November 5: Frontios Parts One & Two

It's the really far future -- so far, in fact, that the TARDIS states that it's exceeding its time parameters.  And while the Doctor doesn't want to interfere in the fragile future of a handful of Earth refugees ("Fleeing from the imminence of a catastrophic collision with the sun, a group of refugees from the doomed planet Earth--" Turlough reads gleefully from the TARDIS databanks), it seems he has no choice when the TARDIS is pulled down to the surface of Frontios.  There's a mood of quiet desperation among the colonists on Frontios -- it seems they've been eking out a living while being bombarded by meteor strikes for the last thirty years.  And while there's some semblance of order, the general impression is of a society on the verge of tearing itself apart, trying desperately to hold everything together.

But it's not just that -- there's an energy present in these episodes that derives from this near-extinct colony, but also from the characters that inhabit it.  Science Officer Range is played with a bit of wry humor by William Lucas -- he's very much aware of how tenuous their situation is, but he still has a streak of dark humor running through him ("It failed," he tells the Doctor, after the Doctor asks what happened to all the "failure-proof" technology aboard their colony ship).  Meanwhile Chief Orderly Bragen is a narrow-minded man who's trying to keep it all going in the wake of the death of their leader, Captain Revere, and Captain's Revere's son Plantagenet is doing his best to lead in the wake of his father's death.  It's a really nice set-up, aided by some striking set design (which manages to look both futuristic and primitive, as well as run-down, with dirt everywhere), and Peter Davison is once again given the opportunity to flex his muscles as the Doctor:

DOCTOR: At first we thought it was some sort of meteorite storm.
PLANTAGENET: And what do you think now?
DOCTOR: I think your shelters are totally inadequate and your warning system does nothing but create panic.
PLANTAGENET: I did not ask--
DOCTOR: Your population has already fallen below critical value required for guaranteed growth and you're regularly losing new lives.  I think, and you did ask what I think, I think your colony of Earth people is in grave danger of extinction.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Frontios)

Peter Davison also decides to play things with a bit more age behind them -- he treats everything with grave intent (albeit still with the same sense of breathless energy that has characterized his Doctor), and his habit of looking at things through half-moon glasses, as if to suggest that he is in fact older than he looks, is really lovely.

But as good as Davison is, he's eclipsed by Mark Strickson, who finally gets a chance to shine again (after being locked in a dungeon in The King's Demons, stuck in the TARDIS in The Five Doctors, made to act really cowardly in Warriors of the Deep, and locked in a barn in The Awakening).  This is a Turlough who has been around the universe -- he knows about phosphor lamps and something called the Twenty Aeon War¹²⁸, and he finds the tunnels underneath the colony vaguely familiar -- the word "Tractator" coming to mind for some reason.  And then his pure abject terror at the end of part two, all wide-eyed and staring, is really compelling.

But then the entirety of these first two episodes is compelling.  They've somehow managed to create a near-perfect synthesis of story and scripting, direction, and design.  They've even brought the lighting down to create lots of eerie shadows and dark spaces.  All that and two excellent cliffhangers to boot (the TARDIS has been destroyed!  Destroyed!; and, the Doctor is helpless against the power of the Tractators, those strange insect/slug-like creatures, deep beneath the surface of Frontios -- the danger, it seems, was from below, not above).  It's like this is the anti-Warriors of the Deep.  If the rest of the story is this good, Frontios will be one of the bona fide classics of the series.







¹²⁸ Yes, yes, I know the universe is currently only 13.5 aeons old -- but it still sounds cool.  And besides, maybe the Arar Jecks of Heiradi didn't use the term literally (i.e., where 1 aeon = 1 billion years).