Customer Reviews

Doctor Who - The Awakening & Frontios [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tegan decides she wants to spend some time with her grandfather, Andrew Verney. But when the TARDIS crew arrives in Little Hodcomb, an extremely violent version of English War Games is in progress, and an evil alien pressence is behind it. Another wonderful, successful 2 parter that eliminates any padding, and has a great pace. All the guest are in fine form, as with the regulars. A lot of fans like to think this is "The Daemons" of the eighties, but I feel it has more in common with "The Visitation"(the church explosion is much better). Great design and atmosphere. One of the few contemporary/pseudo-historicals(?), too bad they didn't keep Will on.

"Frontios" is really surprisingly good. Not quite as wonderful as "Logopolis" & "Castrovalva", but still, very enjoyable. The sets and design are great, with exception of the Tractators feet(they have none! I know, there giant earthworms, so to speak). Mark Strickson's performance is pretty good, when he isn't way OTT and frothing at the mouth. The Gravis' reaction when the Doctor shows him the console room(what's left of it)really stands out. Nice use of desperate colonists, as well. With the exception of some silly acting, "Frontios" is a successful Davison outing.

These are both good stories, actually some of the best of season 21. "The Awakening" is a nice tribute to the classic Pertwee story "The Daemons" and it does work on many levels. I myself am not a fan of the character of Will, but I know many others liked him and even wish he joined the Doctor on his travels. The plot itself is fine, though a little unclear at times. The Malus is surprisingly effective for an immobile head, and most of the other characters in this story are engaging. Not exactly memorable, but certainly a nice little refreshment. "Frontios" is far more original and entertaining. The story itself is intriguing and the Tractators are suitably menacing. Credibitity is stretched in places, especially in regards to the fate of the TARDIS, and there is a rather pitiful scene involving a coat hangar which is best left forgotten. The portrayal of the Fifth Doctor is atypical of this era, but actually works better than what was normally seen. Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson as Tegan and Turlough are very good, although Strickson terribly overacts in several scenes. The rest of the characters presented range from bland to frustrating to interesting, but collectively they manage to portray an intriguing and well realised society on the brink of oblivion. Not a bad collection, but I would recommend first "The Caves of Androzani", "Earthshock", "Resurrection of the Daleks" or "The Visitation/Black Orchid" before this one.

The Awakening
Mock wargames reconstructioning the English Civil war become dangerously real, as Sir George Hutchinson begins to lose his mind, under the terlepathic influence of the Malus, an evil creature entoumbed in the local church since the Civil War! Tegan is forced to beecome the Queen of the May and is horrifyed when she discoverd the Queen's traditional fate to be burned alive!
Frontios
The TARDIS loosed its integraty and breaks apart into many pieces, stranding the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough in the far future on the remte planet Frontios. They find a small group of humans apperently the only survivors of the human race, bearly surviving after the crash of their spacecraft. They are under constant bonbardment by meteors, and some of them have mysteriously dissapeared. Turlough and Noma, a young female survivir, stumble across an underground cave system and start exploring it. Noma dissapears, and Turlough is found wandering in a state of skock. The Doctor must try to make sence of Turlough's ramblings, discover what is happning to the survivors and, repair the TARDIS at the same time! END

This two-tape set includes the two-part "The Awakening" and the four-part "Frontios". "The Awakening" was by far the best adventure here. Which is surprising considering that "Frontios" looked like the better one on the DVD trailers. The best two-part adventure in the whole original series. The only other one that comes even close is Tom Baker's "The Sontaran Experiment", and even that one wasn't as good as this one.

THE AWAKENING

In this one the Doctor takes Tegan back to Earth in order to visit her grandfather in the small English village of Hodcombe only to find her grandfather missing and an English Civil War re-enactment is getting out of hand. Soon the Doctor suspects that an alien influence is behind it, and the answers he needs could be buried in the old village church.

This one has a great gothic story in it, a great exciting script, both the acting and production values shine, and the directing is top-notch creating a very eerie atmosphere throughout the prceedings. Five stars.

FRONTIOS

Not quite as good as "The Awakening", but still pretty good. In this one the TARDIS is drawn off course and forced to land on the planet Frontios far in the distant future where the last remnants of the doomed planet Earth have set up their colony. However, the colony is now under threat by attacks from space by an unknown enemy, low morale, lack of supplies, and a strict leadership. As usual the Doctor's arrival only adds to their paranoid suspicions of an invasion from space. But the Doctor believes the threat is much closer to home - underneath the planet itself. Soon the Doctor comes face to face with the powerful subterranean insect race known as the Tractators whom not only threaten the survival of the human race on this planet, but the safety of the entire universe.

A great plot, the acting and directing is brilliant, and for "Dr. Who" the special effects were pretty good as well. And even Peter Davison's Doctor is more eccentric than usual. The only let down to this story is a somewhat mediocre ending. But overall it's still a pretty good and enjoyable tale. Four stars.

Two great adventures that any "Dr. Who" fan would enjoy. Highly recommended!

The best two-parter of the Peter Davison era is a slight tweaking of the Daemons, of an extraterrestrial alien feeding off psychokinetic and negative emotions. The Doctor and crew land in in the quiet English village of Little Hodcombe to visit Tegan's grandfather, historian Andrew Verney. Did I say quiet? Actually, there's a reenactment of the English Civil War led by village magistrate Sir George Hutchison, who dress in period costumes and ride horses, but whose taking the games seriously might lead to people getting hurt. However, Verney's disappeared, and Hutchinson, who has cordoned off the village, is insistent on the time travellers taking part in the games.

Things get weird when 1984 gets linked to 1643, the year "a parliamentary force and a regiment for the king destroyed each other and the village." Ghosts and psychic projections appear, including a youth named Will Chandler, played to perfection by Keith Jayne. Turns out that troopers weren't the only thing to come to Little Hodcombe. "Malus comes," he says. "He only makes fighting worse. He makes'em hate more."

The Doctor's love of tea is shown in an exchange between him and Will. Tea is described as "a noxious infusion of Oriental leaves containing a high percentage of toxic acid." Will grimaces and says "Sounds an evil brew, don't it?" Doctor: "True. Personally, I rather like it."

Of the other guest cast, Denis Lill, who played Fendelman in the Who story Image Of The Fendahl, does a great maniacal turn as Hutchinson.

The crew then travel 10,000,000 years in the future, where the last traces of Earth people struggle to maintain a colony on the verge of extinction and fight a meteorite bombardment and a high desertion rate caused by low morale and dwindling food supplies. The Doctor helps the wounded under the care of science officer Range and his daughter Norna, but is initially deemed the enemy by Security Officer Brazen and the young and weak ruler, Plantagenet. However, what of the phrase "deaths unaccountable" and "Frontios buries its own dead"? Tegan sees Plantagenet sucked into the ground. And in exploring the abandoned mines, Turlough senses something familiar, which has the name "Tractators." He and Norna discover something in the mine, which sends Turlough into such a traumactic shock that his frenzied vocalized remembrances lead to him slightly foaming at the mouth. Turlough's state alone is Mark Strickson's best acting in the whole series.

A great line at Tegan's expense comes when in order to protect her, the Doctor tries to pass her off as an android to the Gravis, the Chief Tractator: "I got this one cheap because the walk's not quite right. And then there's the accent." Janet Fielding's expression is priceless, as she's clearly pi--ed off at being insulted. Both she and her character Tegan are Australian. Oh, and she does look great in a leather mini.

The Tractators were based on woodlice that infesting the flat of writer Christopher Bidmead. He also based Frontios on what was going on in war-torn Beirut at the time, the last vestiges on humanity. Also, the name of Plantagenet was a nod back to British culture, as that was the dynasty ruling England from Henry II to Richard III.

Leslie Dunlop (Norna) would reappear in the Happiness Patrol as (Susan Q) but also as a regular in the May to December series as Zoe. The part of Range was initially to go to actor Peter Arne, but he was murdered at his flat hours after his costume fitting, and the part went to William Lucas, who has a great explanation on the plight of the colonists: "[We had] systems that could rebuild a civilization for us. Failure proof technology." The Doctor asks what happened. Range says soberly and deadpan, "It failed."

Both stories are imaginative revamps of previously explored ideas, The Awakening on The Daemons, Frontios on Colony In Space.

Although Tom Baker addicts complain that Peter Davison's stint as the Doctor was a time of all style and no substance, I can't think of anyone who could have done a better job in following Baker onto the stage. Davison is witty, charming, warm, accessible and a treat to watch for intensity. The fifth Doctor's time was also characterized by a number of brief two-episode stories that did away with the padding of unnecessarily long ones. "The Awakening", a story about people taking Medieval reenactment games too far due to the influence of an alien who feeds on bad vibes, is one of these stories. The story is excellent, but the acting could be loads better. The five stars are mainly for "Frontios", a four-parter about a struggling colony of humans on another planet, a generation after the destruction of Earth. The leader is dead, and his son is too young and under too much stress to maintain order. People are dying dangerously quickly, threatening the colony with extinction, and the bodies are disappearing, sucked into the soil by mysterious forces. Asteroids rain from the sky, making life hazardous in the extreme. The tension is palpable, and the acting is superb, especially by Mark Strickson as Turlough, who does a superbly Lovecraftian job of going temporarily insane with terror of monsters from the race-memory of his mysterious origins. "They are the appetite beneath the ground," he raves piteously and, surprisingly for a line like that, with absolute conviction, and "Long ago...my home...AN INFECTION!" he screams, literally foaming at the mouth. The fact that the heretofore indestructible TARDIS is suddenly "destroyed" and then "repaired" with no credible cause in either case lets the regular cast's situation down plot-wise, but this is a quibble. This is one of the fifth Doctor's stories most worth the price you pay, even with the less-than-spectacular "Awakening" tacked on to the front.