5G1 - The Creature From The Pit 1

Let's mention the awful bits of The Creature From The Pit and get them out of the way, shall we? Surprisingly, most of what I don't like about Creature only occurs during the opening TARDIS scene. Lalla Ward's hair and dress do not flatter her slim figure at all (it's interesting to note that Ward and the costume designer had a falling out over the costume, and the result of that spat led to Ward having more say about her costumes in future. The next story in production was, of course, City of Death, which, as noted before, features the best Romana costume of them all).

The Doctor is being read a nursery rhyme by K-9, which is just silly without being entertaining or funny. Speaking of K-9, K-9 is speaking differently these days, thanks to John Leeson leaving and David Brierly arriving as the new voice of the robot dog. No disrespect to Brierly's performance, but it's just not K-9. It's like when Barney Rubble was voiced by Daws Butler in place of Mel Blanc for a while, or when Coy and Vance replaced Bo and Luke Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard.

And then, in another in a line of Graham Williams's obsessive explanations for the TARDIS landing on a new planet, Romana discovers a distress beacon that has never been used on the TARDIS before (and, no doubt, never will again) which brings the TARDIS to Chloris, a planet inhabited by stern women and grubby bandits, the latter of who are not at all funny, despite their best efforts.

Okay, so I guess that was actually a lot that I'm not in favour of in this story thus far. One thing that genuinely shines, though? The scenes set outdoors on Chloris as shot at Ealing Film Studios, which rivals some of the material shot at those same studios for Planet of Evil.