Frontios Part Four

The one where the TARDIS is pulled back together...

It's amusing how the Gravis is treated completely seriously by those around him, despite the fact he looks like a giant constipated rubber snail. The Doctor chats away to him conversationally, offering a handshake but then realising the Gravis's shortcomings in that department. I also like Tegan's brief fake smile when the Doctor introduces her!

Best of all, of course, is how the Doctor pretends that Tegan is an android, his "serving machine", in an effort to draw the Gravis's attention away from his companion. It's hilarious how he explains that he got Tegan cheap because "the walk's not quite right, and then there's the accent..." The look of suppressed fury on Tegan's face is priceless, and I'm surprised she doesn't pick him up on it later on!

Frontios Part Three

The one where Turlough dredges up some traumatising race memories...

Resourceful as ever, Tegan chucks a phosphor lamp at the Tractators holding the Doctor and Norna, resulting in a comical scene where the creatures scurry away screaming and flapping their little arms. It's not meant to be funny, but you can't help chuckling as the creature operators scamper off-camera. It's another good example of Christopher H Bidmead's excellent writing here though, giving Tegan an active role in the Doctor's escape rather than becoming part of the problem.

Sadly, the Doctor and Tegan spend most of the ensuing episode wandering around the cave system trying to get out, achieving very little, although the scenes where they are being drawn towards the Tractators by gravitational force are realised well, with both Peter Davison and Janet Fielding successfully selling the fact their bodies are being compelled. I love the bit where they're sliding along the ground on their bottoms!

Frontios Part Two

The one where our heroes find creatures beneath the surface...

The Doctor, who continues to be written with a classy sarcastic edge by Christopher H Bidmead, delivers the perfect rejoinder to every Doctor Who cliffhanger that ends with our heroes having a gun aimed at them. "Oh marvellous! You're going to kill me. What a finely tuned response to the situation." However, the Doctor goads the pompous Plantagenet just a little too much, as he ends up ordering his execution after all ("This wasn't what I had in mind at all!").

Then a wonderfully Doctor Who-ey thing happens, something you'd never see in Star Trek or Blake's 7. Turlough threatens their aggressors with a hat stand! This item of TARDIS furniture has enjoyed an unusual prominence in the story so far, and now Turlough is pretending it's a powerful weapon to save the Doctor. Obviously they don't have hat stands in the far future (perhaps hats have been abolished?).

Frontios Part One

The one where the TARDIS is reduced to a hat stand...

It's the return of former script editor Christopher H Bidmead with his third and last story for the TV series, and as is traditional, his script is named after the planet on which events take place. He's good at naming planets, but his story titles aren't the most dynamic in the canon (having said that, Castrovalva's working title was The Visitor, which is even duller).

The opening scene is intriguing enough, as we meet a bunch of military men who've found something in the earth, but it's not long until the earth beneath their feet begins to collapse like a sinkhole, aided by a little red straw which I am sure is not supposed to be in shot! We can laugh, but it's actually so visible that you wonder whether it's supposed to be part of the scene, and begin to imagine a mischievous worm beneath the surface poking his little red stick through the soil! The shaft collapses as the ground moves, crushing the curiously mute Captain Revere (played by the uncredited John Beardmore), but then it's discovered that his body has disappeared altogether, eaten by the hungry earth!