Frontios / Excelis Dawns

The TARDIS drifts into the far future where one of the last colonies of humans have taken shelter after Earth's final destruction. The planet is Frontios, the life is hard, and the dangers are everywhere. Meteorites constantly rain down on the colony as the humans struggle to stay alive, but when the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough arrive they discover that the conony's enemies are not in the sky above them, but are operating beneath the soil of the planet.

The first time I saw Fontios it was was November 1984 at a convention called WHO Fest in Buffalo. I was totally floored by the existence of such gatherings (it was a surprise trip my parents took me on) and I was still trying to take in the presence of Jon Pertwee at the autograph table let alone the viewing room where I came across brand new episodes I had never seen before, plus old classics I had heard of but not seen. Frontios will always have that little something extra to it in the nostalgia department.

The story is well written by former script editor Chrisopher H Bidmead, and once again he takes us into one of his favourite plot devices: the destruction of the TARDIS. He's already tried to drown it and then blow it up in his previous scripts, so having it actually explode (or in this case get ripped apart) is not exactly out of his league. And the Doctor is remarkably calm about it when it happens, or maybe he suspected all along seeing as it was a gravity beam that dragged the TARDIS down to the planet in the first place. Bidmead had another script out there once called Penacasta but it never made it to screen (note also that Bidmead always names his scripts after the name of the planet they take place on) so how the TARDIS would have been wrecked in that is anyone's guess. Also interesting to note : Bidmead is the writer who gave us the now infamous cloister bell, the tolling of which signals wild catastrophe.

All this trivia is not lost on Jay. Pity him having to sit there and listen to me yatter away, though. Maybe we need to drink while we watch the show.

So the peoples of Frontios fall into two distinct groups: the humans, led by the youthful Plantagenet ("He's kinda hot," Jay observed. He's right.) who only got the job as leader because his late father was leader before him - hurrah for patriarchy - and the subterran Tractators, who draw their gravity power from the Gravis. "Big bugs," Jay said. Again, he's right. The Tractators are kind of woodlouse things - not exactly slugs but certainly like nothing we have ever seen on Doctor Who until this point - the closest similarity would be to the Wirrn in The Ark in Space. The Tractators are by nature parasitic, plundering planets and infesting others, and somewhere in the past they invaded Turlough's as-yet-unnamed home, which triggers a race memory in him and allows Mark Strickson to go all sketchy and foam at the mouth. He's got some fantastic mad eyes and a very expressive face, but in the green glow of the phospher lamps and with dribble runing down his chin he's just plain scary crazy man. Tegan doesn't go mad on us, but we do get to see up her skirt in part 4 and her outfit is new. Again. I just realized, too, that the woman never wore pants through the whole show, aside from those bad overalls in Earthshock. And if that skort counts from Arc of Infinity onwards.

The reason I bring the Big Finish audio Excelis Dawns into the mix here is at one point in part 4 of Frontios the Doctor and Tegan leave the planet briefly and return again to pick up Turlough, and this audio is made to take place within that gap in the adventure. The TARDIS lands on the planet Arteris and the Doctor meets the warlord Greyvorn (played by Anthony Stewart Head). Greyvorn is on a quest to recover a lost relic from a tribe of flesh eating jungle dwelling zombies, and he is accompanied by a nun and a pain in the ass Time Lady called Iris Wildthyme. Iris is a character developed during the years when Doctor Who was off the air, spanning both the Big Finish audios and the BBC Books range and encountering the Doctor in various incarnations here and there. She's loud, her TARDIS is stuck in the form of a double decker bus, she drinks and she smokes, and she's got a hell of a crush on the Doctor, who would rather she just go away. And the real fun part is she is played by none other than Katy Manning, who was Jo Grant during the Jon Pertwee days.

Excelis Rising is actually the first in a four adventure cycle which sees the Doctor return to Arteris a few more times in future incarnations, the irony being as he makes his departure this time the Doctor states that he never wants to come back to this planet again. If they're all like this one, though, maybe it's a good idea if he doesn't; the plot gets silly, it doesn't really go anywhere; it's more a vehicle to get Iris onto audio and sell three more plays. Oh I did buy them, don't be mistaken.

So the Doctor has his adventure off to the side, goes and finds the TARDIS where he has left Tegan waiting for days now (Janet Fielding is not in this; until last year she refused to touch the audio projects) and probably gets an earful, then they go back to Frontios to get Turlough.

And then just as it seems it's over, the TARDIS encounters some turbulence which leads right into the next story.

NEXT EPISODE : RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS