Full Circle | Sophisticated Idiots

Call us impatient if you will.

But we reckon it’s unlikely to be a great sign when a writer considers a range of exciting concepts to frame a story around, and eventually opts for the theme of… procrastination.

Throw in some of the flimsiest acting in Classic Who along with introducing the series’ most derided character, and what do you get?

This steaming quagmire of a story, apparently.

There are probably some interesting ideas buried beneath the surface in Full Circle. The evolution theme could have worked. And the crashed spaceship doomed to perpetual repair is a neat thread.

But we’re not convinced it’s the viewer’s job to sift through the bog water in desperate search of the occasional nugget. At some point the writers and producers should get involved.

Unfortunately, on this story everyone was too busy trying to develop a process for casting a new Doctor – it had been so long since they last had to do it, they resorted to spending days on end watching veterinary shows in search of a new leading man.

The upshot of all this was that instead of giving Full Circle their undivided attention, they hastily agreed to every idea put forward in a team brainstorming session. No procrastination here, eh?

This scattergun approach results in:

• Robot furry spiders!
• Swamp creatures!
• Speed-ramped evolution!
• E-space!
• A gang of children!
• Mistfall!
• A 50-year attack cycle!
• A crashed spaceship whose population continually repair it!
• Decapitating K9!
• A trio of wise sages struggling with power!
• Melons!

In hindsight the first episode serves a pretty strong warning that this one’s going off piste. We’re all for Doctor Who breaking out from a constraining formula but Tom and Lalla enjoy approximately three minutes of screentime in Part One.

This makes room for an entire 20 minutes of the Bill Sykes gang of scrotes bickering, repeatedly failing to pinch melons and reading lines off a page with the bare minimum of acting effort.

Sadly, any emotion these kids are able to muster has been left in the dressing room.

Maybe they’ve all frozen in front of the glaring studio lights, which is understandable. Or is it a plot point that the humanoids have evolved into emotionless planks over the generations (if so, it might be an idea to tell us)?

Among many, many other examples, we give you Keara’s, ahem, muted reaction to eventually being reunited with her dad. And the audience’s collective shrug when Varsh carks it at the end.

Producers have recklessly defied the adage to never work with children or animals. Full Circle is packed to the rafters with them both.

While the littl'uns are running amok in their Lord of the Flies paradise, we also have to contend with radio-controlled spiders. And K9, who has outstayed his welcome by at least two seasons.

Anyway, as irritating as it is to see Doctor Who overrun by kids (for context, imagine if the tsunami of younglings at the end of Temple of Doom had been buzzing round Indy throughout the story), let’s leave the child actors alone for a moment.

For those of you keeping tabs on our near-obsessive 007 analogies, we’re abandoning our attempt to rein in the references in the face of an unrelenting bombardment of Bond Bonhomie.

Full Circle boasts an On Her Majesty’s Secret Service double-bill. The Deciders offer us not just Sir Hilary Bray but also the ever terrifying Gebrüder Gumbold (whose unshakeably stiff poise, once again on display here, still has us quaking).

The former – good old Mister Reliable George ‘Inspector Wexford’ Baker – is the best thing about this story.

And yes, we include his namesake Tom in that comparison, who not only looks like hell but is giving no more than one out of 10 effort.

It’s almost as if The Great Tom can sniff out a stinker of a script a mile off.

Though perhaps he’s being charitable: his inability to help dredge Full Circle from the swamp gifts the novice actors the comfort of not having exclusivity over poor performances.

This story isn’t all bad by any stretch and some decent aspects are visible through the smoke machine:

• Romana’s dressed like Adam Ant.
• And her awesome shimmering face makeup when she’s possessed has received more care and attention than anything else in this story.
• “I usually get on terribly well with children,” the Doctor says, foreshadowing a great relationship between him and the holder of the Maths Star. Until Earthshock.
• Stop leaving the bloody TARDIS door open. Kids wander in left, right and centre.
• The marshmen emerging from the lake is a cool image.
• Their barbels are brilliant.
• The big climax revolves around repeatedly spraying the marshmen with soda streams.
• “We’re all basically primeval slime.”
• At the Mistfall, let it crumble…
• Locking the door for ten years – and shutting out your own daughter, even if her acting skills are substandard – is a rather extreme response to some fog.
• The moment where Draith is dragged into the water is macabre and brilliant. It’s slightly ruined by Adric’s blank face but we’ll just have to get used to this for the coming year.

Right, there’s no use procrastinating over the inevitable any longer.

Full Circle makes the *chooses words carefully* bold decision to introduce Adric to the World of Who.

But we’re not gonna join in the hating on Matty Dubya. There’s no sport in that.

We are, however, a trifle baffled that, based on his unbearable debut outing, producers felt this was the right guy to provide stability in the TARDIS as we transition between Doctors.

It’s difficult not to draw the conclusion they were trying to constructively dismiss Tom at this point.

But we know, we know: our tolerance for Adric in his early days is misplaced. Fear not, it won’t last (unlike the limitless oxygen spray bottles aboard the Starliner).

After all, as our half-hearted Doctor mutters in a rare moment when he can be arsed to call out the Deciders on their unrelenting faffing, “Too much patience goes absolutely nowhere.”

You’ve been warned, Adric…