Frontier in Space

Good grief. You know you are first person to believe me.

Frontier in Space may not be the best title for this story. The Doctor in Prison would be a more apt title. If you totaled all the time the Doctor and Jo spend outside of a cell or other prison facility, I'm not sure you could total enough time to get a full episode and this story is six episodes. With a rap like that you might think this would be a dull story. However, you would be mistaken.
Plot Summary

The Doctor and Jo materialize on a cargo ship in the 26th century where the galaxy is divided between the human and Draconian empires. As the Doctor tries to figure out where and when they are, the ship is hit with a sonic pulse from another ship. The second ship moves to attack the cargo ship, appearing to the two-man crew to be a Draconian warship.

As the second officer goes below to secure the hold, the Doctor tries to introduce himself, but the crewman is convinced he is a Draconian soldier. Jo coming up behind him, sees the officer as a Drashig. The officer tosses the two in the brig while they prepare to be boarded. Meanwhile the Captain sends a distress signal to Earth who in turn dispatch a warship to assist.

In the brig, the Doctor suspects that the sonic pulse is stimulating the fear portion of the brain, causing people to see the thing they fear most. He then sets to use his sonic screwdriver to unbolt the door. He succeeds but the second officer returns and places the Doctor and Jo in front of them to act as human shields. When the ship is boarded, it is Ogrons and not Draconians who stun the crew and the Doctor. Jo is tossed back into the cell as they steal the cargo and the TARDIS.

On Earth, tensions run high as the President confronts the Draconian ambassador about this latest attack. The Draconian denies involvement and points out that humans have been attacking Draconian ships as well. Word of the attacks are leaking out and anti-Draconian sentiment is running high all over the Earth.

The Doctor wakes from being stunned just as the Earth warship arrives. He signals them and lets Jo out of her cell. As the soldiers board, they interrogate the crew. As the crew can't remember, they accuse the Doctor and Jo of being stowaways and agents of the Draconians. The soldiers then arrest the Doctor and Jo.

The Doctor and Jo are transported back to Earth but no one believes their tale. General Williams firmly believes they are spies and his paranoia convinces the President as well. The Doctor and Jo are brought before the President and the Draconian ambassador but the Doctor maintains his innocence causing the Draconian ambassador to sneer at their story.

The ambassador is worried though of a greater plot. He agrees to let one of his aides arrange an escape for the Doctor and Jo, although only the Doctor is retrieved and brought back to the embassy. The Draconians are convinced that the Doctor is a plant by General Williams to start a war. The Doctor maintains his story that a third party is behind this. When the Draconians threaten to probe his mind, the Doctor escapes but is immediately captured by the humans.

Arriving back at the prison, Jo greets the Doctor but is distracted by a sonic pulse similar to the one on the cargo ship. A squad of Ogrons attack the prison, appearing to the guards as Draconians. They get the Doctor and Jo out of their cell but are gunned down as they try to leave the prison.

Believing the attack to be the work of the Draconians, the ambassador is expelled from Earth and the Doctor is subjected to a mind probe by General Williams. The Doctor continues to tell the truth although the General refuses to believe it. In the face of this failure, the Doctor is sent to the penal colony on the moon which is a home for political prisoners, while Jo is left on Earth.

Shortly after the Doctor is dispatched, the President receives an extradition request from the representative of the Earth colony on Sirius 4, which has dominion status. The representative, which turns out to be the Master, arrives and informs her that the Doctor and Jo are Sirius 4 criminals and are to be sent back to stand trial. The President agrees, over the objections of General Williams, so long as the prisoners are available to be sent back to Earth if needed for information following their conviction. The Master agrees and collects Jo, slyly confirming her accusation that he is behind the Ogron attacks and that he became aware of the Doctor's involvement when the Ogrons brought back the TARDIS in their last raid.

On the lunar prison, the Doctor falls in with a political prisoner named Professor Dale. Professor Dale is planning an escape and elects to take the Doctor with him upon hearing his story. Professor Dale has bribed the shift lackey and the two enter an airlock with two stolen suits. However, the lackey has double-crossed them and the air tanks are empty. He then depressurizes the room. The Doctor bangs on the door trying to get out when they are discovered by the Master who repressurizes the room.

The Master takes custody of the Doctor and places him in a holding cell on his ship with Jo. The Master then prepares to take them back to the Ogron home world. Unbeknownst to the Master, the Doctor has a file chain hidden in his shoe. He uses Jo to distract the Master with banter while he cuts through the door hinge.

Once out, the Doctor puts on a space suit and leaves the ship via an airlock. Shortly after doing so, the Master course corrects the ship, jolting the Doctor off the side. He manages to recover himself and climb through a hatch to the flight deck. The Master checking in on Jo and the Doctor, becomes suspicious when the Doctor doesn't answer despite Jo's cover. He discovers the Doctor's escape and places Jo in the airlock, threatening to blow her into space if the Doctor does not return. The Doctor attacks the Master, briefly disarming him but he is forced to surrender due to the threat to Jo.

Before he can return them to the cage, the ship is boarded by Draconians as they have accidentally flown into Draconian space. The Master tries to have them released but given the icy relations between the two empires, the captain of the battle cruiser elects to take them back to Draconia to stand trial. All three are placed in the holding cell but the Master activates a beacon, signaling their location to his Ogron mercenaries.

The ship lands on Draconia and the Doctor presents his case, also arguing that he is the same Doctor who aided the Draconians five hundred years previously. The Draconians receive a transmission that an Earth ship is asking to land and the Emperor agrees to hear the peace commission. Jo however hears the fear sound wave and alerts the Doctor. Ogrons burst in and rescue the Master but one of their number is knocked out and left behind. As the ship leaves and the sound disappears, the Emperor sees the Ogron as he is and not as the human commandos they all thought they were.

Seeing that the Doctor is telling the truth, the Emperor orders the Ogron be taken to Earth along with the Doctor, Jo and his son as representative of Draconia. As they fly towards Earth, the Ogron ship discovers them and attacks. The attacks allow the captive Ogron to escape and he attacks the Doctor on the bridge, causing the ship to stall in space. The Master elects to send a boarding party to take the Doctor alive. The party takes Jo captive but the Doctor and the Draconian prince hold the Ogrons off.

An Earth battle cruiser approaches and the Master orders retreat back to the Ogron homeworld, taking Jo with them. The Earth battle cruiser takes the Doctor and the Draconian prince back to Earth. The President authorizes an expedition of a single ship to the Ogron homeworld to verify the story. General Williams objects but the Draconian prince exposes him as the cause of the previous war when he fired on an unarmed Draconian battle cruiser twenty years ago. Shamed, General Williams offers to lead the expedition himself.

On the Ogron homeworld, the Master prepares for the Doctor. He attempts to hypnotize Jo but when that fails, he activates his fear device. Jo manages to beat that as well so the Master has her taken to a cell to wait for the Doctor. In the cell, Jo discovers the earth to be soft and uses a soup spoon to begin to dig her way under the bars.

The Doctor, General Williams and the Draconian prince leave Earth and fly towards the Ogron homeworld. They are attacked by a Draconian cruiser but they manage to escape using hyperdrive. The attack forces the Doctor to EVA to make some repairs which are successful and they end up in orbit around the Ogron planet.

Having escaped the cell, Jo finds the Master's fear inducer and pockets it. She then finds a transmitter and calls for help. Her transmission is received by the Doctor who descend to the planet. The Master discovers her and thanks her for participating as he hoped Jo would escape and signal the Doctor. He plants a homing beacon to lure the Doctor further while Jo is taken back to a new cell.

After landing, the Doctor, General Williams, the Draconian prince and a squad of soldiers make their way towards the homing signal. They are ambushed by an Ogron patrol but the patrol is scared off by fearsome creature the Ogrons worship. The party continues until they are captured by the Master, supported by his employers, the Daleks. The Daleks intend the humans and the Draconians to destroy each other in war and they would move in to the vacuum and take over.

The Daleks intend to kill the Doctor but the Master persuades them to keep him alive until after the war is finished so that he can see the loss of all that he loves and then kill him. The Daleks agree and place him in the Master's charge and prepare to leave the Ogron homeworld. The Master intends to double-cross the Daleks at a later opportunity and begins to make his own plans.

In the cell, Jo gives the Doctor the fear inducer she stole. The Doctor modifies it and tricks the Ogron guard into thinking he is a Dalek and unlocks the cell before running off. General Williams and the Draconian prince return to their ship to head back and tell their respective governments what is happening. The Doctor and Jo head to the TARDIS where they are surrounded by the Master and Ogrons. The Doctor activates the fear inducer and the Ogrons flee while he attacks the Master. The Master gets a shot off which wounds the Doctor in the head before running himself. Jo helps the Doctor into the TARDIS and they take off with the Doctor sending a telepathic message to the Time Lords as they do.

Analysis

This is a fairly good story which would have been even more poignant in the Cold War era. Malcolm Hulke was well known for his very left wing political leanings and those come across in this story, although not in a bad way. There is nuance and a lot of character depth especially as this story is allowed to breathe. Yet the breathing does not make the story feel slow in any appreciable manner.

The best parts of the story are the four episodes in the middle. The story starts slow and the acting of the two cargo crew members is less than stellar. Jo's initial reaction to the fear inducer is also a bit over the top and that is a bit grating. However, once they are on Earth and they are fully enmeshed in the political schemes between the humans and the Draconians, things pick up nicely.

The Draconians are quite impressive both in costume and style. They come across better than the humans and given Hulke's leanings, it is easy to see the Russian allusions in the them. Never-the-less, they are not perfect and are shown to be as arrogant and belligerent as the humans.

The military, by contrast, comes across badly in this one. The Earth President starts as somewhat sympathetic to the Doctor but is worn down by political threats to her position by the military in the form of General Williams. But whatever sympathy you might have with her goes away when the Doctor is sent to the lunar colony. It is a bit of a twist as the lunar political prison is akin to the Siberian camps Stalin sent his prisoners off to but the humans are operating in the role of the Western governments, riddled with political corruption and cowed by the military.

It is also interesting to note that even the political prisoners are not given a complete pass. They are the most sympathetic (outside of the Doctor and Jo) but even there one prisoner admits to using violent means of expressing their beliefs. The irony gets laid on thicker in that they are referred to as the "Peace Party."

The Master is at his most charming and surprisingly competent in this story. He comes in as a complete surprise in the middle of Episode Three with no fanfare at all. He just shows up as the representative of Sirius IV and it is only the audience's familiarity with him that lets anyone know that something is up; at least until he collects Jo. He also does very little to screw things up unlike some of his other schemes. He is only thwarted in taking the Doctor back to the Daleks by their capture by the Draconians and then later by the arrival of an Earth warship, neither of which he was in a position to do anything about. Even at the end, he fails because of the Ogrons and not anything he did in particular (although he should have noticed the fear inducer being missing).

As Roger Delgado's last story (he was killed in a car accident three months after filming wrapped), this was an excellent performance on his part. Obviously the team didn't know that it would be his last story or he would have had a more poignant exit that simply fleeing with the Ogrons after shooting at the Doctor. But it does sum up his character in the series: he gets the drop on the Doctor but cannot kill him, mostly due to his own ego, and is then forced to disappear until striking once again.

Aside from the weak opening, the only other significant problem of this story is the very rushed ending. Rushed endings are notable in Doctor Who as I have ranted about before, but this may be the first one that I've heard a proper explanation for. The story goes that Malcolm Hulke came up with the idea of the Daleks being behind the plan to start the Earth-Draconia war and wrote his story accordingly. Terry Nation, who owned the rights to the Daleks, agreed to let Hulke use them in Episode Six but that he would take over the story afterwards. Nation then proceeded to tweak the last five minutes of the story, dismissing most of the characters and allowing him to start on a totally independent Dalek story (Planet of the Daleks), effectively ignoring the previous story.

Still, even if you know the circumstances surrounding it, it doesn't change the disappointment of having such a rushed ending, especially after enjoying the amount of breathing room given to the characters in other stories. Fortunately, the ending is not bad and all the characters continue to act in a manner that is consistent with their earlier characterizations. What probably would have helped would have been to scrap the EVA scene earlier in the story in favor of more detail in the final escape. At the very least, it would have nice to see General Williams and the Draconian prince get back to their ship rather than just see them run out the door. But that is a relatively small quibble on my part.

The production values for this story were pretty good. Everything looks very 70's futuristic but you can't help that. The model work was not bad on the ships and the make-up on the Draconians was excellent. It is a bit of a shame that the Draconians never made a come back in a later story as they were an interesting race. There were a few janky moments, especially with the EVAs as the wires holding the Doctor up were pretty visible. A change in the lighting might have helped there. The recycled footage of the Drashig and the Sea Devil looked a bit off as well, but there you are dealing with the limitations of previous stories so it's somewhat understandable.

I will drop an aside that if you have a thing for opera gloves, this is your story. All the women are wearing them, including the mind probe technician. I can understand the Earth President and members of her staff wearing nice gowns and wearing gloves but why the technician. I would have expected her to be in more of a coveralls type of uniform. There is also a naughty poster on the control room of the cargo ship. A topless woman is lying on her backside with a laser glow where her nipples are. It's the sort of thing you might expect in an actual cargo ship, but I'm very surprised that no one at the BBC busted the show for it given the focus on children.

All-in-all, I liked this one and would watch it readily watch it again. It has it's slow moments and a few other flaws, but nothing that genuinely diminishes my enjoyment. A good story, good acting, and even pretty good effects for the time. It is well worth the watch.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5