Frontios

"The conspiracy of silence!"

Writer: Christopher H Bidmead

Format: Novel

Released: December 1984

Series: Target 91

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough

Synopsis

The TARDIS has drifted far into the future and comes to rest hovering over Fronts, refuge of one group of survivors from Earth who have escaped th disintegration of their home planet.

The Doctor is reluctant to land on Fronts, as he does not wish to intervene in a moment of historical crisis – the colonists are still struggling to establish themselves and their continued existence hangs in the balance.

But the TARDIS is forced down by what appears to be a meteorite storm, and crash-lands, leaving the Doctor and his companions marooned on the hope-forsaken planet...8

Verdict

Frontios was not the greatest novelisation of the serial of the same name. For whatever reason, I just couldn't get invested into this adventure and I guess that shouldn't be too much of a surprise as I wasn't an enormous fan of the televised version either. It's very much at the bottom spectrum of Fifth Doctor adventures and I think when it comes to the Target books I've read, it ranks as the worst rating I have ever given which goes to show how much I didn't enjoy it. I thought things actually started decently well as far as the TARDIS trio were concerned with the Doctor not wanting to land on Frontios given the permutations of when they located towards the end of Gallifreyan observation and the issues that interference would cause. That was a fun theme running through the book as upon arriving, it didn't exactly take long for the Doctor and co to get caught up in events! I think this story is something fo a victim of the overall story arc of the companions when reading in isolation because I have to say that Tegan and Turlough don't have great outings. It's not ideal when the companions aren't getting along and whilst it's intriguing to have Tegan think of Turlough as being a little weird, I prefer closeness between companions and we really didn't have that here. Turlough just felt unwanted and wasn't able to offer much until late in the day with the ancestral memories of the Tractators. I'm not his biggest fan anyway, but this was a really poor showing for the character. His presence did bring something of a closeness between the Doctor and Tegan though which was a nice change. I thought the Tractators as enemies didn't make a great deal of sense and I think they were severely lacking a motive and backstory for the longest time. The description of them was good and I think the cover adorning them is excellent, but they don't actually offer a huge amount and then we find out they're useless if the Gravis is put out of action which instantly took away any kind of threat. I wasn't a huge fan of most of the characters with the likes of Mr Range and Plantagenet not being favourites of mine. I thought Norna was a standout though and definitely my favourite of the characters not part of the main cast. The far future setting didn't feel like it was real and I think a better use of the setting was needed. I was baffled by how ridiculous a chapter on the power of a hat stand was. That felt really silly. I did like the idea of the TARDIS being broken up, even if the science behind it didn't feel too logical. Using the Tractators' gravitational pull to repair it was brilliant though and I thought the concluding couple of chapters were actually really good and saved the book from being a complete disaster! I just wasn't a fan of the writing style which seemed like it didn't establish a lot of what was going on and maybe took the reader for granted in thinking they'd already seen the story on television. Overall, some good stuff in parts but as a whole this struggles to break being anything more than average.

Rating: 5/10