The novel “The Pit” by Gareth Roberts was published for the first time in 1993. It’s No. 12 in the “New Adventures” range by Virgin Publishing and follows “The Highest Science”.
Bernice Summerfield is bored and asks the Seventh Doctor to take her to the Althosian system, home to the Seven Planets, a collection of human colonies that eventually became independent from Earth. Before Bernice was born, the system vanished, and no one ever discovered the reason.
The Doctor finds no reference to that system in the TARDIS’s memories, and he knows nothing about it. This is decidedly abnormal, and the Doctor decides to investigate. However, the TARDIS suffers a mysterious interference that causes it to make a rough landing.
With “The Pit,” Neil Penswick attempts to create a sort of mosaic, piecing together fragments ranging from ancient Gallifrey to 1888 London, via the mysterious Seven Planets. Each fragment features different characters, who may be biological or android. Beginning with a perfectly normal situation in which the Doctor and his companion set out to investigate a mystery on a planet, the author takes the travelers and many other characters here and there across space and time.
The novel’s beginning seems intriguing, with a mystery involving the Seven Planets that reveals several ramifications. The Doctor is perplexed by the lack of information he has about that system and intends to understand the reason. Very quickly, a connection to ancient Gallifrey starts emerging, along with some secrets whose nature is initially unclear. The problem lies in the way the plot unfolds, fragmenting it into various stories that at times feel like digressions, if not fillers.
Keeping the Doctor and Bernice apart for much of the novel is a method already used several times in the past, including in “Doctor Who,” to achieve the desired length of a story. When done well, it offers the opportunity to make optimal use of the Doctor’s companions and to continue the development of new or semi-new ones. It must be said that at least from this perspective, “The Pit” has some positive aspects, providing the reader with new information about Bernice. The rest, honestly, left me with a lot of doubts.
Perhaps the author hoped to create a sort of kaleidoscopic vision that would bring together the various fragments of a larger story. Frankly, as I continued reading, it felt like a hodgepodge, with the ingredients unevenly mixed. Throwing the Doctor into what seems like another universe and then having him meet the poet William Blake feels more like a piece thrown in to fill a few pages. Perhaps the parts focusing on the characters of Carlson and Kopyion would have been more enjoyable as a standalone story, not fragmented within a novel.
The story also features androids who don’t seem mentally brilliant, and this is immediately apparent because one of them meets Bernice and remains stubbornly convinced she’s a shapeshifter. Even the Doctor has a very low opinion of them, but it must be said that his opinion is general, as if androids were little more than puppets and not artificial life forms. Perhaps he’s influenced by past encounters, but he doesn’t come across as very nice.
It’s not surprising that “The Pit” is a novel that tends to receive negative reviews, so much so that many readers consider it the worst of the range. For this reason, I recommend reading it only to those who want the complete collection of these books. You might find a copy on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
