“Frontier in Space”

As you may know, I am greatly fond of Doctor Who; not particularly of the season that wrapped up last Sunday, but of Who in general, certainly — whether classic or modern. The 1973 six-part serial Frontier in Space, which I have just finished watching, strikes me as one of the most excellent examples of Classic Who and of Jon Pertwee's Doctor, so let's examin exactly how.

Story. Frontier is a clever little science-fiction tale, not without its wisdom. The setpiece is the year 4500 or thereabouts, where Earth's space empire has come to an uneasy truce with another, the Draconian. The modern Earth is a nuanced and interesting portrayal of the future, neither a utopia (the Doctor gets an unpleasant trip to a penal colony on the Moon for political opponent) nor an all-out dictatorship (the President of Earth is obviously well-meaning; she is, incidentally, a woman, which should alone put an end to recent media's unfair claims that classic Who contained old-fashioned sexism in spades, a blatant untruth meant to make the casting of Whittaker as the Doctor more interesting). 

The plot sees the Doctor's old enemy the Master (more about him later) is conspiring to bring the two empires at war with one another, for the sake of a fourth party in whose interest it is to see them weakened by renewed hostilities. To do so, the Master uses the clever science-fiction device of a hypnotic ray that makes you see whoever is in front of you as your worst fear, exploiting it to make Draconians think humans (“Earth-men”, as they are stubbornly called) are attacking their ships, and vice-versa. 

The Doctor, accidentally landing inside one of the attacked ships alongside Jo Grant, suffers much trials and tribulations as he is captured by one Empire and the next and interrogated as a spy, fruitlessly trying to convince both that they're being tricked. By Episode 5, our heroes are aware of the presence of the Master (who makes a fruitless attempt to rectify the situation by imprisoning them himself, and shoots himself in the foot instead), and manage to convince the Draconian Emperor of the truth. But just as it seems like the serial is wrapping up, the true masterminds who employed the Master are revealed; and they're…

Though war between Earth and the Draconians is of course avoided, the Daleks are not foiled altogether, and so Episode 6 of Frontier in Space leads directly into the next serial, Planet of the Daleks. That is in itself a point in favor of Frontier's story; arc structures weren't as established in 1970's Doctor Who as they have been since 2005, but this is quite close to it and I like it. 

Humor. From the First Doctor's inability to keep his words straight (an amusing quirk that modern audiences have often, unfairly, reduced to William Hartnell simply flubbing that many lines accidentally; but it is generally agreed among Whovians that it happens too often to have been wholly uninentional) to the Twelfth Doctor's pretending to enter the TARDIS for the first time, Doctor Who has always included a decent dose of good humor, and while Frontier in Space is hardly The Husbands of River Song, it gets its fair amount of chuckles. Most are owed to our two rival Time Lords; the anecdotes Pertwee's Doctor tells to Jo to cheer her up are simply charming, and Delgado's Master occasionally lapses into cartoony villainy to hilarious results ("Don't you want to kill him?" "Of course I do!… It's just… long-range rocket missiles… it feels like it lacks that personal touch"). 

Villains. It is notorious that Doctor Who would have been cancelled before the end of its first season, all the way back in 1963, if not for the Daleks; ever since, alien monsters and well-acted villains have been staples of the show and one of its greatest draws. Indeed, it's the weakness of many too pedestrian villains such as Josh Bowman's Krasko that has been the greatest flaw of the current series, in my opinion. 

A very appropriate choice of reading. 

Frontier in Space on the other hand is lucky enough to have two great Doctor Who villains in one story, plus secondary one-shots. The first is Roger Delgado's Master, a wonderful evil counterpart to Jon Pertwee's Doctor, refined and unapologetic in his foulness, relishing any time he's on top just as the audience relishes any time he's on screen. Sadly, due to a car accident some few months after the end of shooting, this would be Delgado's last turn as the evil Time Lord; his being a Time Lord allowed the show to bring back the character with new faces, and I absolutely love the Master's portrayals by Anthony Ainley or Michelle Gomez later on, but just like no Doctors can be quite alike, no posterior Master ever recaptured quite the same spirit as Delgado's. 

The second are Doctor Who's iconic evil tin-cans, the Daleks, who are entirely themselves and manage to pose a real threat despite their inherent goofiness. It's not the Daleks' finest turn — if nothing else, their “metal parrot” voices lack the stunning range that Nicholas Briggs would later bring to them — but it is nearly impossible for a halfway-decent Who writer to go completely wrong with the Daleks, and I think we've established that Malcolm Hulke is more than decent a writer, on the faith of this episode alone.

In terms of secondary villains, I will give special recognition to Michael Hawkins as the warmongering General Williams, whose voice is consistently full of gravitas and seems to me to have been a great inspiration for Timothy Dalton's iconic portrayal of Rassilon in The End of Time. Speaking of great actors, John Woodnutt as the Draconian Emperor is also worthy of praise, though the Emperor isn't actually a villain; and as Pertwee himself would remark, the make-up on the Draconians is probably as good as alien makeup got in the Classic Series; it's hardly more rubbery than the very similar Silurians in The Hungry Earth forty years later. 

The most unremarkable creation of the serial would have to be the Ogrons, the Master and Daleks' extraterrestrial grunts, who are little more than their name suggests — ugly, ogre-like space Orcs of limited intelligence. They're never scary, and they're only amusing because of the superintelligent Master's frustration with their stupidity, rather than because of anything about themselves. Their design is woefully uninspired. Still, they're not meant to be the memorable part of the episode, and so one shouldn't be surprised that they're not. 

Frontier in Space is all in all an extremely pleasant Doctor Who experience, highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the series, or just looking to have a good sci-fi time.