Four Episodes
Aired between 26th January 1984 and 3rd February 1984
Written by Christopher H. Bidmead
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones
Synopsis
The Doctor is doing some re-organising of the TARDIS when it takes them to the far limits of time, long after the destruction of earth. They end up in orbit around a planet called Frontios.
The Doctor is reluctant to land as he says it's they're messing around somewhere at the limit of Galifreyan influence and he doesn't want to interfere with a struggling human colony they've found there.
Before he can move though, the TARDIS is hit by a meteor shower and they're forced to land on the planet. They land in the middle of the colony as the meteors crash around them. The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough immediately begin to help those injured in the shower, and instead of being thanked, are treated with suspicion.
It turns out that the meteors didn't fall by accident, they were sent by some unknown enemy to attack the colonists and Mr Range, the head physician believes they're the vanguard of an invasion.
Naturally, the Doctor bullies them into focusing on healing the wounded, and he sends Tegan and Turlough to get him better equipment and light sources from the TARDIS, but as they go there, they find the interior door stuck fast. They decide instead to go off with Ranges daughter, Norna, to enter a forbidden part of the colony where the old leader, Captain Revere had a workshop. They believe that he was working on more equipment that would give light and power.
Turlough, Tegan and Norna get the acid battery,
despite guards looking for them, and get back, but another shower arrives and destroys the TARDIS.
Chief Orderly Brazen meanwhile has spotted Tegan and company, and after sending his men after them, he goes to tell the young leader of the colony, Plantagenet. The ruler is the son of Captain Revere, and is paranoid as Range was about the Doctor being one of the invaders. He and Brazen confront the Doctor as the meteor shower that destroys the TARDIS comes down.
As the Doctor and co stand around the smoking ruins, Plantagenet gathers a squad of men and orders the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough shot.
Turlough grabs the smoking remains of the TARDIS' hatstand and convinces them it's a weapon enough for the soldiers not to fire. The Doctor strikes a bargain with Plantagenet to find the answer as to why a mysterious force is bombarding the colony and buys them time.
They work with the reluctant colonists, and Tegan finds in the course of this, a series of records in Mr Range's files showing unexplained deaths of colonists.
Plantagenet tries to attack the group, but collapses with a wound from the bombardment that he's been trying to conceal. The Doctor and Turlough get him to the medical facility and help to save his life. In the wake of this, Turlough questions why the colonists don't dig underground bunkers to escape the bombardment, but Norna tells him that Captain Revere forbade them to do so. This prompts him to check Revere's workshop again and finds a hidden tunnel under the floor. They go exploring in the caves beneath and Turlough says he feels a familiar fear about that place.
The Doctor and Tegan in the meantime are dealing with their own problems. Plantagenet is mysteriously sucked underground, creating a problem as he's the only figurehead the colonists will follow. Without him, they will descend into anarchy, and the Doctor finds out that Revere told them to stop digging underground because they found evidence of monsters living in the tunnels.
The Doctor and Range go into the tunnels when they find Norna and Turlough gone and eventually find Turlough going mad - blubbering about "Tractators".
Turns out that the Tractators are giant woodlice type aliens that live underground.
They have the ability to move things with the waddle of their antennae and are responsible for pulling people underground and indeed for pulling the meteors (and the TARDIS to the planet).
The Doctor enters a long bluffing and negotiation process with their leader, Gravis, and finds out that the Tractators have been stranded on Frontios for centuries.
They waited until the colonists were set up then began "farming" them to use in their organic technology, the most terrifying of which is a mining machine that is powered by a living brain and torso of Captain Revere.
They plan to use Plantagenet to replace him when he dies.
The mining machine is used to create tunnels that enhance the Tractators telekinetic control and thus pull the meteors to Frontios. The Gravis is very interested in the Doctor's TARDIS as he knows about the Time Lords and wants to use it to get the Tractators off the planet.
They hold the Doctor off and start to put Plantagenet into the mining machine once Revere is dead.
Thankfully, Brazen leads a squad down into the tunnels and creates enough of a diversion for the Doctor to rescue Plantagenet and escape. Brazen is captured and killed by the mining machine in the process.
Whilst trying to get out of the tunnels, Plantagenet explains to the Doctor that he figured out the Tractators plans. They intend to use the tunnels to enhance their abilities to ultimately move the planet and steer it through space, so they can capture other planets.
After the Gravis is stunned, Turlough remembers from some instinctive race memory he has that the Gravis is the source of the Tractator's power. If they separate him from the rest, they will be mindless and mundane.
The group discover that the Tractators have pulled bits of the TARDIS underground and used them in tunnel construction. The Doctor lures the Gravis to where the console room is and manipulates him into restoring the TARDIS so it can take the Tractators off the planet.
Unfortunately, the Gravis didn't anticipate that once the time machine was put back together, its interior would once again become dimensionally separate from the rest of the world. The Gravis becomes dormant because of this, and the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are able to take it to a different planet and dump it away from the rest of the Tractators.
They return to Frontios to say goodbye to Range, Norna and Plantagenet, and give them a hatstand to remember them by (but warn them not to mention the Doctor's involvement).
With that, they leave again in the TARDIS, but it soon starts to shake and danger looms as the Doctor fights with the controls, saying they're being pulled to the centre of the universe.
Trivia
- This is the last story Christopher Bidmead did for Doctor Who. It was written like it had a movie budget to go with it, and so a lot of the elements were just too hard to realise on the actual budget. To the relief of the BBC but the regret of many viewers, the more gruesome elements of the story didn't make it in. The original script called for the entire mining machine to be made of human body parts and the Tractator's translation device was a severed head!
- The practicalities as ever were a problem, and finding themselves short on time and money, the entire story was filmed in studio, rather than outside in real caves and tunnels. The actors had to be careful how they walked so that their shoes didn't squeak on all the polystyrene
- One sad note was that renowned actor, Peter Arne was due to play Mr Range, but after he returned home from a costume fitting, he was brutally murdered. The killer was thought to be insane and killed himself a short time later by throwing himself in a canal.
- Whatever you think of John Nathan-Turner, he was very good at publicity. During Frontios, its believed he started the rumour about possibly doing away with the TARDIS, and the scene where the TARDIS is destroyed sure played into everyone's fear and got viewers. The truth is it destroying the TARDIS was never in question.
- By this time, the press were introduced to Colin Baker and were having a field day anyway.
The Review
The one big thing I remember from watching Frontios as a five year old was Captain Revere in the mining machine. I remember this story as something dark and interesting. The Tractators were never scary, but the sets and the lighting and the horrible corpse make up left a good impression in my mind. Therefore, I really was looking forwards to watching this. It could never truly live up to the image I had in my mind, but what I took away from all of this was this: Frontios, like Snakedance, has a lot of good worldbuilding. It also has some quite good concepts, with the twist of the meteors coming down actually being from a threat under the earth, and the spooky tag line of "the earth buries its dead".
But Christopher Bidmead loves complex stories and if Doctor who were judged on that, then this and Warriors Gate would be the highest praised stories in all of Doctor Who. I myself find it too complex for it's own good. There's intrigue, but it goes so overboard with it that minutes and minutes go by without any real action. It takes so long to explore the back story that it ends up being quite boring in places.
As with what I remember, the sets, lighting, Blakes 7 helmets and the mining machine are all great. The acting is far too over the top and cliche with both Plantagenet and Brazen being super annoying (that's part of their characters I guess, but still).
Frontios is a decent watch, once. I'll not be coming back to watch it again for quite a while I dare say, but it's far from being the worst Doctor Who, and in comparison with other Peter Davison stories, it's still up there as one of the better ones.
Rating
6 out of 10
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- The Twin Dilemma
- The Hungry Earth (Doctor Who, Series 5)
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