The Monster of Peladon

Dear Gary—

“There’s a gang of hot-headed miners running around in those tunnels with sophisticated weapons.” That nicely sums up The Monster of Peladon.

The Doctor has returned to Peladon fifty years after the events of The Curse of Peladon, this time with Sarah Jane Smith in tow.

“It’s not your precious Citadel at all; it’s another rotten, gloomy old tunnel.” A tunnel with hot-headed miners running amok in their afro badger hair.

Peladon hasn’t changed much since the Doctor’s last visit. It still has a rather ineffectual ruler (King Peladon’s daughter Queen Thalira); it still has a rather medieval caste society; and it still has Alpha Centauri. Peladon has joined the Federation, but the hoped for progress has not materialized.

It would be interesting to see Peladon fifty years after Curse if Jo had stayed behind to become the queen. How different things might have been. Instead King Peladon must have continued allowing himself to be cowed by his Chancellor and the Federation; forever caught between the two and paralyzed to make any decision. And his daughter is carrying on where he left off.

The result is that Peladon is on the brink of yet another civil war, this time led by the exploited miners who have been bearing the brunt of the power struggles occurring in the Citadel.

Add to this boiling pot a traitorous Federation engineer and a rogue Ice Warrior faction intent on getting the trisilicate for the Federation’s enemy the Galaxy Five confederation. Then mix in the Doctor and Sarah Jane.

The result is another decent Doctor Who action adventure.

Decent Doctor Who adventure . . . Galaxy Five . . . I don’t know, Gary . . . I’m kind of missing the days of reconstructed Galaxy Four.

But I have to let those sprays of molten silver that are Galaxy Four spread themselves out and dissolve into the Galaxy Five crisis at hand.

And so the Doctor’s lament, “I wish we could stop for a while and take stock of ourselves instead of being surrounded by dangers all the time,” disperses out and reimages itself as “My dear Sarah, there is nothing I’d like more than a quiet life.”

A quiet life, however, is never the Doctor’s fate.

“He was the most alive person I ever met,” Sarah says of him when she thinks he is dead. Alive; full of life; larger than life; never quiet. Even the Doctor’s Zen like memories that he shares are bursting with color and life, just like those shimmering molten silver sprays.

But of course the Doctor is not dead.

“I put myself into a complete sensory withdrawal,” he explains; “I shut myself off.”

That brief trance-like state is the only quiet the Doctor knows. After that it is off to race about the tunnels with those hot-headed miners. The Monster of Peladon really should have been called The Tunnels of Peladon.

The monster that the title refers to is a holographic image of the Doctor’s old friend Aggedor that the engineer Eckersley and his Ice Warrior cohorts are using to terrorize the miners. The real Aggedor also makes a cameo appearance and the Doctor reacquaints himself using his old standby Haroon, Haroon, Haroon lullaby. Unfortunately this furry royal pet meets an untimely death.

It is an interesting re-visit to Peladon, The Monster of Peladon. It has enough reference to The Curse and yet enough difference to keep it a separate story. Trisilicate and the miners were only minor plot points of Curse and have been mined effectively here in Monster. The Chancellor holding desperately to the old ways and dominating the young ruler is also a nice echo of the past story, but the outcome of Monster promises more reform than the previous with the appointment of the miner Gebek as the new Chancellor.

Sarah’s exhortations to the queen also remind one of Jo’s efforts with Peladon back in Curse, although Sarah seems to be making more of an impact. Peladon was lovesick and starry eyed; when Jo left her influence left with her. Sarah’s lectures on women’s lib, however, start to sink in and Thalira begins to take more of a commanding role as the story progresses.

And then there is Alpha Centauri. Good old Alpha. And the Ice Warriors. Only this time, instead of being the good guys the Ice Warriors turn out to be the baddies. Similar yet different. Quite a nice touch.

Galaxy Four to Galaxy Five; Curse to Monster; first Doctor to third; the magic of Doctor Who. Shimmering echoes of the past enriching the present.

Here’s hoping those shimmering echoes are spreading out amongst the stars and will find you, Gary, somewhere in time and space.

Death to the Daleks

Dear Gary—

“They’re probably the most technically advanced and ruthless life form in the galaxy.” And yet whenever the Daleks appear on screen in Death to the Daleks they are accompanied by some kind of bumbling bumpkin music that undermines this image of the Doctor’s deadliest enemy.

“Inside each of those shells is a living, bubbling lump of hate.”

Cue bumbling bumpkin theme music.

It just doesn’t rhyme.

Granted, the Daleks are somewhat neutralized in Death to the Daleks due to the energy drain that has rendered their weapons useless. However, even with their energy blasters out of commission the Daleks find a way to dominate; they simply fit themselves with more primitive firearms.

I do have to wonder, though, why the energy drain does not affect the Dalek power of movement. After all, the TARDIS is completely shut down. Landing on the planet Exxilon the TARDIS, “a living thing . . . thousands of instruments . . . its energy sources never stop” as the Doctor describes her, is plunged into darkness. Even the doors will not work and the Doctor has to dig out a hand crank to pry them open. Back in The Web Planet the first Doctor could open the powerless TARDIS doors with his ring, but absent the ring I guess he uses a crank.

The Daleks, however, can still move about; can still communicate; can still enter and exit their ship; can still find firearms to take the place of their defunct blasters; can still strike terror in the hearts of their foes. All to a bumbling bumpkin tune.

Despite this anomaly Death to the Daleks is a decent four part story. Due to the energy drain the Doctor, Sarah, a party of similarly stranded earthlings and the Daleks form an uneasy alliance. However once fitted with their new but primitive firearms, the Daleks take over and enslave the native Exxilons to mine for parrinium, yet another rare precious mineral in a long line of Doctor Who rare precious minerals.

Meanwhile, the Doctor leaves Sarah behind to cope with the Daleks and the parrinium while he goes off with Bellal, a native Exxilon, to restore power.

The Exxilons are another example of a longstanding Doctor Who tradition—a tribe of people descended from a great and technologically advanced peoples but who have devolved and have lost all knowledge of their ancestral heritage. Plus we have an engineering feat that has run amok; a maze that can only be traversed by solving a series of complex puzzles; and a computer undone by a paradox. All solid Doctor Who staples.

And all part of a separate storyline that the Doctor has followed, leaving the Daleks, enslaved minors, and stranded Marine Space Corp team behind, although a couple of Daleks and space cadets do tag along belatedly.

Bellal leads the Doctor to the magnificent living city that his ancestors built. This self-repairing city with a brain turned on its creators and now sits impenetrable and indestructible, sapping all energy around it. As the Doctor and Bellal work their way deeper into the city by solving the various brain teasers along the way, they are followed by two Daleks. However the threat posed by these ‘bubbling lumps of hate’ is again undercut by the bumbling bumpkin theme.

I almost wonder, Gary, if the Death to the Daleks title was meant to be prophetic; I wonder if the show was trying to kill off the Daleks, not with a bang but a whimper. After all, who would hide behind a couch when the musical cue was clearly comedy not danger?

And yet the “scorched planet policy” of the Daleks is a very real threat in Death to the Daleks.

It just does not rhyme, this discordant note.

In the end the Daleks are handily disposed of by the unlikely Galloway, the de facto leader of the Marine Space Corp who defies all expectations and sacrifices himself to blow up the Dalek ship in flight, ending the Daleks with a bang after all and not a whimper.

The Doctor is left to deal with the power draining city. “A computer is a machine of logic,” the Doctor reasons, and therefore “it cannot stand paradoxes.” He engineers “what in human terms is called a nervous breakdown” and the city self destructs. This is a useful device used against many a Doctor Who computer, and yet, Gary, I can’t help doubting its authenticity. But I’ll let that go.

The Daleks have their own way of dealing with the city, having sent up two of the space cadets with a bomb to blow up the beacon atop the city. I suppose if the Doctor hadn’t scrambled the city’s brain it would have self-repaired, so the Doctor’s trek into the inner workings of the place was not in vain, and Galloway was able to secrete one of the bombs for use later against the Daleks so everything ties together nicely.

“It’s rather a pity in a way; now the universe is down to 699 wonders.”

Cue bumbling bumpkin music; cue TARDIS takeoff.

Cue another send off, Gary, hoping to find you somewhere out there . . .

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Dear Gary—

Invasion of the Dinosaurs should be better than it is. Someone had the germ of a good idea, but the execution fails. A tyrannosaurus rex terrorizing the streets of London sounds impressive, but it just looks bad. It almost looks like they cut out a dinosaur from some cheap B flick and then mounted it on a Popsicle stick puppet style and moved it about in front of the camera while filming shots of London; then this footage was projected onto a background while the actors stood in front of it pretending to be scared. It’s bad.

Perhaps I exaggerate. Or perhaps it would have been more effective if they had actually done it this way.

I can forgive poor effects, however, if the rest of the story makes up for it. Invasion of the Dinosaurs doesn’t quite.

It is a shame because the first episode starts out rather promising. The Doctor and Sarah arrive back in London to find it eerily deserted. “Perhaps it’s Sunday,” the Doctor speculates, but even Sunday would not account for the totally dead and silent streets.

This sinister start, however, comes to a screeching halt when the first fake pterodactyl is flung at the Doctor’s head. Then we have a rather mundane arrest as the Doctor and Sarah are rounded up as looters.

Even the Brigadier can’t quite save this story. “It’s more important to find the cause of this crisis than to deal with their effect,” he says quite sensibly, but the cause of the crisis is rather nonsensical.

Earth is in danger of “becoming one vast garbage dump inhabited only by rats,” and a small group of fanatics is bent on bringing the planet back to a simpler time, before it was defiled “by the evil of Man’s technology.” This is a common enough goal, but the means by which this group wants to accomplish this end is convoluted and ridiculous.

Again, I can forgive convoluted and ridiculous plots if the rest of the story justifies them. Again, Invasion of the Dinosaurs doesn’t quite.

Dinosaurs are being transported for brief spans of time onto modern day London streets by a mad scientist in order to evacuate the area so he can work in secret on his real project of rolling back time to a pure and innocent age. Why dinosaurs are chosen as the instrument of terror is a mystery and I suppose incidental. The real question is why do it at all? He is already working in secret in an underground bunker; the dinosaurs have effectively evacuated government workers and civilians, however UNIT forces and the army are now concentrated in the area and on high alert.

OK, the mad scientist has this covered; he has the general in charge of the area on his side and he has the one remaining government representative on his side. But neither of these men are convincing as environmental fanatics. I just can’t see General Finch caring about chemical and industrial pollution or Sir Charles Grover worrying about mercury poisoned fish.

“It’s not the oil and the filth and the poisonous chemicals that are the real cause of pollution, Brigadier; it is simply greed.” Perhaps it is greed that is motivating the general and Sir Charles, but what will they get out of turning back time? Are they stockpiling wealth so that when all of civilization is gone and none but the chosen few remain they will be kings? But kings of what? No, the motivation for Finch and Grover is murky at best.

And then there is Yates. Poor Yates. I can believe that Yates would care about dying fish, but I can’t believe that he would condone the destruction of countless generations of people to achieve utopia. A mental breakdown of this nature just does not seem in character for poor Yates. Why didn't he just go off with Jo and her professor to the Amazon if he was interested in saving the planet?

I am at least glad to see that Sergeant Benton remains stalwart.

Sarah Jane also does not disappoint. The feisty, independent character that was developed in The Time Warrior is maintained here in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Ignored and dismissed, Sarah ventures off on her own and discovers the truth. She does get kidnapped, but she doesn’t need the Doctor to save her. She saves her fellow inmates, although she first has to convince them that they need saving.

This is another rather unbelievable element of our story. Hundreds of intelligent people have been duped into believing that a scientist has discovered a means of space travel that will take them to a new planet (that he has also discovered) in only three months time and that they are actually on a spaceship on such a journey, and that all of this has been kept secret from the world at large.

This hoodwinked group kept in an underground bunker reminds me of the similar group in Enemy of the World, except that this group doesn’t believe they are in an underground bunker and the outside world has been dangerously irradiated from war, this group believes that these couple of rooms in an underground bunker is actually a spaceship and that they are on a journey to the stars. And this group is made up of an elite core of intelligentsia. I don’t buy it.

Six episodes of cut-rate dinosaurs and unconvincing characters is a bit of a letdown after The Time Warrior. But it is still Doctor Who and has enough entertainment value to make it passable. One interesting note—the Doctor seems to have abandoned Bessie in favor of a sleeker new age model: “This car of mine is exactly what I need; speed is of the essence.”

I’ll let this go, Gary—speed it off into that time swirl of the Doctor and hope it finds its way to you . . .

The Time Warrior

Dear Gary—

The Time Warrior is Doctor Who at its best. Everything works in this manageable four part story: script, cast, sets, costumes. The only quibble I might have is with special effects, but that is incidental.

I’d like to start, Gary, with the introduction of the new companion, Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane is one of the best known and loved companions of early Doctor Who and The Time Warrior is the perfect debut story for her.

“You can make yourself useful; we need somebody around here to make the coffee,” the Doctor says with a smile as he first meets her. Sarah Jane is no coffee maker; neither is she a test tube fetcher; nor a devotee. Not Sarah Jane Smith.

I love Sarah’s character as depicted in this her premier serial. My initial exposure to her had been in the Baker years when her role had settled down into the more typical female companion who wanders off and gets into trouble. I have only first viewed The Time Warrior in the past few years and I am delighted to see her feisty nature given full reign. I always like a bit of friction between the Doctor and his companion (think Ian and Barbara) rather than the near idolatry that many companions exhibit, so The Time Warrior is a refreshing perspective on the Sarah/Doctor relationship.

“This isn’t a rescue, Doctor, it’s a capture.” Finding herself in the midst of a Middle Ages power struggle between the robber baron Irongron and the local nobility, Sarah decides that the Doctor is at fault.

When first confronted with Irongron and his henchmen, Sarah goes through the natural, logical progression of guesses as to what is going on. A village pageant, a film set, a tourist attraction. She considers and rejects each option in turn until she is left with the obvious truth: she is in the Middle Ages. This leads her to the Doctor and the mysterious machine she stowed away on. The Doctor must be responsible; “he’s no magician, just some eccentric scientist,” and he must be stopped.

Like the good investigative journalist she is, though, she does eventually dig down to the truth and converts to the Doctor’s side. “I never lie,” the Doctor tells her, “well, hardly ever.” And that is good enough for Sarah; a new companion is born.

The Time Warrior doesn’t just introduce a new companion, however; it also marks the first appearance of a Sontaran in Doctor Who. Linx is short and compact, but larger than life. Of all the recurring Doctor Who enemies, I have to say that the Sontarans are my favorite. The Daleks and Cybermen are all very well and good, but a bit monosyllabic. Give me a Sontaran any day.

Add Irongron to this mix and you have one whale of a story.

“I’ll pickle that insolent star warrior in boiling water one day.” Faced with a Dalek or Cyberman, Irongron would never be able to rant and rave as he does. He would be exterminated, cyberized, or terrorized. Linx, however, allows Irongron’s braggadocio. A cowed Irongron would be no fun; an Irongron free to futilely spout and fume provides a wealth of entertainment.

 “My race has been at war for millennia,” Linx says. Sontarans are not intent on exterminating anything unlike them, nor are they motivated by the survival instinct. Sontarans are inspired by the glory and honor of war. As such, Linx has a certain respect for Irongron and his fight against the neighboring lords.

However, Irongron’s conflicts are only a momentary diversion for Linx. His main objective is to repair his spaceship so he can return to the unending war against the Rutans. Not finding the required equipment and expertise for such a project available in the Middle Ages, Linx uses his limited resources to devise a way to kidnap scientists from the 20^th Century to conduct the necessary repairs.

It is this rash use of time travel that leads the Doctor to Linx. Linx does not pose an immediate threat to humanity. He has recklessly displaced some scientists out of their own time and is fashioning firearms for Irongron, but he has no malicious intent. He simply wants to escape from this backward time he finds himself stranded in.

“Human beings must be allowed to develop at their own pace,” is the Doctor’s objection to this plan. Providing weaponry to Man before its time will alter the course of history. The Doctor goes on to describe the Time Lords as “galactic ticket inspectors” opposed to “unlicensed time travel.” And for the first time the Doctor reveals the name of his home planet—Gallifrey.

 “Your Time Lord philosophy is egalitarian twaddle; it is a weakness,” Linx tells the Doctor. The Sontaran weakness, we learn, is the probic vent at the back of their necks.

The Time Warrior has just about everything a good Doctor Who story should have.

“Brigadier, a straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.”

The Time Warrior takes the interesting route.

It is not just the introduction of an ideal new companion, nor the impressive foe, nor the blustering comic relief. It is all of the details; it is the cold stone castle interiors; it is the lush green exteriors; it is Sarah Jane’s Robin Hood and Maid Marian costume changes; it is Bloodaxe hanging adoringly on every inane word out of Irongron’s mouth; it is the absentminded and nearly blind Professor Rubeish wandering at will through the dungeon lab.

I could use the Doctor’s own words about the TARDIS to describe The Time Warrior: “Well done old girl—absolutely on target.”

I hope this hits on target, Gary, and finds you out there somewhere in the Doctor’s time swirl . . .

The Green Death

Dear Gary—

“So the fledgling flies the coop.” The Green Death is Jo Grant’s last appearance in Doctor Who. Jo was the perfect companion for Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. The Brigadier introduced her as a test tube passer and devotee; Jo quickly moved past that limited role and became a true companion. “You need me to look after you,” she tells him in the Mutants; and that is her strong point—she is a care giver, a mother hen, a nurturer. For an earth bound Doctor this was ideal.

However the Doctor is no longer earth bound: “I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like; I’ve got absolute control over her.”

Unlike companions of old, Jo Grant does not have wanderlust; neither is she rootless. Jo’s first experience in the TARDIS back in Colony in Space she tells the Doctor, “I want to go back to Earth.” Now that he has the TARDIS in proper working order he offers her “all the time in the world and all the space,” but she is more interested in aiding the cause of a Nobel Prize winning environmentalist she has never met, Professor Clifford Jones.

It is appropriate, therefore, that The Green Death is another UNIT story taking place on Earth despite the TARDIS being back in action. The Doctor does take a brief spin to Metebelis Three on his own while Jo and the Brigadier motor off to South Wales; however the Doctor eventually returns, a little battered and beaten, to help investigate the mysterious goings on at the Global Chemicals plant and the nearby abandoned mine.

The Green Death is a complex tale simply told.

“Doctor, it’s exactly your cup of tea; this fellow’s bright green, apparently . . . and dead.”

Simply put; and yet the trail of green death leads the Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier through a well-crafted web of plot points.

The Doctor wants to explore the universe; the Brigadier wants to investigate the mysterious dead green miner; Jo wants to protest with her Professor. The Doctor wants an unwilling Jo to accompany him; the Brigadier wants a reluctant Doctor to accompany him; Jo is engrossed in a world of her own and is already mentally separating herself from the Doctor and from UNIT.

All three are led to the maggots.

“Well I never thought I’d fire in anger at a dratted caterpillar.”

The Brigadier wants to blow them up. Jo wants to capture one for her preoccupied Professor. The Doctor wants to get to the bottom of them.

The Brigadier still has not found a foe that yields to bullets. Jo just gets herself cornered in a cave surrounded by maggots with her useless Professor. The Doctor introduces himself to the BOSS (Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor).

“I am the BOSS. I’m all around you. Exactly. I am the computer.”

A megalomaniac computer whose prime directive is “efficiency, productivity and profit for Global Chemicals of course.”

“You’re still nothing but a gigantic adding machine like every other computer,” the Doctor tells the comically insane BOSS.

The BOSS, overseeing this complex of plot threads while humming Wagner to itself.

“Wholesale pollution of the countryside. Devilish creatures spawned by the filthy by-products of your technology. Men . . . men walking around like brainless vegetables. Death. Disease. Destruction.” A simple summing up.

The Green Death is a morality tale against the evils of big business; against technology dependence; against mindless destruction of the environment. The Green Death is an adventure story. The Green Death is a romance. The Green Death is about a deadly green virus. The Green Death is about giant maggots. The Green Death is about a megalomaniac computer. The Green Death is a complex tale simply told.

And in the end The Green Death is a fitting fond farewell for Jo Grant. The romance is rather by the numbers as Jo stumbles and bumbles her way into the affections of Professor Jones, but the scenes at the Nuthatch nicely ground the story in the everyday moments of life, just as Jo is completely grounded on Mother Earth.

Jo adores the Doctor, but Metebelis Three does not call to her. She therefore transfers her affections to the closest thing to the Doctor she can find on her own planet. “In a funny way he reminds me of a sort of . . . younger you,” she tells the Doctor.

 I have to say, Gary, that I am not as impressed with the Professor as Jo is, but of all the twits she has flirted with throughout the series I guess he is as good a twit as any for her to settle down with. He won’t take her to Metebelis Three, but he will take her to the Amazon so I guess she has that.

Goodbye Jo Grant, soon to be Jo Jones. The Doctor gives her the blue crystal from Metebelis Three for a wedding present, and she looks wistfully after him as he departs, but her heart remains in her own familiar world.

It is a touching scene at the end when Jo and her Professor celebrate their engagement with their UNIT and Nuthatch friends as the Doctor quietly slips away to ride off solo into the sunset.

I have to say, though, that I am looking forward to the new chapter opening up as TARDIS travel has been restored to Doctor Who.

And so I will take my fond farewell, Gary . . .

Planet of the Daleks

Dear Gary—

Planet of the Daleks does not take place on the Dalek planet of Skaro. Planet of the Daleks takes place on Spiridon, a remote planet of an invisible race of Spiridons that the Daleks have conquered, and they are now attempting to master the Spiridon technique of invisibility. This is a truly scary thought—invisible Daleks—but it is not fully developed or explored. It is a simple plot device to explain why the Daleks are on this planet; that is all.

The Doctor and Jo have stumbled out of the treadmill that was Frontier in Space and are now hot on the trail of the Daleks; or rather, the TARDIS is. The Doctor had been grazed by a bullet from the Master’s gun and only had time to send a telepathic message to the Time Lords before passing out. Operating the TARDIS by remote control, the Time Lords send the TARDIS, the Doctor, and Jo to Spiridon.

I have to say, Gary, that fresh off of Frontier in Space I feel rather like Professor Fate at the end of The Great Race—I’ve been cheated. I have come all this long way and have been cheated. The Master, and parenthetically the Ogrons along with the Earth and Draconian Empires, has been left dangling and forgotten. Now I begin a story that claims to be on the planet of the Daleks but it isn’t. The specter of invisible Daleks is raised but never explored. I expect Doctor Who to step up.

Doctor Who does not disappoint.

Skaro aside; the Master aside; invisibility aside; Planet of the Daleks is solid Doctor Who entertainment.

“You come here out of nowhere and then claim to be something out of a legend.”

Materializing out of the mists of the Doctor's time swirl, the legend that is Doctor Who sweeps away all vague disappointments.

Even though Planet of the Daleks does not take place on Skaro it does have some nice echoes of that past initial encounter between the Doctor and his mortal enemies. We have an inhospitable planet with the Daleks holed up in a city while the ineffectual Thals are on the outside unable and unwilling to cope. We have the Doctor arriving to lead the Thals on a several pronged raid on the city where the Daleks have a countdown to unleash a deadly threat to all living creatures on the planet surface. We even have someone getting inside an emptied Dalek casing to maneuver past patrolling guards.

However, while the first Doctor was simply motivated by curiosity and the desire to retrieve his fluid link, this third Doctor traveled to Spiridon with the sole purpose of defeating the Daleks. “For a man who abhors violence, I must say I took great satisfaction in doing that,” the Doctor says of disabling a Dalek. Even the Thals have traveled all this way in pursuit of the Daleks.

In the original, rather over long, Dalek adventure the Daleks were confined to Skaro and only posed a threat to the Thals. The Daleks have since emerged as a danger to the entire universe, and Planet of the Daleks (still a tad long at six episodes) has a greater sense of urgency about it and more than enough action to carry us through.

“When faced with the inevitable, don’t waste precious time by resisting it.”

The Thals have been wasting precious time. They at least had the gumption to man a space flight to track the Daleks, however now that they have landed they are hopelessly inept and not much better than their ancestors from the first story. The lackluster leader Taron attributes his paralysis of mind to caution, and later has the nerve to blame it on the presence of his lover Rebec. His compatriot Vaber, on the other hand, is far too rash.

Enter the Doctor. "Let's take a look in our pockets." The Doctor leaves no pocket unturned; he will always find a way. (Thankfully this time around the Doctor's way does not involve long treks through swamps and caves like the first time.)

As I mentioned before, the Dalek plan to adapt the Spiridon art of invisibility doesn't go very far. They have had only limited success when our story begins, and apparently they abandon all attempts in future as I am unaware of any further mention of invisible Daleks in Doctor Who history.

The second Dalek threat in our story also peters out. The Daleks intend on unleashing deadly bacteria onto the planet surface, but the native Spiridon Wester sacrifices himself by releasing it in a sealed room so that it is contained; the Daleks cannot open the room as they have not yet been immunized. Of course this wouldn’t stop them from completing the immunization process and then letting the bacteria out, or from just whipping up another batch.

These first two Dalek plots, however, do serve to keep the action flowing until the Doctor can uncover the third and real danger--a vast army of Daleks currently in cold storage on the planet.

At this point it turns out to be a good thing that the Thals have squandered their time on Spiridon just moving their stockpile of explosives from one hiding place to another. This at least has served to keep the bombs safe so that the Doctor (with the help of Jo who manages to snag two from the clutches of the Daleks) can utilize them in his plan to bury the Dalek army in a flood of molten ice.

“We have been delayed, not defeated. The Daleks are never defeated.”

That is the wonderful thing about the Daleks. They never kill the Doctor and the Doctor never quite defeats them. They will always be back as the Supreme Dalek proclaims--delayed not defeated.

Before taking his leave of the Thals the Doctor advises them, “Don’t glamorize it; don’t make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.” Somehow I don’t think the Thals can make anything sound exciting or thrilling. All in all the Thals are rather a dull race and there is a reason that they do not return again and again to Doctor Who.

A few final thoughts, Gary, about the TARDIS before I sign off. The uncomfortable looking curvy lounge beds that the first Doctor used have been abandoned; we now have a bed that emerges from the wall at the push of a button. In fact there is an entire bank of drawers and lockers along one wall of the control room that is something new. The TARDIS interior has gone through several redesigns in recent serials; I wonder when the Doctor finds the time. One more point about the TARDIS; I find it rather hard to believe that the oxygen supply can be so easily depleted in this indestructible, miraculous, bigger (seeming infinitely so) on the inside machine.  But I will set this TARDIS anomaly aside just as I set Frontier in Space aside and let the Doctor Who magic take over.

Until next time, Gary, . . . delayed not defeated . . .

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 . . .