15x5. Underworld
Writers: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
Director: Norman Stewart
Script Editor: Anthony Read
Producer: Graham Williams
Synopsis: The TARDIS
materializes on a spaceship piloted by a small crew of Minyans who have
been pursuing another of their species' ships, the P7E, for 100,000
years while artificially prolonging their lives in the hopes of
retrieving their species' race banks. Eventually they discover that a
planet has formed around the P7E and come into conflict
with descendants of its crew, who serve the ship's computer as an
"oracle" and exploit the others for labor.
Review: "Underworld" has some
interesting ideas, but it doesn't really do much with any of them,
instead just sending the Doctor and Leela running around with a bunch
of underdeveloped characters. The Minyan crew insist that "the quest is
the quest" and use artificial regeneration technology to continue their
pursuit of the P7E, but they are not particularly convincing as a group
of people who have supposedly been doing this for 100,000 years. The
Minyans' predicament is partly due to their ill-fated development of
technology originally given to them by the Time Lords (it eventually
led to their discovery of nuclear weapons), and the Doctor explains
that this was part of the motivation for their eventual isolationism,
but this never becomes anything more than a tangential piece of
backstory. As for the "Oracle," it's a pretty standard-issue insane
computer that pales next to Doctor Who predecessors
such as Xoannon, BOSS, and WOTAN. And while the references to Greek mythology (specifically the legend of the Argo)
may be somewhat clever, they really add little to the story itself,
functioning mostly as a curiosity. The serial does manage to keep the
audience's attention for its running time, but it's still one of the
more forgettable outings of the Tom Baker era to date.
Rating: ** (out of four)
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