Underworld Part Four

The one where the Minyans get their race banks and the quest is over...

It makes a change for the good guys and the bad guys to actually talk things through and agree to cooperate for the greater good. Ankh and Lakh ask Herrick what it is the Minyans want, and when Herrick says they just want their race bank cylinders, the domeheads agree to go and get them, and release Herrick unharmed, as long as they all just go away! Makes a change.

What exactly are Ankh and Lakh though? In part 3 they state that they are not Minyan descendants, they have "evolved far beyond them" and are servants of the Oracle, "seers of the realm of Hedas". So they are not humans, and we can see that when they take their hoods off to reveal their domed heads. They look like robots, but how can robots evolve from humans? Nothing more is revealed about what these two characters are, and once they put their hoods back on, it's all forgotten about and they just become like any other hooded baddie. It seems a bit pointless to have them look like that at all if it's not going to be explained. It's not even as if they helped provide a cliffhanger. Baffling.

I love the voice of the Oracle, performed by Christine Pollon with delicious gravitas. She makes the Oracle sound eerie, spooky and dangerous, and of course very slightly mad. But when it comes down to it, the Oracle is yet another mad computer, the latest in a growing line of mad computers in Doctor Who, and so soon after the last one (The Face of Evil's Xoanon). What is good though, is the shade the Doctor throws at the Oracle: "You're just another machine with megalomania. Another insane object, another self-aggrandising artefact. You're nothing! Nothing but a mass of super-heated junk with delusions of grandeur!" The Doctor would go down a storm on RuPaul's Drag Race!

It does highlight the fact that this is nothing original though. When your hero even comments upon how the villain of the story is "just another insane object", you know things are dire. Were they the original words Bob Baker and Dave Martin wrote, or was the script rewritten by Tom Baker after he identified it as "whippet shit"? Either way, it would have been nice to have Leela pass comment on the similarity between the Oracle and her fallen god Xoanon.

When Herrick rejoins his crew with what he believes are the Minyan race banks, Jackson and co prepare to just bugger off and forget all about the Doctor and Leela, who'd helped them get this far. Talk about ungrateful! Jackson readies the R1C for take-off now that, as Orfe says, "we've got what we came for". It's a good job K-9 speaks up to say the Doctor and Leela aren't back, otherwise Jackson would fly off in the R1C, with the TARDIS aboard!

There then follows lots of waiting and doing nothing as Jackson's crew wait on the R1C for K-9 to fetch the Doctor and Leela, and the Doctor, Leela and Idas wait in the collapsed tunnel for somebody to dig them out. And the wait is interminably dull, just like everything else about this story. Director Norman Stewart was seasoned in the ways Doctor Who worked, as he'd been a production assistant on stories as far back as Season 1, but he certainly had no idea how to direct. I understand the gig was particularly difficult, being bogged down with the necessity of using CSO, but Stewart had no idea how to direct pace or jeopardy, or even simple dialogue scenes. There isn't an iota of inspiration in the way he handles these four episodes.

So the Doctor has the real race bank cylinders, and warns Jackson that the ones he has are actually fission grenades with an explosive content of 2,000 megatonnes. "I think I'd better get rid of them, don't you?" says the Doctor. In the CSO caves, Rask takes the grenades off the Doctor thinking they are the real race banks, and the explosives are placed back inside the Oracle, essentially sealing the crazy computer's fate.

The Doctor rallies all of the trogs (at one point scooping up a little girl and placing her down in such a way as to expose her bottom to camera!) and gets them aboard the R1C, which Jackson isn't very happy about, because he's already low on fuel and thinks the extra weight will prevent take-off. Tom Baker is marvellous here as he angrily reprimands Jackson for wanting to condemn the trogs, when actually they are the future of the Minyan race. "This is your people, this is your race. Descendants of the people who came on the P7E." An admirable stance to take, but not one that extends as far as the poor Seers, who get obliterated in the fission blast without anybody trying to save them. They are descendants of the Minyans just as much as the trogs, but because they were bad guys and wore evil hoods, they apparently deserve to die.

The R1C takes off but struggles to break the P7E's gravitational pull... until the P7E explodes, and the R1C can ride the blast out of the spiral nebula, and off towards Minyos II, a journey which will take "only" 370 years. The explosive end for the Oracle is kind of sad, I think, as the computer acknowledges its failure and says it deserves destruction. And all because some crazy-haired bohemian stole its cylinders, after it had kept them safe for 100,000 years. There's a certain amount of tragedy in that, I think?

The traditional abrupt ending sees the Doctor donning his painting gear back in the TARDIS (with paint smudges on his face in exactly the same spots as in part 1!) and Leela asking him why he called Jackson Jason. Cue a silly exchange unworthy of the talents of Baker or Jameson, and Underworld finally comes to an end with Leela kissing K-9, and the Doctor going off in a strop.

Underworld is abominably poor. It has a reasonable first episode which sets up a bit of mystery, and has some cracking effects, but it's still relatively bland and pedestrian. Then the CSO kicks in, and Norman Stewart's inadequacies become painfully clear. He can't direct basic dialogue scenes with any inkling of panache or style, let alone entire set-ups involving practical effects, actors, dialogue and the dreaded Colour Separation Overlay. Stewart fails abysmally, but he's not alone. The usually reliable Bob Baker and Dave Martin turn in a set of dreary, colourless scripts devoid of any inspiration, and the entire guest cast (with one exception) are on autopilot, bringing absolutely nothing to proceedings apart from their physical selves. All credit to Alan Lake for injecting some enthusiasm and chutzpah into his performance, but as everybody else around him is so monotonously bland, he kind of feels out of synch.

Underworld is a dull, boring, unforgivably bland runaround, with blue-screen caves in place of wobbly space corridors. There are no characters to speak of, and the rather clever idea at the heart of the story (paralleling Greek mythology) is wasted and under-used. For my money, Doctor Who should, first and foremost, be entertaining. It isn't very often that it fails to be entertaining, even if it's entertainingly bad, but Underworld isn't even this. Underworld is just bad.

Amazingly, Underworld part 4 was the most-watched episode of Season 15, with 11.7m viewers. It was the highest rating Doctor Who had had since The Robots of Death, and it wouldn't be beaten until The Power of Kroll... also directed by Norman Stewart. The universe moves in very mysterious ways...

Twelve months before Underworld was shown, Doctor Who was churning out corkers such as The Face of Evil and The Robots of Death. What happened to make Doctor Who fall from such great heights? Well, let's not point the finger of blame too much at the change in personnel behind the scenes (Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes were replaced by Graham Williams and Anthony Read). There's also the frighteningly unpredictable British economy at that time (inflation had rocketed), which meant that unless they used CSO for Underworld's sets, they'd never afford to make The Invasion of Time.

Let's hope the sacrifice was worth it...

First broadcast: January 28th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Christine Pollon's vocal performance as the Oracle.
The Bad: Everything else. Just all of it.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 4.0 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 13

NEXT TIME: The Invasion of Time...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/underworld.html

Underworld is available on BBC DVD as part of the Myths and Legends box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Legends-Monster-Underworld/dp/B002SZQC98