I’ve always felt about The Mutants (editor’s note: alternate name for ‘The Daleks’) that the “done thing” is to praise it; it is, after all, the first Dalek story, and the story that cemented Doctor Who’s popularity with the public. Despite this, I've always looked upon it as being quite dull. As with 100,000 BC however, I've come to reassess it having watched it again. The TARDIS crew continues to develop, the Doctor still exhibiting the selfishness he displayed in the previous story – he is quick to suggest leaving Barbara to her fate when he discovers that they have radiation sickness, more concerned with saving himself and Susan. When Ian insists that they find her, he then elects to abandon both teachers. Later, he is in no doubt that they should use the Thals to aid them, despite the fact that, as Ian says, they have no right to endanger the Thals just to get the fluid link back. In this case, Barbara agrees with the Doctor, whereas Ian strongly disagrees – a reminder that, whilst they tend to get referred to in tandem, they are each well-rounded characters in their own right. Ian comes across as the most reasonable member of the TARDIS crew here, only finally acting to enlist the Thals once he realises that the Daleks will kill them if they don’t defend themselves and later holding the morale of the expedition together, diplomatically blaming himself when Antodus fails to catch the rope during the chasm crossing, and striving to reassure him. Despite this, the crew continues to operate well as a team in dangerous situations; all four of them contribute to the plan to escape the Dalek cell, and once committed to working to attack the Dalek city, the four members all play vital roles. The Doctor’s character continues to develop; he launches eagerly into the attack on the Dalek city, expressing sheer glee when he destroys the power line in episode six and getting so caught up in the mental challenge of what he is doing that he becomes oblivious to the danger they are in and ends up being recaptured. This, I feel, is a key example of his increasing delight in “becoming involved”. The Daleks also have a profound effect on him I feel; as noted, he still exhibits enormous selfishness during the first half of this story, but witness his rage at the “senseless killing” planned by the Daleks; not only is he starting to relish involvement but he also I think starts to feel that there is evil that needs to be fought. Susan comes of less well than in her debut, prone to more fits of hysteria and panic, although in her defense she completes her mission to fetch the anti-radiation drugs from the TARDIS despite gibbering in fear until she meets Alydon. It’s probably convincing behaviour all things considered, but this doesn't make it any less irritating, and although by the second half she has calmed down in general, she swaps her panic for a role as the Doctor’s shadow, there purely for him to explain things to for our benefit. 

The atmosphere aboard the TARDIS at the start of the story is interesting; Ian and Barbara clearly think that the Doctor owes them a degree of responsibility to get them home, whereas the Doctor objects strongly to this, blaming their curiosity for their presence. Despite this, when not under stress, he seems almost to appreciate their company, asking Barbara to reassure the frightened Susan and eagerly showing off the TARDIS food machine. This story also gives us a greater sense of the sheer size of the TARDIS, allowing us beyond the then-massive control room and further into the ship; it isn’t just bigger on the inside, it’s much bigger on the inside. 

The Daleks are impressive in their debut, and not merely because of their distinctive appearance and method of movement. They come across as excellent scientists and strategists, having harnessed static electricity learnt how to grow food in artificial environments, created an entirely artificial city, and developed a long-lasting power source in the city’s nuclear reactors. They are quick to allow the Doctor and his companions to live when they realize that they can be used to trap the Thals, and quickly realize what is happening when the laser scope is blocked by the reflections, switching without hesitation to the vibrascope, demonstrating the degree to which they take multiple eventualities into account in their technology and thinking. Most of all of course, they come across as callous and ruthless, defining their prisoners solely by their usefulness, eager to destroy the Thals in order to remove any obstacles to their planned rebuilding of Skaro, and prepared to irradiate Skaro again without any sign of a conscience about wiping out everything else living on the planet just so that they can survive. They are not the backward, city-bound non-space faring, non-time traveling primitive Daleks I remembered, but rather master planners, keen to extend their technological and territorial boundaries and become that threat seen in their later appearances. This is not some prelude to the start of the Daleks’ status as the Doctor’s archenemies this is the beginning. It is interesting also how they are used as a metaphor for the nuclear threat, the cold, scientifically dependent, war-mongering, radiation based Dalek society versus the peace loving farmers, the Thals. This is nowhere more evident than in the final episode, as the countdown progresses towards nuclear annihilation of the Thals and a Dalek-less future for Skaro. It is also unusual for a writer to include such a message alongside such an obvious argument for the need to fight, represented by the death of the pacifistic and trusting Temmosus. 

The Thals are rather duller than their nemeses and still come across as rather wet, but nowhere near as much as I remembered. They are well scripted as individuals, with the pouting Dyoni, the stalwart Alydon, the dashing Ganatus, and the terrified Antodus who is painted as a coward so that he can redeem himself through a brave death. The whole expedition across the swamp and through the caves is raised above B-movie status by the character interaction, be it between Ganatus and Antodus, or the sexually charged friendship between Ganatus and Barbara. Finally, I must mention Skaro – in a series that would come to use quarries as alien locations, the studio-bound settings on Skaro are an impressive achievement, let down only by the obvious painted backdrops used to make the corridors in the Dalek city look longer (the perspective is wrong). The Petrified Forest and the caves look very convincing, and even the swamp works well, despite stock footage of a caterpillar used to portray a mutant. Overall, the Daleks is an impressive debut, although it is a shame about Susan’s pratfall at the end. The development of the relationships between the TARDIS crew progresses well, ready to be given lasting definition in the next story.

There is little that can be said about An Unearthly Child that hasn't been said before. Nevertheless, I'll mention a few things - it's a great episode, atmospheric, intriguing and well acted. Ian and Barbara are immediately engaging, Ian cheerfully admitting that he's curious about Susan, Barbara claiming that she is genuinely worried about the girl. The Doctor is, from the start, a fascinating character whose rather patronizing and high-handed attitude towards his two stowaways is fascinating - I know of course how he mellows towards the two teachers over time, especially after Inside the Spaceship, but it will still be interesting to see it unfold in order, for the first time for me. Despite knowing what it looks like, the first shot inside the TARDIS still impressed me and it must have been amazing in 1963 - the direction is superb. The fact that Ian and Barbara pass out on take-off is weird though. The only weak point really, is Susan (more on that later), who provides the only embarrassing bit in the episode with her weird hand dancing to John Smith and the Common Men. 

Anyway, I could go on about An Unearthly Child, but I'd rather move on to The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear, and The Firemaker. I haven't seen these episodes for ages and I'd decided that they are dull. Having watched them again however, I've had to reassess them. The Cavemen are basically dirtied actors in rugs, but they all act with such conviction that I found them thoroughly believable. Their desperate desire to survive and their brutality were superbly conveyed - Za and Kal in particular, both ultimately brutal and stupid no matter how cunning they try to be, are played well. Their final fight in the cave is particularly well done, actually resembling a violent, desperate fight to the death. Za's brutal slaying of Kal contrasts nicely with his struggle to understand the new ideas offered by Ian - friendship, and strength in the unity of the tribe. And the cave set looks brilliant.

The TARDIS crew continues to shine - Ian and Barbara's struggle to understand what has happened is well done, and their eventual success contrasts with Za's failure to rise above a savage despite Ian's best efforts. Barbara's hysteria in the forest is convincing and makes sense; Ian's strained pragmatism contrasts, but also works, as he tries to keep control as much for Barbara's sake as for his own. Their insistence on helping Za, however ultimately foolish, again shows the contrast between them and the savages. The Doctor is fascinating here, concerned primarily with his own survival and that of his granddaughter - his frustration at Ian and Barbara's helping of Za and brief attempt to kill the caveman suggest what he later states in The Dalek Invasion of Earth - he is prepared to kill in self-defense. But at the same time, he seems to be watching his companions intently, and is perhaps shamed by their compassion. Certainly, by the time Ian and Barbara leave him in The Chase, he is much mellowed. That said, he is not the anti-hero claimed by some - he offers Barbara comfort in the Cave, and admits that he is scared. It is this fear I think that fuels his desperation to return to the TARDIS. He is also quick-thinking and resourceful, swiftly assessing the situation on regaining consciousness and offering to make fire almost as soon as his eyes open; later, he easily manipulates (the admittedly stupid) Kal into confessing his part in Old Mother's death. 

The only thing that grated for me was Susan's reaction to the Doctor's wandering off - at this point, she had no idea that he had been kidnapped and no reason to. Yet immediately on seeing that he is out of view, she screams hysterically and falls apart. Panicking under stress is one thing, and given later hints of prior adventures I'd have thought she'd have learnt to control it to some extent anyway, but her hysteria in this case is ridiculous. 

So all-in-all, a much better start to the series than I remembered, and one worthy of re-assessment. And it even has an anti-smoking message.

One of the really irritating things about 'Robot', the first Doctor Who story to feature Tom Baker, is the voice of the robot - you can't help but hear it as a slighly less frightening, non-branded copy of the better known Dalek. The writers would like the robot's voice to be written in the jagged diagonal typeface found in the pages of the Dalek comic, but it would be lucky to even get italics. In all ways, Kettering's robot is a bit sad. Clearly, to look at this robot, you would never mistake it as a Dalek, and you kind of sympathise with it when Sarah Jane Smith tells it that it has been programmed to behave "all wrongly". Yes, robot, it isn't your fault that you've been programmed to behave the way you do, walking a bit like the Mitchelin man, talking a bit like a violent pepperpot. But, alas, this is the robot we are stuck with, in this remarkably below average Doctor Who story. 

What is there to say about 'Robot' that is positive? Well, there is Tom Baker. The skipping scene, with Harry, is remarkably funny, and must have been unbelievably odd, coming straight after the bravado of Jon Pertwee. Equally, Baker makes the riff on "unbreakable sounds ominously like unsinkable" the best dialogue in the episode (and there is some awful dialogue to be found here). A quick negative, while on the subject of writing: the bizarre unveiling of the 'robot' couldn't possibly try any harder to sound like a speech from a 1930s Nazi rally, and this blunt symbolism really doesn't do an already weak story any favors. 

However, following after this comes the Doctor's disarming and completely Doctor-like stand-up comedy routine. This is not only the Doctor we would come to love for 10-or-so years on television, but it is also the Doctor that we have always loved: Baker catches, in his performance, the special something that makes the Doctor who he is, and builds on it. His performance is a shot in the series' arm, and we are still seeing the benefits of it today, in, for example, the Eighth Doctor of the novels. 

So pretty frothy, in terms of plot, dialogue, and characterisation, by all accounts... but it is saved by a charming performance from Baker, teeth, scarf, and all.

"Why should we remain forever underground, cowering from the memory of things that happened centuries ago?"

Revenge of the Cybermen was one of the first Doctor Who stories I saw (at the tender age of three), so it always retains a special place in my heart. I never fail to enjoy watching it, but even I have to admit that, on many levels, it's actually rubbish. Yes, there's atmospheric shooting in Wookey Hole, the Cyberdesign looks good in photos and Kellman and Vorus shine as characters amid the cardboard, but so much just doesn't work. The Earth people are tired, the effects are risible, the music is irritating, the Vogan masks are ill-formed and characters dull - even Kevin Stoney delivers the line "It's going to hit!" not with the terrified panic of the novel, but in a tone of faint disinterest, apparently playing his role as Father Christmas. Gold is introduced as the Cybermen's nemesis, yet undoubtedly gold-firing Vogan weapons are useless against them. Above all, the script and the Cybermen themselves fail dreadfully - ironically, neither displaying much in the way of logic. 

So what went wrong? How did it so stunningly fall short of any other Hinchcliffe and Holmes story's themes or quality? All real fans know they were the new masters of innovation after the stale old season that preceded their work, that they could do no wrong. It's a *fact* that they made the Golden Age of Doctor Who. We know they were brilliant. We know they can't have got tired or uninspired. We know that, if this was the result, it must have been *somebody else's fault*.

At last, the true story can be told.

REVUE OF THE CYBERHAMS

In the midst of a production run of quality drama, usually dwelling on gruesome 'body horror', possession and lurking, subterranean ghouls, one story stands out as really not seeming like a Hinchcliffe / Holmes story at all. You've all wondered about it. What on Earth was Revenge of the Cybermen doing in Season 12? I have the answer. Hinchcliffe and Holmes had nothing to do with it. 

Picture the scene, back in 1975; the new production team is about to start work on their masterpiece, the triumphant conclusion of a trilogy of stories stamping their own, distinctive universe-view on the Doctor's past foes and establishing the new Doctor in the process. Yet, lurking in the shadows like a Bob Holmes underground megalomaniac are the twisted figures of the old guard, waiting for a last stab at glory.

That's right. Suffering Who withdrawal symptoms, Letts, Dicks and Pertwee committed a hideous crime. Falling upon the new team in an unguarded moment, they knocked their successors unconscious and bundled them into a cupboard (unknown ‘til now, the real reason why Terror of the Zygons was delayed). They then took their places, to produce a final 'Season 11' story. Pertwee had always wanted to face the Cybermen, and his team were confident they could make a 'top monster' return story every bit as dramatic and successful as Death to the Daleks. Pertwee donned a dark wig and used his famous talent for silly voices to impersonate Tom, and managed at least to be more convincing than 'the Doctor' at the end of The Monster of Peladon part 4.

So embarrassing did the BBC find this incident (they weren't the only ones, I hear you cry, but hush!) that it has remained a secret until now - although many must have guessed. Across three decades, details of the storyline as originally amended by Robert Holmes have been lost, but his settings can now be pieced together. They make for a story rather different to that overseen by the men who brought us ‘classics’ like The Eight Doctors and (whisper it) The Ghosts of N-Space. . .

To set the scene, it's perhaps best to consider the two great Hinchclomesian themes. First comes what might be termed the dastardly, demented, devious, disfigured, deformed, deadly, depressive denizens of the dank, deep dark. Or, if you prefer, 'something nasty in the cellar'. The brooding, not to say unhinged, physically limited villain buried down below is a staple in most stories of the time, seen most clearly in the characters of Davros, Sutekh, Morbius, the Master and Magnus Greel (and infesting other Holmes scripts from the Krotons and Linx to Sharaz Jek and Drathro).

Second, there is the much-remarked-on gothic / Hammer horror theme of possession and 'body horror'. Again, these ideas run through virtually every Hinchclomesian story (and most other Holmes-influenced scripts). Within this theme, an extraordinary number of stories really stand out - just look at The Ark in Space, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear and The Face of Evil.

Now the background is fresh in your mind, I'm sure it takes little prompting to realise that Revenge of the Cybermen was to have been Hinchcliffe and Holmes' early masterpiece. In their rewrite of the script, the Cybermen were far more than mere joke robots, fit only for clumsy fight scenes (which Terrance later let slip he'd written by using one of them – the monsters’ storming of the spaceship / space station - again, with a more professional production team, in Shakedown - the Return of the Sontarans). 

Imagine how sinister the Cybermen would have been as the 'walking dead' of The Tenth Planet reborn, with the higher production values and greater willingness to go for outright horror of the mid-70s. You don't have to look to the more recent Borg for inspiration; the human shape corrupted by chillingly wrong body language and an utterly inhuman way of speaking that marked the Cybermen in their first appearance is the best prototype you could wish for.

In Holmes's version, perhaps better titled Last of the Cybermen, the Cybermen are far into the future of their previous appearances. Worn out and alone in the wake of the Cyberwar, without spare parts or reinforcements, this Cybership's crew is near termination point. Their human parts are, at long last, starting to decay, their cybernetic parts malfunctioning. They must survive.

The Cybermats are introduced to the Beacon to inject humans with a form of paralysing agent, a neural inhibitor that also forms the first stage of the cybernisation process (much as we saw in The Moonbase). Their aim is to have the Beacon in quarantine long enough to convert its facilities into a Cyber-factory. This makes perfect sense; after all, the human bee-hive of The Ark in Space showed where Holmes's thoughts at the time were leading. Just as Holmes followed The Deadly Assassin almost immediately with a thematic sequel to explore the same ideas, so this story was to have been Season 12's equivalent of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Graphic body horror reaches its heights as the ancient Cyberleader, having been unable to hibernate and now literally rotting to death, is restored with the voice and body of the much-loved crew member who apparently copped it in episode one. It's a shame we had to wait until Frontios for ideas like this to reach the screen (now there's a story that's out of place - an odd mixture of Quatermass, Hartnell, Hinchcliffe and Holmes, and precious little like the surrounding tales).

However, this story isn't just an unmade masterpiece through its lost depiction of the living dead. The other Hinchclomesian theme, of the lurking fiend, was also well to the fore. While the Cybermen's cold, clinical, scientific corruption of humanity was perfectly suited to raising the goosebumps with body horror, the Vogans were created as the ultimate in twisted underground-dwellers. Like living dead themselves, the Vogans are 'pallid, devious worms' who have hidden in the dark for so long they have become as deformed and demented as any Hinchclomesian mastermind. With the Vogans, Holmes designed an entire race of Magnus Greels.

Voga was to have been a darker, more claustrophobic, paranoid ruin of a world. In the tame 'Season 11' story that we've all seen, we are drawn to Vorus only because he's the one Vogan that's remotely interesting – though we generally see him as a mad glory-hunter who endangers all those nice old dodderers, he was originally a much more tragic, almost heroic, figure. 

The Vogan civilisation is scheming, twisted and repressive, with paranoid manipulators always jockeying for a bigger position in their tiny planet. Vorus was a misfit mirror image to that, a glorious anti-hero with a real motivation to raise his world and his people out of their cancerous existence - not just to stir up a load of happy old cowards for the sake of it. David Collings could have pulled off a prototype Sharaz Jek, too. As it was, the state of Kevin Stoney's performance matched the Cybermen's deterioration since his last appearance with them... If it *was* Kevin Stoney. Records are unclear, but I wouldn't be surprised if Pertwee had also spirit-gummed on an unconvincing beard to play Tyrum, as Stoney's proven abilities would surely have produced a performance much closer to the devious, sinister, embittered Vogan leader of the Holmes draft.

So there you have it. The Hinchclomesian masterpiece that was never made, thanks to the terrible crimes of Dicks and Letts. The basic story of Revenge of the Cybermen is quite sound - it takes little imagination to convert it back into the 'Season 12' version, now that you know how Holmes and Hinchcliffe had planned it. Yet without understanding and delivering on the themes that brought it together, it just collapsed back into the pile of clichés that Holmes' extraordinary talent was normally able to fashion something magical from. Instead of a logically desperate group of Cyber-survivors in conflict with their sinister enemies, we had a romp. Tough and gritty it was not; desperate, but in quite the wrong sense. At least even the old production team had the sense not to let Gerry Davis anywhere near it after his first draft.

The lost draft still leaves the Cybermen with that ludicrous vulnerability that was to plague them for ever more, of course, but what can you expect? Not everything even Bob Holmes touched turned to gold, you know.

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.

Following the superb ‘Spearhead From Space’, the production team wisely changed tack and tried something rather different, instead of trying to repeat the success of Pertwee’s first story. The result is a longer, almost ponderous story, but one that approaches its subject matter very well and delivers a morality play unlike anything seen to date in the series. It also goes a lot further towards established Jon Pertwee’s Doctor after his comparatively short and action-packed debut.

It should come as no surprise if I note that the strength of ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ lies in the characterisation, something for which Malcolm Hulke is justifiably renowned, and which I’ll inevitably come to later. This however overlooks the significance of the plot, which is unlike any story seen so far in the series. Whereas in ‘Spearhead From Space’ the Doctor confronted an alien invasion from outer space, a plot with precedents in the series, in ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ the threat is not from outer space, but from an “alien” species native to Earth and with a claim on the planet that predates humanity’s by many thousands of years. The only other “home-grown” menace defeated by the Doctor in the series is WOTAN, which was a new creation, whereas the Silurians have been in hibernation for aeons. This immediately provides the moral dilemma faced by the (alien) Doctor, since he finds himself caught between two species which both live on Earth and which both have a valid right to exist there. And therein lies rub; we immediately have a tragedy in the making, as anger and hostility on both sides scupper the Doctor’s attempts to negotiate a peaceful coexistence between Silurian and Human, resulting in attempted genocide by parties in both groups. With a plot such as this, the conclusion is inevitable; the series format does not lend itself to actually letting the Doctor negotiate peace between the two species, and so the story advances towards the climax with the viewer realizing that the Silurians are not going to get to reclaim their planet. It is this foregone conclusion that provides the framework for the marvellous depth of characterisation presented by the script, but most notably, it allows us to get to know the Third Doctor in more depth.

It is in ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ that Jon Pertwee really establishes himself. During ‘Spearhead From Space’, his extended periods of unconsciousness meant that the Doctor didn’t get much to do for more than about two episodes. Once he had recovered, the four-episode length of the story meant that the remaining screen time was devoted to foiling the Auton invasion. Here however, the Doctor gets seven entire episodes to involve himself in the story, and we really get to see his new character at its best. Firstly, after the jovial nature of the final scene of ‘Spearhead From Space’, we get to see his relationships with Liz and the Brigadier after some time has passed, and they have developed somewhat in the intervening time. The Doctor and Liz clearly work well together as a team, even more so than in ‘Spearhead From Space’, and he seems to appreciate having a capable scientist as a companion, especially during episode six as he tries to find a cure for the Silurian plague. His relationship with the Brigadier is more complex. They are still clearly friends, but there are hints of strain, the Doctor making several jibes about the Brigadier’s military approach to the problems facing them, which eventually visibly start to erode Lethbridge-Stewart’s usual diplomatic attitude. Despite this, his respect for the Doctor seems undiminished, and they continue to pull together under stress, as witnessed in episode seven when they communicate volumes simply by making eye contact. 

In fact, I suspect that the Doctor is almost exclusively responsible for the tension between himself and the Brigadier; there is a general feeling that his relief at being given somewhere to stay and resources with which to repair the TARDIS at the end of ‘Spearhead From Space’ has been rather tarnished as the fact of his exile sinks in. Whilst he has agreed to help the Brigadier (and is willing to do so when the situation merits his involvement) he clearly resents the Brigadier summoning him to the research centre in episode one and refuses to go until Liz talks him into it by massaging his ego. By the end of the story, this situation is rather worse; the Doctor is frustrated by his failure to negotiate peace, and make clear his intention to revive the Silurians one at a time in an attempt to reason with them. Then the Brigadier blows them up. The final scene, as the Doctor tells Liz that this is murder, is remarkable and shows Pertwee on his finest form. The Doctor seems genuinely stunned that the Brigadier has committed such an act, despite the human casualties of the Silurian plague and the fact that they tried to wipe out humanity a second time by using the disperser. It shows the Doctor’s high moral values and his disappointment when others don’t live up to them. In short, the entire story shows this new Doctor to be a strong moral character and Pertwee conveys well his frustration when humans and Silurians alike make peace impossible. 

The characterisation of the supporting characters is what makes ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ famous. Whilst Hulke has a reputation for creating what Terrance Dicks calls “people monsters”, this is only half of the equation. The human characters are just as complex and flawed as their reptilian counterparts. To start with the Silurians, there are only really two that we get to know in any detail, the Old Silurian and the Young Silurian. The Old Silurian represents the Doctor’s best hope for peaceful co-existence, since he realises that the primitive apes of his time have evolved into an intelligent species and agrees to try and live in peace with them. Had he survived, the denouement might have been very different. Early on during the story, the Silurians as a people are clearly shown to be rather more than just a new race of monster; as the Doctor points out, the Silurian wounded by Baker doesn’t kill anyone deliberately except for Quinn, who tries to take it hostage. The dinosaur that attacks people in the caves is twice called off before it can actually kill anyone (although of course it does kill one of the pot-holers in episode one). This suggests that the Silurians can be reasoned with, and the Old Silurian embodies this. Then in episode five, the Young Silurian infects Baker with the plague and any hope of a peaceful solution is dashed. For all the Doctor’s optimism, it seems unlikely that the humans would forgive this attempt at genocide (which results in a significant death toll in London), whether all of the Silurians supported it or not. Once the Young Silurian kills the Old Silurian, the situation becomes even more clearly irretrievable, as this angry creature, furious that his home has been invaded by apes, single-mindedly focuses on reclaiming Earth from the animals that have overrun it, too arrogant accept that they are intelligent, and too blinded by hatred to seek a peaceful solution. Yet for all that the Young Silurian is clearly a “villain” in the traditional Doctor Who sense of the term, Hulke refuses to make him some two-dimensional ranting madman; earlier in the story, he seems to be simply power-mad, but in episode seven as he announces that he will accept the responsibility that he has claimed as leader and will sacrifice himself to ensure that the rest of his people are saved, we see that however evil and misguided his actions are, he is genuinely motivated by the welfare of his people. 

The humans are just as well characterised. All of them have complex motivations, and do not divide easily into good guys and bad guys. Doctor Lawrence is presented as a deeply obnoxious, unpleasant man, who shouts and sneers his way through the story before meeting his end in episode six. Yet despite this, he is an understandable character; his career is on the verge of collapse, destroyed by forces totally outside his control. In episode one, in a brief flash of conscience, he shamefacedly apologizes to Quinn, telling him that he knows that everybody is doing his or her best to find the fault in the cyclotron. Then there is Doctor Quinn, an initially rather likeable character and ironically a unique example of human/Silurian peaceful interaction. But any chance he represents of peaceful coexistence between the two species is blown when his greed for knowledge motivates him to take a Silurian prisoner, resulting in his death. This also has a visible knock-on effect; his confidant Miss Dawson, on discovering his body, becomes a fierce proponent of revenge attacks against the Silurians, urging Masters to order a full frontal attack to wipe them out. She has no knowledge of why Quinn was killed; she merely assumes that the Silurians are hostile. Both her response, and those of Quinn and the captive Silurian are understandable, emotional reactions, and yet it is precisely these reactions that stand in the way of the Doctor’s desire for peace. Then there is Major Baker, misguided and trigger-happy, yet also with the best of intentions and a fierce, blinding loyalty to his own kind that reflects that of the Young Silurian. And of course Masters, a seemingly reasonable and rather likeable civil servant, trying to do his job, surprisingly willing to listen when enough evidence can convince him, and yet so thoughtlessly self-important that it doesn’t even occur to him that he should stay in quarantine. This results in not only his own death, but those of dozens of people in London. This is why ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ is such a tragedy; everyone’s motives are understandable, if not excusable, yet they make a peaceful solution utterly impossible. 

Production wise, ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ stands up well. It can’t help looking slightly shabby next to its glossy predecessor, but the sets are effective, and there is some excellent direction, including the Silurian viewpoints in episodes two and three. The notorious incidental music isn’t too bad either, mainly because it is used at just the right moments to be effective. Overall, ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ continues the high standard of Season Seven begun by ‘Spearhead From Space’, and really establishes the Third Doctor’s characteristic strong sense of morality.