Tegan's upset reaction to the idea of Earth suffering a catastrophe leads the Doctor to reflect that she's poor Time Lord material. Is this the germ of the idea about Ace becoming a trainee Time Lady in season 27?
The TARDIS central column is referred to as the Time Column. And the TARDIS doesn't materialise on Frontios, it falls to the surface through space.
The colony has a Warnsman whose job it is to look out for meteor showers, and crank a siren when one's coming. A sensible precaution.
An extra exchange between Turlough and Tegan about whether they should interfere on Frontios is followed by a sinister Nietzschean note: 'Neither of them realised at that stage that the planet might be interfering with them.'
The State Room scene between Brazen and Plantagenet is preceded by a bit where Brazen tells Cockerill off for speaking disrespectfully of the new leader. The room itself - it's the former control room - is full of broken instrumentation, and only two of the three lighting panels are working. This effectively conveys the decline that the colony is in.
When Norna leads Tegan and Turlough to the ship so they can get the acid jar, she knows that the research room has been sealed, so they don't go there directly. At one point they have to hide in the State Room, where Cockerill is sitting in Plantagenet's throne, eating a chicken wing that he's stolen. He lets them go though, and there's a hint that he will turn out to be important later.
(It's this chicken that he eats up on the hull at the illicit picnic with his mates. Their names are Kernighan and Ritchie - this is probably the only Bidmead techno-joke that's made me smile).
After the apparent destruction of the TARDIS, Turlough and Tegan start bitching and bickering. The Doctor tells them that they must 'take it like Time Lords'.
The Doctor is 'not very fond of tunnels at the best of times.'
Norna and Range don't find a map in the tunnels, but a plaque:
LEVEL TWO. NO MINERALS OF VALUE DETECTED AS FAR AS THIS POINT. THIS DAY OF FRONTIOS ALPHA 14404, CAPTAIN REVERE
which reminded me agreeably of Arne Saknussem's carved initials in Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
All the Gravis' speeches are translated by a horrific device made out the head and arm of a dead colonist mounted on a trolley. This is very effective as showing us what the Tractators are capable of, but of course it means the story is lumbered with it and it has to follow the Gravis round everywhere, until it's destroyed in the shaking the TARDIS gets in the climax.
Their excavating machine is even more unpleasant: it's made entirely of human corpses, with bone struts, polishing hands and arms and legs working in the interior. This really does emphasise the horrific position that the 'driver' is in. However, the connections between the driver and the machine are removeable, which undoes this a bit.
The Doctor doesn't say anything about his Tegan android's accent. Perhaps CB got fed up with accent jokes after Castrovalva? The point of the android pretence, by the way, is so that the Tractators won't want her as their new driver.
Cockerill is present with Plantagenet and Range in the last scene, and gets some of Range's lines. In compensation, we're told that Range has outlined his plan for completing stage one of the Long Path.
The Time Lords never did find out about the Doctor's intervention on Frontios. How odd that CB, who's spent the whole book adding adult, often horrific touches to the story, chooses to end it on a true children's book note.
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