Day 517: The Creature from the Pit Part 4

The fantastic thing about this story is the way in which it deals with our preconceived notions of villains. When the story begins, we can easily see that Lady Adrasta is the designated villain, shouting her way through scenes and ordering her minions about. When she throws the Doctor into the Pit to be eaten by the Creature, we therefore assume that the Creature is also on the side of evil as well. But throughout the rest of the story, we slowly come to realise that the Creature, otherwise known as Erato, may not be as evil as first thought, just a misunderstood beast that was taken advantage of by Lady Adrasta, who actually came to help the planet that the story is situated on. So when Lady Adrasta is killed at the beginning of Part 4, we're left with a vacancy for the position of villain within the story. For a moment, we suspect Erato of being up to no good, but we then realise that this is another misunderstanding, and that it is quite a decent creature when it comes down to it. This is all fantastic because the story is about slowly figuring out the motivation of Erato, and it's not afraid to avoid the cliché of having Erato be evil all along, and the Doctor to join forces with the humans to stop Erato's scheme, and instead go out and form its own story. There's actually quite a good story here, provided that you can look past the giant phallus that is Erato.