Underworld

The quest is the quest.

I think the only two things I had ever heard about Underworld was that it was a take on Greek myths (especially Jason and the Argonauts) and that it was rather famously shot largely on green screen. Both elements are not exactly the thing that fills you with confidence going into a story but I'm willing to keep an open mind, especially if the quality of the story can keep up with any shortcomings in production.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Leela arrive at the limit of the universe where a nebula is forming. Unwilling to get sucked in, the Doctor has K-9 reroute the TARDIS on to a passing vessel which is also approaching the nebula.

The ship is piloted by a small crew of Minyans, a race of people who were visited by the Time Lords in the past and revered them as gods. Ultimately, they rose up against the Time Lords and drove them off. The captain, Jackson, and his crew have been searching for thousands of years for a ship called the P7E, which contained a race bank and can be used to reconstitute the Minyan race after their home world was destroyed by civil war.

Jackson detects the sound of the TARDIS landing and enters it into the computer which registers it from the days of Time Lord intervention. One crewman, Herrick, is distrustful and thinks they should attack but Jackson is more patient.

The Doctor and Leela emerge from the TARDIS find themselves in a store room. Leela picks up a shield with a laser weapon attached and uses it to blow open the door. They make their way to the bridge, leaving K-9 in the TARDIS. When they arrive at the bridge, the Doctor and Leela are taken captive but in a restrained manner. Leela resists and one of the crew, Orfe, zaps her with a pacifier gun which gives her a calm, almost blasse demeanor for a few minutes. Orfe is forced to use the same gun on Herrick when he tries to attack the Doctor.

Before much can be said on either side, the sole woman crewman, Tala, collapses of what appears to be old age. Orfe and Herrick carry her to the regeneration pods where her youth is restored. She returns to duty and the Doctor is impressed. Jackson tells the Doctor of their question and of the many regenerations they have been through to try and see it through.

The ship becomes caught in the gravity of the nebula and is too damaged to allow full power to be used. The Doctor summons K-9 to the bridge and he and the Doctor conduct quick repairs, restoring power and allowing the ship to escape.

As they do, they detect the signal from the P7E and Jackson orders a turn around back into the nebula. As they enter the nebula, the hull is bombarded with small rocks and other matter and a planetoid skin begins to form around it. Jackson orders the guns to fire and manages to blast a small hole in the skin and the ship emerges from the forming body. However, the maneuver uses up nearly all the fuel and they are unable to redirect the ship as they crash into another planetoid from which the P7E signal is emitting.

In the depths of the planet's core, a rebellion is being suppressed. The underclass, called Trogs, are being put down by a guards. They capture an old man advocating the rebellion and pursue his son through the tunnels as he climbs to higher levels, eventually emerging on the same level as the crashed ship.

Jackson and his crew leave the ship to find the P7E but order the Doctor and Leela to stay behind. The Doctor and Leela wait a couple of minutes and then head out to explore on their own. The Doctor and Leela see the young man pursued by the guards and duck out of sight. He dashes towards the ship and they make a distraction, causing the guards to start following them. They hide in some old ore trams, giving the guards the slip and then head back to the ship.

Jackson and his crew wander through the tunnels until they reach a branch. Jackson sends Herrick on ahead with a radio relay while the others wait for his report. He is attacked by a guard who thinks him a Trog but Herrick rebuffs the guard's weapon with his shield gun. Irritated by the attack, Herrick picks up the radio and sarcastically replies to the call sign. Fearing the Trogs are gaining the upper hand and weapons, the head of the guards orders that area of the tunnels sealed and gas to be pumped into that area.

The Doctor and Leela return to the ship where they find the young man, named Idas, wounded. They tend to his wounds but observe gas being pumped into the tunnels. The Doctor orders Leela to take him onto the bridge and disconnect K-9 while he heads out into the tunnels to deactivate the gas. He finds a relay station and rewires it to suck the gas back rather than pump it out. The gas flows back into the control room where it knocks out the guards.

The Doctor returns to the ship where Idas and Leela are waiting. Idas gives the Doctor a map of the tunnels and speaks of the central room where the Oracle lives much like their own ship. The Doctor grabs K-9 and the four of them head back into the tunnels to travel to the central lair. The Doctor sends K-9 to find Jackson and his team and tell them where they are going while the rest head to the tunnel main entrance.

Leela disables the electronic shield with a spare shield gun from the ship and the three of them descend down the shaft with a gravity cushion. They are captured while boarding the ship and are taken to the control room where they find Idas' father Idmon about to be sacrificed by a hanging sword with it's cord being burned through. Just before the cord snaps, the Doctor lurches forward and pulls Idmon's bier to them. Leela fires a captured gun, knocking down the guards. The group and several other slaves rush back through the ship towards the entrance bridge.

Guards come up and surround them but they are cut down by Herrick who has run ahead of Jackson and the others. He provides cover while the others run back to the bridge. On the edge of the bridge, Jackson urges Herrick to fall back with the rest of them but Herrick impulsively stays to fight. He takes down a number of guards until he is eventually shot down. Stunned, the guards drag him into the ship.

In the tunnels, the group catches their breath. Jackson knows they'll have to reenter the ship but the bridge will be too well guarded to breach by force. Idmon and another slave named Naia tell the Doctor of how they gather ore to be crushed and used as fuel for the operations of the ship. The Doctor gets an idea of how to sneak on to the ship. He and Leela climb in a tram and have Idmon push it as though it's another load of ore to be dumped into the processing chute. As they are dumped, the other Trogs jump out and attack the guards. The guards manage to set off the alarm but are steadily pushed back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Herrick is interrogated by two figures known as Seers that work directly for the Oracle. Herrick is tortured and tells the Seers of the quest to find the race bank of the Minyons. The Seers deny that he is of the Minyon race as they are the only survivors but also claim no knowledge of the race banks. They remove their hoods to reveal that they are robots. They overhear that the guards are being overwhelmed but order them to stand and fight. One of the robots then suggests that give Herrick what he wants just have them go away.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas use the cover of the chaos to sneak through the tunnels and back to the ship. As they go, Herrick is released and given two golden cylinders, which he is told are the race memories. He makes his way back to Jackson and the others and together they return to the ship to prepare for departure.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas enter the ship and slip into the Oracle's chamber. The Doctor tricks the Oracle into revealing that the race memories she gave were fakes. He then pries open a hatch and steals the real race memories as she sounds the alarm. The trio retreats back through the shafts as the guards come through. The guards set off a trap and seal the trio into a part of the tunnel by collapsing either side.

Jackson readies the ship for take off despite K-9's warning that the Doctor has not returned. Jackson sends K-9 to find him and finishes the preparations. K-9 frees the Doctor, Leela and Idas and takes them back to the ship. Jackson nearly takes off when the Doctor returns and orders him to stop. He gives Jackson the real race memories and takes the fake ones to K-9 who diagnoses them as powerful fission bombs. The Doctor takes them to get rid of them and orders Jackson to wait for him but to fully prepare the ship.

The Doctor, Leela and Idas head back into the tunnels where the guards have been searching for him and the race memories. He hands them over to the head of the guards who orders him to leave. While those guards are distracted, Idas and Leela knock out other guards and free the working Trogs. The two of them gather up all the Trogs throughout the city and, per the Doctor's orders, have them brought to Jackson's ship.

The Doctor has them all board the ship but Jackson tries to throw them off due to the extra weight. The Doctor overrides him and once everyone is aboard, he orders them to take off. They do so but lack the fuel to achieve breakaway velocity. The begin to orbit the planet but the Doctor tells them to hang on.

The guard brings the cylinders to the Oracle but she recognizes them as the bombs. When told that the other ship has already left, she bows to fate and the Seers open the bombs. The resulting explosion destroys the forming planetoid and the shockwave pushes Jackson's ship out of the nebula. They set course for Minyos II, estimating that it will only take 300 years to get there. The Doctor, Leela and K-9 board the TARDIS and depart with the Doctor making an offhand comment about the parallels between Jackson and the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

Analysis

This was a bit of a disappointment of a story given it's rather interesting premise and a pretty good start with Episode One. But once Jackson's crew arrive on planet, the whole things just starts to crumble.

In many ways, this story was two different stories. The first episode gave so much potential to play with. You had a race of people that were shadows of Greek myths and had versions of Time Lord technology with them, at least a form of regeneration. These were people with whom you would expect to deal with the Doctor on more of an even footing and could be developed well. There were also some rather disturbing ideas as well. I found it very interesting that when Leela came back to herself after having the pacifier used on her, her reaction at that loss of identity was akin to a woman who had been raped. You could see this profound anger at what had been taken from her without her permission. It's a disturbing reaction, especially given Orfe's very casual reaction. But like the regeneration, nothing is done with that past Episode One.

While on the subject of Leela, we can chalk this story up as another wasted opportunity for her. She is written with the emphasis on her savage nature and not her intelligence. She also relegated to the role of bodyguard and messenger girl for the rest of the story. K-9 actually has a more active role than her. She is at least in most scenes so you never confuse the fact that she is the companion but aside from her line about how the Doctor has saved many fathers, after Episode One she could be swapped out for any other character. All semblance of the personality that is truly Leela is absent and that's a real shame.

Aside from the rescue by K-9, this is one of the stories where it could be argued that the Doctor doesn't really need a companion. There's no real deception going on in this story so the Doctor understands everything pretty much from the get go. That's not a bad thing except for what it does to Leela though. The Doctor is pretty much the best thing about this story and he does almost no faffing about either. He helps Jackson land, he helps people, he recovers the race memory, he saves people and he allows the enemies to be destroyed. There is the occasional joke and the general lightheartedness that the Fourth Doctor has during the Graham Williams era but overall it's very direct and you never question the Doctor being in charge. As long as he is the focus, the story is at least somewhat entertaining.

That same cannot be said for the guest cast. There is almost no personality among any of them. Idas spends three episodes with the Doctor as a pseudo-companion and yet he is instantly forgettable. The Trogs are almost never seen and their plight is only given a surface level examination. Even Jackson's crew is boring. Herrick is the only one who is given something resembling a personality and even then, it doesn't do much. His mouth off at the end of Episode Two is mostly to create a conflict for the cliffhanger and his staying behind on the bridge to be captured towards the end of Episode Three makes even less sense. Playing rearguard is fine but it should have been a slow retreat along with everyone else. It's just stupid and lazy writing to have him stay. But everyone else, even if they get lines, are so generic that you question why they are even there except to fill the screen.

These are also the most underdeveloped villains I've seen in quite a while. You have a mad computer (something that's been done a lot), two enforcer robots, a select team of security people and then the Trogs. Why was this society set up this way? Why did the computer go mad? Why does being the protector of the race memory mean that most of the population has to be controlled and culled with occasional cave ins? None of this is explained. You simply have evil because you needed evil to be there. In the original story, Jason defeats the guardians of the Golden Fleece with the help of Medea, the daughter of the king. If the Oracle and the robots represented the guardians of the fleece, then there should have been some backstory about taking possession and either Jackson or the Doctor getting help from someone on the inside and high up in the power structure to represent Medea. That might also have given insight into the motivations of the guardians and why the computer went mad upon having the planet form around the P7E.

But of all the failures of this story, and there are many, the worst has to be how it was shot. As the second to last story of the season, what little budget they had was gone. So the whole thing apart from the bridge of the ship and a couple of corridors was shot on green screen and it looks dreadful. Aside from always being painfully obvious that it is an illusion, green screen forces the camera to stay still, meaning that you can only shoot your actors coming or going and if you want a shift in shot or a zoom you have to cut to a new shot. That can be time consuming and expensive so most of the shooting is done at a distance. For me it felt especially pronounced as it wasn't that long ago where I was watching Revenge of the Cybermen and you had some very nice shots in caves there. That is what being underground should feel like and this just looks and feels awful.

There are other directing faux pas that I can't understand. One of the most prominent is when Leela and Idas free the Trogs. They shoot down one guard but there is another standing right there in the shot. As they free the Trogs he just slowly backs out like he realizes he isn't supposed to be in frame. It's an absolutely terrible shot and it makes it look like no one knew what was going on. There were other bad shots as well but that is the one that really made me question if the director had any idea of what he was doing.

I would argue that this story needed a major rewrite. I doubt there was much anyone could do about the lack of budget though I think it would be interesting to see if it actually might have cost less to back to Wookie Hole and film there rather than on green screen, which would have improved the look. But as for the story, some of the ideas involving the Minyons and the Time Lords should have been dropped to get to the planet sooner. Once there, it should have been a direct line to the ruler of a people who live in fear of the Oracle and her guardianship of the race memory. From that point, you have a representative of these people working with the Doctor, Leela and Jackson's crew where each lets their talents shine to defeat the barriers the Oracle has laid before them. That would have been a more direct rip of the Jason legend (and more akin to the Hinchcliff era) and would have probably streamlined the cast while also giving more attention to each of the characters.

I don't know if this story could ever have been great given the limitations facing it, but the writing and direction only amplified the problems with it. It only gets more disappointing given how well it started. About the only positive things I can say is that each episode is short and when action is happening, things move quickly. I enjoyed watching the Doctor and as bad as things looked, I'm not sure I could ever say that it was boring. So I'm going to give it a small pass in the regard that it generally held my attention which is better than some stories. But as for actively picking this one to watch again, I can't even imagine that it would occur to me to look for it.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5