Full Circle (Doctor Who)

Full Circle is the third serial of the 18th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 25 October to 15 November 1980.

The serial involves the alien time traveller the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) discovering the life cycle of three closely related species on the planet Alzarius—the humanoid Alzarians, the Marshmen, and the Marshspiders—coming "full circle". Full Circle is the first of three loosely connected serials set in another universe to the Doctor's own known as E-Space and introduces Matthew Waterhouse as the companion Adric.

Plot[]

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En route to Gallifrey, the TARDIS passes through a strange phenomenon and ends up in an alternative universe called E-Space. Neither the Fourth Doctor nor Romana herself can calculate why the TARDIS scanner shows images of their planet when they have arrived in a verdant forest.

A small but sustainable civilisation of humanoids who live between a river and a grounded spaceship, Starliner. They came to the planet, Alzarius, from Terradon and much of the focus of society is on repairing their craft to make it navigable. It is an oligarchy ruled by three self-selecting senior colonists known as Deciders, who ensure the smooth running and order of their adopted world and lay particular store on technical ability. One of the younger colonists is Adric, who bears a Badge of Mathematical Excellence in recognition of his computational skills. However, his brother Varsh has rejected the Starliner's society to lead a band of rebels called Outlers, who steal harvested riverfruit and other foods to survive.

A sudden series of irregular events are interpreted by Decider Draith as an omen of Mistfall, a periodic change which the natural balance of society is threatened. The colonists move into the Starliner to protect themselves. Adric attempts to steal some riverfruit to prove himself to his brother; Draith gives chase but lands in the river – only to be dragged beneath the waves by a strange force. His last words to Adric: "Tell Dexeter we've come full circle!" Adric heads into the forest in panic, finding the TARDIS. The Doctor and Romana take him in and tend to his leg wound, which recovers remarkably quickly. The Doctor heads off to investigate the planet, while Adric attracts Varsh and the other Outlers to the protection of the TARDIS.

The other Deciders, Garif and Nefred, have order the Starliner sealed, knowing that both Draith and Keara, an Outler and the daughter of a prominent citizen called Login, have not entered the ship. Despite his worries, Login accepts a position as Third Decider when it is determined that Draith has died. Humanoid, aggressive Marshmen begin to appear from underwater, looking threatening, and scuttling Marshspiders hatch from the eggs of the Riverfruit. The Doctor gains entry to the Starliner, followed by a young and inquisitive Marshchild. Both are found and taken to the Three Deciders. The Doctor is appalled when chief scientist Dexeter starts to perform vivisection experiments on the Marshchild.

A group of Marshmen have carried the TARDIS to a cave, intending to use it as a battering ram on the Starliner. Romana decides to venture outside. She is bitten by a Marshspider and starts to change, seeming possessed. Adric panics and materialises the TARDIS inside the Starliner. When the Outlers emerge, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS back to the cave, and finds an alert but amnesiac Romana. The Doctor scoops up the remains of a Marshspider and then reverses his journey. Dexeter has tried to examine the brain of the Marshchild, provoking it to attack and kill him and itself. The Doctor is furious, turning on the Deciders – revealing secret ship controls that show the Starliner has been ready to pilot from Alzarius for centuries, but the farce of constant repair continued. The problem is that, though the Deciders understand the technical construction of the ship, no one knows how to pilot it.

The Doctor persuades the Deciders to give him equipment to examine the cells of the Marshspider and marshchild and deduces that they are from identical DNA sources. However, a transformed Romana releases the Starliner's emergency exits and allows the Marshmen to in. Nefred is mortally wounded while fleeing; his last admission is that the colonists cannot return to Terradon, because they have never been there. It is realised that the Alzarians are a Marshmen subspecies, who wiped out the Starliner's original crew and then gradually evolved into human form to take their place.

The Doctor uses a protein serum to cure Romana, and they determine the ship has been maintained for 40,000 generations by a species that has three aspects; spiders, Marshmen, and the current humanoids. They are all from the same DNA and thus have come "full circle". This is the real secret of the System Files.

It is accidentally deduced that oxygen in pure form is problematic to the Marshmen, and this non-lethal defence is used to force the Marshmen out of the Starliner. During their retreat, Varsh is killed, leaving Adric in emotional turmoil and stows away in the TARDIS. Meanwhile, his fellow colonists pilot the craft away from Alzarius.

The Doctor, Romana and K-9 are unaware of Adric's presence as they leave the planet. They deduce they have journeyed to this pocket universe through a rare space/time phenomenon known as a Charged Vacuum Emboitment, and are now trapped in E-space.

Production[]

The story was repeated on BBC1 (except BBC1 Wales) across four consecutive evenings from Monday to Thursday, 3–6 August 1981, achieving viewing figures of 4.9, 4.2, 4.6 and 6.4 million viewers respectively.^[3]

Working titles for this story included The Planet That Slept.^[4] At the time of writing this story, Andrew Smith was a seventeen-year-old who achieved his lifelong ambition to write for the show.^[5]

The exterior locations for Alzarius were filmed at Black Park in Buckinghamshire.^[6]

Commercial releases[]

In print[]

Full Circle

Author	Andrew Smith
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	26
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	16 September 1982
ISBN	0-426-20150-7

A novelisation of this serial, written by Andrew Smith, was published by Target Books in September 1982. The novelisation opens with the Starliner crashing on Alzarius. An audiobook of the Target novelisation was released on 29 January 2015 read by Matthew Waterhouse and John Leeson.

Home media[]

Full Circle was released on VHS in October 1997. The DVD was released in January 2009 as part of a boxed set called The E-Space Trilogy. This serial was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files (issue 85) in April 2012. Paddy Kingsland's incidental music for the serial was released as part of the compilation album Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 4: Meglos & Full Circle in 2002. In 2019, the story was released on Blu-ray as part of the Doctor Who Collection Season 18 box set.

Academic Studies[]

A book on the serial, written by New Zealand academic , was released by Obverse Books in January 2018 as part of its Black Archive series.^[7] It won the Sir Julius Vogel Award in the category of Best Professional Production/Publication in 2019.^[8]

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Fourth Doctor

• Full Circle at BBC Online

Target novelisation[]

• Full Circle title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database