Review of Full Circle (#111)

DVD Release Date: 03 Oct 16
Original Air Date: 25 Oct – 15 Nov 1980
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, Adric, K9
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Matthew Waterhouse, John Leeson
Preceding Story: Meglos (Four, Romana II, K9)
Succeeding Story: State of Decay (Four, Romana II, Adric, K9)

I have to say I wasn’t surprised to find Full Circle among the ranks of Everything Else when I looked over all the stories I hadn’t yet reviewed. It’s one of those stories that flies easily under the radar, certainly not a “really good” story, nor an entirely awful one. And as Adric has never been one of my favorite Companions (though I don’t think I dislike him as thoroughly as some fans do), his introduction story has also not really been one I think on often.

As such, my impressions of Full Circle have been pretty minimal. I’m pleased to say, though, that I did at least remember the main conceit of the story, and knew what the big twist at the end was going to be. Being able to watch things unfold with that kind of foreknowledge is one of the fun parts of re-watching a show for me, so I appreciated being able to take advantage of that small bit of familiarity with the plot this time.

Right off the bat, we get a major plot point that will follow the Doctor and Romana through this trilogy of stories, known collectively as “the E-Space Trilogy”: the TARDIS has been pulled off course into Exo-Space, a dimension outside of “real” space where our own universe exists. Instead of having landed on Gallifrey, then, they are on a planet called Alzarius, right when an every-fifty-years event called Mistfall is beginning.

The locals are suffering some internal strife, with some of the younger generation naturally rebelling against the older. Adric’s older brother Varsh appears to be a leader of this rebel group, known as Outlers, who don’t believe the hype about Mistfall and the dangers thereof. It turns out that the Outlers are both right about being deceived and wrong about some of the dangers.

Our new friend Adric gets tangled up with both the Doctor and Romana, who have predictably wound up going separate ways during the adventure, thus getting into different scrapes. Romana ends up more involved with the Marshmen and other indigenous fauna, while the Doctor goes aboard the Alzarians’ colony ship the Starliner and butts heads with the Deciders, their leaders.

Eventually the secret the Deciders have been guarding is revealed, and others even they didn’t know are discovered. With the Doctor’s help, the Alzarians have a new opportunity, and make a new decision, while Adric sneaks aboard the TARDIS for his own purposes.

Interestingly, it’s not made obvious at this point that Adric will join the TARDIS team. We see him leave an image translator for the Doctor, and then apparently depart the console room. In retrospect, we know he didn’t actually leave the TARDIS, but since that’s the last we see of him in Full Circle, the audience would probably have assumed (unless the publicity machine had already told them otherwise) that Adric was a one-off character. I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t written that way to give the production team a choice about whether or not to keep Matthew Waterhouse on.

By itself, Full Circle is a moderately interesting story that makes good use of some classic science fiction tropes. It’s neither inspiring nor off-putting, which is probably why it’s fallen through the cracks into the ranks of Everything Else. But it also serves as the beginning of a larger arc, the aforementioned E-Space Trilogy. Now that the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 (who is conveniently absent for much of this adventure, having had his head literally knocked off by Marshmen at the end of Episode Two) are stuck in this alternate dimension, they must search for an ultra-rare CVE (charged vacuum emboitement) to get themselves back home.

Full Circle works as either a standalone or as the beginning of an arc—and I will, in fact, be reviewing the next installment in this trilogy in May, so can explore that arc further then. But it is not, in my opinion, particularly memorable in either a positive or negative sense; it’s kind of flat. As the first part of this E-Space arc, then, perhaps it doesn’t ramp up towards something more as much as one might like, but at least it holds its own. And perhaps that’s all it really needs to do.