Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
492: Underworld, Episode Two
Dear diary,
I know how this works. You lot. You’ll laugh, you’ll point. You’ll hunt me down with knives and pitchforks. You’ll revoke my Who card and make me surrender my DVD collection. But you know what? I’m going to say it anyway: Underworld isn’t that bad. And on top of that… the CSO actually kind of works.
Oh, believe me, I’m as stunned as you are. I was really dreading making it out of the ship today and into the the green-screen tunnels. It just seemed like such a bad idea. There’s several places where - no - it really doesn’t work: moments when characters are able to walk in front of things that they shouldn’t be able to, or when the smoke starts to fill the cavern at the end of the episode (although points for trying…), but equally there’s a lot of places where it looked good enough to me.
It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m saying this after a single episode of CSO shenanigans. By the time I’ve finished the next two episodes, I’ll probably have grown somewhat sick of it. I think the biggest shame is that while this world well enough to tell the story, it can’t ever compete with being out in real caves on location somewhere. It just lacks the kind of depth that you get when they film in locations like those used for The Mutants. This seems even more of a pressing shame coming right after The Sun Makers: a story in which to corridors and tunnels looked especially nice for being proper locations.
The other thing that seems to be happening - and especially in Tom Baker’s case - is that people are compensating for the fact it’s being shot so much on CSO by over-acting. When the Doctor and Leela first step out into the cave system, we get a few shots of him as things are explained. It’s all pretty standard stuff for a Doctor Who episode, and it’s the kind of thing that Baker could usually rattle off in his sleep.
He’s really going for it, though, and delivering a version of the Doctor that I’ve not seen him give before. He’s more ‘boggly’ than ever before. In some ways, it reminds me of that bit in the Whose Doctor Who documentary, where he describes Jon Pertwee as being like a big lightbulb. Playing up for the cameras. It’s not needed in this instance, though, and it sticks out more than any of the CSO backgrounds are.
The other issue I’m having is that… I don’t really care. Yesterday’s episode gave us a lot of sci-fi nonsense with dying civilisations, and pacifier rays, and rede banks, but as soon as we switch today to some men in hoods banging on about sacrifice, I just really thought very clearly ‘I don’t care’. It doesn’t feel rooted in reality: it’s just the kind of thing you could find in any old sci-fi. That’s not a fault particularly of Underworld (indeed, several Doctor Who episodes fall into the same trap), but it is a let down. I’m starting to wonder if the story’s poor reputation may actually be deserved - in the past I’ve only ever heard people say it’s rubbish because of the CSO effect… I’ve never actually heard anyone talk about the story…
