YMMV / Doctor Who S15 E5 "Underworld"

• Hilarious in Hindsight: One reason the serial was so maligned when it came out was that it used digital backgrounds over physical sets. In the late New 10s/Early New 20s, using digital backgrounds over sets became very commonplace among TV and film productions (such as the later episode “Wild Blue Yonder”), making it seem like this serial was ahead of its time.
• Special Effect Failure: This particular serial suffers from a lot of these, brought on by having No Budget. At first, it looks like the story is going to avert this: the miniature effects look completely gorgeous and the spaceship set, costumes and laser effects look rather good for the time. The cave set looks good too, or rather it would if it wasn't a miniature pasted behind the actors in some of the most jarringly awful CSO the show has ever created, forced upon the production by the budget. Since there's no in-story reason for the caves to be an effect, it looks especially weird. Doctor Who has used CSO into miniature sets to create a psychedelic, surreal or dreamlike aesthetic at times, like in "Planet of the Spiders" and "The Invisible Enemy", with brightly-coloured and trippy sets that would be impossible to do in reality — but in "Underworld" they decided to make the shot look 'realistic' by making it all brown, meaning it's ugly as well as difficult to even see where the characters are. K-9 goes through the wall once or twice and is once connected to something with connectors that are obviously just ordinary box clips, not even spray painted. There's also a matte painting shot of a regeneration room — the painting itself looks incredibly realistic and would have worked really well if the shot hadn't been made a little too low down so the bottom of the painting is visible at a right angle on the set floor, ruining the illusion. (To add insult to injury, this is the serial that was airing at the time Star Wars came out.)
• Visual Effects of Awesome: For all it's No Budget moments, there are some visually pleasing moments too:
  • The actual spaceship out on the outside is well shot, looking believably 3D and imposing.
  • Whilst the CSO of the nebula is shoddy, the actual nebula swirling effect is gorgeous.
  • The laser rays from the guns during all the fights are quite unique, with the green and purple thick ray asthetic not often used during 70s who.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jackson mentions early in the story that the Time Lords got involved with Minyan society soon after learning the secrets of time travel, only for their interference to help lead to the civil war that destroyed Minyos. This seems like an ideal opportunity to explore the reasons behind the Alien Non-Interference Clause that caused the Doctor to grow disillusioned with Gallifreyan society and take off with the TARDIS — however, it's never brought up again after the first episode, other than the Doctor briefly mentioning it to the Oracle near the end of the story.

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