Director: Peter Grimwade
What's the score?
Full Circle is the first story to be transmitted with an incidental score provided solely by Paddy Kingsland - State of Decay was produced earlier, but transmitted after this one. This, and his work on the following story, gives Kingsland the chief responsibility for designing the musical feel of E-Space, as well as musically introducing the new companion, Adric.
Kingsland's score is lyrical and makes strong use of repeated motifs. He tends to favour woodwind-like sound - particularly high, fluting sounds in this score - and prominent bass drum accents. His electric guitar also gets its first proper workout here.
Musical notes
- A jolly "riding into action" cue plays over the shot of the TARDIS flying through space at the start of Part One. Hold onto that cue, it'll come in handy next week. It turns up again in Part Three when the Doctor pilots the TARDIS back to the Outlers' cave to rescue a comatose Romana.
- Adric has a theme, except that it's not exactly his theme yet. It starts out more as a theme for the Outlers, and ends up standing for the Alzarians in general. Variants of it play throughout the story. It crops up again from time to time in future stories in reference specifically to Adric. Perhaps surprisingly, Kingsland won't use it to reintroduce Adric when he turns up in the next story.
- K9 has a theme too, and it's heavy on the guitar! It's actually a close cousin of the Alzarian theme. It plays in Parts One and Two over scenes of K9 following the Marshmen through the woods. Unlike Adric's theme, K9's theme doesn't reappear in later stories; but then K9's only in two more stories, and he doesn't get a lot to do in either.
- A repeated seven note phrase plays over scenes that relate to Mistfall or that feature revelations about the Alzarian life cycle. The end of Part One, as the Marshmen emerge from the water, is a notable example. The notes rise and fall cyclically within the phrase, and the phrase itself rises across repetitions, as if emphasising the upward climb of Alzarius' super-evolving lifeforms. "The Ascent of Marshman", we might call it.
- The other major theme is a sombre piece that represents the Deciders. There's a special extra-sepulchral version that plays when we first see the cathedral-like space of the Starliner's bridge, where the Deciders hold court.
- There's an ironic little fanfare when K9 is beheaded in Part Two. It's almost as if the composer were making fun of this solemn, dramatic moment - surely not?
- This week's quote from the DW theme tune comes in Part Three, after the Doctor has rescued Romana. We get an overt "oo-wee-oo" over the Doctor working the TARDIS controls, followed by a more subtle bass "oo-wee-oo" as we track through to Romana's room.
- There's an unexpectedly rockin' moment at the start of Part Four when the possessed Romana lets the Marshmen into the Starliner. When I hear this cue, it puts me in mind of the "Piltdown Man" section of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells - no particular musical similarity, just the combination of rock guitar and primitive hominids. Is it just me?
Vox pop
This is a charming score, eerie and lively in equal measure. The liberal use of the electric guitar adds a lot of fun to the mix, too. It works well with the TV episodes, and Kingsland's development of themes within the score makes it a great listen in its own right.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
- The score was released on the Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Volume 4 CD in 2002, alongside the Kingsland/Howell score for Meglos. Volume 3 included some of Dick Mills' sound effects from the story.
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