5.17: Frontios

In which I belatedly realise it’s a pun on “frontier”.

Broadcast: January-February 1984

Watched: December 2020

Frontios, Part One

“Well, I suppose you’ve got all that to look forward to.” How many groups of last humans do we meet? This, The Ark, Utopia... All stories which rather ignore the fact that by this point in the show’s continuity there must be millions of human colony worlds out there. 

Anyway. This is one people really like but I can never retain any recollection of, so I have high hopes.

It’s a similar setting to Full Circle isn’t it – the colony ship as the centre of a struggling civilisation under siege from an alien menace it doesn’t understand. Does a good job of making this feel like the end of the world – the slightly reddish lighting, the sense everything is falling to pieces, the way things are rationed and slightly militarised in a desperate attempt to keep order. I like the idea of the war with an enemy no one has ever seen, and that the obstacles to overcome in this story are the military leadership, not the aliens. As an exercise in world-building in a small studio it’s pretty effective. There’s a lot of people running veeeery slowly to make the space look bigger.

The opening in which Captain Revere is sucked into the ground is creepy, even if it’s not massively clear what is meant to have happened. The cliffhanger, in which the TARDIS has apparently been destroyed, is strangely unsettling – it’s the one thing that’s meant to be inviolable.

I quite like how pathetic Plantagenet is.

Hmm, the weird font in the credits on The Awakening has stopped again. I wonder what that was about.

Oh wait, it’s a pun on “frontier” isn’t it? I just got that.

Frontios, Part Two

“Why do you ask when the reason is well known?” I dunno, badly structured exposition I suppose.

Something this does well, in a way that’s actually quite unusual for Who I think, is portray a society that might genuinely be weeks away from collapsing. The colonists distrust the Doctor and co for perfectly sensible reasons: people are disappearing, there’s an invisible threat, it’s not crazy to suspect outsiders. Plantagenet wants to stay visible, not because he’s afraid of losing power but because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t the whole thing will just dissipate. People are literally running into the wilderness because it feels like a better option than staying put (is there a sort of fall of Rome subtext here somewhere?) This isn’t the most fun of stories, but it’s doing something more sophisticated than the normal “colonists vs aliens” story, showing a society under strain in ways that aren’t always obvious.

Turlough accidentally maiming someone with a hat stand is hilarious. His descent into post traumatic madness is not brilliantly done.

Frontios, Part Three

This is actually a weirdly influential story, and I’ve never noticed before. The words “hungry earth” and the associated imagery are lifted wholesale in 2010. The machine Captain Revere is in is repeated in Voyager of the Damned.

The Tractator models aren’t mobile enough to make the “howzat” scene work. Also, making them talk and announce their plan feels oddly like wussing out.

Once again there are hints of an interesting backstory for Turlough, but they never add up to anything – it’s weird how they keep almost playing that card and never actually do it.

Is ancestral memory a real thing?

The fact the judge is someone we’ve not seen before feels disarming in a way that makes no sense. You get so used to the limitations of Doctor Who casting that “Oh yes, there are more than four people in a society” momentarily confuses me.

Turlough’s “pick a hand” routine to decide whether he’s going to follow the others into the tunnels is slightly silly (both hands contain coins, what a surprise) but also potentially quite a good character moment. Finally he’s doing something. If he had a more coherent arc, this might be important.

Also – the idea people keep abandoning the colony to live in the wilderness, and that the moment the earth rejects Cockerill they basically declare him a god, is a nice comment on the collapse of civilisation. He’s basically a Gallic king.

Frontios, Part Four

So I wouldn’t say I massively enjoyed this but I think it might have been quite good. Unusual alien race, plot twist that borders on clever at the end (using the Gravis’ desire for the TARDIS to both fix it and isolate him from his minions), more complicated society than normal... For years I’ve been unable to remember how they get the TARDIS back at the end, and expecting it to be a handwave, but no, actual plot. It’s pretty good.

Lot of anti-insect prejudice on show here, mind.

Convenient that Turlough remembers how to beat the aliens at the last second. The way his incompetence gets Brazen stuck in the machine, and he’s never mentioned again, is a bit weird.

Norna defeating the rebels by announcing that Plantagenet is still alive, mere seconds before her father appears yelling “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE”, is hilarious. So is the Doctor pretending Tegan’s an android, and using it as an excuse to bitch about her accent.