Earthshock

4 episodes

Aired between 8th March 1982 and 16th March 1982

Written by Eric Saward
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Grimwade


Synopsis

The Doctor and Adric are having a spat about him going back into E-space.

It gets so bad that the Doctor lands the TARDIS in a cave and storms off . They leave Adric to work out the calculations to take himself home, whilst Tegan and Nyssa go to calm the Doctor down.

As they are looking around, they find fosilised remains of dinosaurs and the Doctor tells Nyssa about what happened to them.

As they are in the cave, they come across a bunch of angry space marines.  It turns out this is the future, and the marines had gone down into this cave to find out who killed a bunch of archaeologists who were looking at the fossils (and the marine's believe it's the Doctor and Co who are the culprits.

It doesn't take long however before they are proven innocent as two faceless androids appear and start shooting at the marines. After a heated exchange of fire, the androids are destroyed.

Adric finds them all and explains that the TARDIS picked up part of a signal coming from somewhere  and the Doctor speculates that it was the android's masters. They find a hatch in the rock, containing a bomb and the Doctor realises the signal was to start the bomb's timer.  He and adric work together to eventually stop the bomb.

The group speculate as to why the androids planted the bomb and the Doctor decides to trace the source of the signal and find out.  Despite his misgivings, the marines come with him.

The signal came from a space freighter on its way to earth and again, the Doctor is mistaken for a murderer as he and Adric explore it and are found looking at the dead body of a security guard by the ships Officer, Ringway.  He takes them to the bridge to see Captain Briggs who's only interested in making her shipment on time to get a big bonus.

As they debate the Doctor's innocence, they discover the real threat to the ship - Cybermen!!!

Meanwhile, Tegan goes with the marine's led by Sgt Scott as they decide to go and look for the Doctor.

Back on the bridge, the Doctor pleads with Briggs not to put her men against the Cybermen but she refuses.  Ringway turns traitor and says he got the Cybermen on the ship, but the Doctor makes short work of him and they block off the bridge with blast doors, buying themselves some time.

Even though the Doctor does a nifty trick with an anti-matter field to keep repairing the door, the Cybermen ultimately gain access to the bridge and capture everyone and the Cyber Leader kills Ringway.

They explain that they are intending to destroy a conference taking place on Earth that will solidify armies against the Cybermen and wipe them out.  Now that the Doctor has stopped the bomb in the cave, he will have to turn the freighter into a bomb and crash it into the conference.  After a bit of posturing, the Cyber Leader forces the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to go and give him access to the TARDIS so he can escape the resulting crash.  The Cyber Leader leaves everyone else with a couple of Cybermen to die on the ship.

Soon after, Scott manages to kill the Cybermen guards.  Adric and the freighter crew work frantically at the locked controls and manage to take the ship though a warp and back in time.  With nothing left to do, the freighter crew and Scott aim to leave the ship and urge Adric to do the same, but he's convinced he can break the codes to the ship that the Cybermen have installed and he can save the Earth. He stays behind to try and sort it.

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, Nyssa, Tegan and the Doctor observe that the ship has gone back in time 65 million years and will effectively cause the ice age  as it's now the meteor of legend. Scott manages to signal the TARDIS and tell them that Adric is still on the freighter but they've escaped.  The Cyber Leader decides to kill the crew, but the Doctor suffocates him by rubbing Adric's gold mathematics badge into the Cyber Leader's vent (he took it just before they left Adric).

The Leader shoots  at them, hitting the console and damaging it, and the Doctor is forced to take the gun and kill the Cyber Leader.

Similarly, Adric has just about found a way to avert disaster, but a Cyberman turns out to just be wounded and shoots the controls as it dies, stopping any chance Adric might have had.  He watches as the ship hits the Earth and causes a huge explosion.

The TARDIS crew watch in stunned silence as Adric is killed and history goes on.

Trivia

• The cyberscope that the Cybermen watch the androids progress on was built using parts of the Nostromo set from Alien

• One of the androids would be sprayed silver and used later on for the awesome Raston Warrior Robot in The Five Doctors

• It's not clear why Matthew Waterhouse left the show, but it's entirely likely to have been a decision from John Nathan-Turner.  

• The end credit scene is the only one since The War Games to have had rolling credits.  The next time would be the new series episode, Rose.

• The part where the various Doctors are seen on the Cyberscope showed clips from The Wheel in Space, whilst talking about events that happened in The Tomb of the Cybermen. This was because Tomb had been wiped from the archives and hadn't been re-discovered yet

• Malcolm Clarke, the guy who did the soundtrack for The Sea Devils also did the soundtrack for this.  He was asked to try and mimic the overused music that accompanied the Cybermen in Patrick Troughton's reign, but add his own flair to it

The Review

The Cybermen have been off screen for seven years by this point, and judging by the Revenge of the Cybermen, they were set a pretty low bar of expectation.  The haters of this story would point out that there's baffling logic at work for much of this, with the odd way they go about destroying the world being at the forefront. 

Whilst I can't deny those faults, I would say this is a story to sit back and enjoy, like the Sea Devils. It's there to show a triumphant return of a major villainous race, and give you a shock factor of them daring to actually kill a companion.  Short of Robert Holmes, there's nobody better qualified to write a script like this than Eric Saward.  His penchant for death-heavy stories plays very well here, and in the beginning, there's a real sense of the sinister - it's pretty much a copy of Aliens, just made four years earlier than the film!  There's hints of the battle of Tantive IV in there too.

Unfortunately, the whole thing gets a bit drab in the middle once Beryl Reed enters the scene.  It's not her fault entirely, the marines with useless guns and the pointless waiting around doesn't help at all.  It's just something to get through, but there are a few nice highlights including the Doctor's discussion with the Cyber-Leader (even though it's the most emotional Cyberman I've ever seen).

The ending is fabulous, with the Doctor forced to actually take a life, and they witness the death of Adric.  It's definitely morose and the silence for the credits is a very nice touch.  Earthshock is definitely a Doctor Who story to watch, but go into it just looking for ways to see how awesome and cruel the Cybermen are and you'll have a good time.

Rating 

9 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Daleks' Master Plan

• The Tomb of the Cybermen

• The Moonbase

• Attack of the Cybermen

• Silver Nemesis

Black Orchid

Two episodes
Aired between 1st March 1982 and 2nd March 1982

Written by Terence Dudley
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Synopsis

Things look a little bit suspicious when the TARDIS randomly takes its passengers to a train station in England, 1925 and a chauffeur is actually expecting them. They are invited by him to go to a cricket match run by his employer, Lord Charles Cranleigh.

The group all go there and the Doctor plays along, taking his role in the match and causing his team to win. 

It turns out that Lord Cranleigh has been expecting A doctor, not THE Doctor - a friend of his passed on the invite to this doctor to come and play to help them out.  Nevertheless, the Doctor fools Cranleigh and gets them all invited back to Cranleigh hall for a spot of tea.

Meanwhile, a man in bonds manages to escape and he kills a servant in what looks like a manor house.

Once at the hall, the Doctor meets Lady Cranleigh - Lord Cranleighs mother, and to everyone's surprise, Lord Cranleigh's fiance, Ann Talbot, looks exactly like Nyssa. 

It turns out that Ann was originally betrothed to Charles' brother, George Cranleigh, but he went missing as he went up the Orinocoe river, looking for the elusive Black Orchid, one of which is actually in the hall itself.

Lord Cranleigh is giddy from winning the cricket match and proposes they all have a fancy dress tea party.  The Doctor and co all agree and go off to guest rooms to get changed.

Ann suggests to Nyssa that they both wear the same costume as a bit of fun to confuse people and together with Tegan and Adric, they go off to the party.  The Doctor meanwhile is freshening up when a mysterious figure enters from a secret passage. 

The figure hides and when the Doctor finds the entryway, he is locked in and the mysterious man steals the Doctor's costume.

The party is full of hi-jinx with Adric stuffing his face and Tegan and Nyssa dancing the Charleston,

but Lady Cranleigh is met by an Indian man who explains that someone has escaped.  They go off to search the house and come across the Doctor who's found the dead body of the servant stuffed in a cupboard. 

Lady Cranleigh convinces the Doctor not to spoil the party and he goes off to get changed.

Meanwhile, things turn nasty when the Harlequin that was supposed to be the Doctor, tries to abduct Ann.

A butler tries to stop him and gets killed for his efforts. 

Ann faints and the figure takes her away and secretly returns the costume to the Doctor's room.

When Ann awakes, she panics and legs it straight to the door. Lady Cranleigh and the Indian - Latoni find her and whisk her away downstairs, finding the mysterious man - a hideously disfigured human man, hiding in the corner.

The Doctor cheerfully comes downstairs and is arrested thanks to Ann's accusations.  Lady Cranleigh refuses to confess and he's carted away to the Police Station. 

The Doctor eventually finds the TARDIS at the Police Station and convinces the bobby's to come on-board, confessing that he's a Time Lord.  They're all aghast and understand that he is what he says he is.  They all go back to Cranleigh Hall and find that George Cranleigh is actually alive and well and he's kidnapped Nyssa now, believing she's Ann. 

The Doctor goes onto the roof to talk him down as the building is set on fire.  He manages to convince him to let her go but George falls to his death. 

The TARDIS crew stay in the area for a few days to attend the funeral and then are allowed to go on their way back into time and space.

Trivia

• The most obvious point to make is that this is the first story since The Highlanders in 1964 not to have any supernatural monsters responsible for the bad stuff. 

• The tea party was supposed to be set in summer, but they filmed it in October. It was freezing, rainy and the wind kept blowing things off the table.  Just watch how it flaps the costumes about when the cast are stood talking.

• Peter Davison actually played cricket and they managed to capture his lucky bowl that resulted in him getting the batter out

• This is the only on-screen time that the Doctor's shown to engage in his love of cricket

Review

If you're looking for a story in Black Orchid, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.  It's there, but it's almost totally irrelevant.  The only real dramatic thing to happen is that a couple of people are beaten to death, then the Doctor is accused, then he goes up on a roof and watches someone fall to his death.

The total time this takes is about 15-20 minutes at most. The rest of the time is spent watching Adric stuff his face, or the Doctor show off at Cricket. 

In one sense, it's a nice character piece that shows life with the TARDIS crew, and it is nice to see Tegan suddenly enjoying herself instead of moaning about Heathrow.  Having said that, it's like the characters have had a temporary lobotomy and forgotten all the tension that they'd had in the last few stories. 

As short as this story is, I can't imagine watching it again for a long, long time.

Rating

4 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Crusade 

• The Massacre

• Carnival of Monsters

• The Androids of Tara 

• Ghostlight 

• The Unicorn and the Wasp (Doctor Who, Series 4)

The Visitation

Four episodes
Aired between 15th February 1982 and 23rd February 1982

Written by Eric Saward
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Moffatt

Synopsis

The Doctor attempts yet again to take Tegan home, but ends up taking her to Heathrow Airport as it would be in 1666.

Little do they know that a few weeks earlier, lights in the sky crashed to the ground and hearkened the arrival of an alien race on earth.  The aliens made their way to a manor house and invaded it, presumably killing the entire family and their servants.

Anyway, once Tegan finds out she's not exactly home, she loses her temper.  The Doctor soon convinces them all to go and have a look around first.  Unfortunately, they get into a fight with locals and are rescued by a wandering Shakespearean highwayman called Richard Mace.  Mace leads them to a barn where they begin to find strange artefacts that are clearly not of earth origin.  As they investigate, they find an alien holographic force field in the manor house of the family who saw the lights in the sky.

The Doctor and his gang come face to face with an Android.

Tegan and Adric are stunned, and the rest leg it. They soon turn around to go back however, and Nyssa is sent to the TARDIS to make a sound wave machine that will disrupt the android's circuits.

Tegan and Adric are questioned by the owner of the android, a reptilian alien known as a Terileptil.

The boss soon extracts what he needs of them and places them in prison underneath the manor. They are more resourceful than what the boss thought however, and manage to escape.  Adric gets out of a window, but Tegan is re-captured by the android.

The Doctor and Mace go to a nearby stable to steal a horse to use in their rescue attempt but are soon confronted by more villagers who seem to be under mind control of the Terileptil boss.

They prepare to execute them both, but the boss decides to keep them alive to use the Doctor's knowledge of time travel.  The boss sends the android, dressed as the Grim Reaper into the stable to march them back to the manor.

Once there, the Doctor spots Tegan who is now under the control of the boss thanks to a bracelet.

Fearing the Doctor trying a similarly clever plan to escape, the Terilleptil boss destroys the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

He then smugly recites his plan to genetically modify the black plague to kill everyone. The Doctor pleads with him to live peacefully with the humans but the Terileptil isn't interested in doing that at all.  He leaves to a secret location in the city to put his plan into action.

Things look desperate, as even Mace is fitted with a bracelet.  The Doctor ultimately escapes his death by convincing Tegan that she's the feisty young woman he knows and he stuns Mace with feedback from a power pack.

The Terileptil sends the android out after the TARDIS and reaches it but Nyssa's sound machine destroys it.  Adric against Nyssa's advice, pilots the TARDIS out into the mansion.  The Doctor gets snarky with him but is ultimately grateful as he can quickly look at the scanners and track down the Terileptils to an old bakery.

Despite protests from Mace, they all go in there and have a fight with the aliens that results in an accidental starting of a fire.

The Doctor and crew escape and heap the boxes of unused genetic virus into the flames, thus destroying the threat (and leaving the Terileptils to burn to death).

Nyssa asks if they should put the fire out but the Doctor thinks it should continue to burn.  They leave Mace behind and jump back into the TARDIS.

As the ship de-materialises, we discover that the bakery is on Pudding Lane, the source of the fire that sparked the great fire of London.

Trivia

• As will become evident, this story was the last one in the original run to have featured the Sonic Screwdriver.  The original script had the Doctor simply replace it, but John Nathan-Turner wanted it gone as he saw it as a narrative crutch (which it was)

• This story was the first to be submitted by Eric Saward.  It came in during Christopher Bidmead's time as Script Editor.  John Nathan-Turner was impressed with his ability and asked him to consider becoming Script Editor. He agreed but there was an overlap with Anthony Root who was also in the running for the job.  Anthony sorted this story out, and decided to leave, handing the reins over to Eric.

• Michael Melia of Eastenders fame played the Terilleptil boss. He wasn't too happy with not having his face visible, and wouldn't let them alter his voice even though they wanted to

• Speaking of the Terilleptil, this was the first mask used in Doctor Who to be animated. 

• Another "star" was Micheal Robbins who played Richard Mace.  He's most well known for his time "On the busses" as Arthur.

• The character of Richard Mace was used by Eric Saward for a number of radio plays prior to his appearance in Doctor Who

• If you discount the brief trip into Renaissance Italy during City of Death, this is the first story in the last 5 years to go back in history.

The Review

If you look back over the many reviews that I've done for Doctor Who from 1963 until now, you'll see that, perhaps sadistically, I value the bloodier episodes more than not.  Anyone who knows me can attest that I'm not violent in anyway, but I do find it curious that I'm drawn to such things in Doctor Who.  The Visitation is no exception.

I think it's for the most part, the fact that stories with a body count raise the stakes. It immediately takes us out of the realm of the Doctor swanning through and saving the day, and into the realm of "yes, but at what cost?" The Visitation shows from the start that the stakes are high with the assault on the home of a family (one that contains a woman no less). Watching it, there's a real sense of wanting someone to come and save the day, but they never do, and when the Doctor finally finds the house, it sets up foreboding really well.

The character of Richard Mace is comedic and entertaining, but at the same time, he provides a good outlet for the audiences reluctant voices.  It's a real shame that when the Doctor treats him like a complete idiot, that he's not vindicated by something truly horrible happening as a result. Still, it is family entertainment.

Some reviews I've come across reckon that you'd love this story in 1982 as it was a breath of fresh air to be going back into history, but in 2018, you'll find it pretty empty.  I don't agree.  This story is very enjoyable for me, and it's main downside is the fact that the Terilleptil boss ultimately devolves into a bond villain near the end and the wrap up is a little quick.  Peter Davison's Doctor is quite annoying in this one, but it could be because he hadn't found his stride yet (it was the third story filmed, just before Castrovalva).

I think the Visitation has much suspense and genuine horror going on make it near the very top of the ones you must watch in Peter Davison's era.  That's good enough for me.

Rating

9 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Reign of Terror

• The Time Warrior

• Terror of the Zygons

• The Android Invasion

• The Awakening

Kinda

Four episodes
Aired between 1st February 1982 and 9th February 1982

Written by Christopher Bailey
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Grimwade


Synopsis

The crew land on a jungle planet called Deva Loka. Whilst everyone explores it, Nyssa stays behind to recover from a series of fainting spells she's been having.

As they explore, the Doctor and co. find a bunch of crystal structures that make musical sounds. 

Tegan is enthralled by them an falls asleep near them.  As she rests, she has something of a nightmare, encountering a bunch of spectre-like figures that all bear the mark of a snake on their arm.  One of the spectres, Dukkha, tries to get Tegan to let him use her body to spend some time outside of the dreaming world.

He does so by trapping her in the nightmare, reflecting herself and making herself doubt what is real and what is fake.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric find a human recon team who are looking at Deva Loka for colonisation.  They've found a bunch of natives called the Kinda, who are totally silent (well, the males are), and have subjugated themselves.  During there time on the planet, some of the recon team have gone missing and one of the soldiers, Hindle, is slowly losing his mind.

The commanding officer, Sanders believes that the Doctor and Adric are responsible for the latest person going missing and they keep them locked up whilst he investigates in an environment suit called the TSS. He leaves the unstable Hindle in charge of the base whilst he's gone.

As Sanders is out, he encounters female Kinda who present a wooden box to him that turns him child like.  When he returns, he is content to let Hindle be in charge and he does whatever anyone tells him. 

Back in the clearing, Tegan eventually lets the Dukkha take control of her, and she awakens, quickly taking control of a Kinda male called Aris who then goes off to rally the Kinda together to destroy the recon base.

Hindle in the meantime has somehow made two of the Kinda follow his orders and he has set explosives around the base with a threat to blow them up if he feels like it, or if anything from the
outside tries to get in. 

The Doctor makes friends with the scientist from the recon base (Todd) and together, they manage to make a run for it, but Adric is caught and forced to stay and buy into Hindle's insanity.

Whilst they are in the jungle, Todd and the Doctor come across the two Kinda females - Panna and Karuna - and they tell them of the fact that great destruction and evil is coming. They share a vision that shows a sort of cycle of time, where disastrous events happen once every few thousand years.  It becomes clear that Aris is the centre of all this and he  is possessed by an evil spirit called a Mara.

Aris turns up and hypnotises Karuna, removing their ability to stop him from killing the humans.  She is eventually freed of the hypnosis, but is possessed by the life force of Panna to do so, effectively killing Panna's old body.

Together. they find Tegan, wake her up and explain what's happened and what she's unleashed.

Back at the recon base, Adric has had enough and tries to escape in the TSS.  This coincides with the Kinda marching on it. 

Adric is unaware that the TSS responds to thought waves and it ends up firing its gun in all directions, wounding many of the Kinda, and Aris.  The natives flee and Aris is left on his own to run into the jungle.

The Doctor shows up and helps Adric out of the machine.

Together they go into the recon base and overpower Hindle, eventually making him look into the box which somehow restores his sanity.

The Doctor figures out that the Mara doesn't like to see its own reflection and he recruits the restored Kinda tribe to use solar panels from the recon base to trap Aris in a ring of mirrors.  The Mara slithers from his arm and manifests as a giant snake.  With the mirrors reflecting it and each other, the Mara is effectively banished to the dark realm where it came from. 

In the aftermath, Todd decides to leave the planet when human supplies arrive. The Doctor encourages her to register the planet as unsuitable for colonisation.  Sanders and Hindle decide to stay. 

Nyssa emerges from the TARDIS fully rested, just in time to head off again on their next adventure.

Trivia

• Ok, let's get the most referred fact out of the way - Much like The Planet of the Spiders, Kinda is a story based around Buddhist concepts. 

• The character of Nyssa had to be cut out of this story whilst contract negotiations were taking place, along with royalty issues from the writer who created her.

• This story was originally commissioned by Christopher Bidmead, but had gone through so many re-writes that by the time it came around to being filmed, Antony Root (script editor from Castrovalva up to this story) took it on.  

• In fact, I believe the script editor job was under a bit of a fight between Antony Root and Eric Saward who were both being tried out for the role.

• Supposedly during the filming of this, Matthew Waterhouse was trying to tell Richard Todd (Sanders) who is an Oscar nominated actor, how to act.  Waterhouse defends this by saying he was sort of poking fun at himself for accidentally doing exactly what he was telling Todd not to do.  I'll let you decide if he's telling the truth or not

• As noted before, this was the third story of season 19 to be filmed, done before Castrovalva 

The Review

More than a few years on, Kinda is now regarded as a classic by the Doctor Who fandom as a whole.  They say it is daring and inventive, to be applauded for trying to be abstract and moving past the monotony of running down corridors and having hammed up villains.  These people claim that Kinda sticks out from the lacklustre bunch of stories from Season 19 (with the exception of the Visitation).

Whilst I can personally agree that it is an unusual story, it's only unusual in the same way that Warriors Gate was, but for me, maybe a bit less entertaining. 

This is one of the very few Doctor Who stories that has a supernatural bad guy that's not just a futuristic alien.  It deals with concepts and other intangible stuff, which is not bad in itself, but as a result the narrative threads make very little sense.  It could be just me that's not intellectual enough to truly appreciate the story, but I don't think so.  I understand that it's about temptation and the cycle of history and other concepts of enlightened living, okay, I get it.  What happens in Kinda however is that it's told in a very...boring way.

The concepts are left vague and open to interpretation but as Eric Saward himself said, you can't have an open ended narrative and expect everyone to extrapolate the story from it themselves - it's just boring TV.  Hindle, whilst providing entertaining viewing for his over the top reactions and memorable quotes, is just a sideshow and the kinda in pith helmets just show how absurd it all is.

The TSS is no better, being appallingly realised, along with the original version of the mara snake.

The Doctor is reduced to the role of a companion for much of this story, having to ask all the questions and not really being pro-active until the end, and Adric seems to have retained all the annoying traits he picked up from Four to Doomsday.

The best thing about this story, is Tegan's dream sequence which is actually quite effective and the Durrkha is chilling. Other than that, this is unfortunately a quite forgettable story for me that does not deserve the attention it often receives.

Rating

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Mind Robber

• Planet of the Spiders 

• Planet of Evil

• Face of Evil

Four to Doomsday

Four episodes
Aired between 18th January 1982 and 26th January 1982

Written by Terrence Dudley
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by John Black

Synopsis

The Doctor and the TARDIS crew find themselves on a ship instead of Heathrow airport.  After exploring, they discover that it's a generation ship, belonging to a race of intelligent frog like beings known as the Urbankans. 

Of them, only the three leaders are present: Monarch, Enlightenment and Persuasion.  They claim they're four days away from visiting earth.  They supposedly visit the planet now and again and take sample people from the cultures they find there.  As a result, an ancient Greek (Bigon), a Chinese Mandarin (Lin Futu), an Aborigine and a Mayan princess all hang about on the ship.  Monarch claims that the Urbankan planet has unfortunately been destroyed, and as a result, the remainder of their race is on board the ship, going to earth to ask for a peaceful co-existence.

The Doctor and crew are questioned about current life on earth, and are treated well, being given food and drink, and subjected to each cultures entertainment.  They are surprised as well when Enlightenment and Persuasion both transform into human form, based on a sketch Tegan does of today's fashions.

It doesn't take long for the Doctor to figure out that Monarch's story doesn't add up.  Bigon tells them that actually, the Urbankan planet is destroyed because Monarch was something of a mad scientist and it was a direct result of his experiments.  He convinced the Urbankans to digitise their consciousness onto microchips that could be stored upon the ship and he reviles flesh, forcing others to do the same.  Indeed, Bigon and all the other "humans" are in fact robots.

It turns out Enlightenment and Persuasion have transformed themselves so as to weave their way amongst the humans long enough to release a poison into the air that will shrink the population of earth to minuscule proportions, thereby allowing enough room for the Urbankan people to survive.  Oh and there's a lot of stuff about him wanting to travel faster than light and meet himself coming back, but it's not really important.

This is clearly a bad outcome for humans, but Adric is convinced by Monarch that he offers fantastic things (admittedly, he just learns about turning everyone into machines and never needing to grow old or needing food and air).  Nyssa protests against this and nearly gets herself turned into an android right then and there.

The Doctor has to sit Adric down and give him a good talking to, but whilst this is happening, Tegan is freaking out about the potential fate of earth and gets so desperate that she tries to pilot the TARDIS herself, luckily only managing to move it to a few feet outside the ship.

The Doctor is forced to float out into space to recover the TARDIS, but enlightenment and Persuasion turn up, severing his oxygen line, and leaving him floating in space.  He uses a cricket ball from his pocket, throwing it against the hull of the ship and using the ricochet to propel him to the TARDIS doors. 

He takes the TARDIS back to the ship whilst Adric manages to tear out the circuits from Enlightenment and Persuasion. 

With the help of Nyssa, they make all the androids go haywire.  They get hold of the Urbankan toxin and use it to shrink Monarch. 

They return the androids to normal, and give the ship over to Bigon, who intends to pilot it somewhere far away from earth and start afresh.

Trivia

• This was the first story to be filmed in Peter Davison's run. 

• The Chinese men who danced inside the Dragon were from a local restaurant that the production team frequented

• Nyssa was supposed to be killed off in this one, but Peter Davison asked for her to not be - she falls unconscious at the end so as to buy some time enough for them to negotiate her contract.  See also the next story

The Review

I remember not really liking this story the first time I watched it.  I can't remember exactly why, but I do have the prevailing sense of boredom when I think of it.

Having watched it again, there's certainly some of that in play, but not as much as you'd think.  It's alright for the first two episodes whilst ever there's a mystery about it.  Once that's out of the way though, things seriously go downhill. 

The way this story's approached is very old-school, with some episode guides claiming that it was a 60's style story filmed in the 80's.  This is probably true, and would feel a lot more at home with William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton wandering around the ship.  So much so in fact, that the story feels shoe horned into place and it causes the Doctor and Adric to change their characters quite dramatically in order to fit it in (Peter Davison was finding his feet and deciding how his Doctor would be played, but still..). 

With the exception of the ultra annoying version of him in Full Circle itself, Adric had been a halfway decent character up until now, shining most in The Keeper of Traken when he had room to spread his wings.  Now he turns into a brattish, chauvinistic little twerp who willingly sides with the bad guys and has to be re-educated despite his immense intellect. From this point on, I don't think we ever see Adric in the same light again, as he retains some of these qualities throughout the rest of the stories he's in, and it's a big shame.

On the whole, it's essentially a Cyberman story, but dragged out for four episodes, and it totally lacks any sense of menace about it that the Cybermen would have brought with them.  There's a lot of stuff we've got to take on faith, like how come the Doctor suddenly can't fly the TARDIS again when he managed it perfectly in Logopolis, or how come he gives Tegan a spare key, but everyone can seemingly pop in and out of the TARDIS (except Monarch for some reason).

I can't find any redeeming features of this story worthy of a re-watch in the next decade.  It's been done before in older Cybermen stories, and it's been done better, I mean, Earthshock is even in the same season as this....

Rating

5 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Ark

• The Tenth Planet

• The Moonbase

• The Faceless Ones

• The Android Invasion