Full Circle

Four episodes
Aired between 25th October 1980 and 15th November 1980

Written by Andrew Smith
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Grimwade


Synopsis

Romana is upset that she has to return to Gallifrey.

The Doctor seems to sympathise, but he knows it's impossible to refuse the call.  On their way, they luckily pass through a Charged Vacuum Embodiment (C.V.E. or in other words, a rift in space).  This event takes them to another dimension that they refer to as Exo-Space or E-Space.

At first, The Doctor and Romana don't realise what's happened, and they think the TARDIS is faulty when they supposedly land on Gallifrey, but the area outside is a wooded clearing.

They begin to trouble shoot the problem, when a young boy called Adric barges into the TARDIS and collapses.

They learn that Adric is one of the descendants of a colony crew that crash landed here thousands of years ago.

They are ruled by a council of three men called the deciders, and  they are periodically trapped inside the ship when toxic mists descend on the planet.  Adric's brother and some of his friends have rebelled against society and hide in a cave nearby.  They were goading Adric into helping them steal fruit from the community (Adric's a nerd who has a badge for mathematical excellence).  Adric was caught by one of the Deciders who was in the market, but before he could be taken in, the Decider was dragged into the marsh by some humanoids.  His final words to Adric were that they had come "full circle".

The mistfall is upon the planet again, and Adric gets the Doctor and Romana to try and help him get his brother and friends to safety.

The Doctor gets to the colony ship and starts to investigate, as he finds the fact that the deciders have been lying to the colonists - the mists are perfectly fine.  The monsters (marsh men) rise up out of the swamp and make their way onto land.

One of them gets into the colony ship and is captured.  The Doctor tries to stop the colonists from dissecting the marsh man up, but it gets free, kills the surgeon and itself. 

As the Doctor is messing about, Romana and Adric stay in the TARDIS.  The Marsh Men come along and take it on their backs to a cave above the starliner (the colonist's crashed ship). They intend to use it as a battering ram.

The Marsh Men are scared off and Romana goes outside to find out why.  They meet Adric's brother and his friends and they find some fruit that has strange spiders in it.

The kids run into the TARDIS as they swarm against them, but Romana gets bitten and possessed.

She turns into an ally of the Marsh Men and starts to direct them. Adric and the kids meanwhile manage to haphazardly pilot their way to the starliner.

Ultimately, the Marsh Men, led by Romana attack the starliner.

The Doctor figures out that the Marsh Men are actually ancestors of the humans living there (they killed the original colonists).  Romana is captured and injected with a serum devised by the Doctor and he cures her.  The Marsh Men are driven out of the star liner when the colonists discover that the marsh men don't like pure oxygen (they use cylinders to drive them out).  Adric's brother is killed in the attempt.

The Doctor gives the deciders knowledge on how to pilot their star liner and he goes off again with Romana in the TARDIS.

Trivia

• This story was written by a fan who'd read a Doctor Who production book that was published with a "how to create a script" section at the back.  He impressed Script Editor Christopher H Bidmead and he was brought in.  After extensive work on the script, it was made 

• The role of Adric was thought up by John Nathan-Turner, but didn't quite turn out how he wanted.  The original concept was for him to be a sort of Artful Dodger character.  The reality was much more a whiny brat than skilled pickpocket.

• The name Adric is derived from eminent physicist P A M Dirac. 

• By this time, Tom Baker and Llala Wards relationship was worse for wear.   Guest stars recollect that they would be at opposite ends of the rehearsal room, screaming and shouting at one another

The Review

The first thing fans comment on when they discuss this story is that it was written by a genuine fan. I think because of that, a lot of people try to look for things to like about it, effectively giving it a "pass" because if it's bad, there's a fear of the "I'd like to see you do better", especially when you realise that the fan in question was nineteen at the time.  I'm not immune to those feelings, but as much as I want to like it, I just can't.  Why not?  Because to me, it's very, very boring.

I know some people will say "hold on, there's a lot of science in there and fascinating stuff about evolution".  Yep, I'll give you that, there is.  But it's just not covered in an interesting way for me.  I'm not even sure how I'd do it.  Look, it's sort of like Day of the Daleks.  The concept is pretty good, but you've to watch three quarters of it before you get to the point.  And to add insult to injury, the whole thing is so wooden.

There's only two people in this entire story that show any kind of genuine pathos - one is the Doctor, and I don't mean Tom Baker. I'm talking about the surgeon that gets killed by the Marsh Man, the other is Login who has some compassion for his daughter being trapped outside.  Everyone else is pretty bland.  I didn't care about Adric's brother or his mates.  Adric himself is totally unsympathetic, and even Tom Baker and Llala Ward are just plodding through it all. 

The tension in the plot is built around the Marsh Men attacking, the mists killing people, and the spiders.  Well, the spiders are laughable, the Marsh Men lumber about so slowly that they never feel like a threat at all, and there's absolutely no fear about the mists because we never get to build up anticipation that the Doctor's going to die when he come's into contact with them, I.e. the killer mist theory's immediately disproved and done in a very casual manner. 

Sorry to all fans of this story, but despite the slightly interesting concept of long evolution, this story is booooorrrinng!

Rating

5 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Rescue 

• The Sea Devils

• Planet of Evil

• The Face of Evil

• The Pirate Planet

Meglos

Four episodes
Aired between 27th September 1980 and 18th October 1980

Written by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Terence Dudley

Synopsis

As the Doctor and Romana tinker in the TARDIS to repair K9, a bunch of space mercenaries land on a desolate planet called Zolfa-Thura.  There, they bring a modern day earthman to a strange structure that rises from under the ground.

The mercenaries have been hired by a talking cactus called Meglos to help him get a very powerful artefact called the Dodecahedron from a neighbouring planet called Tigella.

On said planet, the Dodecahedron is supplying power to a community of humans that are split up into two philosophies - the Deons (priests) and Savants (scientists).  Both are led by an old man called Zastor.

The Dodecahedron is doing something strange and neither group can decide what to do about it. Zastor has sent an invitation to the Doctor to help out.  On Zolfa-Thura, Meglos knows this, and  after he uses the human prisoner to morph into a dopelganger,

he sends the approaching TARDIS into a time loop, then morphs into the Doctor to impersonate him.

The Gaztaks take Meglos to Tigella and looking like the Doctor, he manages to steal the Dodecahedron from under their noses.

The Doctor and Romana repair K9 but realise they're trapped in a time-loop. They manage to get their way out of it, only to be split up and be captured by the Tigellans and Gaztaks.

Thankfully, Romana slips the mercenaries and gets back to stop the Doctor from getting crushed under a rock. They rush back to the TARDIS and follow Meglos to Zolfa-Thura. Once there, the Doctor himself takes a leaf out of the alien's book and ends up impersonating Meglos in order to gain access to the Dodecahedron.

It turns out that the power source is being used by Meglos as a type of death-star lazer to destroy other planets.

The Doctor sets it up so that the lazer destroys Zolfa-Thura itself, he rescues the human businessman, and he gets them back to the TARDIS in time to take off, thereby leaving Meglos and the Gaztaks to be destroyed.

The Doctor agrees to take the human businessman back to earth before they continue on with their adventures.

Trivia

• The writers were sitcom writers that Christopher Bidmead discovered and invited to work something up.  As they were writing at one of their homes, they noticed a very sorry looking potted cactus on the kitchen table and used that as a template for Meglos

• As part of their writing style (and likely because they weren't veterans at writing sci fi) they used an anagram for one of the character's names.  Brotodac is actually an anagram of Bad Actor. They did write other scripts for Doctor Who and the anagrams got progressively ruder.

• A lot of the Gaztak uniforms are from The Ribos Operation

• This story debuted the first use of a revolutionary new technique in special effects. It was called scene sync.  It worked by using technology to link the camera focused on the green screened actors with the camera focussed on the tiny model, so that when the characters walked across the room, the other camera panned too, allowing it to look like they were walking across the surface of an alien planet.  This doesn't sound great now, but in 1980 it was huge. Look back to Underworld and see if you notice any special effects shot where the camera pans and then compare it to this.

• Because the season's stories were not shot in the same order as they were shown, it's hard to tell, but during this story, Tom Baker was quite ill due to an illness he'd picked up in Spain.  He got so bad that at one point, Llala Ward (who was having an on-again off-again relationship with him), had to feed Tom Baker via tubs of baby food.  It's speculated that this act brought them back together for a time and we'll see later in this season what that lead to.

• The end credit music for part 4 weirdly is in a different key (and is actually the same key as Delia Derbyshire's original title score)

• Last but not least, this sees the return of Jaqueline Hill, Barbara herself (not the character unfortunately).  She spent the time between Doctor Who having kids and raising them.  She wanted to get back into acting and her husband pulled some strings to get her this gig

The Review

Meglos is a strange story to summarise in review.  As a story itself, it doesn't do anything new. We've got a bunch of primitives who are monopolising planetary resources on jungle planets (creature from the pit). We've got two worlds at war with one a wasteland and another lives in a bunker (Armageddon Factor).  Even the dopelganger isn't anything new.

What is new, is the techniques of the story, and whether I want to admit it or not, they do go some way to redeeming this story.  Let's start with the obvious one - the make up.  I think it's brilliant. Although the concept of an evil cactus is like something straight out of Monty Python, the practical effects are so intricate and painstakingly applied that I can't help but to be impressed.  The voice of Meglos is pretty great too, harking back to that gravelly growl of Morbius and hints that this thing is really evil.

The scene sync is also a very welcome addition and up to this point, I never even knew I wanted it.  It opens so many doors of potential for the production team that I can't help but get excited about how this will be used in the future episodes.

Then there's the acting.  Most of the Tigellans and Gaztaks are very melodramatic, I have to say, and the stupid haircuts and clothes don't help lend any credibility to them.  Brotodac is funny and stupid, but he's meant to be.  The real gem is that even Tom Baker relishes playing the villain and happily does it well.  And this brings us to another point on technique. For the second story running, he's relegated to a side slot, whilst Romana does all the fast talking. Their roles have become reversed.  She rescues him now, she gathers companions.  It's not necessarily bad, just weird.

I like Meglos, but not because of anything it offers as a story. I would watch this story purely from a fascinated place, where I wanted to see the technological and cultural turning points of the show itself.


Rating

6 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Chase

The Enemy of the World

Death to the Daleks

The Creature from the Pit

Ark of Infinity