(537) Full Circle - Episode 4

The final episode of the first story of the E-Space trilogy starts with the reprise of the Marshmen walking into the Starliner and I think that it’s a fantastic image that is again helped by the music. It’s weird that I always thought that the music of the JNT era was terrible and yet twelve episodes in and I have to say that my opinion has changed. I am sure that at some point the music will not work but at the moment I am impressed with how much I have enjoyed the music and its been used smartly during this story.

I’ve always been a fan of this story and nothing in the past four days has made me change my opinion of Andrew Smith’s writing. The writing has been strong and consistently engaging, its just a shame that Smith never got to write another DW story for the show but he’s written a few cracking stories for Big Finish which I highly recommend (especially The First Sontaran). I never felt like the story was plodding along and even though I haven’t been wild about the Outlers, I cant say that they have been detrimental to the story. I think that its given Adric a reason to exist and ultimately a reason to stowaway on board the TARDIS. The direction has been a revelation and I think watching this story in this manner means that the directing really stands out.

After telling the deciders that the starliner has been ready for centuries it seems that the main aim of this episode is to get them off Alzarius. It was never going to be that simple and during the course of the episode there are a few drops of information where it turns out that the Marshmen are the ancestors of the humans/deciders and I liked this because it bought back what Draith said in the first episode and was a good payoff for explaining the marshmen.

There is a bit where the Doctor is using K9’s head to scare off the marshmen, this is the most useful that K9 has been for quite sometime. The simplistic way that the Doctor tells the deciders how to take off is quite a fun way and I think that it was never going to be a scene that would go on for a while because quite frankly this would have taken too much time and required either another set or a more complex decider chamber. I liked how they went off in the starliner with no problems and thought that the deserved a nice exit.

The final scene with the Doctor and Romana in the TARDIS is quite a sad one and it seems like a surprisingly downbeat tone. They are travelling in E-Space which is still quite funny when its green but I like how they are feeling down about their current situation without realisation that things are about to get worse with Adric on board. I really must stop the hate for Adric.

This was a good final episode to what has been the best story of the season so far. I have rated this story overall at 7.56 with ‘The Leisure Hive’ at 7.51 and ‘Meglos’ at 7.46. In Tom Baker’s stories this is tied in 9^th place with Robot and overall it is the 30^th best story beating such strong stories as ‘City of Death’ (32), ‘The Talons of Weng Chiang’ (45) and ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ (65). I would be surprised if this story isn’t one of the highest rated stories of the season. On a slightly downbeat note, two weeks on Wednesday will see the last Tom Baker episode which seems to have come around really quickly. As the moment that has been prepared for gets closer I will be thinking about the state of the show and just what Tom Baker’s legacy will be.