Frontios - Out Like A Summer Cloud now... Not a word to the Time Lords

[SiHart]

Eric Saward dislikes everything that wasn't written by either him or Robert Holmes it seems (and I don't think he likes his own stuff much either).

[Paul Monk]

Thats a shame. I normally love the Davison commentaries.

[Si Hunt]

Ours hasn't even been dispatched from Sendit yet. I can understand if you order after the release date and they have sold out of their initial batch, but when you pre-order you expect them to be ordering in enough copies to cover it. You've told them in advance you'll be buying it.

We won't be using Sendit again, ever, if it doesn't get dispatched soon.

Si.

[Anthony Williams]

Mine is on it's way from amazon.co.uk, along with Mannequin Mania!

Hopefully it'll make it's way to the US of A sometime in the next month or so...

[SiHart]

Ours hasn't even been dispatched from Sendit yet. I can understand if you order after the release date and they have sold out of their initial batch, but when you pre-order you expect them to be ordering in enough copies to cover it. You've told them in advance you'll be buying it.

We won't be using Sendit again, ever, if it doesn't get dispatched soon.

Si.

This is why I stick with Play or HMV- always get a good service from them. Whenever I've tried others they've always let me down. I remember the Sendit problems with New Beginnings a few years back...

[Lissa]

I ordered the last 3 from Sendit and Frontios is the only one to be delayed. Like any store they're great sometimes, lousy other times.

My problem with Sendit is that they've started adding a £1.99 shipping charge to every item without telling you until the last possible moment. And even then it's just a radio button at the top of the page - nowhere gives you the total amount you'll be paying. It doesn't make them more expensive - they've cut their prices by £2 to offset the P&P charge - it just makes them seem deceptive and sleazy.

[Stuart Wallis]

Just like me then...

[Si Hunt]

I wrote a stinky e-mail this morning and within an hour, it had been dispatched. Funny that!

What annoys me is that, as with our Avengers order at Sainsburys, it's seemingly trapped in "out of stock" hell, yet they are still showing the same product on the website for other people to buy, without any indiciation that it's unavailable. It's almost like they are luring you into ordering something at a reduced price (perhaps making you buy something else with it to reach the minimum spend) then they don't want to sell it to you. At worst, it's a waste of your time. If it's not available, it should say as much on the site.

Si.

[Paul Monk]

My problem with Sendit is that they've started adding a £1.99 shipping charge to every item without telling you until the last possible moment. And even then it's just a radio button at the top of the page - nowhere gives you the total amount you'll be paying. It doesn't make them more expensive - they've cut their prices by £2 to offset the P&P charge - it just makes them seem deceptive and sleazy.

Thats annoyed me as well Lissa. Its seems to me to be purely so that they get the lowest prices on comparison sites and then not tell you about it until the last minute. And its £1.99 an item which is extortionate as postage goes. If they've any sense they'll revert to free postage and up their prices again. It might catch out a few people in the short term but surely it must be putting people off.

[Si Hunt]

Sendit have replied to my e-mail today and told me that the release date for "Frontios" has been pushed back to 18th July.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

Does that mean we have to give our copy back?

[Stuart Wallis]

I was going to say i've seen some Frontios-shaped Scotch mist myself...

[Anthony Williams]

I'll let Amazon know that they have to track down my copy as it flies across the Atlantic, get it back, and then not give it to me for another month and a half...

[SiHart]

How odd, especially since I've had it for a week now...

[Perry Vale]

I'm yet to buy this, but noticed copies in Tesco today.

[fan]The grey of the roundels is the wrong colour![/fan]

[Jason Thompson]

WHat a strange, muddled, oddly unsatisfying story this is. The sets are nice, the lighting is moody, Davison's performance is superb. But on the whole it just seems to muddle along and has a very convenient resolution dropped in in the last five minutes (how much more satisfying might it have been if they had found the TARDIS roundels in the cave walls before, say in part three, and then spent the time looking for the console room, rather than just stumbling across it just when it was useful and Turlough remembered 'the secret of the Tractators'?)

And I still laugh every time the Gravis collapses with a sudden 'thunk' flat onto his face after getting a shock from the machine....

[Rob McCow]

And I still laugh every time the Gravis collapses with a sudden 'thunk' flat onto his face after getting a shock from the machine....

There's a paticularly wonderful follow up to Frontios in the BF Short Trips - Farewells, if you can track down a copy, where Tegan and the Fifth Doctor take the overgrown woodlouse to a new home. Very amsuing without being toooo diserespectful to the Tractators.

[Jason Thompson]

There's a paticularly wonderful follow up to Frontios in the BF Short Trips - Farewells, if you can track down a copy, where Tegan and the Fifth Doctor take the overgrown woodlouse to a new home. Very amsuing without being toooo diserespectful to the Tractators.

Well, if I can't find a copy I'm sure a rummage through your bookshelves might yield results...

[Rob McCow]

Could be!

Frontios is a strange story, but it's also a showcase for Davison's finest performance (outside of Androzani). He really should have done another year!

[Si Hunt]

I hadn't got the patience for "Frontios" this time. I have to say I found it a trifle dull; the performances, the sets etc. were there but it was like "Androzani" but with boring direction. And there are some decidedly odd aspects like Davison's performance (fine, if he'd been like this in every/any other story, but he isn't), the episode-long hike to get some lighting globes, the Doctor's frankly bizarre dialogue about voluvents and Tegan's walk (!) and so on and so forth.

Worthy, but just a little insipid.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

One problem is that there just aren't enough people in it, so we never get an idea of how the colony runs or how the 'rets' get along. Suddenly in episode 3 a woman appears who is aparently some high court judge type person, but we've never seen her before, and barely see her after. None of the guards apear to have any use beyond walking around with guns, as they are clearly blind and never actually do anything. None of them react when Cockerill is attacked by a bunch of rets, even before Brazen tells them to leave them to it. The Doctor and Tegan running around tunnels repeatedly almost getting caught is tedious (and as I said, could have incorporated the discovery of TARDIS parts in the caves, surely?). And the Tractators, like most Doctor Who monsters, look fine until they have to move, when they just look silly.

But the most frustrating thing about Frontios is the potential, I think. The story was great, with a bunch of colonists believing they are under attack from the skies when the real problem is just the opposite. It just takes too long to get anywhere.