Doctor Who: Frontier Worlds

Eighth Doctor Adventures #29

by Peter Anghelides

What strange attraction lures people to the planet Drebnar? When the TARDIS is dragged there, the Doctor determines to find out why. He discovers that scientists from the Frontier Worlds Corporation have set up a base on the planet, and are trying to blur the distinction between people and plants.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Media Tie In, Fantasy, Ebooks

273 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 2000

About the author

Anghelides' first published work was the short story "Moving On" in the third volume of the Virgin Decalog collections, which led to further short stories in the fourth collection and then in two of the BBC Short Trips collections that followed. In January 1998, his first novel Kursaal was published as part of BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures series on books. Anghelides subsequently wrote two more novels for the range, Frontier Worlds in November 1999, which was named "Best Eighth Doctor Novel" in the annual Doctor Who Magazine poll of its readers, and the The Ancestor Cell in July 2000 (co-written with departing editor Stephen Cole). The Ancestor Cell was placed ninth in the Top 10 of SFX magazine's "Best SF/Fantasy novelisation or TV tie-in novel" category of that year.

Anghelides also wrote several short stories for a variety of Big Finish Productions' Short Trips and Bernice Summerfield collections. This led, in November 2002, to the production of his first audio adventure for Big Finish, the play Sarah Jane Smith: Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre.

In 2008, he wrote a comic which featured on the Doctor Who website

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something that attracts me to the more simpler and traditional Eighth Doctor stories, with an easier plot to follow it allows the reader to enjoy this TARDIS team more.

This fun adventure sees the time travellers investigating the Frontier Worlds corporation and what sinister plans they’re devising.

With Fitz and Compassion working undercover for the corporation with the aliases of Frank and Nancy Sinatra, which leads to some great interactions between the pair.
Whilst this Doctors incarnation is perfectly captured too.

The story is engaging and with each chapter titled as a Sinatra song easily highlights what a fun enjoyable romp this was.
I’d much prefer the series to have more stories like this!

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great EDA book. The story itself was fine, not amazingly exciting or original (evil corporation destroys the environment, oh no!), but the office-based focus it took was interesting and somewhat unusual. The pacing is also kind of unusual, it frequently throws you into a scene halfway through the action and expects the reader to just catch up! I like that, though — much better than loads of exposition and shilly-shallying getting from point A to point Z. Just drop me in at M and if I don't figure out the rest of the alphabet on my own, that's on me 😂 The villains aren't terribly scary or threatening, and at times cross into being 2 dimensional and cartoonish (although I love the weird robot? I wish the robot would become a companion....).

But where the book really shines, though, and why it gets 4 stars from me, and which makes up for the lacklustre story and enemies, is in its character work.

Fitz and Compassion drive this story, they are fantastic!

I especially enjoyed the sections written in the first person by Fitz. He is a fantastic character, really "Just Some Guy" in so many ways. I love how Fitz is often very scared of things, he doesn't particularly want to risk his neck to save anyone (not out of cruelty, just from fear!) and that he is often written to be openly sad and worried about things without being written in any way to be the "Anxious Character TM". He is just a normal person with ups and downs and fears and hopes and flaws. Fitz isn't especially clever, he isn't especially brave (for a Who Companion anyway lol), he isn't ambitious, or driven, or inventive, or often even terribly helpful — he's really Just Some Guy. But he just draws you in and makes you care about him, even if at times you want to smack him around the ear with a rolled up newspaper for being a jerk.

Also loved all the fascinating character development with Compassion. I ADORE her as a character, even if as a person she's a bit worrying... It is great to see The Doctor and Compassion always being so at odds with one another, perhaps irrevocably (although I see the blurb of the next book has the Doctor and Compassion trapped in a small space together so I can't wait to see how that goes...). They represent an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force in many ways. Compassion is resourceful, intelligent ruthless, and cold; both an asset and a liability to have around. It is great to see that kind of unfriendly, cautious, tenuous relationship between the Doctor and a Companion. Frenemies who are very light on the "fr". Can't wait to see where Compassion's story goes, especially after the continuing implications of her relationship with the TARDIS following the climax of "Taking Planet 5"...

Whereas Fitz, as Compassion points out, *dotes* on the Doctor — Fitz doesn't entirely want to admit that to himself, thoughneither does he seem able to deny it. He isn't unaware of the Doctor's flaws, and he gets frequently exasperated with him (as does the Doctor with Fitz), but there is such a deep, if still somewhat hesitant, affection (even love?) between the two which is quite endearing.

Honestly, I reckon Fitz and Compassion are fast becoming my all-time favourite Who companions. This book is very much much carried by them rather than the Doctor. In fact, the parts of the story following the Doctor are a lot less interesting than those with Fitz and Compassion — and eight is my favourite Doctor!! But his companions are just so interesting and unusual and unique and compelling, both conceptually and as individual personalities, that I find myself constantly keen to get back to them.

Anyway, I'm rambling. But yes, TL;DR fun book, the lacklustre story is more than made up for by great writing and beautiful character work!! Enjoyed it a lot.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quietly, one of the stronger eighth Doctor novels. The sci-fi elements are well thought through, the plot driven by very human motivations, some of the most considered character work the regulars get in the whole range, and the office comedy (pre-Merchant/Gervais too) probably the highlight of the book. If anything, the book might have been even better for cutting the extended chase sequence to something a little more taut and extending Fitz and Compassion’s struggles with the office life familiar to readers but not to these fish out of water characters.

It’s perhaps slightly marred by the fridging of a guest character to motivate a regular, and a propensity for realistic violence but otherwise it’s thoughtful and often dryly funny and repays a revisit as much as the more celebrated novels of this era do.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The team of the Eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion goes on a more traditional than usual adventure in Frontier Worlds: working undercover, the trio aims to expose a dangerous experiment on a colony world. There’s not a huge amount of plot here but there is a lot of memorable action and satisfying character work for the leads. It’s unspectacular but thoughtfully written, and does its job well. A definite improvement on the author’s previous book, Kursaal.

3.5

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much body horror, not enough plot. Theoretically this is a sci fi story about the possibilities and dangers of GMO crops, but the only takeaway is that Monsanto-style shenanigans are preferable to mad scientists warping their brains by trying to cross themselves with plants in an effort to achieve immortality.

Okay then.

The subplot with Fitz's love interest left a bad taste in my mouth. The fridgiest fridge plot ever to fridge, so Fitz's quote-unquote character development via man!pain didn't do it for me. Extra points: she's the only explicitly-stated person of color in the book AFAIR. Also, I just started Doctor Who: The Shadows of Avalon and Fitz is pining over a different woman he left on a different planet. Nice. By which I mean, fuck you.

[Hidekisohma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man, Taking of planet five put me off of reading another 8th doctor book for a WHILE. it had literally been since march since i read one of these. almost six months of an 8th doctor reading slump. Ah well, at least Frontier worlds wasn't nearly as bad or complicated.

I remember reading Peter's other book, Kursaal ages ago and remember it not being bad, just...very very okay. and that's the way i feel about this one. Essentially the doc, fitz, and compassion go undercover to investigate some weird goings on in this lab corporation called 'frontier worlds' and they figure out the world ending nonsense through undercover work.

And just like Kuursal it's....fine. Not wonderful, not great, just...fine. I can definitely say for certain this one was MUCH easier to understand. Evil corporation, evil space plant thing, there you go. Peter wasn't trying to write the next great Doctoral theoretical space physics paper like simon was from "taking of planet five." So it had that going for it.

This book DEFINITELY reminded me more of a James bond-esc kind of story. the doctor hanging off ski lift trams, the villain chasing after the heroes with a combine thresher, threatening people with guns while the evil plan is discussed, love interests dying, yeah. this 100% felt like a spy thriller. and...i guess that's okay, just a little off for Doctor who.

Speaking of the doctor, he's really not IN a lot of this overall. i'd say he's in about 33% of it all truth be told .Nearly 2/3 of it is Fitz and Compassion just doing their thing trying to figure out stuff. and yeah, i get what this book is trying to be. this is the "Fitz and Compassion starting to bond" book. i get it. But man does the middle of this book drag.

One of the best things i can say about this book is that there is no side character story nonsense. which is a HUGE relief. it doesn't go off into chapters and chapters of characters who aren't one of the main three telling the story from their point of view which, sadly is a RARITY for doctor who novels and i have to give it credit for that at least. (all of fitz/compassion scenes are told first person perspective from fitz's POV)

Thankfully Fitz and Compassion make an interesting team and i actually want to see where their storyline goes. i know they have another 7 novels to hang out together after this one, so i'm hoping they get some good development before Compassion goes off to 'god knows where' land.

The vilains were....fine if not stock and the big bad alien baddy wasn't so much a "Villain" as it was... a threat they had to deal with. so no real personification of the evil plant thing.

All in all, the story was fine. read well, but not really my favorite kind of doctor who story. i don't really like the "being stuck in a place and acclimating to the new place to live for weeks/months on end" kind of stories. and spy thrillers normally aren't my thing, but i can definitely appreciate the relative simplicity (especially in comparison to 'planet 5' 'beltempest' or 'interference').

So yeah, 3.25 out of 5, rounded down to a 3. Welp, on to parallel 59!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best of the EDAs in a long time, by far. I remember enjoying Angelides' Kursaal early on, so I had a feeling I would be in for a decently good ride. The last two installments have had homages or themes to them and this EDA is no different. We've got a bit of "Monsanto is evil" combined with many nods to Frank Sinatra. It sounds weird, but it rather works well. Compassion and Fitz are undercover in the Frontier Worlds Corporation attempting to dig up whatever information they can about what's really going on behind the scenes, and the Doctor is doing his own investigating on the fringes, jumping into and out of captivity, as per usual. There's a bit of body horror here, but not as bad as other novels. We get to see more of the rapport between the two companions, and they take center stage here. Compassion is robotic, stoic, and focused on the goal, while Fitz has trouble containing his emotions, gets too involved, and take everything too personally. This novel was a great way to showcase their characters and their relationship. Another bonus- there were no useless points of view. Everything was from a main character perspective. Classic Who really likes to think that random characters and their stories are important and should be explored (even if they are going to die within a few pages of meeting them) - I don't care for that type of storytelling and find it lazy and fluffy.
Overall, Frontier Worlds had a great classic feel to it, and I could certainly see it being an episode. Kudos to Peter for another solid EDA.

[Trin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a bog-standard "evil corporation is evil" plot that goes on through at least one too many action scenes -- which is a pity, because it starts out with a great one. There's some fun side business with Fitz Julian Bashiring as a spy again -- code name: Frank Sinatra -- and good progression of his and Compassion's arcs. I particularly liked this conversation:

Compassion said, "You dote on the Doctor, Fitz. You haven't worked it out yet, how he tolerates us. Humans are just the Time Lords' embarrassing relations. Isn't it how you'd feel if you had to travel round with only inferior species for company?"

Fitz wouldn't accept this, and snorted back at her. "You make us sound like pets. Is that your big idea, Compassion? We're the Doctor's pets?"

"Yes," she said simply. "But it's like the difference between cats and dogs. A dog thinks, My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me, so he must be god. A cat thinks, My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me, so I must be god." Her smile made Fitz angrier still. "He's got you to sit up and beg, like a well-trained dog. Well, he won't change me."

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it does action set-pieces, and concentrates on the Doctor (an excellent depiction of Paul McGann's 8th incarnation), this novel fires on all cylinders. But Fitz and Compassion feel trapped in one long, boring bureaucratic soap opera, and the pacing in general feels dragged out. It's an odd feeling, reading this old BBC Books novels years after they came out...sometimes they feel absolutely epic, and sometimes they feel over-written. This story falls between both of these stools, but ultimately comes out on the positive side of the spectrum.

[Barry Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting plot and good (or is that bad!) characters make for a good book. No dependence on prior history with this one....

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't enjoy this book. I found it quite dull

[Leela42 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eighth Doctor Adventure (EDA) with Fitz and Compassion. A great deal less than the fan reviewers said it was. (I suspect they were parched for SOMETHING resembling Doctor Who amid all the deconstructing and retconning that typified the EDAs.) Yes, this book would probably make a nice episode, but since that would require cutting a lot of the bits that I found plodding, that's hardly high praise. There are a couple of memorable action sequences, and a Doctor who acts instead of reacts, but the book is probably mainly of interest for advancing the Compassion and Fitz arcs--neither of which were of interest to me. The author is remarkably good at answering questions when the reader asks them, and at keeping track of things. On the other hand he has a habit of addressing issues several times where once would suffice, and the characters (including the Doctor) are often terribly slow to come to what the reader considers obvious conclusions. Personally, I found it disorienting when characters did thoughtless things and then something smart; it kept making me wonder how they could be so dumb. The parts narrated by Fitz are hard to read--the cultural references seem random and bizarrely American, like the author just strung stuff together and without any regard for whether someone from 1963 London would think in those terms. By the two-thirds mark I'd decided I had no particular fondness for the book and couldn't imagine wanting to reread it. I did like the final six chapters considerably better than the rest.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something funny is going on at Frontier Worlds corporate headquarters, so the Eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion decide to get jobs at the company and play detective.

Not a bad idea and Fitz ( the bumbler who so badly wants to be a cool man of action) and Compassion ( the snotty lady with a secret) are great companions, but nearly the entire supporting cast is either unpleasant or uninteresting and the author can't stop reveling in the details of all kinds of bodily functions.

It almost seems like he realized he didn't have enough actual story for a novel, so padded it out with a bit of sex, a couple pages of gore and having one character pick his nose constantly. Wore pretty thin by the halfway point.

Plus, as much as I like Fitz, having him be the narrator for so many chapters didn't quite work, as he tends to be a slightly clueless everyman.

The alien was interesting, but awfully similar to an old Who monster, so I kept being distracted by why they just didn't use the old monster and at least get cut some slack from nostalgic fans like me.

There are some great action scenes, some clever ideas, nice portrayal of the Eighth Doctor and I liked the robot.
Not a bad book, but still a rewrite away from being a really good book. With some trimming it might have made a fun TV episode.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1914347.html

I had been a bit underwhelmed by the last few Eighth Doctor novels I read, but this one has restored my confidence. It's one of the few Who novels which I could easily imagine as the basis for a TV story; the Tardis crew investigate a dubious company doing genetic engineering on a convenient planet, the two companions going undercover, with all the personal conflicts that involves, and the Doctor taking on the bad guys directly. Fitz continues to be one of the best spinoff characters, and for the first time I actually found Compassion interesting (in, what, her third or fourth book). Well above average for this range.

[Basicallyrun · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised how much I liked this book - while I always like Anghelides' plots, his writing doesn't usually do it for me. I have to say, I love the bits from Fitz's POV. The first one made me give the book a few funny looks - Fitz is *British*, he's hardly going to be thinking about sidewalks - but once you realise the reason for that, it kind of makes it even more awesome. I like Fitz being all insecure and worried the Doctor doesn't need him, and I love how much they care for each other (Compassion too, in her own weird way). Plus there's some rather lovely banter when the Doctor is captured (hardly a spoiler, let's be honest - when *doesn't* he get captured?) and the bad guy is emptying his pockets - 'a strange assortment of confectionary' indeed! <3

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion investigate a company who is doing experiments on an alien plant. These could cause the destruction of the system they are in. A decent story, that shows some extra depth to Compassion and Fitz. Though Fitz is put through the ringer again, I'm starting to be surprised that he continues to stay with the Doctor. There are some creepy and gory moments too. A good read.

[Numa Parrott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story from the Doctor's point of view, but as usual, Fitz and Compassion each had their own boring subplot.
The dilemma was interesting and the action scenes were pretty good. I liked the tidbits of moral philosophy that got thrown in.

Read it if you like. If not, you're not missing too much.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characterisation in this one was really good. I also loved the humour displayed by Fitz. There were a few holes and unanswered questions, but overall it was quite an entertaining Doctor story!

[Simon Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Nenya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book where I felt that Fitz and Compassion were really working together as a team.