"We're all basically primeval slime with ideas above its station."TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.15 1980.IN THIS ONE... The Alzarians are revealed to be the Marshmen's descendants and the ship leaves after oxygenating the monsters out....
"We're all basically primeval slime with ideas above its station."TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.15 1980.IN THIS ONE... The Alzarians are revealed to be the Marshmen's descendants and the ship leaves after oxygenating the monsters out.REVIEW: This is rather like The Mutants, isn't it? A planet where evolution is proceeding in strange and improbable ways, where the monsters are really another form of the native "humans". It's not entirely clear WHAT the evolutionary set-up is, truthfully. When the cells from the spiders, Marshmen and Alzarians are shown to be "the same", it sounds like they're trying to say these are different stages of the same organism's life cycle. But what's actually on screen is merely the more reasonable revelation that the Alzarians are native to the planet and not transplanted "Terradonians". The dialog is either too technical (from the Time Lords) or too simple (from his Outler assistants) to make that clear. And with Romana acting like a bored cat, swatting at the air as if she was turning into a marsh creature, and the big to-do about Adric's cellular regeneration abilities, it really does seem like a story about a metamorphosing species. Instead - and again, I think this is a more believable story, or else the Deciders wouldn't have stuff about the Marshmen in their books - what we see is two strands of evolution side by side, sort of like where Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons shared the planet. The Marshmen, primeval cousins of the Alzarians, just come out when the planet cools down is all. It's a strong SF premise, but the dialog doesn't quite bring put it across.The idea that the Starliner crashing and creating a whole culture, mythology and science, indeed an entire re-writing of a people's identity is a good one, and (inadvertently?) mirrored in the Doctor's use of K9's head as a mask to strike fear into the Marshmen who were previously using it as an axe head. It's a neat image and recalls the cargo cults of the Pacific. With his two companions having lost their heads, it's good to see the Doctor do something interesting. This season, the show's often been content with providing eye candy as opposed to well thought-through plots and witty dialog. In this case, plenty of extras on both sides when the Marshmen make their move. Unfortunate that in the climax, the Deciders' debates are boring and rather pathetic. Maybe they should be called Procrastinators instead. In Login, they seem to have elected the first Decider with any kind of active leadership in generations, and finally the ship takes off, leaving the Marshmen to their own devices.So what about Adric? Interestingly, he doesn't join the crew at the end of the episode. It's left as a surprise for the next. He leaves a gift, a spare part from the Starliner that is exactly like the frizzed-out part from the TARDIS. It's a ludicrous coincidence, of course, that a ship from Terradon in E-Space would be exactly the same as one manufactured on Gallifrey. Or does the TARDIS' innards have a translation circuit of their own? They do seem to change over time... Though he still doesn't know what to do with himself when he's on camera, Adric isn't quite the character fans will come to hate. I wouldn't call his brother's death touching exactly (it's savage and harrowing though), but there's something to Adric inheriting his rope belt, I suppose. But as the episode leaves it, he was just a guest player and an okay one. Had they left well enough alone... but State of Decay was produced first, so...THEORIES: So what the heck is E-Space? It's not a parallel dimension like the one in Inferno. It's smaller than our own universe (N-Space), apparently, and its green tinge might mean physical laws are different there (though it's hard to say; Full Circle's science isn't any wonkier than Leisure Hive's or Nightmare of Eden's, for example). Not parallel, but when you superimpose N-Space's absolute coordinates on E-Space's, you do get planets in the same spaces. A
