Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 637: Frontios Episode One
Dear diary,
Frontios was one of the last Peter Davisons stories to be released on DVD, coming out towards the latter end of the range in 2012. Up until then, there wasn’t much I could have told you about it, other than it was broadcast as a part of this season. It was just one of those Doctor Who stories that existed, but whereas the tales around it in this season featured the return of creatures like the Silurians, or the Daleks, or were the location of major cast departures and arrivals, this one was just A. N. Other story. Because it was one of the later DVD releases, I was long since caught up on buying them, and I’d pick them up on day of release on the way to work. Even if it wasn’t a tale I was desperate to watch immediately, I’d still dutifully buy the DVD, because a) I’d want to see it one day, and b) there would be a gap in the collection and it would drive me mad knowing that it was still to be filled. That said, I’ve still not actually bought The Web of Fear on DVD, because I picked it up on iTunes…
With this being one of the stories I knew so little about, though, I couldn’t wait to get it home and watch it. At some point, I’d sort of made a conscious decision not to find much out about it, because I liked the idea that there could still be Doctor Who stories that were almost completely alien to me. Actually watching my way through the series for The 50 Year Diary has revealed that there’s loads of stories I know very little about - even if I didn’t realise it - but for a long while Frontios was an example of a story that I was aware of knowing very little information on. I still wonder, if I’m honest, if that’s why I enjoyed it so much on that first viewing, because I can remember being simply glued to it throughout.
It’s one of those times when I want to say ‘you can always tell that so-and-so is back in the director’s seat this week…’, but actually, it’s not as simple as all that. When I started out on today, I made a note that it must be Peter Grimwade directing, because it was looking so polished and he’s one of the best director’s we’ve got at this point… but then I remembered that he bowed out of the series with Earthshock. I had to wait for the closing credits to roll around to find out that this one was being directed by… Ron Jones!?!?! Surely that’s an error in the credits? Ron Jones was the director responsible for Time-Flight, which wasn’t particularly stand out direction, and for Arc of Infinity, which even in Amsterdam didn’t make any impact! This is the man who turned the corridors of Gallifrey into a tacky office block corridor, complete with sofas!
I’m being rude, yes, and unfair. I was just so surprised by the revelation, because I’m loving the direction in this story. The main courtyard set looks fantastic when it’s being struck by the ‘missile attack’, and there’s a lot of really nice close ups that make this story feel quite unlike anything… well, quite unlike anything from before Season Twenty-One. I’ve been musing over the last few days that this season has its own very unique style. The costumes worn by the ‘locals’ here are very similar to the ones we see in Warriors From the Deep, and we’ll be seeing similar things cropping up in at least a couple of other stories before the season is out. It’s not just the design that feels different this year - the whole ‘look’ of the season feels more polished and glossy than anything from the last few years has. It’s almost as though we’ve done that ‘Season Eighteen Upgrade’ thing again, where everything has suddenly started to look completely different from the Doctor Who that came before…
