If you ever find yourself in a frustrating debate with a dullard who stubbornly refuses to accept the hype around just how outstanding Tom Baker was as the Doctor, don’t waste your breath arguing with them. Just pop on The Creature from the Pit – and bask in the proverbial mic drop.

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It’s not the finest Fourth Doctor serial – damn good, though it is – but as an advert for Tom Baker’s magnificence, it may well be unsurpassed. If a better showcase of his talents exists then we’ll happily fling ourselves down a pit to watch it.

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From start to finish, Thomas Stewart Baker is on his A-game. His confidence, his swagger, his massive hair. Even his relentless sweating in the scenes in the pit is sensational.

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The Doctor starts this story reading Peter Rabbit with a robot dog, and Baker even manages to make this ridiculous conceit entertaining for the viewer. It’s a hint of the acting masterclass we’re about to be treated to.

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What’s most impressive is that on paper this is a meat-grinder of an acting challenge. The script forces the Doctor to spend vast swathes of the story talking to himself or to an inanimate object. Or blustering his way out of being gruesomely dispatched. He’s faced with giving life to turgid lines like, “It's definitely the shell that's the transmitter. I wonder what it's transmitting, and to whom? Well, I suppose to whatever laid it. That's not a very pleasant thought, is it, Doctor.”

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He manages it in spades.

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Of course it’s unfair but it’s impossible not to speculate how other Doctor actors would approach the material. And none of them would come close to this 10 out of 10 performance.

The Doctor utterly infuriates foes with his charm, his witticisms are effortless and his delivery is never anything short of masterful.

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Baker is at the absolute pinnacle of his powers here. Untouchable. He’s Connery in Goldfinger.

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Our hero is excellently supported by Lalla Ward. The chemistry between the pair is, obviously, sparkling but she is also given plenty of screentime in her own right. She’s awesome throughout, convincing us that Romana is the Doctor’s equal. See how she remains unflappable when captured by the bandits before turning the tables on them and forcing them to literally kneel before her: here, she’s positively Doctor-esque.

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It’s notable that at different stages of this story, both the Doctor and Romana are told that the other has been captured and faces certain death. On both occasions, they are totally relaxed, 100% confident that their friend will be able to take care of themselves. It’s hard to think which other Doctor-companion pairing have such faith in one another. They’re a genuine team who rely on one another and it’s refreshing that the writers avoided the urge to turn Romana into a damsel in distress in the final act.

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On the rare occasion she needs help she summons her trusty mutt K9, who would seriously benefit from a heftier power bank. His charge barely gets him halfway through any of these episodes, meaning he spends more time being carried than on the ground. Still, we enjoy his irritation at being repeatedly called ‘tin’ and the moment he orders the guard to lift him from the table is sublime. Our cats have definitely taken note.

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Episode One ends with one of the best cliffhangers we can remember. The Doctor leaping into the pit is a genuine shock, a display of such apparent recklessness that we raced to the next episode to see how the hell they were going to write themselves out of this corner. Inevitably, the reality is a letdown, even without clubbing us with the OTT gag of the Doctor speed-learning Tibetan.

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​The Creature from the Pit may be a mid-season story but it goes far beyond the ‘album filler stereotype’ that we have come to expect from serials stuck in the middle. This is mostly killer, with very little filler.​​​​​​​​​

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The moralising is laid on thicker than the blob’s atomised shell door. If the writers aren’t making unsubtle commentary about how power corrupts, then they’re propaganda-ing us that greed is bad, or that it’s dangerous to presume something different to us is a threat. Trump’s free speech crusaders would adore this story.

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But in truth this wokery doesn’t come across as lecturing, any more than it’s problematic for the feminism we enjoy in the early stages giving way to Lady Adrasta being exposed as a homicidal brute. We should have guessed from all the gimp masks and leather basques.

She's an intimidating presence throughout – as unrelenting as her perfect makeup – and spends most of the running time ordering people’s execution.

 

In what’s otherwise a generally light story, the moment where an unfortunate guy is literally put to death because he’s intellectually inferior to the Doctor is damn strong stuff. If that’s the bar needed to reach to stay alive then we’re all screwed.

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The entire cast do a solid job, with the lesser characters providing good value. The exception are the guards, who are routinely swatted aside and spend too long whipping vibrating balls of moss.

 

The hilariously classically-trained bandits manage not to be annoying, while the pit-dwelling astrologer is a delight in every scene.

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When we finally encounter the titular creature, its oft-criticised design is obviously a bit silly but it’s a fascinating premise for an alien and is surprisingly well characterised. All credit to the production designers for managing to make us feel emotion towards a plastic membrane stretched over a green bulb. The poor sods in the art department tasked with creating The Invisible Enemy’s lobster baddie would have killed for a creature design this well realised.

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Yet for all the positive aspects of The Creature from the Pit, standing 6ft 1in above it all is our leading man, a bundle of white teeth and manic energy. To unashamedly repurpose the infamous You Only Live Twice publicity line about Connery, Tom Baker is Doctor Who.

 

*drops mic*

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