133: Frontios

8/14/08

The TARDIS lands on a planet named Frontios where the Doctor soon discovers that people are disappearing. There are mysterious deaths and mysterious disappearances of the bodies. The culprit? A underground dwelling creature called Tractators, which the writer based on wood lice that he found in his garden.

Spoilers follow.

In the finale to the 2008 series four of Doctor Who, the TARDIS literally tows the earth back to where it's supposed to be in the galaxy. There has been much complaining and much debate over this, but I have to say after seeing this episode, Frontios did it first. The Tractators are a sort of hive organism, and when they are together, they can do remarkable things like moving objects through space. The disappearances have occurred because they are literally bringing people down through the ground.
Their goal is to move entire planets out of their places and bring them to themselves, using the power of their collective mind. It's not exactly the same thing, but the people who have problems with the TARDIS towing a planet take note: planets have been towed by less powerful things than the TARDIS.

One thing that's beginning to become very evident is that there is much more to Turlough than meets the eye. He knows things he shouldn't know. He mentions that earth is not his home planet, and he is incredibly good at navigating the TARDIS when no human should be able to. At first I thought that maybe I'd missed a story and that there was an explanation that had been given that I'd not happened upon, so I went to the internet to research it, and lo and behold, there IS much more to Turlough than meets the eye, but they haven't tipped their hand on it yet. I have indeed seen all of his appearances. I'm supposed to notice that all is not as it should be with him and that he is more than meets the eye. Within the next two stories it seems I will have all my answers.

Another thing I want to mention is that I'm really starting to see the little quirks that David Tennant patterned his Doctor on. The 5th Doctor wears Plimsoll shoes, which look like trainers, and he has now started using spectacles in this third season, another trait of David Tennant's 10th Doctor. In addition, I see much of Peter Davison in Tennant's speech pattern and the way he relates to his companions and other characters. I think when this season is over and we have moved on to Doctor number 6, I will do a retrospective piece looking back on Peter Davison's portrayal and what he brought to the show.

Frontios is an okay story, but really, it's just par for the course. I give it a 6/10