes. They just almost completely failed to work for me, while most people seemed to love them. :( Oh, well. At least I got to see "Logopolis" again. That pretty much made up for my disappointment with "The Satan Pit."

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Following you here from thesixthdoctor

Dunno if it makes you feel better or worse, but I pretty much agree with your ep reactions here...

[ghost2.livejournal.com]

Actually, it makes me feel better. :) So far, hardly anyone has seemed to even come close to agreeing with my episode reactions and it's tended to make me feel like I've missed things that are really obvious to most other viewers.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Ah, you see, when everybody else disagrees with me, I tend to think it's because I'm smarter than them ;)