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...
