Day 312 – November 8th 2021
Frontios Parts Three and Four
Frontios – Part Three
For all that I said yesterday the Tractators aren’t especially brilliant looking monsters, I think they’re more effective than I gave them credit for. The facial design is nicely done, but I think the problem is the finishing touches. It looks like it’s just been pulled from the mould and sent to studio. It needs a bit of paintwork on there to finish it all off. Think back to the likes of the Zygons – they wouldn’t be half as effective without the care put in during the final stages, if they were just vaguely orange plastic. The overall look of these creatures, though, with tufts of hair sticking out and antennae which wiggle up and down is pretty good. I don’t think you’d have to make an awful lot of changes to bring them back in the New Testament.
I think my biggest disappointment today is the revelation that the Tractators can speak. I sort of knew they would – I could remember Doctor Who having discussions with the Gravis – but I’d hoped I might be misremembering. The second they open their mouths they just become big standard Doctor Who monsters. I think they’re much creepier when just shuffling around appearing suddenly from among the scenery. I’d love to have a story where they’re not outright evil, they’re just doing what they do as insects (who happen to be giant) and the effect on the Colony above is entirely coincidental.
I think it’s because the Tractators become bigger standard monsters in this episode that I’ve found my interest being held more above the ground and in the Colony itself. The society is only loosely sketched in here, but I feel like we’re given enough of it to feel well fleshed out. One of the smallest things that impresses me are the tattered posters of Captain Revere dotted around in the back of the sets, which are a curious mix of 1984 and the Obama campaign images from 2008. They’re not prominent, no attention is drawn to them, but they hint at the world before our heroes arrived on it. It’s the kind of colony which puts me in mind of The Macra Terror, too, and that’s never a bad thing. I love the speech about the breakaway factions, which feels like it could be directly from Orwell;
Cockerill: ‘This colony is finished, and everyone knows it except for those who are too stupid to think for themselves.’
Brazen: ‘You’ve got enough food there to last a few days. What then?’
Cockerill: ‘I don’t know.’
Brazen: ‘It’s not easy to live inside the system, but to live outside of it takes
more than you’ve got.’
There’s other things which feel like they’ve been given some proper thought when it comes to establishing this world. The costumes feel functional, and as much as I may have liked the more ‘glam’ outfits worn in Warriors of the Deep, these feel far more practical. Some thought has gone into the variations between them, too, so that you can identify different ranks and functions easily. I used to talk a lot about stories having worlds which felt fully developed, and I feel like I’ve not been able to do a lot of that recently, but this is as good of an example as any.
If there’s one element which doesn’t quite fit for me, it’s the music. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Paddy Kingsland’s work on Doctor Who. His scores for Season Eighteen were a big part of the overall tone in that series. And I think that’s the problem I’m having here – the music feels like a real throwback. Kingsland provided the scores for a handful of other Davison adventures (Castrovalva, The Visitation and Mawdryn Undead) but this is the first time I’ve felt it slightly out of place for the story I’m watching.
I’m not going to go on about it because I spent so long praising him yesterday, but Mark Strickson is still delivering a belter of a performance here. There’s a point in this episode where he starts foaming at the mouth, which manages to be incredibly effective and slightly off putting at the same time. I think he’s often unfairly overlooked when people talk about the best companion performers in the show.
8/10
Frontios – Part Four
Something I’ve not really noticed for a while is ‘little bits of business’ going on between the actors. Tiny moments clearly worked out during rehearsal rather than being in the script, which add bits of character to a scene. Troughton and Hines used to be the masters at it, with their hand holding in The Tomb of the Cybermen being perhaps the most famous example. Tom Baker and Lis Sladen had it on several occasions, like the double back from The Pyramids of Mars. I’m not suggesting that there hasn’t been any going on lately, but I’ve certainly not noticed it as much. This episode has two examples, which I think showcase how well Peter Davison and Mark Strickson work together. The first is Turlough positioning Doctor Who’s hand while he’s under the console and trying to find the right button without looking, and the latter is Doctor Who pushing Turlough back down into hiding when he tries to get a peek at the Gravis. They’re tiny moments, but they add something a bit special to the episode.
I think this is probably the weakest of the four episodes in Frontios, but that’s not to suggest that there’s nothing here to enjoy. It’s largely let down by the climax, in which the Gravis is forced to wobble around a little on the TARDIS set, and it has to be said that it looks more than a little ridiculous. It feels like the kind of thing people thing of when they picture Doctor Who, without seeing all the great material in the three preceding episodes. I think it comes back down to my wanting the Tractators to be as scary as they were in their first shot during Part Two; this feels a long way from that.
Still, there’s other stuff to like about this one. I love the idea that the Tractators are responsible for everything, right back to the initial crash of the spaceship 40 years ago. I’m not entirely sure I buy the idea that they gave the humans ten years to settle down before they started to take them, but I’ll go along with it all the same. Aliens trying to hollow out planets so they can drive them around the universe is a pleasingly old school Doctor Who idea, so it’s nice to see it making a return again. I sort of buy the internal science of the idea, too, that they’ll be using their mastery over gravity as a tool to steer the world. When I’ve spoken before about really liking the sets for this story it’s the ones above ground that I’ve been thinking of – the glass-walled domain of the Tractators didn’t stand out as well to me. But in this final episode it’s finally clicked into place, and the glowing walls look especially nice.
I reckon the Excavating Machine is the kind of thing which might have given me nightmares as a kid – the moment it first appears in the cliffhanger to Part Three with the body of Captain Revere at the controls is a swerve into genuine horror for the series, and they keep that up in this episode, with the machine taking hold of Brazen against his will. I could be wrong but I don’t think we actually get to see him in the machine afterwards (just a mention that it’s gone haywire) which seems like a bit of a shame.
And always a positive for me, we can add the Plantagenet and the Gravis to the list of characters who get to enter the TARDIS in this era. Depending on exactly how the ship has been pulled apart in the caves of Frontios you could possibly add two regular Tractators to the list, too, but it’s debatable so I’ll leave them off for now.
I’m going with a 7/10 for this one, a little saddened that it didn’t quite hold up to the promise suggested in the opening episodes.
