DOCTOR WHO-FULL CIRCLE part two
DOCTOR
WHO-FULL CIRCLE part two
Well, I
still love this but as I’ve seen it, now, probably close to 20 times, I’m
seeing the flaws as well as listening to the flaws that the commentators have :
this includes Andrew Smith who wrote this when he was 17; Waterhouse and
Bidmead. All of them have beefs with the story.
I have a few
of my own with this episode, though I think the problem is inherent in ANY
Doctor Who story but that’s debatable.
First, the
Doctor opens the Starliner and despite knowing there are monsters in the mist,
he leaves the door open, and then wonders when the knife goes missing, doesn’t
see the Marsh Child that HE LET IN and THEN and only then closes the door. He
tells Omril that he opened the door but sealed it up again….while both face the
Marsh Child. I don’t know which of them is the bigger dope. The Doctor for not
seeing the danger to the Marsh Child that he caused…even later when he meets
and misjudges Dexeter, who’s an evil scientist who wants to experiment on the
Marsh Child later (to be fair, the Doctor meets and greets everyone until they
usually show their bad side) or Omril. Omril may be handsome and well built but
his response to an alien visitor is to bop him on the head, knock him out, and
then take the other alien visitor (which really isn’t that much of an alien to
Omril) to the Deciders instead of say…letting it go outside. Dopes, both of
them.
Second,
while I love Adric…he…when seeing spiders panics, like the rest of the Outlers
(interesting that Gallifrey also has outsiders!), runs into the TARDIS. Only,
this time Adric slams the door while Romana is outside. THEN, we see him run
into the TARDIS console room where the others have used the red stick shift to
shut the inner doors (?) and he blames them for locking Romana out. He tries to
open the doors from the console room and takes the TARDIS into
dematerialization mode. This leaves Romana outside to the cliffhanger to face
the spiders. She’s almost as stupid, lifting up a “melon” which turns out to be
an egg which hatches and emits a spider onto her face which bites her. She
passes out.
Now, as for
the Doctor’s mistakes, I guess drama requires a bit of the hero to be a dumb
jerk dope which he is here. It’s happened before in a way when the Doctor takes
the school teachers away with him, when the Doctor fools them into going down
to the Dalek city by lying to them, when the Doctor opens THE TOMB OF THE
CYBERMEN, has his experiment kill a man in PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, and more…in
face, in this story’s ancestor, FACE OF EVIL, he caused the ENTIRE problem but
gets a pass as he was not in his right mind after his regeneration. And anyone
who thinks it was not during ROBOT is just plain wrong, otherwise, the Doctor
IS a giant dope.
The other
issue is…WHEN did the inner doors and the outer doors become two different sets
of doors? In the First and Second Doctor stories, you can walk out the console
room through those two open double doors and right into the set…the location.
This changed sometime during Pertwee and never went back. Rather than having a
set plan for the interior and exterior of the TARDIS, the thing just changed
according to what was needed for each story. Or how the TARDIS set was stored.
The second
sub-issue is…the TARDIS is carried. Well, okay. In the past, UNIT men were able
to move it in more than one story. The idea the Marshmen were going to use it
as a ram is a fun one, if a bit unrealistic. But a bit of editing here might have helped show
Adric NOT slamming the door or slamming it and trying to reopen it but unable
to thanks to his Outlers messing with the door controls.
The other
issue I have is…Bidmead might be right to have wanted the Marshmen dimly lit.
In close up, the masks might look very fake as we see the eye holes and the
actor beneath each one but at least the mask looks effective. In long shot, the
whole ensemble looks great. Any closer up than that, it looks …fake, rubbery,
and even less real than past monsters such as the Sea Devils.
Okay, so all
of that said, it’s odd that one female fan hates the outlers (and probably
Adric) and phases out whenever they are on. For me, it’s just the opposite. I
love K9, Romana, and the Doctor but I’ve seen them do almost everything they do
here. I’ve never seen, in DW anyway, ANY kind of teenager that reacted like
real ones and there’s even a reason they are afraid of the spiders…which brings
me to…
…does the
whole thing make sense about how the “Alzarians” are not really from Terradon
but from Alzarius itself. They are descended from the Marshmen…and (?) the
spiders? How do they not know this? Okay, to be fair, we don’t really know how
we came to be who we are. We have vague and ultimately wrong ideas about
evolution but not nothing concrete, so I guess it could happen. And it makes
for a shocking twist. It’s also horrible that the Deciders would keep this to
themselves instead of sharing.
It sounds
like a loathe this episode and story. I don’t. I love it to pieces but I think
that the pluses outweighed or blinded me to the flaws. I see the flaws and
still like it. For me, the pluses do outweigh the flaws. I think, the costumes,
and even those silly looking spiders, could have been better in execution. Yet,
again, I look at what they were trying to do and say rather than what they
actually did.
I also like
Smith as a writer but this story, now, is really quite…old. In fact, it might
have been then, too. It and FACE OF EVIL are really sort of a lesser version of
PLANET OF THE APES, aren’t they?
I still think
FULL CIRCLE is far better than both MEGLOS and THE LEISURE HIVE and yet I used
to think everything from FULL CIRCLE to EARTHSHOCK was the best DOCTOR WHO had
to offer, bar season 16 and 17, which are hilariously fun. Now, I’m not so
sure. I think everything from season 1 to 19 is great, or almost everything.
2
The Doc's in
trouble in the marsh and later in the starliner. I guess he's gone
to help the
Decider if he could or see what he could do to stop the problem but
he really
doens't have to get involved nor does he have to send K9 off to follow
the
marshmen. It's quite tragic that the marsh child follows the Doctor inside
the
starliner and the starliner people are not at all friendly. Some typical but
funny
Tom-isms: after the three stuffy deciders introduce themselves, he says,
"And
I"m the Doctor" and "Why
can't people just be nice to one another for
once. I mean
I"m not an alien and you don't want to drag me into a swamp." A
beat and
then, "You do." I love how he
just shakes up this entire culture. And
they deserve
it. There's some secret going on and at the time I should have
expected
some PLANET OF THE APES like revelation but I didn't. It's not unlike
FACE OF EVIL
or UNDERWORLD in this aspect.
There's a
square purple paint spot where the Tardis was standing. Still, some of
these outdoor
shots, brief as they may be are some of the most well lit,
beautiful
outdoorsy scenes ever shot for the series. Despite the sound effects
of something
akin to a lift off the marshmen have taken the TARDIS into the
cave,
carrying it. Now it's been carried or taken before and the weight has
never been
an issue but it is here. And K9 is silly here, just getting his head
knocked off
iwthout defending himself. I HATE that the production team sees fit
to get rid
of him in these violent ways, just make him in the Tardis recharging
if you have
to. Up to the beheading point, he was really quite useful.
The violent
antipathy between Varsh and Tylos (who was supposed to be tougher in
the
script...talk about going against type) was played down...way down to the
point of non
existance and truthfully it could have added something to this ep
and others.
The doors to the TARDIS don't seem to operate togethr, meaning
interior and
exterior. Adric slams one of the outer doors shut but enters the
open
interior doors. Why he did that? Panic over the spiders? Romana was still
outside.
JNT was
correct in not making the giant spiders of the original story. He'd seen
a Blake's 7
ep (HARVET OF KARIOS or something) and rightly realized giant
insects were
not to be done correctly on tv yet, not by the BBC anyway. Instead,
we get these
smaller spider insects and while they are disturbing, if seen in a
scene too
long, they look really fake. Even so, Romana's fate in the
cliffhanger
is pretty upsetting but why pick up a fruit/egg to hit the things
with? And
her earlier, "They're only spiders" is silly. They look menacing from
the moment
we see them and they should to her. I guess they were trying to
emphazise
the antagonism between teh Marshpeople, the Starliner people and the
spiders...
another good
ep, carried by Lalla at her best, Tom as his best, and the
production
and direction at their best, even with the young cast...if Doctor Who
had gone on
like this for ten more years, I would have watched it regularly and
loved every
moment of it. Romana, the Doctor, Adric and K9 made quite a
watchable
team and into trouble every minute and with interesting mysterious
stories and
new cultures to see in conflict...all that was needed was a bit more
trips into
history...this was just great and so promising for the future. Little
did I know I
should have enjoyed it while I could. It was all about to get
ripped away
from me and the audience to bcome something so different too fast.
for now,
this ep stands as another strong one, entertaining and not yet too
demanding
but colorful, fast paced and very very watchable unlike LEISURE and
MEGLOS and a
lot of what was to follow (even some Davison stories were
just...blah!).
for me, this season is shaping up finally to be something of
value and
something different to DW before it.
Comments
Post a Comment