Doctor Who Re-Watch: Full Circle is a strong start to the E-Space trilogy
By James Aggas
In the first story of the E-Space trilogy, the Doctor and Romana arrive in another universe, and “Mistfall” begins on the planet Alzarius in the classic Doctor Who serial, Full Circle…
It’s still amazing to think how young Andrew Smith was when he wrote the opening story of the E-Space trilogy, Full Circle. It’s not just the fact that he was eighteen years old when he wrote it, and therefore was Doctor Who‘s youngest ever scriptwriter at that point. But there’s also the fact that Full Circle is a very intelligent and very well written script.
The story begins with the TARDIS crew heading back to Gallifrey, to send Romana home. However, after having some trouble in flight, they land on a completely different world instead: Alzarius. Along with finding out that the so-called “Marshmen” are returning, ready to attack the descendants of the colonists on this world, they also find out that they’re no longer in our universe…
There are many interesting themes in this story, particularly regarding evolution. Full Circle features a very interesting take on it, and focuses on both how a race can evolve from unlikely roots, and on how people can react to it.
There’s also a collection of well-written and well-performed characters in the story, too. In fact, the society as a whole seems to be fleshed out well. The overall society is ruled by three Deciders, which is focused on making their original ship ready to return home to Terradon. But you also have a small group of young rebels, who have rejected the rest of the society because they don’t want to be ruled over by the Deciders.
New companion Adric is introduced in Full Circle. Is his debut story a strong one?
(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.
Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)
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Meet Adric
Amongst this particular group of characters is Adric. Adric’s introduction story is an interesting one, particularly how he was supposed to start out as an “Artful Dodger” kind of companion. That wasn’t how the character developed, but it’s interesting seeing his roots, particularly when seeing his relationship with his brother Varsh.
Another interesting character is Dexeter, a scientist who’s keen to find out as much about the Marshmen as he can. He’s not a “mad scientist” stereotype, but he’s not the most moral of scientists, either. So his character adds another strong element to the story.
Lastly, I particularly enjoyed seeing how many times we got to see Tom Baker perform brilliantly as the Doctor in this one. His pure outrage at discovering how one of the Marshmen had been treated stands out. But there’s also the quieter moments too, such as his conversation with Romana over how “you can’t fight Time Lords“.
Overall, Full Circle is a very strong debut script from Andrew Smith. It’s a shame that he never wrote for the TV series again after this, but he has spent the last decade writing for Big Finish, and he continues to be a consistently brilliant Doctor Who writer to this day.
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Are you a fan of Full Circle? How well do you think the story works? Let us know in the comments below.