This is in many ways a bleak couple of episodes. Citizen Cordo would rather commit suicide than be in debt to the Company, and there's some indication of how much disparity exists: Cordo is completely unable to come up with the outstanding balance of 31 talmars to pay for his father's death, while Gatherer Hade is willing to give the Doctor 1000 talmars in order to sustain an illusion of mistaken identity long enough for the Doctor to reveal the location of the other rebel leaders (Hade believes). Meanwhile, the rebels living in the Undercity are just as despicable (if not more so), with the leaders more interested in self-preservation at any cost than in any more noble acts against the Company. Only Goudry (as played by Michael Keating, soon to become rather more well-known as Vila in Blake's 7) has any sort of redeeming qualities, and he's just as concerned about not drawing attention to himself as anyone else. The only honorable people we meet are Cordo and Bisham, the man being held in the Correction Centre with the Doctor.
The problem, however, is that that surface layer of jokes has led to a much lighter feel for this story than might have been intended. Now obviously some scenes (including basically anything with Gatherer Hade) are meant to be lighter. But one never really gets the sense that the people living underground are in any danger, and the Doctor and Leela never really feel like they're in danger either (not even in either cliffhanger). And so we get a sense of a society that we're told is bleak and being controlled by drugs in the air, but we never really get to see any of the effects.
The other odd thing about this story is how we're on Pluto in the far future, surrounded by six artificial suns, and yet this becomes a background element almost immediately. It obviously didn't help that it was miserably overcast on the days they shot outside, but there's a story in the mix about how even the light is something the citizens have to pay for, but it's never brought up. All this and the haphazard set design (though, to be fair to designer Tony Snoaden, the design thought processes seem to have been changed halfway through the design stage, which leads to some odd juxtaposition of elements -- Aztec faces, giant fake-looking animal rib cages, and blown up circuitry (from AMD, you may have noticed) all fight for screen prominence, with little rhyme or reason) make this a story that seems like it's been put together in a rush. Hopefully things improve in the last two episodes, but right now this feels like a story that's hoping that the tax jokes will distract people from the fact that this is a roughly-sketched-out oppressed society with no real threat or danger behind it.