 |
| The latest standoff between the Doctor and the Master. |
6 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 144 minutes. Written by: Malcolm Hulke. Directed by: Paul Bernard. Produced by: Barry Letts.
THE PLOT:
The empires of Earth and Draconia stand at the brink of war. Each side's ships have been raided, with survivors swearing that the other side is responsible. So far, Earth's President (Vera Fusek) and Draconia's emperor (John Woodnutt) have been able to maintain the peace, but calls for action among both races are growing.
This hostile environment is what awaits the Doctor and Jo when the TARDIS materializes inside an Earth cargo ship. When the ship is attacked, the members of the crew see their attackers as Draconians, even though the raiders are actually Ogrons. The Ogrons knock the crew unconscious and steal the TARDIS. When the Doctor attempts to tell the authorities what happened, he and Jo are arrested, charged with being spies working for the Draconians!
The Doctor soon realizes what is happening: A third party is using technology to trigger a fear response among the crews. Someone is trying to start a war. But no one in authority, either among the humans or the Draconians, is willing to believe him. Seemingly every conversation just leads the Doctor and Jo to a new interrogation, accusation, or prison.
Eventually, they are remanded to the custody of a colony offical - The Master! He is in command of the Ogrons, who are following his plan to destabilize the galaxy's two great powers. There's one more complication: The Master isn't working alone...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: He retains a cool head throughout. In Part Two, when he and Jo are being held in the freighter's cell, she keeps trying to plan an escape so that they can get back to Earth. He points out that the ship is already on the way to Earth and that the people who will interrogate them are the very people they need to speak to. He initially hopes to get either the President or the Draconians to believe him. By the second half of the story, he unhappily resigns himself to the reality that no one will believe him unless he can provide proof, but he remains determined to find a way to prevent war.
Jo Grant: Most of her best moments in this story involve the Master. There's a scene in which the Doctor escapes from a cell under surveillance. Jo plants herself between the eye of the camera and the Doctor and essentially filibusters, rambling from topic to topic to keep their adversary from realizing that the Doctor has gone. Later, she resists an attempt by the Master to hypnotize her (again), and she holds firm against his fear device. He may be able to make her see monsters such as Sea Devils and Drashigs, but she rejects each illusion in turn, shouting back that "it's not real!"
The Master: This was Roger Delgado's final story as the Master; and though it wasn't planned as such, it turns out to be a fine showcase for the character. The Master's plan is genuinely clever, aggravating existing tensions and then mostly leaving the humans and Draconians to do his work for him. After a slightly "off" showing in The Time Monster, Delgado is back in top form here, the picture of urbane charm as he plays all sides against each other.
Ogrons: They were introduced the previous season as the Daleks' mindless henchmen. This serial clarifies that they are mercenaries who will work for anyone who pays. They're still not terribly interesting creations, being "dumb muscle" and not much else. It's not hard to see why they didn't catch on past the Pertwee era, and I'm legitimately confused as to their popularity in Doctor Who books and audios. They're better here than in Day of the Daleks, though, mainly thanks to the Master's clear impatience with their stupidity.
Draconians: Unlike the Ogrons, they are interesting, their society structured around strict codes. They are formal in speech and manner, and they abhor direct lies - though as the Draconian ambassador's actions show, they are not above deception as long as they can make it work within that framework. The design is particularly good, the makeup elaborate enough to be convincingly alien while still leaving the actors' faces free for a full range of expressions. Given how well they work in terms of both writing and makeup, I'm surprised that this was their only television appearance.
THOUGHTS:
Frontier in Space benefits from some good world building. This starts from the very first scene. The two crew members on the freighter discuss the potential of war with the Draconians. It's your basic exposition exchange, but it's given a lift by the attitude of the older crew member, who shrugs the whole thing off: "They steal a few of our cargoes, we steal a few of theirs. It'll all blow over."
A lot of information is sketched in quickly. Both sides still bitterly resent a previous war, one that we eventually learn was based on a misunderstanding (one that so closely mirrors the origins of Babylon 5's Earth/Minbari war that I can't help but wonder if J. Michael Straczynski had seen this story). The human government is at least somewhat authoritarian, with political dissidents sent to a prison from which no one returns. The Earth President has a lot of authority when it comes to questioning the Doctor and Jo or maintaining/severing diplomatic relations with the Draconians, but she cannot dictate purely military matters. These sorts of details help to make this future seem more real than many of Doctor Who's future societies.
Hulke was always good at weaving substance into his stories, and this is no exception. The Master is deliberately playing on the tensions between the two empires, but he didn't create them. His plan relies on fear. The humans fear the Draconians, and the Draconians fear them. With a slight push from his hypnotic device, he is able to use their existing fear to push both sides to make bad decisions and to take increasingly rash actions. It is, to put it mildly, not difficult to find real world instances of calamitous decisions that were driven by fear.
Structurally, there are good and bad elements. The narrative keeps itself fresh with frequent shifts of focus. The first two episodes revolve around the Doctor's and Jo's (unsuccessful) attempts to convince the Earth and Draconian authorities of the truth. The next two introduce the Master and his role in creating the current crisis, while also making time for an entertaining prison break caper. The final two episodes shift again, with the Doctor finally finding allies as the story reaches its conclusion. The regular changes in setting and focus keep the six episodes from becoming too stale.
Some staleness happens, however, because this serial suffers from severe repetition. In Episode One, the Doctor and Jo are captured and put in a cell. They escape, only to be recaptured and put back in that cell. In Episode Two, they are put in a cell on Earth. The Draconians break the Doctor out and briefly hold him captive, until he escapes and is recaptured by the humans. This continues for the entire story, with the Doctor and Jo being basically passed from one group to the next and from one cell to the next. There is simply too much of this, and the capture/escape pattern becomes tiresome long before the end.
Performances are strong. Pertwee is at his most authoritative when dealing with the various officials. He remains generally calm throughout, but we can see the Doctor growing more frustrated as the story goes along. He and Katy Manning continue to play wonderfully off each other, granting added energy to their scenes together, and Roger Delgado is excellent opposite both of them.
Oh, and if you haven't seen this serial yet... AVOID SPOILERS! There's a terrific twist late in the story, one that few viewers would be likely to see coming even though the story lays all the necessary groundwork. If you somehow don't already have prior knowledge of it, then don't look up anything about this serial before watching it.
OVERALL:
There's a lot to enjoy in Frontier in Space, from the interactions among the characters to the efficient world building. It does suffer from too many repetitions of the capture/escape formula, though, and this is definitely one of those stories best viewed an episode at a time rather than all in one sitting.
It's enjoyable thanks to strong performances and a fast pace, and it gets an extra boost from a late plot turn. Still, I think the repetitive structure keeps it from being as good as it might have been.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Previous Story: Carnival of Monsters
Next Story: Planet of the Daleks
Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On BlueSky:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment