Grab Bag Reviews: "Full Circle"

I'll admit, I've been putting this one off a bit. It is a bit of a difficult story to get a handle on.

For once there was not much going on in the background on this story. It was written by Andrew Smith who actually holds the place for being the first Doctor Who fan to get to write an episode. He was no fan-ficcer turned lucky though; he had grown up on the show and went into writing for TV, having episodes of several other TV shows under his belt before submitting his script to the Doctor Who office.

It was decided to do a series of linked stories. "Full Circle" would start what became known as "the E-Space Trilogy" with "State of Decay" (which I reviewed previously) as the second installment. Since Tom Baker had announced he would be leaving the program the idea was for the E-Space Trilogy to set the stage for the Doctor's death and regeneration. This meant introducing a new companion to prepare the way for an exiting one since Lalla Ward was not interested in staying on as Romana either.

As such a very novice actor named Matthew Waterhouse, who also happened to be working in the BBC offices, got the nod to become the new companion, Adric, introduced here. And hated for years. But that's for later; in the meantime, on with the plot!

The Plot: The Doctor and Romana have been summoned back to Gallifrey but on the way the TARDIS passes through a rare anomaly called a Charged Vacuum Emboitment (CVE) this places them in the smaller, negative universe of E-Space. They land on the planet Alzarius to get their bearings and discover a colony of humans from a crashed starliner who have been busily repairing their ship so that they might one day return home.

This also happens to be a time known as Mistfall, when dangerous mists rise and creatures known as Marshmen rise from the swamps and attack the colonists. The colonists retreat into their ship but one group of teenagers remain outside. The Doctor finds all of this very curious and the more he digs the more he comes to realize that there is something strange going on on Alzarius and things are not as they seem...

My Take: Doctor Who is at some of it's best when it pushes boundaries and plays with new ideas. The central concepts here of change, fear of change, fear of "the other", and the potentialities of evolution fly pretty high. There are a lot of ideas packed in here and if you don't watch carefully and pay attention you may not catch everything.

For example, there is the fact that the Alzarians see the Marshmen as mindless brutes, little more than cattle, but the Doctor sees something different -- a species capable of learning and adapting quickly. There are overtones here of the way colonial powers often used to perceive native populations. The discovery of the true connection between the colonists and the Marshmen is therefore quite a shock to the colonists.

There is also the irony of the Deciders. The Alzarian society appoints a triumvirate of leaders which they call "Deciders" and these Deciders then seem to decide what the people need to know or not. And yet time and time again we see them as too timid, too frozen by their own uncertainties to actually *make* a decision.

There are also a number of reversals and surprise twists which keep the audiences sympathies volleying back and forth. At the start we see the monstrous Marshmen as the villains of the piece. They are frightening looking, it is indicated that they are responsible for the death of one of the Deciders, the nice, peaceful, Alzarians are terrified of them and most damnable is the fact that they knock K-9's head off (although it does lead to an amusing bit where Romana remarks that they're always fixing K-9. Seriously, the little tin dog was like the Kenny of Doctor Who he was forever having his electronic innards pulled out, getting attacked by aliens, having his batteries drained, etc.). And yet later we see the Marshchild become fascinated with the Doctor and it makes no truly threatening moves. It's capture by the Alzarians suddenly turns the table. The scientist's crude and painful techniques of study and his callous disregard for the Marshchild's life in the name of "science" turn the audience's sympathies to the Marshchild. The Decider's support of what amounts to vivisection of the creature alive finishes the transformation of the Alzarians for victims to victimizers. But yet again the wheel spins when the painful truth of it all is revealed and when the Marshmen rampage through the ship killing indiscriminately we again feel pity for the Alzarians.

There is a pretty big cast here by Doctor Who standards, although not all of them are given a fullness to become anything but cyphers. Most of the teenage "Outlier" band are little more than stock, rebellious teenagers who get to show a bit of mettle when the chips are down. Adric is the only one of them who is allowed to show much of a range and unfortunately Waterhouse's inexperience robs this of a lot of impact. There's always something a little off about his performance. He tends to either underplay or overplay and in at least one scene comes damn near breaking the fourth wall and delivering his line directly to the camera (a no-no with something like this). Inflection on some of the words is also just a shade off. Nothing you can really point to directly but something that just gets on your nerves a bit as the story goes on. There is also a kind of earnestness which seems built into the character in the script which doesn't do the character any favors -- it just increases the annoying factor.

The story also isn't quite Romana's tour-de-force either. Lalla Ward does a lovely job with what she has to do but sadly for a number of episodes she basically plays a zombie in thrall to the Marshmen... sort-of... either way we don't get to see quite enough of the intelligent, problem-solving, witty Romana that fans know and love.

Tom Baker, on the other hand, has some really lovely lines of dialogue and some great sequences. His defense of the Marshchild and the Marshmen in general is filled with clever, back-handed insults but at the same time we see even the Doctor taken aback as he learns more of the truth about the Alzarians.

As for the filming, the location shots are really, really excellent. The forest and water are shot in such a way as to put one in mind of Earth and yet still seem alien. The sequence with the Marshmen rising out of the water is also really well done and creepy as all get-out... if only they had left the Marshmen in the forest. Right around 1979/1980 something started happening in the studios at the BBC. In the past the Doctor Who production teams were careful to light the sets to hide some of the cheapness and stageyness of the sets. As the 1980's dawned that changed and the sets started to be over-lit, leading to them looking more like the backdrop to a high school stage production. We see that starting to creep in here. The starliner interiors don't look bad under this lighting but the Marshmen costumes suddenly go from something freaky and intimidating to looking like nobbly rubber wetsuits. And then there are the spiders. The spiders which are supposed to be rather creepy and jump out of the river fruit... yeah, I've seen cheap rubber novelty spiders which looked better than these things. They are absolutely ridiculous. Thankfully they only appear in a couple of scenes and then vanish.

Getting past some of the crappier special effects the story itself is compelling and keeps you off balance as the situation shifts and changes. There are a lot of good ideas and a lot of things to leave you thinking after the credits roll on the final episode.

Grab Bag Reviews: "State Of Decay"

What do you get when you mix Bram Stoker with Doctor Who?

"State of Decay"

As per usual, a little background to this story before we delve into the more review-like aspect of these posts...

Back in 1974 with new Doctor Tom Baker came a new script editor in Robert Holmes and a new producer in Philip Hinchcliffe. Holmes and Hinchcliffe shared a vision of proving just how far the format of Doctor Who could be stretched and so they began mixing the stories with elements of Gothic horror and mystery. In the process they pulled from some of the great stories of Victorian fiction... Mary Shelly's Frankenstein became "The Brain of Morbius", Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde became "Planet of Evil", and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were given tribute with "The Talons of Weng Chiang". Yet throughout all the stories one of the iconic monsters Hinchcliffe and Holmes never got to was Count Dracula. There had actually been a vampire story planned, written by veteran Doctor Who writer and former script editor Terrance Dicks but the script was quashed when the BBC planned an expensive adaptation of Bram Stoker's original novel and feared Doctor Who doing a vampire story would lower the perception of the other production.

Fast forward to 1979. Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner (hereafter J N-T because I'm not typing all that out over and over again) found himself in a not-at-all-unusual place for a Doctor Who producer -- short on scripts and short on time. Feeling pressure, J N-T delved into the unproduced script files for the show and found himself reasonably attracted to Dicks' vampire story. Because of the passage of time, Dicks was asked to re-write the script to suit a different set of companions. There was also a clash as script editor Christopher Bidmead had wanted the show to move out of the realm of science-fantasy and back into more traditional science-fiction and asked that Dicks include more science and pseudo-science in the story -- something that irritated Dicks. Eventually, however, differences were ironed out.

Besides the script problems there was trouble on the set. Baker and co-star Lalla Ward (Romana) had been in an often-turbulent relationship. Part of the filming for this episode coincided with a period in which the two had broken up. Baker had also been ill for quite some time unable to get the rest he needed to get better. On top of all of this new cast member Matthew Waterhouse was not working out well. He was an extremely novice actor and some on the set felt he was disrespectful of cast and crew.

"State of Decay" would be part of a three-serial story arc which became known as "The E-Space Trilogy". Bidmead and J N-T had envisioned these stories as setting the stage for Tom Baker leaving the show. The trilogy featured the Doctor and Romana being trapped in a kind of alternate universe known as "E-Space". Over the course of the series long-time companions Romana and K-9 would depart, a new character, Adric, would be introduced and the whole would emphasize a theme of entropy, decay, and death as the Fourth Doctor's own "death" approached.

And now... on with the show!

The Plot: The Doctor and Romana continue to search for a way out of E-Space and back to their own universe of N-Space. Finding signs of technology on a nearby planet they land only to discover the population is at a medieval level, gathered around a castle and reliant on the "Lords" for protection. These Lords, however, exact a heavy price -- they keep the populace ignorant, have forbidden the use of technology, and regularly send guards into the village to take away the youngest and strongest of them... people who are rarely seen again.

The Doctor and Romana investigate and soon discover that the people on the planet came from an Earth exploration ship which also ended up in E-Space. Disturbingly, the Doctor and Romana learn that all is not what it might be with the Lords. The Doctor is reminded of an old Time Lord legend... that once there was a race of Great Vampires which threatened all the universe and the Time Lords went to war to stop them...

When stowaway Adric goes looking for the Doctor and Romana he soon falls into the hands of the Lords and Romana ends up in their clutches while trying to rescue him. Now it's up to the Doctor to finish a war that was started milennia ago and he has to finish it before his friends and traveling companions suffer a fate worse than death!

My Take: Despite all of the tensions on-set, off-set, on-screen and behind the scenes this story stands tall. It is rather obviously a throwback to the Gothic horror themed stories of Hinchcliffe's era and, as such, it does sit uneasily amongst not only the rest of the E-Space Trilogy but among the rest of the season as a whole as well. Still, there is no denying the powerful horror imagery and the tips of the hat to the Hammer Horror tradition. Of course, the show took some lumps from critics for the amount of blood and the bloody overtones.

The backstage tensions aside, most of the actors turn in excellent performances. After years in the role, the Doctor comes to Tom Baker as naturally as breathing. Much of his trademark madcap humor is toned down this episode, though, which helps to bring home the horror. A particular short-cut trick the writers sometimes relied upon is employed -- making the audience fear the bad guy because the Doctor is afraid of them. In this case it comes in rather handy since the primary villains the audience sees are the Lords and the Great Vampire himself does not appear until near the end. Having the Doctor seem intimidated and at a loss on how to stop the Great Vampire increases the threat level without needing to see the villain.

Lalla Ward's Romana is a bit weaker here than she has been in previous stories. She is less snarky with the Doctor, less witty, and takes the lead less often as well. While this is a bit disappointing for fans of the character it can be chalked up to Terrance Dicks having to write for a character he was not very familiar with. Of course, in those scenes where Romana is given a chance to shine Ward gives it her all.

Matthew Waterhouse though... Adric. Bane of most Doctor Who fans' existence. He rather quickly became and remains the character most fans love to hate. It's sadly easy to see why. Adric is smug, naive to the point of stupidity at times, and annoying and Waterhouse's lack of experience as an actor did not help him make anything more of the role or endear him to the audience.

The special effects have, sadly, not all held up well. Scenes of outer space have a distinctly greenish hue and in at least one scene of the TARDIS flying the "stars" are overlayed on top of the TARDIS. Likewise, the first images of the Great Vampire are not so great -- looking like a rubber hand puppet... which, eventually becomes a rubber hand itself. On the flip side, the costuming here is gorgeous, the face-paint used for the Lords conjure up the idea of abstract "wings" but lend an air of 'alienness' to the proceedings, the interior of the "castle" is well-done and the sequence where the Lords age to death actually still looks pretty darn freaky even today.

Overall, a nice, creepy story that pays tribute to the vampire horror stories of the past and yet gives everything a fun sci-fi twist. If you're looking for something different to watch at Halloween grab "State of Decay" and turn out the lights... if you dare.