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!

Meanwhile, aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor is being exceptionally eccentric, as if the personalities of his former selves have finally caught up with him. The Doctor's preoccupation with the hat stand - and finding the other one to make a pair - is endearingly true to the character, whoever plays it. Bidmead might not be the best writer Doctor Who had, but he knows Doctor Who better than many, having script edited Season 18 and helped create the Fifth Doctor. Here, he writes the Doctor eloquently and with real insight, and Peter Davison riffs on the script like a professional, responding to everything he's given on the page and making it sing on the screen. Davison, at least at this time in his life, was not gifted with a natural eccentricity, but he could certainly play it when given the opportunity, and that's what we see in Frontios. Finally, someone is writing for his Doctor the way he should have been all along!

The Doctor seems very slightly removed, like his thoughts are principally elsewhere, which is Hartnell and Tom Baker to a tee. He's ever so slightly gruff with those around him (classic Pertwee), but also manages to add his own breathless exasperation to the mix to finally portray the best version of the Fifth Doctor I've seen so far. The addition of the half-moon spectacles (the "brainy specs"!) gives Davison, despite being just 32 here, a typically professorial look, which he couples with an eccentric air in his performance. I honestly do not think Davison gave a better performance as his Doctor before Frontios part 1.

His extinction speech is delightful. "Your population has already fallen below critical value required for guaranteed growth and you're regularly losing new lives," he tells Plantagenet. "I think - and you did ask what I think - I think your colony of Earth people is in grave danger of extinction." Davison delivers this perfectly, and I can imagine any and all of his predecessors and successors saying these exact same words, and powerfully so. All credit to Bidmead for providing the nourishing fuel for Davison to soar with his character.

It's also great that the Doctor vows not to get too involved with events, hoping to come and go "like a summer cloud", until Range claims the colony is under attack, or at war. From this moment on, the Doctor becomes much more willing to find out more, as if his interest is piqued by the possibility of bringing an end to conflict, or maybe just meeting some monsters! Having said that, his apparent decision to make a "swift exit" from Frontios at the end shows he's not all that bothered!

Unusually for Bidmead, characterisation is pretty good in this episode, not just for the Doctor, but also the companions. Since Mark Strickson joined as a regular, Turlough has been sidelined, ignored or wasted, often given nothing to do except deliver withering asides and button up his blazer. Here, at last, he's given something to do, and takes an active role in trying to solve the lighting problem in the medical shelter. He thinks up a way to generate a steady voltage using the acid, and without telling the Doctor their intentions, Turlough, Tegan and Norna make off for the ship to fetch what they need from the research room.

Of course, Strickson does all of this with his trademark elan, my favourite moment being the way he gleefully reads out what happened to the people of Tegan's future: "Fleeing from the imminence of a catastrophic collision with the Sun, a group of refugees from the doomed planet Earth..."

We have resourceful companions, at last! Companions with something to do, something important and constructive, not just there to be threatened, locked up and knocked out. It's like Bidmead has taken one look at script editor Eric Saward's work and decided to put him right.

Bidmead isn't quite as successful at drawing his new characters, but the actors squeeze enough out of the script to paint them in broad strokes (Brazen is a gruff military type, Plantagenet makes up for his lack of experience with arrogant hubris, Range is kindly and open-minded). William Lucas (as Range) gives the best, most natural performance. This is even more impressive when you consider he was cast less than three weeks before recording began after the originally cast actor, Peter Arne, was murdered at his home following a costume fitting.

Designer David Buckingham (who, late in the pre-production process, replaced original designer Barrie Dobbins, who took his own life in November 1983) plays a blinder with a great number of sets over the course of the episode, all of them dressed with detail and thought, evoking the feeling that these people are surviving in pretty desperate, dirty and broken circumstances following the spaceship crash around 40 years previously. He does fall down a bit with the set for the ship's hull, with the sky a simple white cyclorama lacking any texture or colour, but he more than makes up for it with his multi-level medical shelter and research room sets.

There's also unusual ambition in director Ron Jones's use of matte shots to depict the crashed ship under bombardment (much better than the brief model shot, which looks like someone's dropped a plastic toy in a flower bed), and the vast interior of the vessel. The shots aren't wholly successful, but they paint a picture that our imaginations can run with.

The TARDIS is brought down to Frontios amid the bombardment, and the crew immediately gets involved in helping the injured get to safety. Tegan in particular wastes no time in finding the medical shelter, and seems to know her way around it without ever being there before! Again, Bidmead gives Tegan an active role in the episode, helping Norna to transport the acid jar, despite wearing the least appropriate outfit since Romana went rock-climbing in slingbacks. I mean, what was costume designer Anushia Nieradzik thinking dressing Janet Fielding in a flimsy blouse, high heels and a tight, and very short, leather skirt? She's dressed more for a Fiesta Magazine photoshoot than for travelling through time and space. Having said that, Fielding looks stunning, it's just out of place in this context!

In an effort to placate the pompous young leader Plantagenet (played by a boyish Jeff Rawle), the Doctor decides to show him the TARDIS, another example of this Doctor being rather too keen to share the secrets of his time ship with strangers. Unfortunately, he times this offer to coincide with a bombardment from the heavens, in which Plantagenet is injured, and the TARDIS is apparently destroyed. All that is left of the police box and its transcendental innards is the hat stand the Doctor was obsessing over earlier. "The TARDIS has been destroyed," the Doctor rather pessimistically concludes. Of course, what he doesn't know is what the viewer witnessed at the start of the episode, when Revere was sucked into the hungry earth. I'm guessing the TARDIS has too, although how the hat stand got left behind remains a mystery...

I'm mightily impressed by this first episode, there's some good writing, good design and some great acting from the regulars.

First broadcast: January 26th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Peter Davison's fine performance, his best yet.
The Bad: That little red straw.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Frontios is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Frontios-Peter-Davison/dp/B004P9MRSU