Thou Shalt Not...

Doctor Who should never be boring. Such a commandment ought to be etched in stone.

The program's format is remarkably elastic. Stories can have the most outrageous imagery, characters or plot points (aliens with big bull heads, henchmen made of licorice all-sorts, or the Doctor regaining strength a la Tinker Bell). We might question the wisdom of the production team at times, but we should always feel something: love, anger, fear, exasperation. Contentious yes, dull never. Robert Holmes knew this well when he wrote The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor can't return home and spend 90 minutes amongst God like brethren. He wisely deduced that they needed to be decadent, scheming and vain like...we in the real world.

Underworld was another story I missed back in 1984. Not quite sure how that happened. In fact the first time I saw the story was with my friend Graeme, eight or nine years ago. We made margaritas. I fell asleep half-way through episode one. I have vague memories of Trogs running to and fro, lots of smoke and Tom Baker's hair looking like a bad Photoshop crop.

I've been dreading the re-watch (I even had to buy the blasted DVD), but I was determined to give it an honest try. Episode one was dull and talky with a couple of interesting ideas. The back story with the Time Lords could have been interesting, but nothing was ultimately made of it. I was fascinated by Tala's regeneration. but it did nothing more than reinforce that they'd been on the quest for generations. My first year creative writing prof would have put a big red "x" through the whole sequence.

Episode two introduced the ridiculous looking Trogs, was completely pointless and then the story just crawled to an unsatisfying finish.

So went wrong? Here's my best attempt to figure it out:

1) Uninteresting and unmemorable characters. The only reason I remember any of these bland characters is because they're meant to correspond to their counterparts from Greek mythology. Clever on paper but not much further than that. Herrick has a half-formed personality, but in a good Doctor Who story he'd be 4th string. I'm told that one of the Trog extras actually played the lead in Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls--this advanced her to the front of the line in terms of interest. What this story needed was a Professor Marius (The Invisible Enemy) or a Professor Watson (Hand of Fear). 2) Weak writing: when the scripts aren't densely expositional, they're unwritten. It feels like once Martin and Baker mapped out how they would fit their scripts into the Jason and the Argonauts framework, they brushed there hands together and said "done". I suppose it was a no-brainer that the Oracle of Delphi should become a controlling super computer, but frankly that's just dreadfully predictable in its execution. It would have been much more interesting if the Oracle had been programmed with the actual Greek myth and was forcing everyone to play it out.

3) An over-reliance on CSO. There was no budget for sets, so they pushed the boundaries of CSO. Kudos for trying, but it just doesn't work. Mind you it's not the biggest sin of the story, it just increases it's snooze factor. It's also quite obvious that it provided a sort of black hole of attention that no doubt absorbed the attention of the actors, director Norman Stewart and the rest of the production team. As an actor, how do you improvise or create a genuine moment when you're trying to hit complicated marks all the time. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson have the home court advantage, being seasoned pros in their respective roles.
4) Dull, workmanlike direction. Doctor Who is known for running through corridors, but that's practically all we get here (with the possible exception of running across bridges and floating down vertical corridors. While, I'm sympathetic to first time director Norman Stewart's challenge of working with that much CSO, much of the story feels visually repetitive.

5) The Nostalgia Factor: Colony in Space was the first complete televised story of Doctor Who I ever saw. The sort of story most people would abandon to watch grass grow. Painfully slow and earnest in the best Malcolm Hulke fashion. Love it to tears. Because it was my first. Result: Underworld doesn't stand a chance with me.

Hell, I was so displeased with my viewing experience that I was moved to write a short review on Amazon.ca. I'd much rather watch Mawdryn Undead or The Runaway Bride which both make more of the few intriguing ideas in this story.

Number of times we hear "the quest is the quest": 10 (plus 4 "the quest is over")

Original viewing date: 8 or 9 years ago

Spirit: Margaritas!

Music: The thumping in my head the next morning after too many Margaritas...