By Roy Mathur, on 2024-04-23, at 23:05:25 to 23:48:28 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
I'm already falling behind, sorry, but at least only a little bit, only for the taping date (by one day), so the release schedule remains unchanged.
Why? Well, an awful lot goes into these podcasts. See my shownotes.
What else has been happening in Roy World? You're going to have to wait for the big geek zine catch-up after all this Who, but I did take my motorcycle out on my street for it's first spin on Sunday.
Noteable Cast: Fifth Doctor: Peter Davison, Tegan Jovanka: Janet Fielding, Vislor Turlough: Mark Strickson, Captain Revere: John Beardmore (uncredited, so I'm redressing the balance), Plantagenet: Jeff Rawle; Amos Diggory, Brazen: Peter Gilmore; Warlords of Atlantis, Range: William Lucas; The Prisoner, Norna: Lesley Dunlop; The Phoenix and the Carpet (1997 not 1976)
Director: Ron Jones, also Black Orchid, Time-Flight, Arc of Infinity, Vengeance on Varos, Mindwarp
Writer: Christopher H. Bidmead, also Logopolis, Castrovalva
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: BBC Television Centre, Shepherds Bush (1983)
Broadcast: Story 132, serial 3, season 21, following The Awakening covered in 533, 4 x c. 25 min, first broadcast 26 January to 3 February 1984
Media: Target novelization by Christopher H. Bidmead (1984), VHS with Frontios (1997), DVD (2011), DVD Doctor Who DVD Files, Issue 100 (2012), BBC iPlayer's Whoniverse since 2023
The high energy of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax knocks Paul McCartney's boring Pipes of Peace down to number two.
One of a group is buried when a mine collapses. The survivors witness his disappearance into the earth and flee.
Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor is preoccupied by a hat stand, when they see Frontios on the view screen; home to the last vestige of humanity.
On Frontios, the tunnel group officer stops an investigation into his leader's death and shuts down further communications experimentation.
In the TARDIS, Tegan wants to visit Frontios, but the Doctor says they can't interfere due to the "laws of time". However, they are unexpectedly pulled in, land, and find the scant remaining survivors attacked by a meteor bombardment and occasionally mysteriously vanishing into the earth.
The Doctor helps the medical staff and sends Tegan and Turlough to the TARDIS for supplies. They find the door to the TARDIS's interior jammed (the hat rack?)
Meanwhile, the Doctor tries to help with the colony's power plant and Dorna, Tegan, Turlough go to fetch an primitive battery from the crashed starship. Outside, the TARDIS appears destroyed during another attack, only the hat stand remains in a pile of smouldering rubble. The Doctor is almost executed by the paranoid son of the leader who thinks he's a spy. Turlough saves him by pretending that the hat stand is a weapon, but the deputy leader suffers a heart attack. The Doctor saves the man using by improvising a makeshift defibrillator.
Later, exploring the aread under the ship, they discover that the disappearances and the bombardment are caused by intelligent insectoids, the Tractators, led by Gravis, who have control over gravity. The colonists are being enslaved to create cyborg excavators to further their plans to turn the whole planet into a spaceship; the same fate suffered by Turlough's people.
They find the TARDIS warped and scatted about tunnels by the Tractator's gravity. Gravis desires the TARDIS to further his conquest, so the Doctor tricks him repairing it. This isolates him and turns him dormant, while the Tractators revert to their natural and harmless existence. They maroon Gravis on an uninhabited planet, leaves the hat stand as a gift to the colony and departs, only to be drawn to the centre of the universe.
The soldiers of Frontios are wearing a slight variation of the Federation helents form Blake's 7.
I know it's not the done thing, but I must say I like Tegan's fetching stylish rock chick outfit of a leather skirt and arty abstract top, though trainers would have been more practical than her heels and pointy toes, especially on rough Frontios. Turlough and the Doctor remain looking like twits throughout the Davison era.
I love that the hat stand plays such a pivotal role throughout. It's such an eccentric prop, apropos for the eccentric Doctor. His delightful madness is sadly wasted on his unappreciative companions. I wonder if the hat stand was supposed to be what jams the TARDIS inner door for comedic value in the script, or whether it that was the work of the Tractators. (The victim of another Eric Saward hatchet job?) The hat stand is versatile; it can be used for to hang coats or hats, it is able to withstand meteor attacks, it can be used to threaten stupid people, and it makes a nice gift. We had several in our home over the years, and one is reminded of the similar utility of the HHGTTG's towel.
There is a scene in which a block and tackle is used completely wrongly, I suspect this is because they only had the one prop and that had to remain in shot.
The Tractator underground environment is properly alien, with it's black blobs and spiral swirls.
The Tractator creature design isn't bad, but the scenes in which the Tractators shuffled away in alarm and the one in which Gravis faceplants with a clonk had me rolling.
The human-machine cyborg excavator tank, with the dead, blank, staring face is really creepy.
I liked Dorna, she seemed companion material.
Turlough goes right around the bend, reliving bad ancestral memories, sweating, staring goggle-eyed, and even foaming at the mouth. It's quite the Strickson performance.
The Doctor's line, "...a risk shared is a risk doubled." is cynicism on a level I can thoroughly appreciate.
I don't usually do gossip, but this production seemed too outside the ordinary not to.
Designer, Barrie Dobbins, died by suicide and was replaced by his assistant, David Buckingham.
Peter Arne, hired to play Mr Range, was murdered hours after he being fitting for his costume at the BBC, and was replaced by William Lucas.
Source: Wikipedia (unverified; links broken).
I've been revisiting classic Doctor Who in chronological order since 2014 and you'd be surprised how much work it is to churn these out. So, please support me with a small tip on Ko-fi, a good review, a nice comment, or just say hello on Mastodon.