In retrospect, I noticed that Christopher Bidmead with his quite bizarre notions of "science" had an obsession with the TARDIS. All 3 of his stories-- "Logopolis", "Castrovalva" and "Frontios" (all one-word titles) focus more on the TARDIS than normal stories usually do. Early-on, I was fascinated with the first 2, partly because I didn't know what was going on. As time went on, I came to realize that huge chunks of those 2 stories were paying tribute to earlier stories which had NEVER been seen in America (and some, have still never been seen here, due to the sheer short-sightedness and rampant incompetence leading to those stories being wiped / lost / whatever).
I didn't care for "Frontios" early-on, as it was just TOO-- DAMNED-- BLEAK. And yet... a funny thing happened. Over repeated viewings, I began to get bored with the 2 earlier stories, they just seemed like fragmented, badly-constructed, badly-thought out gimmicky things. And this was emphasized (and explained) when I learned that both were LAST-MINUTE replacements Bidmead threw together very quickly. I guess it shows, once you know. Meanwhile... I started to like "Frontios". Especially the 2nd half.
In the first part, The Doctor and his travelling companinos are as out-of-place as anyone could be, they're trying to help, but they're hit with the usual distrust. And then just when he decides they better get the HELL out of there... BAM. No TARDIS. And it's like... WHAT? What in the HELL just happened?
So then, almost by luck, The Dcotor manages to save the life of the colony's leader, so HE trusts them, and from then on, The Doctor finally gets down to the real business of finding out what is really going on. Because, almost like in the Hartnell days, he HAS to-- as he's trapped there.
It blows my mind to think that those DAMNED Tractators were pretty much terrifying and torturing those people FOR DECADES before anyone found out they were even there. I didn't much mind the costumes, because, well, let's face it... this is DOCTOR WHO. You get used to that kind of thing. It's often one half-step removed from watching a live stage play. And how much can you do with special effects on stage in front of a live audience?
The idea of WHAT they were trying to do, just screamed out as YET ANOTHER example of JNT-era reusing older ideas / paying tribute to earlier stories, in this case, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" / DALEKS' INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. Hollowing out a planet and using gravity manipulation to turn it into a gigantic spaceship. Absolutely INSANE. (Thank you, Terry Nation-- or, did some earlier writer do that and he borrowed it, which given the endless wealth of sci-fi pulp magazine stories, is very possible?) Actually, it occurs to me, the most famous example of this has to be FLASH GORDON. The planet MONGO did not just happen to find its way into Earth's solar system. It was piloted there. But I've only read the 1930s Sunday strips, not the dailies, so I don't know if thehy ever went into detail about it. The ONLY time I've ever seen Mongo's "engines" onscreen in film, was in the 1979 Filmation feature film, FLASH GORDON: THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL. I guess a real advantage of animated cartoons is, you can do ANYTHING on a budget!
What took a couple of viewings for me to realize, was that in the 2nd HALF of this, Peter Davison's "Doctor" really started to FEEL like "The Doctor", which, to me, he ALMOST NEVER HAD. I can see why he decided to announce he was leaving before his 3rd season began, the writing really had been THAT BAD. But here (and also in "The Awakening" in spots, and again later, in "The Caves Of Androzani"), were possibly the ONLY times I felt like the "real" Doctor was peeking out from under that COMA he was thrust into for the whole of "Logopolis". In the 2nd half of "Frontios", he actually began to remind me of Patrick Troughton. And I WISH SO BADLY he'd been doing that more. (By comparison, and it takes until the final episode of "Androzani", his dialogue and attitude began to remind me of Jon Pertwee. Gee, where did THAT come from? Robert Holmes always could write ANY character on this show better than ANY other writer.)
MY faviorite moment in the story-- perhaps in the entire Davison run-- is when The Doctor tries to save Tegan's life. This horrible, awful, whining, complaining NAGGING beast of a woman, who's never had a decent word to say to him, and HE has to go out of his way to save her. And the way he does it is F***ING HILARIOUS!!! He convinces The Gravus that Tegan is a ROBOT.
"I got this one CHEAP because the walk's not quite right. And then of course, there's the ACCENT..."
That just sounds SO "Troughton". The look on her face says it all. She wants to KILL him-- but she knows, she can't even say a word, because if she does, the monster will probably KILL her.
Then, after two-and-a-half episodes of wondering, WHAT THE HELL happened to The TARDIS, we find out, the outer shell in our dimension was the only thing that was "destroyed", and in the process, the interior control room somehow got pulled into out dimension... underground. And the Doctor cons the Gravus into using his gravity powers to "pull it all together", so that, before our eyes, the outer shell RE-FORMS... and as soon as it does, the Gravus' power is cut off, because, suddenly, he's no longer in our dimension anymore. It was mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, completely BAT-S*** crazy "science", of the type Gardner Fox would have loved (see his entire run of "Justice League Of America" if you don't believe me). You just have to go along and accept it, as it's totally beyond any current science as we know it. But then, the TARDIS has been like that since the very 1st episode.
I did get the impression that from the moment Davison announced his impending departure, the desision was made to painfully drag out the entire shuffling of the show. Tegan left, Peri arrived, Turlough left, The Master was killed (NOT REALLY), Peri ALMOST died, and The Doctor DID die. But along the way, MOST of the stories in that season were dark, bleak, pointlessly violent, seemingly-hopeless. Davison's "Doctor", some have said, was not up to the job of saving the universe. And the entirety of season 21 seemed hell-bent on proving that. Right down to him taking 4 whole episodes to DIE of lethal poisoning.