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!

This third episode really belongs to Mark Strickson, who seizes an opportunity to show his acting skills, which he's largely been denied since he joined the programme. Turlough appears to have been traumatised by something that has reawakened a deeply-buried race memory. Glassy-eyed and spittle-mouthed, Strickson sells Turlough's state of shock very well (some might say almost too well), as the boy remembers that the people of his homeworld (frustratingly never named) once encountered the Tractators themselves. "They are the appetite beneath the ground," he recounts. "The earth is hungry. It waits to eat." He describes the Tractators as an infection spreading beneath the surface, and it's a good job he does, as we learn precious little about the creatures elsewhere.

The Tractators look good on the face of it, although when they move around it's obvious there's a man inside shuffling about. Their waggly little hands unfortunately make them quite comical, but the moving antennae work well, showing how they control gravity and drag people down from the surface. Most impressive of all is John Gillett's vocal performance as the Tractators' leader, the Gravis. Instead of the usual ranty, shouty monster voice, Gillett opts for some nuance and truth in the Gravis's tone, making him more menacing because he sounds that bit more reasoned. The Gravis may look like a giant rubber snail, but he sounds like a convincing threat.

Up on the surface, the fragile society the settlers have developed is beginning to fracture. Plantagenet is gone, eaten by the earth, and the retrogrades decide that it's everyone for himself. As an exemplar, Cockerill comes to the fore (almost out of nowhere), caught out by Brazen looting Plantagenet's throne room. Brazen lets Cockerill go with his loot, knowing that "it's not easy to live inside the system, but to live outside of it takes more than you've got." Sure enough, Cockerill is mugged by other retrogrades out for themselves, and left for dead. It's a sad turn of events for Cockerill, but would have meant more had Bidmead managed to build the character up in earlier episodes. As it is, although he's been there all along, Cockerill comes out of nowhere and we're supposed to care about his fate straight away.

Luckily for Cockerill, he manages to free himself from the subterranean draw of the Tractators (thanks to the Doctor's distraction) and the other retrogrades start to see him as something of a miracle. "He outlived the hunger of the earth," says a random retrograde. "A man who can do that can do anything!"

There's more material between Lesley Dunlop and Mark Strickson too, as Norna and Turlough have developed a really nice relationship, made of mutual respect and understanding. Norna reassures the traumatised Turlough that he isn't letting anybody down by being afraid to return to the caves, like a big sister looking out for her brother. The scene where Turlough decides to face his fear, and acknowledge his cowardice, is touching. "Nobody expects you to go back down there," says Norna. "No, of course they don't. I'm Turlough," he replies, fully aware of how others see him (probably thanks to Tegan's very obvious disregard for his self-serving nature). In the end, he returns to the caves, knowing he may come face to face with his worst fears. But he goes anyway, to save the Doctor, to save Tegan, to save himself.

A few other observations:

• Peter Gilmore, a seasoned and much-loved TV star, gives a solid, dependable performance as gruff Brazen, but there's not much depth to it. Most other characters have had a chance to show their true humanity by either changing their mind, or showing their doubts, but Brazen remains steadfastly bad-tempered.
• Tegan refuses help from Range when she goes back for the Doctor, stating: "The Doctor's my responsibility." This is a nice character moment which echoes all the way back to her saying the same thing in Castrovalva (also written by Bidmead), showing that she really does see herself as the Doctor's protector as much as he might be hers.
• Look at that gorgeous matte shot of the Tractators' lair, definitely the most successful of the three attempted by director Ron Jones in Frontios. It's a fine example of how Doctor Who has always pushed to look as good as it possibly can, irrespective of whether it succeeds or not. Doctor Who didn't have much of a budget or access to computer-generated wizardry, but that didn't stop the people making it trying their very best. Jones is known as one of Doctor Who's more pedestrian directors, but there's no denying his eye for innovation on this story.
• I love the character of Norna, played with such intelligence by Dunlop. She's A1 companion material, refusing to be molly-coddled, telling her father to lead the expedition into the caves because "I don't need looking after". I guess she must be a pretty strong young woman to have grown up in such harsh conditions, presumably her mother having died in the crash or of the subsequent outbreak of disease. Her bond with her father is clear.

The episode ends with the Doctor and Tegan stumbling into the Tractators' lair, cornered by a truly gruesome excavation machine that's built around the cadaverous living body of Captain Revere, who we saw sucked down into the earth at the start of part 1. He's not dead, but nor is he fully alive, as his mind and flesh have become fused to the Tractators' excavating technology. The Gravis says that soon Revere will be of no more use (ie, dead) but can be replaced by the much younger Plantagenet. Eek!

First broadcast: February 2nd, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The corpse-like Revere at the heart of the excavating machine is a disturbing final image.
The Bad: The Doctor and Tegan spend the whole episode lost in a tunnel.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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