Frontier in Space

Dear Gary—

I feel cheated after watching Frontier in Space. This six episode serial is nothing more than an overlong prologue to the next in the series.

“Well that’s simple then; I mean, all we’ve got to do is find out what’s going on, who’s behind the Ogrons, where they’ve taken the TARDIS, go and get it back, and then we can all go home.”

I wish it had been that simple, Jo; I wish it hadn’t been a six episode long journey, and in the end nobody can go home.

Six meaningless episodes that are all forgotten when the Daleks show up at the end of the final installment. All are forgotten—the Ogrons, the Earth Empire, the Draconian Empire, the Master. They were all red herrings.

The whole of Frontier in Space feels as though it were slapped together because somebody realized they had a six week gap before they could air the real story (Planet of the Daleks) and so they had to hurry up and fill those six timeslots.

The result is we have the Doctor and Jo captured, rescued, captured, rescued, captured on an endless loop almost as if they were back in the Miniscope from our previous story Carnival of Monsters. We have the Doctor explaining over and over that he is not in the employ of the Draconians but rather some sort of mass hypnosis is making Ogrons appear as Draconians to Earthlings and Earthlings to Draconians all in an attempt to start a war between the two empires. Again and again we have the Earth President arguing with her general over whether or not to go to war while television broadcasts in the background describe worldwide protests and demonstrations.

“Jo, will you stop pacing up and down like a perishing panda?” But who can blame her on this treadmill of a story?

Then abruptly the Doctor escapes out of his Miniscope cycle and is shipped off to a penal colony on the moon where he repeats his war conspiracy conjectures, and where the Master suddenly appears. This serves as a brief intermission before we are spun off into another seeming cycle of futility.

Now we have the Doctor trying to convince the Draconians of his mass hypnosis theory—he has reversed the polarity so to speak; instead of Ogron to Draconian it is Ogron to Earthling; instead of the Doctor trying to convince Earth he is now trying to convince Draconia; instead of the Earth President arguing with her general the Draconian Emperor is arguing with his son.

At least the Doctor has an interested ear in the Draconian Emperor, who seems much more composed and self controlled than the Earth President. “An Emperor who does not rule deposes himself,” this wise man states, and he shares the Doctor’s view that “fear is the greatest enemy of them all, for fear leads us to war.”

But Frontier in Space isn’t leading us much of anywhere.

Off we go into yet another recurring cycle of flights on spaceships; space walks to repair/sabotage; hailing vessels that might or might not be what they appear; locked up in cells only to escape from them. I lose track of what ship we’re in, where we’re headed, and who has the upper hand.

Even the individual episode ending cliff hangers seem forced—almost as though they just filmed the whole thing in one go and then chopped it up into six equal parts, never mind at what point the break occurred.

We finally end up on the Ogron planet where the Master has established a base, but it is soon revealed that he is working with the Daleks to mastermind this war between the Draconian and Earth empires. Of course the Master only ever works to his own end, and I do love, Gary, when he sarcastically mocks, “Do not fail the Daleks indeed, you stupid tin boxes.”

“We’ll see who rules the galaxy when this is over,” the ever confident Master states.

The thing is, Gary, we don’t. This (Frontier in Space) is never really over. It just kind of ends. The General and the Prince return to Earth and Draconia respectively with some vague understanding that the truth of the mass hypnosis will be told and war averted. The Ogrons scatter in a panic. The dreaded Daleks take off with their real threat yet to be realized. The Master accidentally shoots the Doctor. The Doctor stumbles into the TARDIS with Jo and dematerializes, leaving the Master behind and sending a desperate message to the Time Lords using the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS.

And we can finally get off of this merry-go-round, a little dizzy and confused.

“Only you could manage to have a traffic accident in space.” That’s what this was; a Doctor Who traffic accident in space.

And what exactly was the point?

I would like this story much better if it had been a manageable four episodes. I would have liked it much better if there was a conclusive end to all of the plot threads. I would have liked it much better if the final few minutes did not make the entirety of the preceding six episodes seem irrelevant.

I feel cheated.

Sadly, this rather unsatisfying ending is the last we will see of Roger Delgado as the Master; he died shortly after Frontier in Space aired.

I hope, Gary, that somewhere out there . . .