The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Frontios

FRONTIOS (Part One) 26/01/2024 

Another story with some detailed set-up and some really nice design. The TARDIS has arrived in the far future, or at the furthest reaches of the universe, or both - it's never made quite clear - but suffice to say they're orbiting a planet upon which is one of the very last remaining colonies of Humanity. The colony of Frontios is being bombarded by meteor storms and the TARDIS has been brought down in the most recent one. The Doctor noted that it had been caught in a gravitational pull, which seems odd, but I'm sure that will be explained later. The Doctor immediately set about helping the injured with the local doctor, Mr Range, while Tegan and Turlough went off with Range's daughter, Norna, to get a battery to power the lights in the hospital shelter. This is because something has jammed the interior door of the TARDIS.

I can't help thinking Christopher H. Bidmead, back again after almost two years, was heavily influenced by the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the years before he wrote the script, as the colonists regard themselves as being 'at war' with an unknown aggressor who is relentlessly bombarding their area of the planet. Apparently, following the ship crashing on the planet (where most of the thousands of colonists were killed and most of their technology lost) there was ten years of peace where the colonists developed a small, prosperous farming community. However, the bombardments have been going on for forty years and have recently increased in frequency. There's no doubt that the ongoing troubles in Israel influenced Bidmead's writing of this script, and a sad fact that forty years on the area is still in conflict with thousands of civilians slaughtered there in just the last few months. He's created an interesting set up with some very down to earth characters and a lot of distrust and suspicion.

The episode started with the colony's Captain, Revere, being buried by a rockfall and seemingly vanishing before the eyes of his Security Chief, Brazen. Their research room was subsequently closed on Brazen's orders, claiming Revere had instructed it, and the colony is now being run by Revere's son, Plantagenet, who seems very young and naïve but is nonetheless capable of delivering a speech. He also thinks, perhaps influenced by Brazen, that the Doctor's party are a long-awaited invasion party, and the Doctor has been given some good dialogue disputing this.

The sets are incredibly good, as are the matted backgrounds, and the lighting is superb, becoming a murky red with the approaching bombardments. They've done an amazing job of making a studiobound story look like the exterior of a crashed spaceship with shelters made of the cannibalised elements of the wreck and their technology cobbled together from the surviving resources within. The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough work together brilliantly now and I'm enjoying their dynamic with Tegan and Turlough more frequently working together and often sharing their exasperation of the Doctor. The Doctor has also dug out his half-moon glasses, which I don't recall seeing in a while.

Overall, the atmosphere and direction in this story so far has been very good with a lot of world-building, plenty of questions being set up and a surprising cliffhanger of the TARDIS having seemingly been destroyed in the latest bombardment. Only the hatstand seems to have survived (which seems a bit odd). So, a promising start and a welcome return for the show's one-time Script Editor.

FRONTIOS (Part Two) 27/01/2024 

Well, that episode threw a curveball in the last ten minutes! So far the story has been incredibly atmospheric and spent a lot of time establishing the society on Frontios. The characters are all well rounded and well performed, even if sometimes the dialogue can seem contradictory (Tegan's assertion that Brazen doesn't trust them after the Doctor saved Plantagenet's life and seemed to indicate otherwise) or overblown (Plantagenet has dialogue more akin to a character from a Shakespeare play, but I suspect that's the point since he's the young son of an esteemed leader trying to maintain order in a collapsing society; and then, of course, there's his name). Bidmead's concept of the survivors living on the planet doesn't seem as fully thought out as his background for the colony, either. Yesterday, it was stated that there was nothing combustible on the planet, so no trees or areas of gas to tap, but that when the ship crashed fifty years ago the survivors had a decade to grow crops and store up food on the ship before the bombardment began. Today we learnt that there are people regularly deserting the colony to go and live in the wilderness 'hunting like animals'. This wasn't elaborated on, but one assumes they must have shelter out there and be able to survive, otherwise why abandon the colony? Especially when deserters are shot! Do they have mud huts and non-combustible straw rooves? Do they hunt the local fauna that feed off each other and the non-combustible local flora? Inquiring minds need to know!

And then there's the quarry which Captain Revere closed down after the Medical Shelter had been constructed from the stone extracted from it. I'm probably just looking for plot holes, but it's hard not to consider these things when so much has been put in to making this small group of Humans and their colony so interesting and believable.

Anyway, lots of stuff happened this episode. Turlough conned the colonists into thinking the hatstand - all that remains of the TARDIS - was a weapon when he picked it up (presumably to twat the guard about to kill the Doctor with) and 'residual energy' from the TARDIS made a small explosion. Plantagenet and Brazen then escorted the Doctor, Turlough and Norna to the research room at hatstand-point so that they could do tests on rock samples to find out why their planetary neighbours are attacking them - apparently Revere believed it was because there were valuable minerals on Frontios. Um. While here, Plantagenet succumbed to an injury he sustained in the previous attack - it looks like he was hit in the chest with a rock and stretching to twat Turlough with a crowbar somehow caused his heart to fibrillate - so they went to the Medical Shelter where Tegan was helping Mister Range and learning about 'Deaths Unaccountable'. While the Doctor saved Plantagenet's life, Turlough was contemplating the purpose of the block and tackle he, Tegan and Norna used to collect the battery yesterday, and worked out it was for lifting the large, metal floor plate covering the mineshaft where Captain Revere disappeared. So off he and Norna went to investigate.

This is where things got a bit odd. The tunnels were nicely designed and lit, comparable with those of Earthshock, but with areas where the walls are smooth and shiny. They seem to have triggered a memory in Turlough to do with 'Tractators' and here's where the curveball hit. Wandering through the tunnels, spurred on by Norna's curiosity, they passed two pieces of set which then turned to follow them looking a lot like upright woodlice with fish/pig faces, antennae and flappy hand/fins. You only got a brief glimpse of them at first but, having saved Plantagenet, the Doctor and Mister Range went back to see how Norna was doing with her rock analysis. Then Plantagenet suddenly fell (dragged?) out of bed and seemed to be pulled into the ground or vapourised. Tegan ran off to follow the Doctor and Range into the mine below the research room where they found a gibbering Turlough, and Norna surrounded by Tractators holding her in a pink glow. Noticed, the Doctor joined her for the cliffhanger.

It was quite an unexpected turn of events and I'm not entirely sure the design of these Tractators works, but so far we haven't seen that much of them. I'm not going to complain, though, because it's all been clearly signposted that whatever is causing the bombardments and attacking the colony has been living under the ground, from Revere closing the mines and quarries to the TARDIS getting caught in a gravity well and Norna remembering that Revere once told her, as a child, that 'the earth was hungry'. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next because this is one of the most interesting set ups the show has had in a very long time.

FRONTIOS (Part Three) 02/02/2024 

The Tractators aren't a terrible design, just a bit rubbery. I also think it was something of a mistake to give their leader a nose. The common or garden Tractator is quite effectively sculpted, but the nose of the leader just looks daft. The mouth mechanism isn't particularly good, either, with the lower jaw moving inward to simulate talking and some of the internal fronds - I'm guessing they're meant to look like the baleen plates of a Blue Whale - hanging awkwardly over the lower lip. Its speech is a bit odd, too, and I think they could have done with putting a little less processing on the dialogue.

Mark Strickson did a bit more gibbering and I think the Director could have asked him to tone it down a bit. It's all very well asking him to drool on himself, but it was all a bit grim and somewhat distracting from what he had to say. That said, his performance was doing a good enough job of that already, and I'm not sure about Bidmead's choice to make it a 'race memory' instead of something he witnessed as a small child. But there you go.

After two pretty amazing episodes this felt like the usual third-instalment-padding as the various parties came together and swapped information, Brazen having found out about Range's 'Deaths Unaccountable' records from Tegan last week. This introduced Brazen's deputy played by Alison Skilbeck who, by a weird coincidence, played the part of Miss Barrow in the Miss Marple serial Nemesis which I watched last night! Nice to see that Norna isn't the only woman with lines on that planet.

Speaking of which, one interesting development was in regards to Cockerill, a minor character in the last two episodes, who's an Orderly with misgivings about the stability of the colony. He's so far been used to add a bit of colour and believability to the non-ruling class, and was caught looting in the ship by Brazen. Last episode we saw the colonists losing faith in the regime and going everyone-for-themselves with rumours of Plantagenet being dead/eaten by the earth, and Tegan commenting on the looting and societal collapse. Here, Brazen put Cockerill out of the ship with his loot to fend for himself and he was attacked and beaten by other 'retrogrades' and left for dead. Barely conscious and bleeding on the ground, a Tractator started to pull him through the earth - this is their thing; they create gravitational forces to attract their prey - but was distracted by the Doctor and Tegan, and Cockerill survived. This led to Speaking Retrograde drawing the bizarre conclusion that someone who survived the hunger of the earth could 'do anything'. It's a bit of a leap, but at least it adds layers to this society which have been notably absent from a lot of other stories.

The Tractators have Plantagenet locked up in a rather cool, spherical cage and have sort of hinted at what they're up to. Turlough called them an infestation, and the implication is that they draw living, intelligent beings down to operate the burrowing machine that carves out their smooth-walled tunnels. This was shown at the end of the episode when, trapped between the machine and the Tractators, the Doctor and Tegan chose to face the latter in the chamber where they're keeping Plantagenet. The head Tractator stated they needed a living being to operate the machine and that was what they were going to use Plantagenet for. Cue the arrival of the machine with an almost dead Captain Revere held - seemingly naked, or at least shirtless - at its front. It's actually a very grim concept and quite a striking image for the end of the episode, with the camera focussing in on Revere's gaunt, haggard and unblinking features.

So, this episode has been padded, but it was interesting padding which developed the characters and world of Frontios rather than just provide us with a series of captures and escapes or 25 minutes of treading water as has so often been the case. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one concludes.

FRONTIOS (Part Four) 03/02/2024 

I don't known what it is about this season that makes it (so far) so much better than last year. It could be the writing or the variety, or the overall style of design or direction. Last season felt very stuffy and cheap; lots of brightly lit sets and uninspiring location work. Yes, the sets for Warriors Of The Deep were brightly lit at the start of this series, but it was set in a military base on the floor of the Atlantic so you'd hardly expect the people stationed there to be all for mood lighting, regardless of what Hollywood might tell us. The lighting for Frontios was very good, giving the uninhabited tunnels a creepy darkness for the most part with clearer lighting where the Tractators were based. This was, perhaps, the only unfortunate thing about the story because it did allow us to see exactly how silly the Tractators' leader, the Gravis, looked. To be fair, he was let down mostly by having a distinguishing 'nose' and a bulbous chin. Given the mechanics of the creature, I don't think the chin was avoidable, but the noseless regular Tractators didn't actually look that bad. Just giving the Gravis a different paint job (which he had - greenish with silvery veins as opposed to a pinkish grey) would have been enough. That and the fact that he was the only one who could talk! Conceptually, they were okay. Perhaps better not filmed in full - the snail-like foot each had often didn't fully touch the floor as the actors shuffled around - but giant woodlouse/snail creatures who could control gravity with their antennae (through some sort of gestalt link with the Gravis, apparently) was a novel concept. Their plan to create a gravity drive by hollowing one out beneath the surface of Frontios so they could pilot the planet throughout the universe and infect as many planets as possible after 500 years of isolation was perhaps a little mundane, and it was never explained how they knew of the Doctor 'by reputation' or of the Time Lords (I suspect Bidmead wanted to try and inject some mystery and power into the Doctor's people after several stories which somewhat diminished their mystique), but it allowed for a fairly straightforward conclusion as the Gravis was conned into isolating himself from the other Tractators by greedily reassembling the disbursed TARDIS around him leaving them all harmless burrowing creatures and the Gravis inert. It wasn't explained why or how the TARDIS had been torn apart and left fused through the tunnels, either. I can only assume the gravitational forces created by the Tractators rended it apart and pulled it underground, but then why was the crashed ship untouched? It's probably best not to think too hard about it as I suspect the entire story will unravel and, these questions aside, this serial was very good!

There was some brilliant comedy early on, where the Doctor protected Tegan from being the next unit to drive the burrowing machine (if they're burrowing creatures, why do they need a machine?) by claiming she was an android:

"I got this one cheap because the walk's not quite right... and then there's the accent..."

Janet's expression was pitch perfect, even behind the pink 'gravity field'. The rest of the cast were on form as well, Jeff Rawle especially good as Plantagenet. I think perhaps more could have been made of the fact that his father was 'used up' powering the excavator, and the bit where Turlough weirdly approached it as if hypnotised during the rescue, apparently only so that Brazen could be caught by it and, for some reason, cause it to lose control didn't quite land - a line or two of explanation would have helped here; and the uprising of the colonists led by Cockerill was an interesting development which ultimately led nowhere. But despite these points (which I think I'm focussing too much on), Frontios has been a very good adventure and certainly better than most of Season 20.

Oh, and we got a cliffhanger at the end as the TARDIS was pulled to the centre of the universe, although since they're at the outer limits I don't think  we're going to see Nyssa again in an exciting sequel to Terminus!