The mic screeches loudly, blanking the rest of the word out. The Doctor winces: "Whoa! Careful! Anyway, it's both of us! Me and Ida. Hello! But the seal opened up. It's gone. All we've got left is this chasm." That's it: all that's left. A big nothing. Separate Rose and the Doctor, and that's what you've got. Over comms, Zach asks how deep it is, and nobody can tell. "Looks like it goes on forever," says the Doctor. And honestly, technically, literally, it does. If you can handle it. Let's ask Rose: "'The Pit is open,' that's what the voice said." Even Rose can handle it. "But there's nothing? I mean, there's nothing coming out?" asks Zach. The Doctor laughs, stupidly: "No, no. No sign of 'the Beast.'" Rose reminds everybody on comms that the Beast totally said it was SATAN, and the Doctor begs her to keep it together. "Is there no such thing?" she asks. No reply. "Doctor?"

The Doctor, still not answering, turns his back on the Pit, even as Rose is begging: "Doctor, tell me there's no such fing." Oh my God the whole point is that there is. Zach tells Ida to withdraw immediately, and she points out that they've come all this way. He rewords it as an order: "With that thing open, the whole planet's shifted. One more inch, and we fall into the black hole. So this thing stops right now." Ida says that it's not much better than up there, "up there with the Ood," and if you didn't watch the first season of this show, maybe you could be forgiven for going with it, but not Zach's next line: "I'm initiating Strategy Nine, so I need the two of you back up top immediately." Strategy Nine. Forget slavery and go back to following orders. Ida looks at the Doctor, who woggles his eyebrows at her, and she shuts down her wrist com entirely. Strategy Nine? Not this season. Zach calls into the silence, but Ida's gone. It's Doctor Ten time.

Ida's like, "What do you think?" and the Doctor knows for damn sure they mean exactly what they said, which was an order, which was to cut it out. He puts one foot on the edge of the Pit and intones, "I am the Temptation." Indeed, and we talked about that last week. Ida asks if maybe there's something hiding out in there, and the Doctor allows that they may have opened the prison, but not the cell. Ida wants to jump in immediately -- because Ida knows how to use fucking Google, apparently -- but the Doctor just laughs: "That is so human. Where angels fear to tread." I wish. I'd get half the hate mail I get if people could manage Google on their own. This stuff is put in to make you enjoy it more, not less. The Doctor: "Even now, standing on the edge. It's that feeling you get. Yeah?" But he's not talking about the recaps, he's talking about everything else. That moment we talked about last week; that Mickey moment you think about jumping in, erasing it, starting over. That Krillitane moment when you realize it could be easier. The Doctor is fascinated. He is more human in this moment. "Right at the back of your head. That impulse, that strange little impulse, that mad little voice saying 'Go on, go on, go on...Go over, go on...'" His eyes are lit by something new. Something like Toby's. "Maybe it's relying on that. For once in my life, Officer Scott, I'm going to say..." The Doctor looks at Ida, and she looks at him, and his terrible history and his new pain are all the same to her. "...Retreat." It hurts him to say, this wisdom pulling him back. He sighs, and pulls his foot back from the edge of the Pit: "Now I know I'm getting old." The Doctor opens communications, and to whom? "Rose, we're coming back."