The TARDIS is dragged down to the surface of the planet Frontios and apparently destroyed during a meteor bombardment. The Doctor is forced to help the planet's human colonists - refugees from a doomed Earth - and eventually discover that the problems affecting the colony are due to an infestation of Tractators, burrowing insect creatures led by the intelligent Gravis. The Tractators have been using gravitational forces to cause regular meteorite showers in order to keep the colonists weak, and use their bodies as components in their mining machines.
Turlough knows of the creatures through a powerful racial memory from his planet, and although experiencing great stress, recalls that the Tractators can be rendered harmless by seperating the Gravis from the rest of the colony. The Doctor achieves this by tricking the Gravis into reassembling the TARDIS around itself.
CAST:
The Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet
Fielding), Turlough (Mark Strickson), Brazen (Peter Gilmore), Norna (Lesley Dunlop), Range (William Lucas), Plantagenet (Jeff Rawle), Cockerill (Maurice O'Connell), Orderly (Richard Ashley), Gravis (John Gillett), Tractators (George Campbell, Michael Malcolm, Stephen Speed, William Bowen, Hedi Khursandi), Deputy (Alison Skilbeck), Retrograde (Raymond Murtagh), Captain Revere (John Beardmore).
FACTS:
Jeff Rawle, now better known for his role as George in 'Drop the Dead Donkey', played the colony's unwilling leader, Plantagenet.
The TARDIS hatstand is apparently the only surviving part of the craft when it is 'destroyed'.
OTHER FORMATS:
The Fifth Doctor Novelisations
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