The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Underworld
Underworld: Part One (07/01/18)
So, after a short break the Doctor, Leela and K9 are back with a rather interesting and quite brilliant episode. It all started off looking a bit like 'The Invisible Enemy', which is interesting as it's by the same writers, but it's already so much better!
Materialising near a nebula, the Doctor was forced to land the TARDIS on a nearby spaceship to avoid being dragged in. Turns out it's a Minyan ship, one of the last of a race which caused the Time Lords to adopt a non-intervention policy; seems in the early days of their Time/Space exploration they discovered Minyos and attempted to aide the peoples' advancement by giving them advanced technology. The Minyans used the technology to develop weapons, cast the Time Lords out (who they viewed as gods), went to war amongst themselves and destroyed the planet.
The TARDIS is on one of the last ships to escape which is on a quest to locate the P7E (another Minyan colony ship containing their race banks), piloted by Orfe, Tala, Herrick and their captain, Jackson, who have been on the quest for 100,000 generations using Time Lord technology to regenerate their bodies to stay alive (as demonstrated when the aged Tala collapsed and had to be taken to Regen).
Their ship is fucked, however, but the Doctor hooked K9 up to the ship's computers and he's now flying it. Unfortunately, it seems that the P7E is at the heart of the nebula, which has formed around it, and Jackson is determined to complete The Quest. Steering the ship into the nebula, it's attracted asteroids due to it having a greater mass, and it's started to turn into a planet, with attempts to blast their way out melting the hull!
Some great characterisation (particularly Leela when and after she was 'pacified'), great use of K9 and some really brilliant ideas. Plus we have an explanation why the Time Lords have their non-intervention policy. It's not often Bob Baker and Dave Martin deliver a really good script, but this is a really promising start! A really great beginning to the new year. Let's hop it continues to be this good!
Underworld: Part Two (14/01/18)
Well, after a promising start this week turned out to be a hell of a lot and very little.
Firstly, the plot seems very similar to 'The Sun Makers' - we've encountered a society of slaves under a repressive governing system. Aside from that, the Minyan crew blasted their way out of the planet forming around them, located the P7E (at the centre of a young planet) and flew to its core through its soft, molten exterior. The solid core is where the slave society lives, presumably descendants of the Minyans on the P7E. They're governed by guards in incredibly impractical hoods and live a seemingly feeble cave-based existence with fables of stars, and Skyfalls (cave-ins) which occasionally bury/kill them.
One such slave, Idas, has lost his family in a cave-in and had his blaspheming father (who believes gods will come from the stars to save them) taken away for sacrifice. Luckily, he's encountered the Doctor and Leela (while the Minyan crew have buggered off on their Quest for the race banks) who are trapped in the Minyan ship by the stupidly-masked guys pumping gas into the tunnels.
And here's where we get to the difficult bit.
This episode was really hard to watch due to its utterly abysmal use of CSO. ALL of the cave systems are done on Bluescreen - sometimes it works, but most of the time it really, really doesn't. It's horribly distracting and has me fondly remembering 'The Mutants' and 'Revenge Of The Cybermen'. Also, those in charge of this relatively primitive society have the technology to have gas vents/pumps and drop-down metallic doors in their excavated cave system, but their people live like cavemen! And what the hell do they eat? There's no vegetation in the caves, and they don't go to the surface because there isn't one!
I don't want to bitch about Bob baker and Dave Martin, but all of their stories bar 'The Sontaran Experiment' and most of 'The Hand Of Fear' have been dogged by really badly thought out, or really badly realised ideas. It's not even like this is a shit story! Most of it is pretty sound, and last week was great, but this week feels like the production team thought "Well, it's only Bob and Dave; let's churn out any old cheap shit!".
Another two weeks of bad CSO will be a struggle. I just hope the script gets back on track to make up for it!
Underworld: Part Three (21/01/18)
This story isn't bad, but the CSO caves are still pretty distracting and the plot is crawling a bit. The Doctor and Leela went to rescue Idas' father - Leela got some pretty good lines again about the Doctor having saved many fathers - while K9 fetched Jackson and the Minyans.
More back story was revealed - the people who live in the planet are kept as slaves, mining rock to be taken to the crushers and processed into food (!). They're also the descendants of the Minyans aboard the P7E. They answer to the guards who answer to the Seers (two dome-headed, three-eyed robots, it seems) who answer to the Oracle who oversees everything.
After saving Idas' father from a ritualistic sacrifice and being helped to escape by Jackson's lot, the Doctor and Leela planned to break into the P7E's bridge again by hiding amongst the rocks sent for processing. Meanwhile, Herrick had been injured, caught, and interrogated during the rescue, finding about the P7E and the Seers.
The episode was a bit dull, but it's an interesting concept and better than Baker and Martin's last effort. I really don't have that much else to say about it, though. I'm hoping that next week will be a bit more interesting and eventful!
Underworld: Part Four (28/01/18)
Well, that wasn't a terrible story, but it was very much lacking in many ways. Perhaps it's because the weather is cold, perhaps it's because of the excessive use of CSO, perhaps it was because of the very bland sets and scenery, the pedestrian pacing or the lack of depth to even the main characters, but this week in particular was a very drab affair.
Given that this time last year we'd just had 'The Robots Of Death', a gorgeous set filled with a diverse cast in a murder mystery story, this rather cold retread of a rather bland Greek myth was quite a disappointment. The attempt to get into the P7E and confront the Oracle seemed rather pointless other than to provide last week's cliffhanger as they found another, much easier way in.
Before then, the Oracle (the ship's computer which had become sentient and evolved, it seems - a la Xoanon) had given Herrick the race banks and sent the Minyans on their way. Fortunately (for the plot), she'd lied and given him fusion bombs. The Doctor worked it out, took the real race banks and legged it. He got to Jackson's ship before it left and had K9 identify the fake race banks as bombs, then the Doctor took them off the ship and back to the P7E where a guard mistook them for the real thing and returned them to the Oracle.
The Doctor, Leela and Idas rounded up all the Minyan slaves - a pleasingly mixed bag of men, women and children of all ages and statures (possibly the most remarkable thing about this story!) and herded them onto Jackson's ship, persuading Jackson to leave immediately.
The ship was failing to leave orbit due to the extra weight, but fortunately the exploding planet provided them with the propulsion to get on their way. Everything sorted, the Doctor, Leela and K9 left them to continue their journey to Minyos II.
Overall, I think the main problem with this story is that it was all rather drab. Everyone seemed to be dialling it in, which is a shame because it had the potential to be quite good. Too many CSO caves or not, I don't think it could have been any better with location filming or real sets. I just hope next week is an improvement!
So, after a short break the Doctor, Leela and K9 are back with a rather interesting and quite brilliant episode. It all started off looking a bit like 'The Invisible Enemy', which is interesting as it's by the same writers, but it's already so much better!
Materialising near a nebula, the Doctor was forced to land the TARDIS on a nearby spaceship to avoid being dragged in. Turns out it's a Minyan ship, one of the last of a race which caused the Time Lords to adopt a non-intervention policy; seems in the early days of their Time/Space exploration they discovered Minyos and attempted to aide the peoples' advancement by giving them advanced technology. The Minyans used the technology to develop weapons, cast the Time Lords out (who they viewed as gods), went to war amongst themselves and destroyed the planet.
The TARDIS is on one of the last ships to escape which is on a quest to locate the P7E (another Minyan colony ship containing their race banks), piloted by Orfe, Tala, Herrick and their captain, Jackson, who have been on the quest for 100,000 generations using Time Lord technology to regenerate their bodies to stay alive (as demonstrated when the aged Tala collapsed and had to be taken to Regen).
Their ship is fucked, however, but the Doctor hooked K9 up to the ship's computers and he's now flying it. Unfortunately, it seems that the P7E is at the heart of the nebula, which has formed around it, and Jackson is determined to complete The Quest. Steering the ship into the nebula, it's attracted asteroids due to it having a greater mass, and it's started to turn into a planet, with attempts to blast their way out melting the hull!
Some great characterisation (particularly Leela when and after she was 'pacified'), great use of K9 and some really brilliant ideas. Plus we have an explanation why the Time Lords have their non-intervention policy. It's not often Bob Baker and Dave Martin deliver a really good script, but this is a really promising start! A really great beginning to the new year. Let's hop it continues to be this good!
Underworld: Part Two (14/01/18)
Well, after a promising start this week turned out to be a hell of a lot and very little.
Firstly, the plot seems very similar to 'The Sun Makers' - we've encountered a society of slaves under a repressive governing system. Aside from that, the Minyan crew blasted their way out of the planet forming around them, located the P7E (at the centre of a young planet) and flew to its core through its soft, molten exterior. The solid core is where the slave society lives, presumably descendants of the Minyans on the P7E. They're governed by guards in incredibly impractical hoods and live a seemingly feeble cave-based existence with fables of stars, and Skyfalls (cave-ins) which occasionally bury/kill them.
One such slave, Idas, has lost his family in a cave-in and had his blaspheming father (who believes gods will come from the stars to save them) taken away for sacrifice. Luckily, he's encountered the Doctor and Leela (while the Minyan crew have buggered off on their Quest for the race banks) who are trapped in the Minyan ship by the stupidly-masked guys pumping gas into the tunnels.
And here's where we get to the difficult bit.
This episode was really hard to watch due to its utterly abysmal use of CSO. ALL of the cave systems are done on Bluescreen - sometimes it works, but most of the time it really, really doesn't. It's horribly distracting and has me fondly remembering 'The Mutants' and 'Revenge Of The Cybermen'. Also, those in charge of this relatively primitive society have the technology to have gas vents/pumps and drop-down metallic doors in their excavated cave system, but their people live like cavemen! And what the hell do they eat? There's no vegetation in the caves, and they don't go to the surface because there isn't one!
I don't want to bitch about Bob baker and Dave Martin, but all of their stories bar 'The Sontaran Experiment' and most of 'The Hand Of Fear' have been dogged by really badly thought out, or really badly realised ideas. It's not even like this is a shit story! Most of it is pretty sound, and last week was great, but this week feels like the production team thought "Well, it's only Bob and Dave; let's churn out any old cheap shit!".
Another two weeks of bad CSO will be a struggle. I just hope the script gets back on track to make up for it!
Underworld: Part Three (21/01/18)
This story isn't bad, but the CSO caves are still pretty distracting and the plot is crawling a bit. The Doctor and Leela went to rescue Idas' father - Leela got some pretty good lines again about the Doctor having saved many fathers - while K9 fetched Jackson and the Minyans.
More back story was revealed - the people who live in the planet are kept as slaves, mining rock to be taken to the crushers and processed into food (!). They're also the descendants of the Minyans aboard the P7E. They answer to the guards who answer to the Seers (two dome-headed, three-eyed robots, it seems) who answer to the Oracle who oversees everything.
After saving Idas' father from a ritualistic sacrifice and being helped to escape by Jackson's lot, the Doctor and Leela planned to break into the P7E's bridge again by hiding amongst the rocks sent for processing. Meanwhile, Herrick had been injured, caught, and interrogated during the rescue, finding about the P7E and the Seers.
The episode was a bit dull, but it's an interesting concept and better than Baker and Martin's last effort. I really don't have that much else to say about it, though. I'm hoping that next week will be a bit more interesting and eventful!
Underworld: Part Four (28/01/18)
Well, that wasn't a terrible story, but it was very much lacking in many ways. Perhaps it's because the weather is cold, perhaps it's because of the excessive use of CSO, perhaps it was because of the very bland sets and scenery, the pedestrian pacing or the lack of depth to even the main characters, but this week in particular was a very drab affair.
Given that this time last year we'd just had 'The Robots Of Death', a gorgeous set filled with a diverse cast in a murder mystery story, this rather cold retread of a rather bland Greek myth was quite a disappointment. The attempt to get into the P7E and confront the Oracle seemed rather pointless other than to provide last week's cliffhanger as they found another, much easier way in.
Before then, the Oracle (the ship's computer which had become sentient and evolved, it seems - a la Xoanon) had given Herrick the race banks and sent the Minyans on their way. Fortunately (for the plot), she'd lied and given him fusion bombs. The Doctor worked it out, took the real race banks and legged it. He got to Jackson's ship before it left and had K9 identify the fake race banks as bombs, then the Doctor took them off the ship and back to the P7E where a guard mistook them for the real thing and returned them to the Oracle.
The Doctor, Leela and Idas rounded up all the Minyan slaves - a pleasingly mixed bag of men, women and children of all ages and statures (possibly the most remarkable thing about this story!) and herded them onto Jackson's ship, persuading Jackson to leave immediately.
The ship was failing to leave orbit due to the extra weight, but fortunately the exploding planet provided them with the propulsion to get on their way. Everything sorted, the Doctor, Leela and K9 left them to continue their journey to Minyos II.
Overall, I think the main problem with this story is that it was all rather drab. Everyone seemed to be dialling it in, which is a shame because it had the potential to be quite good. Too many CSO caves or not, I don't think it could have been any better with location filming or real sets. I just hope next week is an improvement!
I think location filming would have made this story far more successful - well, somewhat more - simply because the fact of filming there rather than against blue-screen in a studio in a way that left everyone confused, frustrated and disillusioned would probably have elicited better performances. That said, it would only have lifted it in the same way as Revenge of the Cybermen, which is still pretty shit, so it would have been something of a Pyrrhic victory.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, while it's by no means one of the best stories ever made, or even just 'quite good', I don't think it's as bad as its reputation implies, as a narrative or production. If nothing else, it has a fantastic first episode, so it's 25% brilliant at least; but that does mean the underwhelming remainder leaves it on that odd little pile of stories that start out full of promise and then just waste away to nothing.
(It's a bit peculiar actually that where the series' four-part stories are concerned there's not much middle ground: either the first episode's good and the rest is shit, or three-quarters of the story's great and the last episode's a letdown, or the whole thing's fantastic, but rarely if ever do you get a story where the first two episodes are great and the last two are rubbish.)
Perhaps location filming would have given us better performances, and *maybe* resulted in better direction, but on the whole the script for the last two episodes is pretty rubbish. I'm not even sure that Orfe and Tala get more than a handful of lines throughout and whilst I complemented the diversity of the extras, it would have been nice to have more than one character from the Underworld who got a decent amount of dialogue. The story is built on a brilliant premise which is mentioned in the first episode then completely ignored in favour of a rehash of 'The Face Of Evil' and 'The Sun Makers' but without the brilliant writing of either Boucher or Holmes.
DeleteIn the story's defence, the cave models are pretty good, but in 1977 actors didn't have the training or experience of working extensively with CSO that they do today, so without any sets to give them a sense of place or context the performances are pretty flat. But yes, episode one is great, putting it in the same category as 'The Mind Robber'.
And, indeed, The Space Museum :D
DeleteAh, now I really like the 2nd - 4th episodes of 'The Space Museum' regardless of its reputation (which is why I didn't mention it). One of the few occasions where a revolution has single-handedly been started by a companion. But its opening episode is pretty spectacular, just not as polarised as 'The Mind Robber' :)
Delete