Doctor Who: Frontios

Part One

“We’re at war.”

“Really? With whom?”

“Well, that has yet to be determined.”

Christopher H. Bidmead again! After not enjoying his previous efforts I wasn’t particularly expecting to like this one much. I couldn’t have been much wronger. I’m still confused as to how the author of Logopolis and Castrovalva can be responsible for such strong plotting, gripping suspense, witty and naturalistic dialogue, and brilliant characterisation. I doubt it’s Eric Saward’s influence, frankly, so I’m left scratching my head. But I liked this. A lot.

Still, one thing hasn’t changed from Bidmead’s earlier efforts; the sheer imagination on display in his choice of story title.

We begin in the TARDIS, where Tegan has actually changed her clothes for only the fourth or fifth time ever. My, what a short skirt she’s wearing. Anyway, the TARDIS Acorn Electron flags up a warning that they’ve drifted too far into the future- perhaps beyond Gallifrey’s “present”? Anyway, it’s forbidden for Time Lords to travel there.

The planet in question, Frontios, seems to be entirely populated by former crew members of Imperial Star Destroyers, judging by the uniforms everyone is wearing. I spent pretty much the entire story half expecting Darth Vader to walk into shot and asphyxiate random characters but, at last, it was not to be. And everything on the planet beyond a few sets seems to consist of obvious matte backgrounds. None of this seriously harmed the story though- it’s script and acting that matter and in this story both are on song.

The Doctor gets involved, naughtily, and for the first time ever (?) puts on his glasses. His development into a more assertive, traditional Doctor is instantly apparent and his charisma, as much as his obvious knowledge and usefulness, instantly get chief scientist Range and his daughter Norna firmly on his side. That sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in previous seasons. It’s an extremely welcome development.

We’re introduced to the basic situation; a colony in a precarious situation, at war with an unseen power, and retreating into authoritarianism in its increasing desperation. We’re also given clear introductions to the characters, all of whom have memorable traits- I particularly like Plantagenet with his line in pompous cod-Churchillian speechifying at the drop of a hat.

And that’s quite a cliffhanger, the TARDIS apparently destroyed…

Part Two

“I think this joke’s gone far enough.”

The Doctor’s about to be shot, but the quick-thinking Turlough retrieves the situation by threatening everyone with the deadly hatstand. But the best thing about this scene is its subverting of expectations; when the Doctor insists that if Plantagenet won’t see reason he’ll just have to shoot him, Plantagenet… agrees.

A few succinct lines from Range to Tegan further underline the direness of their plight; constant death and a sense of panic are causing this society to unravel, and desertion (by “rets”) is increasing. And then there’s the “deaths unaccountable”. Meanwhile, Norna and Turlough establish that the late Captain Revere forbade all digging and that “the Earth is hungry”. That’s how to build up suspense!

Bragen’s still apparently paranoid, but the real sense of threat is no longer coming from him but underground. We see Plantagenet drawn beneath the surface and various characters venture underground, where there lurk some odd looking woodlice monsters. This terrifies Turlough, who starts to mutter about “Tractators”…

Part Three

“Frontios buries its own dead.”

The Tractators look very rubbery, the bottom of the costume is very unsatisfactory, and I can’t understand a great deal of what they say. But none of that stops this story being great- it’s all about the script and performances.

Mark Strickson is once again excellent in portraying Turlough’s mental breakdown, and once again the character gets some decent development- the character’s been quite well served so far. And it’s not just good character stuff that helps make the padding often necessary in a part three serve a useful purpose; the scene with Bragen and the looter, where the looter leaves only to be immediately attacked for his food makes a powerful point about human interdependence. Admittedly, though, it starts a minor plot thread which doesn’t really go anywhere. 

The story quite awesomely turns our expectations on their head as Range’s apparent show trial at the hand of the paranoid Bragen quickly metamorphoses into a council of war, and Bragen is revealed to have secretly been quite aware of what’s been going on but suppressing it for understandable reasons of morale. Suddenly we see the character, and everything he’s done so far, in an entirely different light.

Turlough, having been traumatised by the memories that have been unleashed, nevertheless resolves to join the others underground, an extremely brave thing to do. This is a pivotal moment for the character. After all, when we first met Turlough back in Mawdryn Undead he was shown to be a coward, a liar, even a bit of a bully, and quite willing to make a pact with the Whoniverse’s very own Mephistopholes. He may redeem himself a little by proving incapable of murder or betrayal but he’s still not a particularly agreeable character by the end of Enlightenment. And even these redeeming characteristics take the form of inaction, and so are themselves a form of cowardice.

Turlough has continued to be a bit of a coward ever since, always the first to suggest returning to the TARDIS at the sign of serious danger, or to insist that there’s nothing that can be done to help others. But the Doctor’s positive influence is having a gradual effect, and here for the first time he’s taking a brave step in facing his own very real fears in order to help his friends. A corner has been turned, it seems.

The cliffhanger is quite horrific in a body horror sort of way, although probably more so if you haven’t seen Voyage of the Damned…

Part Four

“Don’t mention it!”

I love the scene where the Doctor tries to pass Tegan off as an android to the Gravis, but “the walk’s not quite right.” Is this really the same Bidmead whose attempts at humour in Logopolis and Castrovalva fell so spectacularly flat? 

This story is so good, even the traditional Davison “showing off the TARDIS scene” is great. So good, in fact, that I’ll even discreetly gloss over the fact that the Tractators' plan is to, er, steer Frontios around the galaxy. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The Doctor quite unambiguously saves the day for once by cleverly tricking the Gravis into re-assembling the TARDIS through reverse psychology, causing the Gravis to fall asleep in exhaustion. And we end on a cliffhanger.

Wow. I wasn’t expecting something that good. This is my third 5/5 of the Davison era after Kinda and Enlightenment. It’s not quite up to the standard of those two exceptional stories, but in a sense it’s even more wonderful; while both of the other stories were one-offs, very different from all that surrounded them, this is very much of the Davison style, but done perfectly.

Doctor Who: Castrovalva

Part One

“I was forgetting, Nyssa- bioelectronics is your strong point.”

I think this is our first ever pre-titles sequence, and very nice it is too. Unfortunately there follows a lot of dull scenes involving running, security guards, irritating incidental music and Adric being particularly annoying. Suddenly, with a new season and a new Doctor, he’s become a lot more annoying. And then the Master gets him but leaves him on the ground in a trance to be collected by the others, Considering what happens later I can’t see the point of that scene.

With everyone aboard, the new Doctor disappears into the depths of the Ship while Nyssa and Tegan chat. It’s notable that Nyssa doesn’t seem at all bothered by the traumatic recent events, calmly dispensing technobabble as though she hasn’t a care in the world. Meanwhile the Doctor, perhaps recalling The Horns of Nimon, slowly divests himself of his scarf by turning it into thread to guide him through the labyrinth. Ooh, how very symbolic for our new Doctor!

There’s a brief conversation with Adric where it becomes clear he’s confused and has to be reminded that Romana’s gone. I think this is the first time we ever hear the phrase “console room”. There follows what might well be Tegan’s first ever exclamation of “Rabbits!” and our second look at the TARDIS BBC micro, which looks as if it’s now a permanent feature. Still, just as people today have digital radios that look like old wooden radios from the 50s, no doubt the Doctor is just using technology that looks retro in style but is in fact incredibly advanced. Er, right?

Peter Davison does a rather good Hartnell impression and a rather less good Troughton one, although it’s good to see the recorder again. All entertaining enough, but surely we ought to be getting round to quickly establishing this new Doctor? He gets a lot of screen time this episode but we still have little or no impression of what he’s going to be like.

Nyssa and Tegan discuss recursion, which foreshadows, of course, what’s to come. Nevertheless it comes across as awkward, un-naturalistic dialogue, something I’m picking up as a general feature of Bidmead’s scripts.

The TARDIS is apparently even more huge than we’ve previously imagined, so much so that the Master manages to kidnap Adric while he’s lost in the corridors. Happily, this means we won’t be seeing much of him for a while. Meanwhile, Nyssa and Tegan lead the doctor to the “stark simplicity” of the Zero Room- more foreshadowing. The episode ends with Nyssa consulting the TARDIS Wikipedia…

Part Two

“We’re playing Russian Roulette with the TARDIS!”

At last we get a small sign of Nyssa reacting naturally to the terrible things that have happened to her as she expresses her revulsion at the Master and switches off the monitor. Not much, but it’s something.

It’s notable that throughout the whole story, not just those featuring Castrovalva itself, the Master is essentially in control of reality itself as far as the TARDISeers are concerned. His control, through Adric, of block transfer mathematics (for which read magic) allow him to literally reshape reality. The surprising thing, if anything, is that his ambitions are so limited, pretty much focused only on his rivalry with the Doctor. This tells us a lot about his obsession with the Doctor, something which has gone to such lengths that it can hardly be considered rational. And it’s also a little odd that we will never see him using this power again.

“I’ll have to explain how to vent the thermal buffer” states the now bespectacled Doctor. How appropriate that this line will eventually be echoed in a much later appearance by this Doctor! And then we have the expected Pertwee impression. There are some great ideas in this scene, mind- the architectural configuration of the TARDIS can be redesigned from the control room, and rooms can be deleted to provide extra “thrust”.

Finally we get to the countryside outside Castrovalva, which looks strangely similar to the South of England. Odd, that. It’s amusing to hear Nyssa advising Tegan that “There’s a whole room full of clothes if you want to change.” Tegan won’t be following this advice for some time but, on the other hand, pot, kettle…

Oh, and I see Eric Saward’s name appearing in the credits as script editor. That’s surprisingly early. Still, I suppose it makes sense given that this was the fourth story of the season to be made.

Part Three

“I’m beginning to feel quite my old self. Or my new self.”

I very much like the gradual introduction of Castrovalva, and the gradual way it’s revealed that they are in fact friendly and apparently harmless. It’s good to see Michael Sheard again too. We get a nice series of scenes introducing us to the setting, marred only by the fact the Portreeve is so obviously played by Anthony Ainley- “Neil Toynay”, indeed! I particularly like the early signs of friction between Shardovan and the Portreeve- yet more foreshadowing. And, of course, the way everyone is instantly intimidated by Tegan!

“I know so little about telebiogenesis” admits Nyssa. I sympathise- I can well remember Wednesdays at school. Maths, history and physics in the morning, then double telebiogenesis in the afternoon. It never was my favourite subject.

The sequence leading up to the cliffhanger is brilliant (“Yes, well that’s democracy for you!”) and the concept of recursive occlusion is brilliant. It even hits you at the end that the sets actually look like the Escher sketch, which is great design.

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone at the time ever did an etch-a-sketch of an Escher sketch? Sorry…

Part Four

“With my eyes, no. But in my philosophy…”

It’s a nice touch how Shardovan seems so sinister right up until the moment we realise his secret is that he shares the Doctor’s suspicions. Appropriately, he ends up as the hero. And I love the scene where the Doctor uses the mirror and some chalk to demonstrate to Mergrave and Ruther that their entire world is a lie. It really is a great concept- space folding in on itself, the same point in space having multiple locations, and the inhabitants of Castrovalva being part of it. The revelation of the forged history is also brilliant.

I had to raise an eyebrow at Shardovan’s line “Why are all these women here? Is this a holiday?” Along with the fact that all the women in Castrovalva seem to be performing some sort of domestic task whenever we see them it seems that feminism has yet to catch on here.

The Master is unveiled and we get a suitable conclusion, although sadly the Doctor once again addresses his rival as “Master”, something he should never ever do, at least by choice.

Now, that’s more like it. The story takes almost two whole episodes to get going, but the final two episodes are superb. Finally Bidmead is able to turn his brilliant concepts into effective drama. 3/5 overall, but the average mark reflects the fact (well, opinion!) that it’s a story of two halves. Peter Davison was fantastic, but now I’d like to see a story with him actually playing the Doctor!

Doctor Who: Logopolis

Part One

“I sometimes think I should run a tighter ship.”

We begin with what we assume to be the TARDIS, but it’s a real police box, in content. It’s surprisingly late for the show to be pulling this trick for the first time. But distracting from this somewhat is a “Take your litter home” sign placed right above a bin! We also get our first instance of the “not a real phone” situation. That worked quite well- perhaps it might be worth another go in, say, 24 years’ time?

Meanwhile the Doctor and Adric are wandering morosely around some part of the TARDIS we’ve never seen before, bedecked with gloomy tendrils of ivy which seem rather in keeping with the Doctor’s mood. The Doctor muses on the inevitability of entropy increasing on account of the Second Law of Thermodynamics… perhaps one of the more reactionary laws of physics? It is, of course, essentially what this entire season has been about, but it’s also a rather apposite metaphor for the Doctor’s fate. And, indeed, his mood.

We meet Tegan. And her Aunt Vanessa, who has a car with a choke, cos it’s 1981. Blimey, that reminds me of my early childhood, as Doctor Who is going to do rather often from now on. Anyway, Tegan wants to be an air hostess, and I’m sure she’ll get to London airport on time and definitely without anything bad happening. I like her- unlike Adric and, to get slightly ahead of ourselves, Nyssa, she has an actual personality.

The Doctor suddenly wants to repair the TARDIS’s “chameleon circuit” for some reason (it’s the first time it’s ever called that, right?), which apparently involves materialising around an actual police box and measuring it exactly so something called “block transfer computations” can be done on it. Fair enough, it seems to fit in with the story’s themes, but why is the Doctor suddenly doing this, exactly?

More continuity porn as we get another peek at Romana’s now deserted room and the Doctor refers to the fact the TARDIS has been stuck as a police box ever since it was in “a totter’s yard”. Apparently he should have waited for the “chameleon conversion” before leaving Gallifrey but “there were pressing reasons at the time”. Still, it seems he at least waited long enough for the TARDIS BBC micro to be installed.

One of the season’s more minor themes is referenced as the Doctor says that “The TARDIS and I are getting rather deter at these short hops.” But mainly it’s all doom and foreboding. Especially after the Doctor catches sight of the Watcher. Brrr.

Still, things soon perk up a bit as the TARDIS materialises around a police box which turns out to be another TARDIS. A bit of an homage to that rather fun and silly story The Time Monster then ensues as the Doctor and Adric walk from TARDIS to TARDIS, nicely balancing out the gloom and doom a bit.

There’s some more intentional but rather less successful comic relief thereafter as Tegan wanders into the TARDIS and asks to speak to the “pilot”. Er, why? Still, the cliffhanger’s a biggie: the Master’s at large. Which we, er, knew at the end of the last story anyway.

Oh, and it’s interesting that the Doctor only killed people by shrinking them in one story, Terror of the Autons, when he was Roger Delgado, but after The Deadly Assassin and now this it’s become a calling card.

Part Two

“I’ve just dipped into the future. We must be prepared for the worst.”

The Doctor has to jettison Romana’s room. How very symbolic. Now the Doctor’s even mardier than he was before, if that’s possible. Especially after her receives a message from Traken telling him that the Master’s escaped. How far we’ve come from the series’ origins- the Doctor is now receiving messages from the planet he just left. Apparently the Master knows exactly what the Doctor’s going to do because, bizarrely, “he’s a Time Lord- in many ways we have the same mind”. Er, is this an allusion to Gallifreyan telepathy or, as I suspect, is it just a lazy narrative shortcut?

Now the Doctor wants to “flush out” the Master by flooding the TARDIS. He’s now clearly gone beyond morose to suicidal. Poor Adric! Fortunately for the special effects budget, it doesn’t work. And the Doctor gets to have a proper chat with this Watcher fellow- a chat we’re not privy to, naturally. It doesn’t seem to cheer him up much.

We finally get to the much-heralded planet Logopolis, which in some bizarre fashion exactly resembles the video to David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes. Tegan’s great during all this, demanding answers from the Doctor and actually intimidating him a bit. This elicits the only comic acting we see from Tom throughout this entire story, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

The Doctor, in another narrative shortcut, is expected on Logopolis, and indeed well known and trusted. They’re mathematicians who refuse to use computers (ah, traditional educational values!) and whose sums are capable of producing actual solid objects. More unexpected is the arrival of Nyssa, brought along by “a fiend of the Doctor.”

Part Three

“Our numbers were holding the universe together.”

The Watcher’s arrived on Logopolis. Ooh! Meanwhile, the Doctor’s in a spot of bother. Still, through a combination of Logopolitan ingenuity and the TARDIS mysteriously being much lighter than it was in Full Circle the problem is solved, but not before taking up half the episode so the plot can be rationed out more slowly. 

Still, this story may be overly serious by a long way and structured very oddly, but there’s no denying it’s crammed with great concepts. The conversation between the Monitor and Adric is great; the Logopolitans can’t use computers because their calculations affect the physical world and would therefore affect the computer. Only the living mind, for some reason, is immune. I’m not sure how all this works, but it’s great, a sort of Schrödinger’s cat as applied to mathematical calculation- a mind-blowing concept.

I’m still puzzled as to why the chameleon circuit needs fixing now, as you’d imagine the threat of the Master would be much more urgent. The bit with Tegan accusing the monitor of running a sweatshop is problematic too- it’s a nice character moment for her, but she doesn’t get anything like a satisfactory answer.

There’s something most effective and disturbing about the Master posing as Nyssa’s father- the fact he’s wearing Tremas’s body adds an extra level of cruelty and horror. But poor Nyssa’s day is going to get even worse…

The master has destroyed Logopolis, but knows not what he did, the plonker. Without Logopolis using its maths to open CVE’s into other universes to stave off the eventual heat death of the universe (there’s the ultimate in another theme of the season- procrastination!), our heroes are beset by the terrifying threat of entropy! Things are so bad that the Doctor and the Master are forced to work together. But not before the Doctor has a right whinge at his companions. He really is in a bit of a mood.

Part Four

“It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for…”

A whirl of activity, as everyone heads to the real Pharos Project on Earth to do some sums and save the universe. Oh, the drama. The Doctor addresses the Master as “Master” here, which feels very wrong. I can’t remember him ever doing that before.

Entropy completely destroys Traken, which is truly horrible for Nyssa. It feels quite wrong to me how much the script underplays the horror of this- surely Nyssa should be traumatised?

We get a lot of tiresome running from guards, and then it’s time for the Master’s cringeworthy “Peoples of the universe…” broadcast, followed by the kind of villainous cackling that is the aural equivalent of moustache-twirling.. This is pure unintentional silliness, and in no way a threat worthy of this great era’s final moments. Fortunately, the build-up to the regeneration, the old clips, the revelation of the Watcher, and the effect of the regeneration itself, are all wonderful.

Well, that had loads of great concepts in it. But it seemed very oddly structured, in a way which was very aesthetically displeasing for me. Bidmead’s good on themes and concepts, but his grasp of character is no more than functional, and he seems to have little conception of the narrative beats needed to make a story exciting. And where was the action here? The ideas were good, but unfortunately a lot of the fundamental elements of Doctor Who scriptwriting are absent. So Tom’s era, perhaps the greatest of them all, finishes on an anti-climax. It just scrapes a 3/5 for the ideas and the development of the themes.

As for the season as a whole… an average of 3.429/5, which places it third from bottom. That’s a surprise, as the E-Space trilogy earned three 5/5s in a row from me, and there were a lot of good things about this season. But ultimately I think there was just too much that was po-faced, and not enough excitement or humour.