I've always felt a rather close affinity with Season 21. After the general dreariness of Season 20, it sure felt good to have the programme back and interesting again.
Even "Resurrection of the Daleks" looked good at the time, so caught up as we were in the warm afterglow of the 20th anniversary celebrations. Heady days for a fan, indeed.
But let's save that particular memory lane (or dead-end) for another time, and turn our attentions instead to more entertaining fare.
"Frontios" witnessed the return to the series of one Christopher Hamilton Bidmead. Despite having written "Castrovalva", we in the Security Kitchen still hold Bidmead in very high regard. Overseeing Season Eighteen in his capacity as script editor ensures he can do little wrong as far as we're concerned.
And it is with his previous gig with the series in mind that makes some of his script seem surprisingly ambitious. If Bidmead's Target novelisation of his own script is anything to judge by, the sheer fucking body horror of the Tractator's tunnelling machine would never have made it to the screen in 1984. Likewise, Bidmead's concept of a Tractator translator device made of human body parts would have encountered similar problems even in an early evening midweek timeslot.
What Bidmead does excel at, whether by accident or design, is help create believeable societies. Season Eighteen had their fair share. Traken and Alzarius in particular came alive under the stewardship of Bidmead. (Argolis may well have been hammered into shape before the new script editor got settled behind his desk, so I'll err on the side of caution before I heap praise on something he may have had little influence over).
The colony on Frontios is no exception, and as scripted the desperation and suffering of the settlers comes over very strongly, as does the extremely tenuous grasp of an authority oddly based on blind primogeniture.
Maybe those Blake's 7 Federation helmets were more than accidental...
I'll confess that "Frontios" is a bit of a personal favourite. The concept of Frontios "burying its own dead" is arresting and not a total loss on screen as some commentators have suggested. The TARDIS breaking apart is also memorable and raises the stakes most agreeably. Mark Strickson gets an opportunity to wonderfully overact and cover everyone with spittle, and Peter Gilmore gets to play Captain Onedin again for the last time.
And let's not forget some truly impressive matte work that always make me think of Captain Zep - (Super) Space Detective. (And not in a bad way, before I hear snorts of derision from the back).
While the brutal murder of Peter Arne at least gave William Lucas a chance to shine in a sensitive portrayal, it is the Tractators themselves that are usually viewed as the real source of tragedy in Serial 6N.
Hiring professional dancers to operate what turned out to be unduly cumbersome Space Woodlouse costumes may have been a bit of a cock-up, and the Gravis is admittedly a bit too chatty for comfort. Other than that, I don't see what the problem is.
But imagine my surprise and delight when I reached university and found myself studying the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. When I discovered that we would be studying his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I let out an involuntary snigger.
And when the student sat next to me did the same, we just looked at each other and said "Frontios!".
Logical Positivism was never quite the same again...
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