Frontier in Space

Six episodes
Aired between 24th February 1973 and 31st March 1973

Written by Malcolm Hulke
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Paul Bernard

Synopsis

As the TARDIS spins its way across the cosmos, it's almost hit by an Earth Empire cargo vessel that's travelling through deep space.  Thinking fast, the Doctor makes the TARDIS dematerialise and rematerialise inside the cargo ship itself.

After the Doctor and Jo wander out of their box, they soon realise that they're in the 26th century, an era that marks the rule of a great Earth Empire.

From one of the view ports, Jo sees another ship coming to dock alongside the cargo vessel just before she hears a high pitched buzz.

The crew of the cargo ship see the second vessel too, but it morphs before their eyes into a Draconian Battle Cruiser (the Draconians being a rival race of lizard like people who have fought a war with the Earth empire in the past).  The crewmen, Stuart and Hardy, send a distress call back to Earth and refuse the Draconians entry to the ship when those demands are made of them.

Hardy goes to get some weapons to make a fight of it, and that's when he meets the Doctor.  There is a constant buzz in the air however  that the Doctor doesn't seem to hear.  It causes Hardy's view of the Doctor to shimmer and he suddenly turns into a Draconian!  Jo in turn sees Hardy and screams, thinking he's a Drashig.  Hardy forces the Doctor and Jo to surrender and takes his captive "Dragons" back to the deck where Stuart is being told by the Draconian commander to surrender his cargo or be destroyed.

Stewart calls their bluff and announces he's caught their spies on his ship and if they try to storm the cargo vessel he will kill them.

On Earth itself, the President (a woman) gets word of the distress call from the cargo ship.

This is another report of the Draconian's breaching the frontier between their empires and attacking Earth ships.  With the help of General Williams (who leads the Empire's armies), the pair summon the Draconian ambassador to her office.  The ambassador is the sun of the Draconian Emperor, a man of high rank and even higher arrogance.  He refutes the accusation that Draconians are attacking Earth ships and says it's more like the Earth Empire is provoking war by making up false claims so they can justify actually attacking Draconian cargo ships.  General Williams squares up to the Draconian Ambassador, but he's not afraid.  He curses Williams for being the man that started the last war.

As the Ambassador leaves, the President sees that word of the latest "Draconian" attacks has already broken out, and people are taking to the streets, demanding action.

Back on the cargo vessel, the Doctor and Jo are put into a makeshift cell.  The Doctor ponders what's going on and concludes that the buzzing noise is some kind of sonic hypnosis that makes people see what they feat the most.  In Jo's case, it was a Drashig, in the Earthmen, it was the Draconians.

The "Draconian's" as it turns out are not going to be put off their prize.  They dock with the cargo vessel and begin to cut through the air lock.  Hardy goes and grabs the Doctor and Jo just as they jimmy the lock and he drags them down to the hold.

When they burst through the airlock however, the Doctor is surpirsed to see that the boarders are Ogrons (see Day of the Daleks), not Draconians.

The Ogrons open fire, stunning the two crew and the Doctor, and lock them all up in the ships cell whilst they unload all the cargo (it happens to be crates of flour, hardly worth the trouble).

When the Doctor comes around, Jo fills him in on what they did, and says they took the TARDIS too.  This puzzles the Doctor because the Ogron's aren't intelligent enough to come up with the technology he saw, and he doesn't necessarily believe that they're working for the Daleks, they're mercenaries so will work for the highest reward.  But if not, then who?

The Doctor goes to the bridge and sees an Earth cruiser coming up on them.  The cruiser demands to board them and the Doctor is in no position to argue.  As the Earth soldiers barge on board, they question Stewart and Hardy as to what the human man and woman are doing on the ship (besides going to a fancy dress party by the looks).  Hardy is confused and shaken.  He decides that although he has no idea how the Doctor and Jo came to be on board, they must have helped the Draconians, they must be spies.

So, labelled as spies, the Doctor and Jo are put in the prison cell once more and taken back to Earth itself.  Once there, they are taken before the President and General Williams who are equally convinced that the Doctor and Jo are traitors, helping the Draconians.  Together, they confront the Draconian ambassador, challenging him to refute the evidence.

The ambassador in turn sees this as a pathetic attempt to lay blame, scoffing even when the Doctor does not play along with the humans account and instead says that he thinks there's a third party playing the Humans and Draconians off against one another to start an interstellar war.  Williams dismisses the prisoners but vows to get the truth out of them.

When the ambassador returns to his embassy, he and his aide decide that it would be a shrewd move to get alone with the Doctor and Jo and force a confession themselves, believing the truth to be that they are patsy's set up by the Earth Empire to implicate Draconia.  So, the ambassador's aide asks the President to summon the prisoners to her office again and they will talk to them together.  Once the Doctor and Jo are out their cell, the escorting guards are attacked by Draconians.

The humans fight them off and whilst Jo and the Doctor aim to escape, they are separated and the Doctor is captured by the Draconians.

He is taken to the embassy where the ambassador tries to question him.  He gets angry when the Doctor tells the same story about flying blue boxes and a third party manipulating them.

The ambassador threatens the Doctor with the mind probe, but before he can implement it, the Doctor does some Venusian Karate and fights his way out of the building.  He races through the garden, taking out a few Draconians along the way but is quickly recaptured by human soldiers as soon as he gets beyond the perimeter.

He is taken back to the cell in the Earth compound and meets up with Jo who's had a costume change into some kung-fu PJ's with knee high baseball sneakers.  The humans threaten them both with the mind probe too, but the Doctor isn't the least bit worried, because it doesn't do anything if you're telling the truth.

As they await the next summons, Jo picks up on the strange buzzing noise again.  Outside, the compound is attacked by Ogrons (whom the guards see as Draconians).  One of the Ogrons bursts through the cell door and orders the Doctor and Jo out.

As they leave, human reinforcements turn up and fight off the Ogrons, leaving the Doctor and Jo back in the clutches of the Earth Empire.

This breakout attempt just reinforces General William's opinion that they're Draconian spies.  He pushes the President to force a preemptive strike against the Draconians but the President refuses to be the one to start a war.  He says that if she doesn't do something, others will depose her.  She eventually relents to banishing the Draconian embassy from Earth and closing the boarders, but refuses to fire the first shot without conclusive evidence.

Williams has to accept this course of action, but he does get his wish to put the Doctor under the mind probe.  He questions the Doctor again and again until the machine burns out.

He still refuses to believe that the Doctor is telling the truth. At a loss with what to do with them next, the President condemns the Doctor to be sent to the lunar penal colony, whilst Jo is to remain on Earth where they hope to talk some sense into her and get her to confess.

One short trip to the moon later, the Doctor is lined up with other inmates and spoken to by a prisoner with special "privileges" to act as one of the guards.

The arrivals are warned not to cause trouble and things will be fine.  Once the roll call is out of the way, the Doctor quickly makes friends with a new arrival who tells him that he's part of the Peace Party, and all political criminals are sent to the moon. When the Doctor asks how long for, he says forever.

Back on Earth, an interesting development comes to pass.  A Commissioner from a far Earth colony known as Sirius 7 gets in touch with the President.  He says that the Doctor and Jo are citizens of that colony, and as such he has the right to transport them back to Sirius 7 for punishment by their own people for a list of crimes as long as your arm.  The President and Williams meet with the Commissioner to argue the point and it turns out that he is none other than the Master, disguised in a retro space age uniform.  His records seem legit and his reasoning is sound, so the President has no option but to release Jo into his custody and allow him to retrieve the Doctor from the Lunar Penal Colony, much to William's protests.

Meanwhile, on the moon, the Doctor has made another friend in Professor Dale, another member of the Peace Party who's been in prison for quite a while.

The Doctor asks to be let in on the plans to escape, but Dale keeps refuting any kind of plan, that is until the guard prisoner gives Dale the instructions that two spacesuits have been left in the airlock.  Dale listens to the Doctor's story and decides that it's best to get him back to Earth and connected with the party so that he can spread his truth to the citizens of the Earth Empire.

Back on Earth, the Master collects Jo who is very, very reluctant to go with him.

She eventually agrees because he threatens to leave her there to rot, and assures her that he's going to pick up the Doctor so she'll be reunited with him.  She asks how he knew about them, and the Master gloats that he was pleased and surprised when the Ogrons brought the TARDIS back to him.  This indicates that he's behind the provoking of interstellar war, except that he mentions "his employers" in passing.

The Doctor and Professor Dale head off to the airlock and sure enough, they find two space suits waiting.  From there, the plan is to have a quick walk across the moons surface to the spaceport where they can hijack a ship and get back to Earth.  As they suit up however, they don't see the guard lock the airlock door and begin the depressurisation.

They do however notice as the air seeps away, that the suits oxygen tanks are empty.  All this is leads to a very embarrassing situation then when the Master is the one to save them by turning the oxygen back on.  He explains that he's there to collect the Doctor and after convincing the prison Warden that it's in his best interest to let his latest prisoner go, he persuades the Doctor to come along quietly in order to be reunited with Jo.

Once he and Jo have been placed in a cell on the Master's transport, the Doctor asks why he's still alive.  The Master explains that his employers will probably want to see the Doctor.  The plot thickens as he reveals that his employers are on the Ogron Planet (but aren't Ogrons).  He sets a course to go there.

Once the ship is underway, the Doctor cuts through the cell lock with a file and Jo cleverly keeps talking as if they're having a conversation, allowing the Doctor to slip outside the shuttle to make his way to the bridge.

There's a moment of danger when the Master suddenly changes course, pulling the Doctor away from the ship. but luckily he rectifies this by using the air out of his oxygen tanks to push himself back to the ship.

The Master meanwhile goes to check up on Jo, and soon discovers their little trick.  He's amused about Jo's sorrow that the Doctor is probably off course.

The Doctor reaches the bridge, but the Master warns him to surrender or he will flush Jo out of the airlock.  The Doctor races back to the cell and they both prepare to have a fight, but suddenly, the ship is boarded by Draconians that enter via the very airlock that Jo is trapped in.

The Draconian's think that seeing as this is an Earth ship, the group have breached their portion of space and thus have transgressed the laws.  The Draconians are initially prepared to kill them all, but the Doctor manages to convince them to take them back to Draconia.  The Doctor, Master and Jo re once again put in the cell for the trip, but nobody sees the Master slip a handheld beacon under his pillow.

Sure enough, his friends, the Ogrons have found the signal and are following.

Once on Draconia, the Doctor, Jo and the Master are given an audience with the Draconian Emperor.  They walk in as the Emperor's Son is begging him to strike at the Humans first, but the Emperor refuses, knowing that it could well mean the end of both species.

The Doctor ingratiates himself with the Emperor by telling a tale of when he visited the planet five centuries ago and saved the fifteenth Emperor (and the other Draconians) from a great "space" plague.  In return, he was made an honorary noble of Draconia.

Despite the Emperor's Son challenging his story, the Doctor gets the ear of the ruler.  He tells him that the Master is the one responsible for bringing both empires to the brink of war and he intends to carry on until shots are fired.  He explains everything about the sonic hypnotising device and the Master's Ogron servants.

As the Emperor considers this information, his soldiers report an Earth ship approaching.  At the same time, Jo hears the strange buzzing sound and realises that it's the Ogrons.  She tries to warn them all but the Ogrons burst into the throne room, guns blazing.  They recover the Master and taker him back to the ship, As they leave and the hypnosound wears off, the Doctor points to an unconscious Ogron and everyone in the court, including the Emperor's Son see that the "human" attackers are indeed Ogrons.

The Emperor decrees that they must get their new captive to Earth to show the humans definitive proof of who's behind all this,  They hastily form a plan for the Doctor and Jo to take Ogron back in the Master's old ship, accompanied by the Draconian Prince and his guards to personally vouch for the Draconians and corroborate the story.  They secure the Ogron in the cells and set off,

It's not long before they discover that the Ogron ship is closing in on them.  Although the Master regrets being forced to, he gives the order to launch missiles and forces the Doctor to take the controls and evade.

Meanwhile, the Ogron prisoner breaks free of his cell and disables the Draconian guards.  He gets to the bridge and fights with the Doctor, causing their ship to slow down enough for the Ogrons to board.  The Ogrons fight their way on-board but an Earth cruiser turns up and forces the Master to recall his servants.  They're not empty handed however.  They manage to capture Jo as they leave.

The Ogrons get away and the Doctor and the Draconians are arrested and shipped off to Earth.  They do get to see the President, but without the Ogrons as proof, she won't believe them.  The Doctor suggests mounting an expedition to the Ogron homeworld to see what they're up to but General Williams debunks it as a trap.  The Prince and Williams enter a lengthy squabble where it turns out that Williams accidentally starts the first Earth / Draconian War because he gives the order to open fire on the Draconian battleship that was unarmed but unable to communicate because it had its radios wiped out in a neutron storm.

In order to deal with the shame of the revelation and restore some honour to his name, General Williams agrees to take a small ship and go with the Prince and the Doctor to the Ogron Homeworld.
Meanwhile, the Master takes Jo to the Ogron Homeworld and tries to hypnotise her into betraying the Doctor.  She has grown more wily since their last encounter however and is able to resist the hypnotism by reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb in her head.

The Master becomes stubborn and tries to smash through her mental defences using the sonic hypnotic device.  Her tactics thwart that too however and the Master is forced to have her locked up so he can use her as bait instead.

Once in a cell, Jo uses the spoon from her prison meal to dig through the soft ground earth to the next cell.  She then sneaks off into the Masters base and finds the hypnotic device and pockets it.  She sees on nearby computer equipment that the Doctor's ship has arrived in orbit.  She manages to transmit a distress signal to him before the Master captures her again.  Unfortunately, he looks rather pleased and reveals that he muted the signal so only the Doctor's ship would hear it, and he intends to lure him here, so she's done what he wanted her to do all along.

The Doctor puts the ship down nearby and as they walk across the quarry-like landscape, they're ambushed by Ogrons.

The soldiers trade shots for a bit but are ultimately scared away by some kind of large globular creature, a terrifying deity they worship known as an Ogron Eater.

The Ogrons flee back to the Master, who is understandably furious, especially when he says that their "masters" are arriving on the planet as they speak.  The Master takes events into his own hands and greets the new arrivals - the Daleks!

The Doctor, Prince and General Williams hear the ship arriving and as they move closer to the base, they're met by the Master and the Daleks.

The Daleks know that they're facing the Doctor and want him exterminated, but the Master manages to convince them that it's a far better punishment to keep him alive to see the known galaxy fall into all out war and the remnants be crushed by the Daleks.  The Gold Dalek considers this and eventually agrees.  It instructs the Master to keep the Doctor prisoner whilst it goes and prepares the Dalek army.

The Master leads the Doctor and his group back to his base and imprisons them with Jo.  :Lucky for them, the Master had no idea that Jo stole the hypnotic device.  She's able to give it to the Doctor who uses it to convince an Ogron guard that he's the Gold Dalek.  The Ogron unlocks the cell door and flees in terror.

The Doctor tells Williams and the Prince to take the ship and get off the planet.  They should both go to their governments and warn them of the Daleks plans, and if possible, mount a joint assault on the Ogron Homeworld.

With that done, the Doctor and Jo head back to the Masters control room where the TARDIS is stored.  They're discovered and caught by the Master and his bunch of Ogrons again as they reach the door.

The Doctor uses the hypnotic device to convince the Ogrons that the Ogron Eater has appeared.  They all panic and knock the Masters aim as he fires at the Doctor.  The shot wounds the Doctors arm as the Master is carried away in the crowd of fleeing Ogrons, allowing Jo enough time to help the Doctor stumble into the TARDIS.

Working fast, the Doctor staggers to the console and takes off, then placing his hands on the TARDIS' telepathic circuits and sending a message to the Time Lords.  He collapses unconscious as they spin off into space.

Trivia

• This story is well remembered by Dr Who fans for a sad occasion.  This is Roger Delgado's last on-screen story as the Master.  Prior to this story, he'd said he wanted to leave the show because he wasn't getting as many jobs offered to him because everyone thought he was a Dr Who regular.  So, they tried to send him out with a bang.  Sadly, on 18th June 1973, whilst filming another show in Turkey, the taxi that was taking him to his shoot crashed and fell off a cliff, killing him, one of the crew and the driver.  Although many people think that this is why the final on screen appearance ends abruptly for him, the dates tell you different.  It was just bad editing that gave him such a sudden send off.  He is missed and lamented to this day.

• Beginning of the end - With Roger Delgado wanting to leave, and Katy Manning wanting to go  too, Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks decided that they'd done Dr Who long enough too.  They wanting to move on to try and create a new space opera TV show called Moonbase 3.  This story was a sort of dress rehersal for it, to test the waters and see if people would be receptive.

• The sonic screwdriver changes its appearance here for the final time in the classic series.  It looks this way until it's finally destroyed in the Visitation in the mid 80's.

What worked

• Got some halfway decent model spaceships from Jerry Anderson
• Great to see the return of the Ogrons because it helps establish some kind of continuity in the universe.
• Again, like the Space Pirates, this tries to create a galaxy wide scope that's rare in many TV shows of the time
• The political tension can be good at times
• The Draconian costumes are probably the second best costumes in Classic Doctor Who (the first being the Destroyer from Battlefield)
• Nice to show the Daleks again as schemers and with a galaxy wide stake in things

What didn't work

• The ships move just like models on string!
• The Ogron Eater is terrible, just terrible
• The inability for anyone to accept the truth is beyond annoying
• the capture and escape routines go on a bit too long
• Why does the master say his employers want to see the Doctor when clearly they dont
• Not sure about the human guard costumes either

Overall Feelings

So, when you watch this story, if you're anything like me, you'll see lots of other shows within it.  Does that mean they were all inspired by this story and therefore it's brilliant beyond compare?  Probably not.  For every show that is developed after this in a similar vein (Babylon 5, Blakes 7 etc,)  there's another Doctor Who show that this in turn has been influence by (Daleks' Master Plan. Colony in Space etc.)

I think Frontier in Space has a good mix of the older stories.  It has all the scheming Daleks of Master Plan, and thankfully omits the stupid side antics of Egypt with a carry on star.  It has the political too and fro of Colony in Space with an arbitrating Master, but we only have to stare at a quarry for two episodes.  It has the prisoners from camp to camp of the War Games but for only six episodes not ten. In these respects and more, the story does manage to improve upon their basis and deliver a decent space opera.

But let's not forget that the Doctor Who Production Team had absolutely no money to do a massive space opera, so the scope and vision of Malcolm Hulke. no matter how improved, is still limited.  The story spans entire planets and indeed the galaxy, but all we really see of it is the inside of a prison cell and a quarry.  There was a lot of capture and escape in the War Games, but at least it was done in interesting ways and often in different locations.  This time, the Doctor and Jo are put into the same prison multiple times.

If you can look past the occasional tedium of repeated arguments and scenery, this story has a lot to offer and entertain.  Plus it's worth watching for the final squaring off of the Master and the Doctor in this guise.

Rating

8 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

6 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Daleks' Master Plan

The Space Pirates

The War Games

Colony in Space

The Armageddon Factor (The Key to Time Part 6)

Blakes 7

Babylon 5

Consulting the Matrix

Who would win in a fight between the Ogron Eater and other anatomy shaped monsters - the Vervoids?