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?).

This second episode continues the story's strong start and manages to give the companions ever stronger active roles than part 1, almost sidelining the Doctor for a change. In a very special instalment of Tegan Investigates..., the fiery Aussie rummages through a filing cabinet left open by Mr Range, and discovers evidence of something called "Deaths Unaccountable". It's great how she mistakenly closes the filing cabinet when she thinks someone's coming, then curses the fact when they're not ("Rabbits!"). She doesn't give up, and tries to force it open with a scalpel. When she's asked what she's up to by Range, she realises there's little point in lying: "I'm trying to get the drawer open if you must know."

Tegan's also resourceful when she escapes from Brazen, thrusting live wires at his face then locking him in the medical shelter with an iron bar across the doors. This girl's been around the universal block a few times, you can tell!

Meanwhile, Mark Strickson is finally rewarded for his enthusiasm over the last 12 months by getting his own prominent subplot, in which he essentially takes the lead role which the Doctor would ordinarily have. He's coupled with Norna (played sensitively by Lesley Dunlop) in the research room, and the exchanges between them are lovely, and feel very natural (Dunlop's return to Doctor Who as The Happiness Patrol's Susan Q is just as special). It makes me realise what good companion material Lesley Dunlop/ Norna would have been, and a natural successor to the soon-to-be-leaving Janet Fielding. She has the maturity and scientific skills of Nyssa, and the resilience and determination of Tegan - little of which, I'd argue, Perpugilliam Brown had - so it's a shame Norna didn't join the TARDIS, just as with Will Chandler.

I like how Bidmead remembers that Turlough is an alien, which is why he gleefully recites the fate of Tegan's Earth in part 1, and in part 2 casually refers to another alien civilisation and intergalactic conflict (the Arar-Jecks of Hieradi, and the Twenty-Aeon War). He's an alien, he'd know about such things. It's just like if Tegan dropped the Boer War or Boxer Rebellion into conversation.

Turlough gets a bee in his bonnet about there being a block and tackle in the research room, for no apparent reason, and wonders where Captain Revere got his rock collection from. Pushing the narrative forward, he leads the way with Norna into the subterranean depths of Frontios, lit beautifully by the green phosphor lamps (a godsend to lighting director John Summers). However, Turlough quickly comes to regret this move, and as the tunnel walls begin to change from wispy and "moth-eaten" to glassily smooth, he becomes fearful, wanting to go back. Rather marvellously, proto-companion Norna is having none of it: "Come on, chicken... I'll leave you to it, then. I'm going."

Turlough's rapid descent into fear and terror is rather unsettling for viewers who might relate to him. He mentions glimpsing things from the corner of his eye, and begins to remember a word that goes with the emerging feelings he's having: "Tractators." By the time the screaming Turlough runs into the arms of the Doctor, he's a glassy-eyed wreck, clearly disturbed by having seen or remembered something terrible. Finally, Strickson gets to flex his acting muscles, and he's more than up to the challenge.

The way director Ron Jones reveals the monsters of the piece is both clever and slightly bungled. As ever with Jones's work, you feel it could have been better. It's a great idea to have the monsters hidden in plain sight throughout the scene between Turlough and Norna - their shell-like backs turned to camera so as to look like rock - but when they turn round for the big reveal, there's no close-up, and we see them only from the side. We don't get a clear view of what exactly they are or look like. We get the idea they are giant snails, but the lack of detail is frustrating, rather than tantalising.

We do get glimpses of them in the cliffhanger as they use their gravitational powers to entrap Norna and the Doctor, but still not enough to truly convince the viewer of what they're seeing. So far they're like big walking boulders, although I get the strong impression they are ugly buggers.

After the curiously monster-lite Season 20, Season 21 is making up for it in spades.

First broadcast: January 27th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The strong, prominent roles given to Tegan and Turlough.
The Bad: Ron Jones's half-hearted monster reveal.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

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