Full Circle is the 112th Doctor Who serial and it arrived on British tv October 25 1980. Tom Baker is the Doctor, Lalla Ward is Romana and John Leeson is K-9. It's the first appearance of Mathew Waterhouse as future companion Adric. The story was written by 17 year old Andrew Smith and the episodes were directed by Peter Grimwade. Andrew's original story was first submitted when Douglas Adams was the script editor. It sat around for a while and when it was selected to be produced the story was changed by the new story editor Christopher H Bidmead. Peter Grimwade would direct three more serials and write three others before he died in 1990 at age 47.
It's a 4 part story that puts the Doctor and Romana on a planet in an alternate universe called E-Space. More trouble with the Tardis. They had been on their way to Gallifrey in answer to the call from the Time Lords. They land in a field and go outside thinking the're on Gallifrey. Not so. It's an inhabited planet called Alzarius and the people are the decendents of a crashed starliner. They've been there a long time repairing their ship. I found their starliner rather silly looking.
Some of the younger citizens have run off from the main group of colonists. They've gone native but they aren't very far away. They pop back to steal food. The planet has random periods where conditions make it unliveable. It's been a long time since the poisonous Mists have appeared. One of the older Council of Deciders was a boy when it happened last. One starts just after the Doctor gets there and the citizens pull back into the starliner. The locals see creatures rising out of the water. They're the Marshmen and they're supposed to be dangerous. The Doc pokes his nose into everyone's business and figures out what's happening. K-9 helps out a bit until the rubber suited Marshmen knock his head off with a stick. Poor K-9. He's going to be out of the series pretty soon. Hardly anyone on the staff liked him except Lalla Ward.
There's a big secret in the system files of the ship and the truth changes everything. The Doctor helps the people work through that. When the Doc and Romana finally leave in the Tardis they have a stowaway in the form of Adric. He'd become the only companion when Lalla Ward leaves the series at the end of the next two stories. They tie in with this serial in a small story arc called The E-Space Trilogy.
I was kind of thinking the story was about average. The first episode gets a 7.4 on the IMDB and that's way too high. Almost 19% of the votes were a 10. The 66.7% of the votes are in the 6-8 range. Only 5% voted the episode a 9. Still it's all relative. I'm not a raving fan of the series, even after all this time, but I'm not hating it either. I still like a lot of the earlier episodes better, though that could be nostalgia for what I watched last year.
There's a couple of ok featurettes and a photo gallery amongst the usual fare. The commentary is by Mathew Waterhouse, Christopher H Bidmead and Andrew Smith. I thought it entertaining enough and sadly thought it was nice to have a commmentary without Lalla lashing out at Tom. The guys do mention some of the troubles they had with Tom while on the set but they still like him. At the time they were making the episodes Tom had to be reigned in to keep him from changing the script and the staging from what was written. Tom didn't care much for the changes going on at the time and I'm kind of on his side. Andrew didn't write anymore tv and in 1982 he started a career in the London Police where currently he's a Detective Inspector. mathew would appear in Doctor Who until 1984 and then pretty much stop working in TV. He acted on stage occasionally after his tv work. Christopher would work on Doctor Who for a while and return to being a journalist.
Comments