Full Circle

The reinvention of the look and feel of “Doctor Who” in Season 18, Tom Baker’s final season, has been well documented, most notably in the superb book “The Eighties”. John Nathan-Turner and Christopher H. Bidmead hit the ground running, taking advantage of the best video effects available to the BBC in 1980, some of the Radiophonics Workshop’s finest new talents using modern equipment, and commissioning stories from mostly new-to-Who writers with a more pure, undiluted approach to science fiction than before, taking on some thought-provoking central themes, and with the linking theme of decay and regeneration leading up to the momentous events of Baker’s last story, “Logopolis”. The team were also lucky to have some very creative directors on board. Old hands Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts’ presence was mainly supervisory.

The team achieved all of their aims with the season opener, “The Leisure Hive”, which overcame the programme’s limitations with total confidence. A director unafraid to throw money everywhere didn’t hurt either! The following story, “Meglos”, was something of a step-back to the previous season, but in “Full Circle”, all the promise of this ambitious season came to fruition.

When people talk about ‘classic’ “Doctor Who”, the stories that top most people’s lists are usually of the epic quality of “Talons of Weng Chiang” or “The Caves of Androzani”. However, equally classic are the stories that don’t set out to be flashy or mark epic points in the Doctor’s history, but simply bring together all the elements on hand to make a solid, good quality “Doctor Who” adventure that is a joy to watch again and again. Doctor Who is packed with them and “Full Circle” is one such story. It’s driven by some interesting ideas, has strong performances from all involved and is a well-realised television production.

“Full Circle” is basically a story about evolution and social engineering. A humanoid civilisation is preparing for its eventual return to its home planet, whilst changes on the planet’s surface sees strange things happening that are part of the civilisation’s history and yet not fully understood, obscured by the traditions and rituals of the Deciders, a benevolent yet authoritarian committee bound by custom and procedure. Like Clare Daly in “Carnival of Monsters” and Shardovan in “Castrovalva”, certain individuals have vague inklings that there is something amiss about their way of life, but they are too much a part of their self-contained microcosm that they cannot think outside the box. The Deciders name is ironic, as they are not able to think freely, being bound by rules and regulations that conveniently wallpaper over any cracks – “Any inconsistencies must be accepted”. In his own quiet way, Andrew Smith is making a subtle commentary on society bound by legislation and procedure just as much as obvious satires such as Paradise Towers, Happiness Patrol and The Sun Makers. The endless pointless repairs to the Starliner remind me of local councils constantly digging up roads to use up their annual budget and maintain achievement levels!

At the heart of “Full Circle” we have a mystery of a microcosmic society based around confrontations and revelations. In Season 18, the Doctor remains cool, curious and casual on the surface, and his passionate ‘humanitarianism’ bursts through in one of his finest serious parts in the role, when he rails at the Deciders for their “procrastination”, and at the elder Decider’s obscuring of the origins of their race in order to maintain his bureaucratic hold over the society’s true evolutionary path. Definitely up there alongside his “Appreciate it?” outburst in “The Pirate Planet”, and the banquet scene in “Warriors Gate”.

This powerful scene, full of some memorable comments from the Doctor, comes right after viewing the disastrously fatal attempt to operate on the marsh child in the laboratory, and their treatment of the marsh creatures as an inferior subspecies for experimentation, because they are not humanoid. These scenes put me in mind of the Third Doctor’s similar idealistic confrontations, most famously in “Doctor Who And The Silurians” – in many ways, “Full Circle”s addressing of the Deciders’ attitude towards the marsh creatures (a mixture of primitive fear and cold scientific callousness) is a more successful revisit of that story’s themes than its true sequel “Warriors Of The Deep”. As with “The Silurians”, the amphibious creatures are not the real villains, as they are simply trying to survive and develop ‘naturally’ – which is why the revelation about the humanoids’ true origins is such a brilliant twist in this story, and underlines the theme of natural evolution versus social engineering. It is always good to see the Doctor side with the ‘threat’ rather than the humans, as it emphasises the universality of his pro-life creed.

I can’t mention the marsh creatures without commenting on their appearance. Although they are obviously the latest in a long line of men in rubber suits, the design of their masks makes them a lot more credibly disturbing, a mixture of veins, seaweed-like fronds and barnacled flesh. Although they have the annoying Doctor Who tendency of walking around with their arms outstretched, zombie-style, the cliffhanger in which they emerge slowly from the misty, bubbling water is one that is still breathtaking. The other great cliff-hanger is Romana’s spider attack. Even though they are clearly toy spiders, the shot of the spider bursting from the fruit and leaping onto Romana’s face is so tightly edited it still makes me flinch. Top marks to Peter Grimwade. 

The direction and editing in this story is of a consistently high quality, and well complimented by Paddy Kingsland’s soundtrack. Kingsland’s score still sounds remarkably fresh, using a variety of sounds and moods to complement the story’s various settings. However, the similarity of many of the themes to those used in his classic score for “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy” does not go unnoticed! 

George Baker gives a good performance as Login. One of Doctor Who’s specialities is portraying the little man who is caught in the wheels of the machine – Laurence Scarman in “Pyramids of Mars” coming to terms with his brother’s possession, and Rex Farrel, the tragic pawn of the Master in “Terror of the Autons”. He portrays Login as a warm, personable everyman who is a family man and a pillar of the Starliner community, with so much faith in the Deciders and their manuals that he does not question the pointless repair tasks that are being conducted all over the Starliner; and is wonderfully ‘real’ when the Doctor opens his eyes to the deceptions of his superiors, and has greatness thrust upon him when he has to take the initiative to launch the Starliner.

“Full Circle” is Adric’s story, so I’ve got to say a few things about him. Adric comes across pretty well in this story, and was initially well served by his first lot of stories. Adric is not likeable in the sense that Sarah Jane Smith was likeable – he is socially awkward, at once both insecure and arrogant like most teenagers, and a bit screwed-up thanks to his inability to fit in anywhere. Nevertheless, he is a trier, and it is this aspect of his character that balances out his personality’s flaws. In “Full Circle” he is not a companion, so the problems with his character that led to his exit do not affect his part in the story here. Matthew Waterhouse is not the best actor in the world, but he is certainly not the worst to have appeared in Doctor Who, so I’ve never thought it entirely fair that he’s so universally disliked!

Here, and in subsequent stories with the Fourth Doctor, his well-meaning bungling was intended to provide the ‘human factor’ to balance out the otherwise infallible crew of two Time Lords and a computer, and he briefly enjoys a charming tutor/student relationship with the Doctor in “The Keeper Of Traken” and “Logopolis”. Taken on his own merits in “Full Circle”, Adric is mostly inoffensive – give or take his proclamation that “I’m an elite!” – and not the petulant brat of the Fifth Doctor stories.

“Full Circle” is also famous for being the first story written by a fan. I wonder if the news that a fan – one of us – could get a Doctor Who story made was a factor that influenced fans to try their hands at writing Doctor Who scripts and books, from successful writers such as Paul Cornell to every budding Who fan that’s got a Doctor Who story hiding in their hard drive or in their desk?

Given the latter day precedent for fan writing to be full of returning monsters, continuity references and other ‘fanwank’ tendencies, it might seem surprising that “Full Circle” is a very original story. At the end of the day, it does prove the fact that to write a successful Doctor Who story, the main criteria is to understand the format and come up with a good idea, and anything else is window-dressing. A review of “Full Circle” quoted in David J. Howe’s The Television Companion makes mention of the fact that the opening TARDIS scenes refer to Leela and Andred (“The Invasion Of Time”) and the Doctor taking on the Time Lords (“The War Games”) – but this isn’t gratuitous continuity. It’s entirely in keeping with the series and its ongoing history that the Doctor would mention his past adventures or previous travelling companions, in the right context, and this is a nice reminder that despite each season having its own internal continuity they are all part of a larger series of adventures. 

The only line that possibly betrays Andrew Smith’s fan status is the Deciders’ comment that “all inconsistencies must be accepted” – perhaps an in-joke at the expense of the continuity cops that had started to rear their heads? 

“Full Circle” is mainly known for the fact that it serves two purposes. It is the first part of the ‘E Space Trilogy’, a loose hook to maintain the viewers interest over successive stories, and it also gently ushers in the eventual departure of one companion, Romana, whilst ‘accidentally’ introducing a new companion, Adric. Stories that have external concerns grafted on to them often suffer as a result and tend to be considerably less than the sum of their parts. “Planet Of Fire”, for example, is not a bad story but has to accommodate Turlough, Kamelion, the Master and Peri and ends up as a bit of a mess. Fortunately, “Full Circle” does not have such weighty demands thrust upon it, and as a result is a story that one can enjoy regardless of being part of a story arc (a pretty tenuous one at that) or having to introduce a new companion, but it is for those two facts that it is mostly remembered. In a season book-ended by the stylish “The Leisure Hive” and the epic events of “Logopolis”, it’s very easy to overlook “Full Circle” – if this is the case, you are missing out on one of the undiscovered classic of the Tom Baker years.