Re-running through corridors: Underworld

4 episodes
Aired between 7th December 1977 and 28th January 1978

Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Norman Stewart

Synopsis

The TARDIS reaches the end of the cosmos and comes across a lone ship called the R1C.

Exploring the ship, the Doctor, Leela and K9 meet a band of humans from an ancient planet called Minyos. The planet was encountered some millennia ago by the Time Lords in a period before their rules of non-intervention. The Minyan's took the Time Lord technology, forced them off the planet and eventually degenerated into a civil war that destroyed the planet.

The R1C is one of the only ships to escape the doomed Minyos. It's crew: Jackson, Herrick, Orfe and Tala, have been travelling in space for 100,000 years looking for their sister ship the P7E that holds the Minyan race banks needed to rebuild their race. They have regeneration machines on board that allow the crew to keep renewing their lives, but the ship has been steadily getting older and older.

With the help of K9, the crew are able to find P7E in the middle of a spiral nebula. As they go into it, the cosmic forces nearly tear the ship apart, and massive gravity generated attracts large rocks to form around the ship. They blast through them and escape but pretty much wreck the ship doing so. They crash into a nearby planet, which luckily has a liquid surface and a rocky core.

There is life in the tunnels at the core of this world, and it happens to take the form of a dictatorship between the Trogs (the tunnel dwelling human slaves), and the Oracle. The Doctor, Leela, K9 and the crew of the R1C get embroiled in the plight of the Trogs and have endless chases from the Oracles guards.

They eventually find their way to the core of the planet (where the Trogs claim there are fire breathing dragons, but are actually laser defences) and they discover that it is the P7E ship that had matter form around it, just like what happened to their ship.

They all escape except for Herrick, who is taken before the Seers, men who serve the Oracle that have evolved beyond human.

They decide to convince Herrick that they are unconcerned about the race banks and therefore aim to just give them up, in return for the crew of the R1C leaving the planet and never coming back.

The Doctor smells something fishy, and upon investigation finds out that the Oracle is actually the P7E computer that's gone stark raving mad.

He deduces that the race banks haven't been handed over at all, so he takes the real ones and goes to find Jackson and his crew. He gets to them before they can take off and K9 identifies the cylinders Jackson has as fission grenades (that have the power to blow up the entire planet). The Doctor swaps out the grenades for the race banks and then takes the grenades back, allowing himself to get captured and the fake cylinders returned.

He escapes and convinces the Trogs to all get in the R1C as they take off. Jackson doesn't like this and is prepared to leave them to go to find their sister planet Minyos 2 where they will rendezvous with the remains of their people but the Doctor insists that the Trogs are his people too. Jackson relents and they all take off.

The Oracle enters the cylinders back into its machine and realises too late that they are the grenades. The planet blows up and the Doctor ultimately leaves the Minyans to it.

Trivia

This story was heavily based on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The Doctor even spells it out at the end of the story to Leela (and thus to us all). The P7E was Persephone, Herrick was Heracles, Orfe was Orpheus, Jackson was Jason, the dragons and the world tree were all part of the myth. The race banks were of course, the golden fleece. Don't know where the skeletons or Talos was though.

As you can't fail to notice, this was a story mostly filmed with CSO. The story goes that Graham Williams came off leave to find that the costs predicted for this story were three times more expensive than what they had budget for. Norman Stewart said he could do it all with model shots and blue screen so Graham Williams let him try. It was a huge success back then, because the story came in on time and budget, and paved the way for more shows to do this.

We've mentioned Blake's 7 a few times now. Just a quick one to say that the first episode aired a few days before Underworld started.

Alan Lake who played Herrick was a bit notorious. He was married to Dianna Dors who was very notorious herself for ahem, certain celebrity parties held at her home. When Dianna died, Alan tragically couldn't handle it and after a phone interview a few weeks later, took himself into the bedroom and blew his own brains out with a shotgun.

The Review

I admit it. When I was thinking about writing this review the other day, I had to think really long and hard to find a positive aspect to start on. I did eventually, but as with anything, you get doing something else and you hope that when you come back to it, all the witty, intelligence and relevant words will come flooding back to you. Well, they haven't.

A lower mortal would blame the show for this, and I have to admit that I am such a mortal. Looking at Underworld as a whole is hardly inspiring. In fact, Underworld has about as much charisma and pizzazz as a wet fart.

First of all, ripping on the awful CSO lines around everything and the Ikea furniture for ship crash couches are a given. As are the bulldog clips that you would get from any high street shop expecting to pass for electrodes that interface with K9 via his ears. You don't have to look that far however to strike gold, and by gold, I do of course, mean crap.

The science behind a lot of it is total bonkers (the huge rocks gathering about the ship just because it's got gravity), the fact that the centre of the planet is zero gravity, but only it seems in one small elevator shaft and more. Even the plot logic has shot off into the stratosphere. I mean, what's the deal with making explosives that could destroy a planet look exactly like the race banks vital to the survival of an alien race?!!!!

Given that this is Jason and the Argonauts, we barely see Jackson (Jason) taking a worthwhile decision on his own steam, and the crew are, frankly put, annoying. Even the Doctor is arrogant and overly bossy - it's like it was a lead up to a personality change we see in the next story without needing the reason they give for it in Invasion of Time. There was a little bit too much of Tom Baker's ego showing through for this entire story. If the Doctor's been acting like this for a bit, there's no wonder Leela P**ses off with a total stranger in the next story.

The plot is barely there and even in the bits that it was, I just couldn't bring myself to care about it.

The ONLY saving grace about this story is Louise Jameson's performance in part one, where we get to see her act a little bit more than she otherwise would.

This story has very little to offer a Doctor Who fan, and unless you're on a pilgrimage like me, I highly advise giving this one a miss.

Rating

2 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

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