Frontios (novelisation)

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

The Doctor is reluctant to land on Frontios, as he does not wish to intervene in a moment of historical crisis - the colonists are still strugging 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...

- taken from the jacket synopsis

Book Chapters
01 - Refugees of Mankind 02 - The Unknown Invaders 03 - The Deadly Hail 04 - The Power of the Hat-Stand 05 - Downwardness 06 - Beneath the Rocks 07 - The Force Takes Hold 08 - Eaten by the Earth 09 - The Excavating Machine 10 - Prisoners of the Gravis 11 - The Price of Rescue 12 - Greed sets the Trap

Deviations from the Televised Story

 * Rather than having the excavating machine composed of metal (as in the televised version) with an enslaved human pilot, the Machine is instead a nightmarish vision composed of corpses of the colonists the Tractators had pulled down to their domain:


 * "It was a repellent sight - a huge and hideous assembly of parts of human bodies, shaped something in the form of a giant Tractator. White bones tipped with metal cutters scraped against the rock, while rotting hands polished the surface smooth. Through illuminated windows in the body Tegan glimpsed more mechanically gesticulating human arms and legs in an advanced state of decay.  It was a machine built from the dead."
 * -- Frontios p107

A human pilot is still required to drive the machine. This scenario does lend a little more credence as to why Turlough had envisioned the Tractators as "Evil"


 * Gravis is incapable of speaking directly, and instead utilises "A tall narrow trolley" on which is mounted "The head and one arm of a dead Colonist, connected by improvised metalwork to a swinging pendulum". This machine is used to translate his thoughts.