Frontios

Tegan: Doctor then do something!
Doctor: Oh I am. Lots of things. Nothing that fits the gravity of the situation.


Plot Summary

The TARDIS flies near the planet of Frontios, a planet settled by a colony of humans fleeing the destruction of Earth. The settlement has been having hard times as they run low on supplies and more and more people and equipment are sucked down into the Earth. The Doctor attempts to stay away from the planet, not wanting to get involved in human development, but the TARDIS is caught in a meteor storm and pulled in to the planet.

Upon landing, they help various colonists into the caves away from the meteors and the Doctor opts to give medical assistance. There is poor light in the caves and no electricity. Seeing a generator, he hopes to get it running but has no power. The medical officer, Range, assists him and his daughter Norna recalls that there is a basic battery generator in the remains of the colony ship. Tegan and Turlough go with her to help carry it.

The colony ship is outlawed territory, the local authority trying to preserve supplies, and the three are forced to sneak into the ship. Meanwhile the military authority, Brazen, alerts the colony leader, Plantagenet, of the new arrivals and they are immediately suspicious that the Doctor is part of an invasion force. Plantagenet has only recently taken command from his father, Captain Revere.

The three young people manage to recover the battery, though they are forced to knock out one of the guards to do it. They return with the battery to the infirmary, much to the Doctor's appreciation. Range informs the Doctor, as Plantagenet bears down on them, that they had no trouble on the planet for ten years, attempting to grow crops and survive. But for the last thirty years, they've been attacked by some unseen force pulling in meteors at them.

Plantagenet accuses the Doctor of being the fore of an invasion force and the Doctor offers to show him the TARDIS as proof that they are just travelers who didn't mean to stop there. They are halted by another round of meteor strikes which forces everyone back into the caves. As it stops, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough race back, hoping to leave in the TARDIS. However, they find the TARDIS gone, apparently destroyed.

Plantagenet arrests the Doctor and prepares to have him shot but Turlough steps in, grabbing the Doctor's hat rack and pretending it is the weapon which summons the meteors. The Doctor attempts to assuage the people that he will only help. Tegan is sent with Range back to help the wounded while the Doctor, Turlough, Norna, Plantagenet and Brazen head to the sealed science lab to run tests on the rocks, though the work had been stopped by Plantagenet's father.

As they enter the lab, Plantagenet attacks the Doctor with a club from a soldier. The Doctor defends himself and Plantagenet is knocked to the ground. His heart begins to go erratic and the Doctor and Brazen carry him back to the infirmary. In the infirmary, the Doctor creates a makeshift defibrillator and settles his heart. Brazen becomes more convinced that the Doctor is actually here to help.

In the lab, Norna runs tests but Turlough is more curious about the source of the rocks, given that Norna told him that the quarry had been outlawed years ago. Examining the block and tackle they used earlier to get the battery, he discovers a secret passage out of the lab through the floor. He and Norna head down to investigate and find themselves in smoothed tunnels. Turlough becomes increasingly nervous and recalls things from his past, including the name "Tractators."

The Doctor and Range return to the lab while Tegan watches over Plantagenet. While talking, Tegan let's slip that she has learned of uncategorized deaths in the records, causing Brazen to begin to question her. While distracted, Plantagenet slips off his cot and disappears into the ground. Both Tegan and Brazen are shocked by this but their investigation is cut short when a group of people, fearing Plantagenet has died come in to see. Brazen chases them out, leaving Tegan a chance to slip free of the guard. When Brazen reenters the infirmary, she braces the door with piece of metal.

The Doctor and Range enter the lab and discover it empty and the tunnel. The Doctor heads down, telling Range to stay behind, but Range disobeys and follows him, running into him later. Tegan also enters the lab and subsequently the tunnels.

While exploring, the Doctor and Range run into Turlough who is fleeing in a state of panic. They catch him and can get nothing out of him except for Tractators. The Doctor orders Range to look after Turlough while he finds Norna. He comes across Norna being held in a field, surrounded by large, roly-poly type creatures. He sees Tegan from across the cave and motions for her to stay down. He is seen though and the Tractators encase him in the field with Norna.

Tegan throws her lamp and the chemicals explode in a flash of light. The Tractators scatter and the three head back up the tunnels. After reuniting with Range and the still shocked Turlough, the Doctor heads back into the tunnels. Tegan and Range go after him. The Doctor is caught in a Tractator gravity beam along with Tegan. He orders Range to head back to the lab with his daughter and Turlough.

Brazen and his men manage to get out of the infirmary and set about restoring order. Brazen finds one of his officers named Cockerill looting food. He is arrested and exiled outside the camp with others considered Retrogrades. The Retrogrades attack Cockerill, stealing his food and leaving him half dead.

Brazen heads to the lab where he finds Range, Norna and Turlough returning from the tunnels. He arrests Range for withholding information about mysterious deaths from the authorities. Range protests, stating that he was given orders to not speak of them and only catalogued the disappearances. During the discussion, Brazen becomes aware of Turlough speaking from repressed race memory about the Tractators and he begins to question him.

The Doctor and Tegan are pulled further into the tunnels but they again destroy a lamp when approaching the Tractators to blind the creatures and flee. They wander about the tunnels trying to find a way out and wondering about the nature of the Tractators. They come across one who is using a gravity beam towards the surface. It is pulling the half-dead Cockerill down. The Doctor distracts it and it breaks the beam, allowing Cockerill to escape. His escape is met with wonder by the Retrogrades as they had never seen someone escape the ground before and he is taken in.

After questioning Turlough, Brazen takes Range, Norna and Turlough to a part of the quarry where he shows Range the location where he saw Captain Revere pulled under the earth. Knowing that there are others, he assembles a squad and heads into the tunnels with Range to combat the creatures. Norna and Turlough stay behind but Turlough, near recovered, feels ashamed of his own cowardice and heads in after them.

The Doctor and Tegan follow the sound of a mechanical drill and discover the central lair of the Tractators, overseen by their leader, the Gravis. They also see Plantagenet being held in a cage. The Tractators use active minds to run their machines and they call in one drilling machine, fitted with the near drained mind of Captain Revere.

The Gravis comes forward and releases Revere. He recognizes the Doctor as a Time Lord and assumes that the Time Lords have come to take stock. The Doctor plays along, pretending that Tegan is actually a defective service robot, much to her annoyance. She is suspended in a gravity field while Plantagenet is taken from his cage and hooked up to the drilling machine. The Doctor whispers in his ear to play along until he has an opportunity.

Range, Brazen and his men stop in the tunnels as Range has lost his way. Turlough comes upon them and offers to help. Range panics at Norna being left alone and heads back up the tunnels, only just managing to avoid capture by a Tractator while doing so. Turlough is also grabbed by a Tractator but Brazen and his men subdue the creature and free him. They burst into the central lair and pull Plantagenet out. The Gravis tries to stop them but an electrical discharge is made and the Gravis is knocked out. The other Tractators flee leaving the humans alone. Turlough is strangely drawn to the machine but the Doctor and Brazen pull him away. However, Brazen is caught in the machine's grip and cannot pull himself out. He instead orders the others to run while he uses his mind to fight and destroy the machine.

In the lab, Norna is attacked by a looter and tied up while he looks for scavenge. He is in turn jumped by Cockerill who knocks him out. Cockerill and the rest of Retrogrades take over, plundering what they can. Norna manages to free herself and tells the group that Plantagenet isn't dead and shows them tunnel where the group went down. Range appears at the tunnel entrance, telling them that the Tractators are everywhere and moving towards them. Cockerill decides to take some men and attack.

As the Doctor and the humans flee, Turlough's memory comes back and he tells the Doctor that the Tractators are harmless without the Gravis to lead them. It is he that is driving the plan to turn Frontios into a mobile base that will allow them to scavenge other planets. They hear screaming as Cockerill and his men run into other Tractators and press on. Tegan however discovers a separated bit of the TARDIS. She is spotted by a revived Gravis who advances on her. She ducks through the TARDIS doors to find the others in the console room.

The Doctor orders them to hide and opens the door, displaying the TARDIS console room. The Gravis, consumed with greed when he realizes what it is, exercises all his gravitational power to pull the disparate pieces of the TARDIS back together. The act exhausts him and he collapses on the console and with the TARDIS back together, he is cut off dimensionally from the other Tractators.

Plantagenet and Turlough head back to the surface where the restore order. The Doctor and Tegan take the Gravis to an isolated, uninhabited planet where his power is limited. The Doctor returns and picks up Turlough, intending to return to Gallifrey, although he begs Plantagenet to never say a word of his involvement in the affair. As they leave, the TARDIS is caught in a time corridor which pulls them away from Gallifrey and toward the center of the galaxy.

Analysis

I never watched Tachyon TV but I heard a mock song they put out once about how boring Christopher Bidmede's writing was. I'm not sure Frontios is deserving of that level of mockery, but it is a rather dull story with a lot of little things that don't make much sense.

The Doctor is very good in this story with a strong sense of urgency most of the time. It is a bit odd that he seems so worried about getting in trouble with the Time Lords about interfering but that point is discarded fairly early. He has a nice interaction with Range and I also liked his witticisms that he would crack now and again. I don't recall the Fifth Doctor doing that that often and it was a bit of a throw back to the Fourth Doctor's style in dealing with high pressure situations. About the only thing I didn't care for was his almost cavalier attitude toward the destruction of the TARDIS. He seemed a bit too blasé about the prospect of being marooned on Frontios, to say nothing of losing that level of a companion, though the Fifth Doctor was probably the most distant from the TARDIS as a living thing.

Tegan and Turlough weren't bad but they had their faulty moments as well. Tegan did a lot of running around and helping here and there but after she rescues the Doctor and Norna, she doesn't seem to do much of anything except be there. I did like her indignation when the Doctor passes her off as a discount servo droid.

Turlough was fine, especially when he was clearly working to overcome his cowardice after returning to the lab with Norna. However I did not like the race memory bit. The acting was alright, if a bit over-the-top, but the explanation of it that Turlough's people kept deep memories of the Tractators and what they are that could be called upon in moments of trauma seemed like the flimsiest of writer's cheats. Granted it made Turlough more important and kept the Gravis from going off on a Bond-villain explanation speech, but it was still a very convenient dropping by the exposition fairy and I didn't care for it.

Most of the rest of the case did fine in a serviceable way, but no one really stood out. Range was probably the closest one as he had a nice rapport with the Doctor and got a lot of time to settle into various character moments. Most of the rest though were fairly one note, with Brazen and Plantagenet being the worst. Brazen was at least consistent in his firm military mind and bulldog attitude.

Plantagenet on the other had seemed rather fickle and changed his mind so easily. Worse, he gave off a feeling of weakness which undercut the idea that it was by his will and the promise of his leadership that the colony held together. I could buy that idea about his father, but a weak presence seemed at odds with what we are being told is happening in the script and it felt jarring to me. He also seemed to have rather rapid and unwarranted attitude swings as the plot shifted from him being either a help or a hindrance to the Doctor.

The Tractators were a fairly interesting idea, although I'm not sure they were well executed. There are limits to the costumes and they seemed overly stiff and a bit too much like a man inside a lumbering suit. The gravity power bit was also very weird. Having technological minds and developing engines I can understand. That seemed well thought out and believable. But that they had an almost magical power of creating gravity fields seemed very strange. It also felt a bit weak that they were actually a benevolent race who were being led astray by one bad leader. I'm not big on stories where everything falls into place with a quick decapitation. Yes sometimes it works but more often than not, it feels like a quick way out of a situation.

I'm also a bit non-plussed about the casual power the Tractators have to destroy and rebuilt the TARDIS. Why was the TARDIS separated into pieces simply by pulling it underground? Why did the Gravis have the power to pull it together, especially if pulling it back together made it trans-dimensional again? That seems to give the Tractators a level of power that would have made them strong enough to battle the Time Lords. If that were the case, I would thing they would have actively sent the Doctor to take out the Gravis much like they did on other missions. It was an unneeded plot device as the TARDIS could simply have been pulled into the tunnels whole and the Gravis tricked into entering and then subdued, allowing the natural trans-dimensionality of the TARDIS, cut off his power from his own kind. The pull-apart was completely unnecessary.

The story was fairly well directed and well lit. I thought the production team did a nice job in trying to stretch what they had and make it look like a believable place. I'm actually surprised they didn't try to film any part of this story in a quarry as it would have fit in well with the mood, but the studios were well dressed here anyway.

Aside from the powers of the Tractators, I think the biggest problem with this story was that it was large in ideas and short on scope. There was a tremendous amount of backstory for all the character and a lot of threads that could have been elaborated on. But most of those were not explored, leaving a lot of questions. Yet despite that, the flow of the story felt padded with a lot of running around, escapes, recaptures and just little things that didn't matter much. This gave it the disadvantage of being both boring to watch and frustrating in a lack of answers, which is strange for a writer who likes to go on about how a thing is scientifically possible.

Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this story that much. It had some good moments but the overall story just seemed to drag and left too many things up in the air and against the common logic of the show. I wouldn't protest overly if someone pulled if off the shelf to watch, but I certainly wouldn't seek it out or put it in the top tier of Fifth Doctor stories to recommend.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5