10x3. Frontier in Space
Writer: Malcolm Hulke
Director: Paul Bernard
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks
Producer: Barry Letts
Synopsis: The Doctor and Jo
arrive in the 26th century, where a growing Earth Empire is in the
midst of an escalating conflict with the Draconians. The two of them
are suspected by each side of spying for the other, while the hawkish
General Williams presses the Earth President to declare war and similar
pressure mount on the Draconian side. In fact, the conflict is being
orchestrated by the Master and the Ogrons, who are working for the
Daleks in an attempt to wipe out the other major galactic powers.
Review: "Frontier in Space"
strikes me as a case of the creative team being so intent on telling a
"big" story that they forgot such "little" concerns as interesting
characters and original plot mechanics. It hops back and forth between
outer space, Earth, the Moon, Draconia, and the Ogrons' planet, and the
possibility of a devastating galactic war is ever-present, and yet the
story is told largely by having the Doctor and Jo locked in prison over
and over again.
One part of me says that it's unfair to pick on Doctor Who for problems that can be
attributed to budgetary constraints. Certainly "Frontier in Space"
suffers from the inherent problems of trying to do space opera on a low
budget, and I can imagine that part of the reason for keeping the
Doctor and Jo locked up was that they simply didn't have the technical
resources to portray what was actually happening outside the prison
cells. The other part of me, however, says that a TV series should know
its limitations, and that in the case of Doctor Who, something like this
probably shouldn't be attempted unless the plotting and
characterization can sustain it on their own. Unfortunately, "Frontier"
is full of contrived plotting that seems designed just to take up time.
The Doctor's two "space walks," for example, are mere diversions that
simply set the story back where it was already headed, and most of the
prison breaks result from laughably inept security procedures. Does it
not occur to anyone that they should actually pay attention to what the
Doctor and Jo are doing while inside their cells? And if they can't be
bothered to do that, couldn't they at least check their pockets (at
least two escapes are only possible because one of them has snuck in a
gadget) or separate them so they can't plan an escape together?
The Earth/Draconia conflict has the beginnings of an interesting story.
Twenty-sixth century Earth, which the script explicitly states is in
the early days of the empire we saw in "The Mutants," is a rather
unsettling place. Despite the moderate tone espoused by the President,
thousands of members of the "Peace Party" have been imprisoned on a
lunar penal colony, and from the opposite side, many political leaders
are now urging all-out war with the Draconians. General Williams,
despite keeping to his pledge of personal loyalty to the President,
strongly disagrees with her decisions and warns that some are calling
for a military dictatorship. Draconia is in a similar political
situation, with its leaders hesitant to declare war but fearing it may
be inevitable. The Master's manipulations naturally take root in this
distrustful atmosphere, and here the script calls to attention the
issue of how precarious negotations can be in this atmosphere.
Unfortunately, most of these concepts and characters are only developed
to the extent necessary for us to understand their immediate roles in
the plot. One could certainly infer that the impriosning of anti-war
activists contributed to the poisonous political atmosphere on Earth,
for example, but these sorts of issues rarely assume center stage in
the script, which usually seems more occupied with the mechanics of the
next jail-break.
There's a scene towards the end which both undermines the whole
Earth/Draconia backstory and illustrates the flimsy way in which the
script's tougher issues are handled. The Draconian Prince reveals that
General Williams actually started the first war between the two empires
by mistakenly firing upon a Draconian battlecruiser on a rescue mission
(the ship was carrying a Draconian aristocrat and had its missile tanks
empty). Surprisingly, Williams simply accepts this story at face value,
apologizes, and becomes a full supporter of peace in the space of about
five minutes. Not only does this render his character rather
unbelievable, but it also makes both sides look generally idiotic. Does
it really make sense that they fought a prolonged war instead of just
checking first to see if there had been an accident or
misunderstanding? And that no one has thought to investigate the causes
of the first war until now? If the leadership of both worlds were
really this foolish, I'd have a hard time believing they could have
built up these empires in the first place. Moreover, after setting up
both sides as believably flawed and paranoid, it makes the solution too
easy. The outbreak of xenophobia on both worlds and the silencing of
anti-war voices on Earth don't ultimately matter that much, because all
that was really needed was for Williams and the Draconian Prince to
have a five-minute conversation that they could have had at any randmo
moment (despite all the suspicion, the leaders of both sides were still
talking to each other the entire time).
The portrayal of the Master is a step up from what it was in his last
two appearances. His animus against the Doctor is better developed: he
laments that killing the Doctor with a long-range missile might lack
the desired personal touch, and he later asks the Daleks to keep the
Doctor alive long enough to see the universe in ruins. The script also
moves away from the motif of his assisting an in-progress attack on
Earth without going over the top like "The Time Monster" and having him
try to seize control of the entire universe. We see that he's savvy
enough to meddle effectively in interplanetary politics, and that he's
capable of fooling the Daleks into accepting him as a loyal servant (he
clearly plans to hold the upper hand over everyone when the dust
settles, though he doesn't explain exactly how). I also thought that
both he and Jo were well-served by their interactions in Episode 6,
when, after she proves resistant to his attempts at hypnosis and
deception using his "fear box," he then uses her resourcefulness to his
own advantage by giving her the means to escape her cell and rigging
the communications array so that the message she sends functions as a
trap for the Doctor. I've enjoyed seeing Jo become more and more of a
force to reckon with, and the scene in which she uses nursery rhymes to
block out the Master's tiresome "YOU WILL O-BEY ME" hypnosis routine
literally earned a round of applause from me. At the same time, it
would be unrealistic for her to outmaneuver the Master at every turn,
and I think this turn of events strikes the right balance.
Unfortunately, there's a fair amount in the final episode that doesn't
work. The Ogrons' stupidity and the Master's exasperation with them
sometimes works as a gag, but the monster that scares them off when
they're about to attack the Doctor and his allies proves to be another
underdeveloped idea. The Doctor later discovers a cave painting that
leads him to believe that the Ogrons see this creature as their god,
but that's as far as it goes. Like so much of the social/political
background material in "Frontier in Space," this is a potentially
interesting concept that's left hanging out there. We don't know if the
creature cares about or even understands the conflict at hand, why the
Ogrons worship it, or why it's even there, other than to prolong the
cat-and-mouse games on the planet long enough for the Daleks to arrive.
The sixth episode also suffers from a scene edited so poorly as to be
almost incomprehensible. The Master and the Ogrons have the Doctor and
Jo surrounded, the Doctor activates the Master's "fear box" which
drives the Ogrons crazy, a general melée ensues, during which
the Doctor is shot and the Master just...vanishes. I've watched the
scene twice, and Master is literally there in one shot and then simply
absent in the next, leaving us with no idea where he went or why or
even how. I realize it's not the creative team's fault that this turned
out to be Delgado's swan song, but certainly they knew he wasn't going
to appear in the next serial, and this is a deeply unsatisfactory way
to have him exit the story. (Reportedly, the script originally called
for an ending involving an illusion of the monster, with Williams and
the Draconian Prince chasing the Master while the Doctor and Jo leave
to pursue the Daleks. Barry Letts scrapped it because the monster was
unconvincing, but personally I'd have preferred more of the
silly-looking monster in exchange for a more coherent ending.)
I'm aware that my tone has perhaps been excessively harsh, and if this
had been a Hartnell or Troughton serial, I might have gone easier on
it. But if the Doctor Who
team didn't know their limitations at first, it seems like they should
have figured out by the tenth season what they could and couldn't do,
or at least come up with a better way to cut corners than to have the
Doctor and Jo spend half the story in jail. Still, whatever the faults
of "Frontier in Space," I'll give it this much: when it was over, I was
half-tempted to cue up "Planet of the Daleks" right away to see what
came next.
Rating: ** (out of four)
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