Doctor Who (TV Series) Underworld: Part One (1978) User Reviews

The opener is better then I remember.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 6/10 · 10 September 2015]

The TARDIS has strolled into nothingness and faces falling into a spiral Nebula. To avoid it they materialise on board a ship, the ship belongs to a race called the Minyans of Minyos, they're on a Quest.

I was tasked with naming every Tom Baker episode, this was the one I forgot, and for good reason, it isn't the most memorable.

The episode owes its conception to Greek mythology, it's definitely Jason and the Argonauts meets Doctor Who.

Naturally good on the eyes, Leela looks as beautiful as ever, but she has competition from the stunning Imogen Bickford-Smith.

Part 1 is actually much better then I thought, my overall memory of Underworld was one if utter boredom, but the opener is better then I thought. Even the sets and props are better then i remembered, maybe I've judged Underworld too harshly, haven't seen it for over ten years. Part 1 solid 6/10

Underwhelming - The quest is not the best!

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 7/10 · 26 October 2019]

Review of all 4 parts:

This was the first story after the departure of Robert Holmes as script editor, following the recent exit of producer Phillip Hinchcliffe. Those two geniuses had created what I think is still the best era in the show's history. Holmes leaving was very sad for the show and that point is hammered home by this inadequate adventure. That is not clearly going to be the case in Part One as although it is below par compared to the great material the show had been producing, it was not too bad. Parts 2 and 3 though are extremely embarrassingly weak and Part 4 is not much better.

In the opening episode the TARDIS arrives on the Minyan ship, finding the crew are on an incredibly long quest. They face a meteorite storm and the Doctor tries to help. Everything at this stage is not that bad at all. The crew are not brilliant but are acted adequately well, the script is stodgy but reasonable, the setting is fine, the premise is OK while the effects are ambitious and actually pretty good for the time. The Doctor. Leela and K-9 are providing some charm and although the episode is not outstanding or impressive, it is acceptable.

Once the ship crashes into a planet at the start of Part 2 things go hugely downhill. The planet is poorly created with bad CSO effects due to lack of budget but no amount of CGI improvements could mask the real issues which are the direction, acting and script. Director Norman Stewart has failed miserably in the 2nd to 4th episodes with so many scenes badly directed, badly acted, badly edited and seeming like a poor amateur dramatics effort. The dialogue is poor but it is also delivered so badly and with so many mistakes in how actors carry out even the smallest physical actions like flicking switches, falling over or reacting to something that it makes me cringe. Action scenes are very weak but so are lots of minor interconnecting scenes with the Seers and workers from the planet. It is embarrassing. I guess the first part was so much better because it only had Tom Baker, Louise Jameson along with the ship's crew and K-9 plus a load of model shots. The director could not fail so badly with that material. But once we get the wider cast on the planet who are all rubbish actors he is unable to direct them to do anything well and he has failed to direct the CSO effects or action well at all also. Tom, Louise and John Leeson (as the voice of K-9) are fine and the ship's crew are not too bad but even they start getting worse. Part 2 and especially Part 3 are easily the worst Who episodes by far up to this point and would only be matched in their bad, pantomime style, silliness when the show reached its low point in Season 24.

Part 4 is not quite as bad but is still weak and it is only the presence of the Doctor and Leela that keep the middle parts from being even worse. Part 1 was not great but was so much better and is the only reason this is not challenging Delta and the Bannermen to be the worst TV episode of the show.

Writers Bob Maker and Dave Martin and producer Graham Williams deserve a fair portion of blame and new script editor Anthony Read was unable to make any positive impact but I feel the support cast and director Norman Stewart were especially at fault. Yes the budget was low but that does not excuse the lame scenes in Parts 2 to 4.

My ratings: Part 1 - 6.5/10, Part 2 - 2.5/10, Part 3 - 1.5/10, Part 4 - 3.5/10. Overall - 3.5/10.

A Needle in a Nebula...

[Xstal · 7/10 · 5 July 2022]

The Minyans have become a little weary, their spaceship's packing up, and a bit dreary, a thousand centuries in space, searching for their missing race, enough to send the sanest minion leery.

Attack Of The Killer CSO

[Theo Robertson · 3/10 · 31 October 2013]

There's a school of thought in DOCTOR WHO fandom that the worst crime a story can commit is to be boring . I don't go along with this train of thought . The simple truth is that the worst crime a DOCTOR WHO story can do is embarrass fans of the show . I've lost count the number of times I've watched a story either in front of my parents or on my own in the 1980s when I felt my skin blush so badly that my body temperature was in danger of causing a fire and felt a fundamental sense of shame that I had told anyone in the world that I once confessed to enjoying the show as a child , never mind confessing to watch it as an adult . No , an embarrassing story is infinitely worse than a boring one

That said Underworld is a good example of a boring story . It's been said by Robert Holmes that the programme works best when its roots are showing . This might well be true when DOCTOR WHO is ripping off HG Wells , or Nigel Kneale or Hammer horror movies but Underworld shows it's not a good idea to plagiarize Greek myth . Did someone mention Jason And The Argonauts ? If you're expecting blokes having a sword fight with skeletons you're going to be very disappointed . That I can guarantee along with being bored

What also lets Underworld down is an over reliance of Colour Separation Overlay ( CSO ) . What's that you ask ? It's a form of back projection where the cast stand in front of a blank screen and an image is superimposed behind them . It was used throughout the 1970s and beyond . A good /bad example would be the 1973 story The Green Death and fiver years later the CSO process seemed to have gone backward rather than forward with the cast often surrounded by a haze

It's interesting the large viewing figures that Underworld received of over 11 million viewers but perhaps this can be easily explained by the fact that no one would have had video recorders , that there were only three television stations and hardly anyone would watching BBC 2 and the time of year when Christmas and New Year meant that few households would money to go out on a Saturday evening