72: Death to the Daleks

Before Watching

Now, there’s a title to get your pulse racing. I’m going to have to be careful not to say too much before we get to the after watching section of this review, since I’m afraid that this is another of those shown in its entirety on the Horror Channel within the last couple of years, which I found the time to sit down and enjoy. Terry Nation, then returned to the fold as it were with season 10’s “Planet of the Daleks”. That essentially was something of a remake of his own “The Daleks” from season 1. In fact, Terry Nation did develop a reputation for rehashing his own material. There is a lovely story, possibly apocryphal, in which Terry Nation is having a meeting with the Producer and Script Writer du jour, discussing a script, and he is supposed to have asked whether they liked it. The producer then replied, “We love your script, Terry, just as we loved it every time you sold it to us in the past.”

So, bearing in mind I only last watched it about a year ago, can I reasonably expect to derive anything new from this story? Well, yes, maybe I can. For when I watched it last week I had not seen every Dalek story before Death to the Daleks. Now I have, and so you never know, this in itself may mean that I come to view it in a different light. Let’s see, shall we?

After Watching

Unless I’m imagining it there’s quite a famous publicity shot from the 4^th Doctor’s time which shows Sarah, clad in beach wear, emerging from the TARDIS with the Doctor, expecting to be in some exotic location, but finding that snow is falling all around her. She should have known better by then, since in the start of this story he has clearly promised to show her a good time in some exotic location, as she starts off dressed in blue beachwear this time. The Doctor is always doing this in the classic series, taking his companions off for a promised holiday in a beauty spot which never materializes, should you pardon the pun. Only a couple of stories ago he kept trying to drag poor old Jo off to Metebelis 3 – no wonder she went off with the Welshman.

We know pretty much what we’re going to get with a Jon Pertwee story now. It’s never going to blow your mind, with the sheer brilliance of a “Mind Robber” or “Deadly Assassin”, but it’s never going to plum the depths of “The Twin Dilemma” either. Seriously, write down a list of the worst Jon Pertwee stories, and then see how many of them would be in your bottom 10. Not many, I’ll be bound. So then, since it’s Jon, the Doctor is going to be dashing around, being heroic, throwing out expositions, barking at idiots, and saving the day – because that’s what the Third Doctor does, without fail. There’s plenty of that in this story.

The TARDIS lands off course, on the planet of the Exxilons. Something is draining power out of the TARDIS. The Doctor meets a group of people from Earth, who are trying to get a supply of Parrinium, (and when you pronounce this on the telly it sounds uncomfortably like perineum) which is essential to fight a terrible space plague. Their ship has been drained of power. So has a ship belonging to the Daleks, who have come for the same reason. Even their guns fail. This is an interesting idea – after all, a Dalek is almost defined by its gun. So what does one do when the gun doesn’t work? Simple – make an alliance with the humans – who can be as evil as Daleks when they want to be – and make sure that you bump them off as soon as you get the opportunity. Fix a different kind of gun to your redundant gun, and hey presto, you’re hot to trot.

So the Earthlings and Daleks strike up a fragile alliance, and put the indigenous Exxilons to work, getting the parrinium for them. See how I told you that humans could act just as evilly as Daleks. This is a point that we are obviously meant to make for ourselves, and the Doctor’s opposition to what is happening really does him some credit.

Meanwhile Sarah has in her own inimitable fashion stumbled up to the great city of the ancient Exxilons. Now, at this stage we get some serious echoes of “Colony in Space”. In both stories an ancient civilization has decayed, and the native in habitants, have descended to ‘primitivism’ over many generations. They have left behind their great city generations ago, but worship it. To enter is forbidden, and just as Jo did in “Colony in Space”, so does Sarah in this story and when the Exxilons find Sarah there they duly take her away for sacrifice.

The resolution to the plot involves the Doctor discovering that it is the city draining power from the TARDIS and the ships. With the help of Bellal, a ‘good’ Exxilon, he enters the city, beating booby traps and facing challenges, with the Daleks hot on his heels.  Now, cards on the table, I like the trope of finding your way into an ancient city, facing challenges and overcoming them to reach the treasure that lies within. It was used to great effect in 3 of the Indiana Jones movies, and is far older than Doctor Who – going back to Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines” and arguably back as far as the mythological story of Jason and the Argonauts. Classic Doctor Who used a slight variation on this theme in “Pyramids of Mars” and again in “The Five Doctors”, but this was the first.

I don’t know whether this had anything to do with it, but this story would have been in the planning stage right about, or just after the time of the great Tutankhamen exhibition in the British Museum in 1972. Now, my parents didn’t actually take me to see the exhibition, which was a shame. I can’t complain too much because they did take me to see the BBC Special Effects exhibition in the Science Museum. I did get to see the 2007 Tutankhamen Exhibition at the O2 Arena, which had more exhibits than the 1972 exhibition, but sadly not the gold death mask. However, I digress. At the time of the 1972 exhibition there were a lot of books and a lot of TV shows about Tutankhamen and the discovery of his tomb. Now, I can’t say for certain that this was the catalyst for my love of this particular archaeologically based adventure genre, but then I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t either. Who knows, it may even have been the inspiration for this aspect of the story. Admittedly this only uses some of the trappings of the genre. There’s no great prize, no enlightenment awaiting the Doctor at the heart of the ‘tomb’, only the opportunity to hopefully destroy the city.

The City itself, even more than the Daleks, is the great enemy in this story, and it’s an interesting idea, one that takes this story some way beyond “Colony in Space”. In short, the Exxilons built the city to be capable of repairing and maintaining itself. Hence we have the huge and tentacular roots that attack the Doctor when they believe him to be a threat to the city. The ancient Exxilons fitted the city with a gigantic supercomputer for a brain, and the city instantly realized that it could function much better on its own, and cleared itself of its infestation of Exxilons. The only remaining descendants are the ‘primitive’ Exxilons on the surface, and the small band living under the city, like Bellal. The idea is a different slant on the dangers of technology. The City’s purpose was originally to provide a home to living organisms. When  it becomes seemingly sentient it destroys the organisms it was built to serve, thus losing its’ purpose at the same time. The City’s purpose then becomes its’ own continued existence and nothing more,  which essentially is a warning to us all , since its’ existence is at best, sterile, and at worst, malign. The message would seem to be then, that to simply be is not a good enough purpose for existence. Self-perpetuation is a means, but it should never be an end in itself.

The City and its’ history give us a clue to another source or influence upon the story. When he is shown some of the markings which are on the City wall by Bellal, the Doctor realizes that he has seen the same markings on a temple wall in Peru. Really? When? It wasn’t during the Aztecs, since anyone knows that they lived in Mexico. Leaving that to one side, this looks again like another nod to human development being guided and aided by aliens, as we saw in “The Daemons”, which ties in with “Chariots of the Gods” and by Erich Von Daniken, and its many sequels and imitators. Not for the last time in Doctor Who, either. This ‘Shaggy God story’ was first published in 1968, and its’ enjoyably crackpot theories became hugely popular in the early 1970s, partly due to a 1970 documentary, and a number of TV shows. Without wanting to spend too much time paraphrasing the text of the book, Von Daniken and his imitators and successors claim that they believe that human civilization developed through the intercession of technologically advanced alien beings, who were worshipped as Gods, and that there is ample proof available if you know what you are looking for.

This is the third of four Dalek stories which have appeared once a season since season 9. Yes, I know that they appear in the end of Frontier in Space – but that acts more of a lead in to this story, not unlike the Daleks’ appearance in “The Space Museum” paving the way for “The Chase”).You’ve got the intelligent story which reintroduces the Daleks (Day of the Daleks), then the Daleks’ Greatest Hits story (Planet of the Daleks), and after this the epic story which introduces the origins of the Daleks – and so I always think that this is the ugly duckling of the four. Which is a shame considering that it’s certainly more original than the preceding Dalek story.  An enemy (in this case the City) more powerful than the Daleks are is an interesting departure.

The Daleks have had another makeover for this show. The Daleks in “Planet of the Daleks” were dark, matt coloured daleks, which gave them a more military,’ this means business’ feel. The Daleks in this story are certainly brighter than we’ve ever seen them before. Their bodies are painted silver, and a bright silver at that, while all of their lumps and bumps are black. This does make them stand out far more against the dull, sandy and grey background of the quarry which stood in for the planet Exxilon (which was presumably unavailable due to prior commitments). It does also make the scene where the Dalek bursts into flames after an attack by the Exxilons more vivid as well.

In fact, destruction is something of a keynote in this story, certainly in the last episode. There’s the destruction of the city itself. The city hasn’t been a bad model up to this point. There is a tendency to only go a couple of ways when you’re designing an alien city of the future. Domes, spires and aerial walkways is one – like the city of the Mechanoids in “The Chase”, and the other is mega-ziggurat. This city is the latter. All in all its’ destruction scene is a little bit of a letdown. Presumably it was made from a block of something like polystyrene, and acetone or something similar was poured over it. So the city just sort of subsides, liquefies and congeals, and the overall effect is not the most effective.  Likewise, the classic TV series, as opposed to the film, has always had a bit of a problem with Dalek ships. We recall the flying saucer in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and the ‘Dardis’ in “The Chase”.  In the climax of this story, after the Doctor has given the City’s brain insoluble problems to deal with to give it the equivalent of a stroke, the Daleks, in time honoured fashion, decide to do a runner with the loot.  All of which allows grizzled Scottish space marine, Dan Galloway, to smuggle himself and a bomb aboard the Dalek saucer – result? – Mit der bang, mit der boom, mit der bing bang, bing bang boom. A little simplistic, but then this is the Pertwee era, and if the denouement doesn’t actually involve reversing any polarity, then that’s sophistication enough.

Compare this story with next season’s “Genesis of the Daleks” and you can learn a lot about the differences between the Pertwee era and the series with Tom Baker. Which we will do. What we mustn’t do though, is forget that this is maybe not the greatest of all Dalek stories – there’s no maybe, it isn’t – but it rattles along well enough, and that’ll do for me.

What Have We Learned?

When Apple finally get around to inventing the iCity we should probably give it a miss. 

71: The Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Before Watching

Some stories have one or two poor special effects in them, which you can easily gloss over, and which do nothing to spoil your enjoyment of them. Then there are others where, for some strange reason, it is only that poor shot that you ridiculed at the time which stubbornly refuses to remove itself from the dump bin of memory, and dominates your recollections of the whole story. Another example would be the Action Man Scorpion tank used in “Robot” next season, and Dobbin the Myrkka in “Warriors of the Deep” in season 21. We’ll get to them in due course.

So, look, we already know that the Dinosaurs in this show aren’t at all good. That probably upset me more than it should when I first watched it, since there were a number of things I was really into during the Jon Pertwee era of the show. Manned spaceflight was one of them, and so were dinosaurs, and so that’s maybe an explanation of why I can’t hear the words “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” without the phrase – bad dinosaurs, bad dinosaurs- playing on a loop through my head for a while. So what I’m hoping for from this particular viewing, is a chance to assess this story for the story, rather than the effects. At the moment I have it filed in my memory in the cabinet marked ‘crap Doctor Who stories’ and I would hate for it to have to remain there a moment longer than is necessary, not least because this is Malcolm Hulke’s last story.

After Watching

Was it hubris which made the Barry Letts production team go ahead with this story? I’ll explain why I ask. For pretty much the whole of the Pertwee era, when the special effects have been bad, they have got away with them, simply because they’ve never tried telling you they’re any good. There’s this tacit understanding along the lines of – look, we’re going to do the best we can to show you the things we need to show you for the story. Some of it, frankly, isn’t going to be brilliant, but it’s the best we can do, and you’ll forgive us for it. – Now, if you call a story “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” it’s not simply a case of  - oh and by the way there’s a dinosaur in it – as was the case with season 7’s “The Silurians”. No, you highlight the dinosaurs in the title, and you’re basically saying – Hey – look, we’ve got some dinosaurs. . . and they’re good enough that we want to shout about it!-  And the problem is, they’re not.

So how bad are the dinosaurs in this? Well, being fair there’s only two really bad ones. Unfortunately these are the first we see, the pterodactyl, and the most foregrounded dinosaur the T-Rex. Well, that’s what they call it, although frankly it really didn’t look like any reconstruction of a T Rex that I’ve ever seen. Let’s start with the pterodactyl. I’m afraid that time has certainly withered this one, and custom staled. It doesn’t matter how skilfully you film it, but a rubber pterodactyl dangling on a wire will always look like a rubber pterodactyl dangling on a wire. Now, none of the land bound dinosaurs moves particularly well, but at least the sauropod, stegosaurus and triceratops look halfway decent. The sauropod is actually called a brontosaurus by the Doctor – he should have known that not long after the story was filmed pretty much everyone would stop calling this species by that technically inaccurate name, and switch to Apatosaurus. Not that this would be a problem for me if that was the only complaint about the dinosaurs. But as I say, the incidental dinosaurs don’t move at all well, but the models really aren’t bad. But the would-be T-Rex, well, I’m sorry but it’s god-awful, and it keeps popping up all over the story, virtually immobile apart from its pathetic twitching arms.

Now, this is going to sound contrary, but in a way I think the dinosaur deficiencies would matter less if they were more important to the story. That’s not a typing error.  When you boil it down, the dinosaurs are in the story for one reason really, and that is to provide spectacle. When they fail to do this because of the shortcomings of the models used, and their animation, then their inclusion is worse than pointless, it is a definite failure. We don’t need dinosaurs in order for the plot to work. The villains bring dinosaurs into the present day for two reasons – to test their equipment presumably, and to scare the authorities into evacuating London. Well, they could do the same thing just s easily by, for the sake of argument, bringing some plague rats from the 1665 plague. Yes, they would kill a lot of people, but hey, they were going to die, or should I say, to never have existed in the first place, so who loses? As a rule, more often than not the show is very aware of what it can and can’t do, but in terms of effects this is a prime example of the show overreaching itself. In practice the dinosaurs it could produce did not provide the spectacle the title promised.

The sad thing is that all of this is a distraction from what is actually important about this story – the ideas behind the script, the script itself, and the way that the cast deliver the script. Let’s start with the ideas behind the script. The Doctor and Sarah return from their medieval avdventure with Linx the Sontaran to find modern day London deserted. This is nicely done, and evokes fond memories of both “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and “The Web of Fear”. The deserted city is a Science Fiction trope I’ve always enjoyed. Their first inkling that someone is maybe monkeying around with Time is the encounter with the pterodactyl. The dinosaurs appear, seemingly out of nowhere. They have in fact been gathered by a piece of equipment, a machine invented by a Professor Whitaker played by the excellent Peter Miles. He was Dr. Lawrence in Malcolm Hulke’s earlier “The Silurians”, and next season will play Nyder, Davros naziest henchman in “Genesis of the Daleks”. Would the name Whitaker be a sly reference to David Whitaker, I wonder? Whitaker and his associate Butler, played by Martin Jarvis in suitably oleaginous and nefarious form, under the aegis of Sir Charles Grover MP and General Finch, are putting into practice a scheme. This firstly involves the evacuation of London, and the removal of the Government to Harrogate – which is achieved through the dinosaur apparitions. Secondly, they will use the machine to make the Earth regress in time millions of years. He has several hundred people, many of whom are stored in suspended animation, who believe that they are on a spaceship heading to a planet they have dubbed ‘New Earth’ to start a new civilization since what’s on the old one is going so rapidly down the toilet. When they have regressed the Earth, then these people will be told they have landed, and will start to build a society which will avoid the mistakes of the past.

Ok – well, it doesn’t do too much to over analyse sci fi ideas behind and adventure story, but it seemed to me when I watched it that this scheme would be a classic example of the grandfather paradox. If that doesn’t ring a bell, a simple way of explaining it would be this. One day you invent a time machine. You go back in time and materialise on top of your own grandfather, crushing him to death before he ever met your grandmother. This means that your father was never born, which in turns means that you were never born. This means that you never invented a time machine, so you didn’t go back in time, so your grandfather did survive, so your father was born, so you were born, so you went back in time and accidentally killed your grandfather etc. etc. So if Grover’s lot went back in time, this would condemn pretty much the whole population of the earth never to have been born – and, although I didn’t hear anybody mention it on the show, which is a bit strange considering that as flaws in plans go it’s a bit of a biggie – condemning Grover and Butler and Whitaker’s own ancestors never to have been born – with predictable consequences.

Well, leaving that to one side, when the crazed Whitaker does activate the machine, everyone seems to be caught, frozen in time, except the Doctor. Being a Time Lord it seems that he has the ability to move outside of time, albeit very slowly. Jon Pertwee mimes moving in slow motion to turn the switch off. This section reminded me a little of the pretty much contemporary Six Million Dollar Man TV series, when Lee Majors would mime moving in slow motion to show off how strong he was. Look, I was only ten years old at the time and it made sense to me. This isn’t inconsistent with everything that has gone before – we know that the Doctor can exist within the Time Vortex for example, from “The Time Monster”.

So the ideas beind the story are pretty much hokum. The idea of the deluded elite within the ‘spaceship’ reminded me a little bit of the people kept in the bunker by Salamander in “The Enemy of the World”. There’s a level of predictability about it as well. I couldn’t remember that much about the story, but as soon as we met Sir Charles Grover, even though the Doctor seemed quite taken with him, being that kind of establishment figure who either muck everything up for everyone, or are downright villains in this era of the show, I knew he was the chief black hat. At least, well, at least it wasn’t overtly through megalomania, which is a welcome departure from a lot of what we’ve seen, but through a misguided, in fact downright twisted messiah complex.

So, we have a story which relies on the showcase effects to provide spectacle, which they singularly fail to do. We have a storyline with a couple of gaping plot holes. Yet for all that “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” is not a grade A oven ready turkey – and it’s turned out that even the least good Pertwee stories never tend to be that. What stops it from becoming that particular avian, then? Well, the regulars have some pretty good back up in the guest cast. I’ve already mentioned Peter Miles and Martin Jarvis . Completing the baddies there’s a fine performance from Noel Johnson as Grover, while John Bennett’s Finch was an interesting sort of Anti-Brigadier. Even amongst the cameo parts we had Carmen Silvera, last seen, I think, giving her all on the sinking ship the RMS Celestial Toymaker, who played Ruth, one of the leaders of the elite aboard the ‘spaceship’.  As for the regulars, I felt his was the story where Sarah Jane really started to become the Sarah Jane we all ( well I do) know and love. She’s treated like a spare part for the first three episodes, but once she leaves the Doctor and goes off to investigate by herself she’s just as brave, feisty and gutsy as Jo Grant ever was – and – sorry Jo, quite a bit smarter too.

I suppose we should end with a comment on the betrayal by Richard Franklin’s Mike Yates. Yates never really worked for me in UNIT. He was neither one thing nor the other, and I have to say that Richard Franklin never seemed to have the greatest range either. On a good day he could run the full gamut of emotions from A to B. I’m afraid that when asked to play out of his range in this story, that is, to show the treacherous Yates’ crisis of conscience when Butler or Finch asks him to sabotage the Doctor’s equipment, he frankly looks rather constipated.

So farewell, then , Malcolm Hulke. If you look at all the stories he wrote or co-wrote –

The Faceless Ones

The War Games

The Silurians

The Ambassadors of Death (credited to David Whitaker)

Colony in Space

The Sea Devils

Frontier in Space

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

- it’s quite a body of work, all of it thoughtful, some of it very good, and all of it a cut above the average. Thanks Malcolm.  

Helicopter Watch

At one point the Doctor is giving the slip to General Finch’s men, and is tracked by a small, fast army helicopter

What Have We Learned?

The Time Lords only care when other Time Lords use a Time Scoop. When humans use the equivalent, they couldn’t give a stuff. 

70: The Time Warrior

Before Watching

Since Dennis Spooner’s “The Time Meddler” we’ve had precious few pseudo-historicals like this, that is stories set in the Earth’s past, yet with a definite science fiction element other than the Doctor and companions arriving via time machine. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is “The Evil of the Daleks” and that didn’t do a great deal with Victorian Britain, which was after all only one of the locations of the story.

I’m not entirely sure why. After all, one of the essential problems with the pukka Historicals was that either they became pure adventure stories where the past is merely used as a kind of wallpaper, like the late Historicals, “The Smugglers” and “The Highlanders”, or you had the Doctor and companions being essentially bystanders and observers, the audience to History, but not participants within it. In a pseudo Historical you avoid this problem, since it’s pretty clear that the Doctor must act in order to prevent the course of History being diverted. Classic Who, though, continued to steer clear of this kind of story for a long time after “The Time Meddler”. In that story you may recall the Meddling Monk’s plan was to use 20^th century weapons technology to defeat Harald Hardrada before the battle of Stamford Bridge, sparing Harold Godwinsson the effort, and ensuring him victory at Hastings. Well, Hastings was a real, pivotal, Historical event. The next time that the Doctor would actually be trying to prevent a real Historical event from being wiped out of History wouldn’t be until season 20’s final story, “The King’s Demons” where the Master plans to prevent the signing of Magna Carta.

Look, I can’t lie to you. I watched this one again last year on the Horror Channel. I’m sorry, but I can’t be expected to sit there idly twiddling my thumbs while they’re showing a classic, Robert Holmes – Jon Pertwee story. I know what happens, I know what it’s like – I know the goodies that are within – the debut of both the Sontarans and my favourite classic companion, Sarah Jane Smith. Actually, I’ll be interested to see over the next couple of series whether Sarah Jane manages to stay in that enviable position  - Jacqueline Hill’s Barbara is a serious contender for the crown too.

After Watching

The first thing that struck me about the new title sequence was how unhappy and old Jon Pertwee appears on it, compared with the smiley, short haired Pertwee whose ginning phizzog has welcomed us to every episode previously. Maybe it’s a good job that this is a Robert Holmes story, and a four parter to boot, to get him back into the swing of things.

The story opens in the late12th/ early 13th century. The earliest action is centred on the castle of Irongron. Irongron is a bandit, who is a bit like Robin Hood, in as much as he robs the rich, although he hasn’t got around to giving it to the poor yet. Irongron is played by David Daker, a very well known face on TV in the 70s and 80s. He was the baddy in Richard O’Sullivan’s rather lacklustre “Dick Turpin”, and is possibly best remembered as Harry Crawford in “Boon”. With his lived in face David Daker was never going to be cast as shrinking violetty, sensitive types, and I doubt that his Hamlet would ever have been much to write home about. Cast him as a thug like Irongron, though, and he’d always do a throroughly good job for you. And in this Robert Holmes script he has quite a bit of good stuff to work with.

Supplies are running low, when Irongron and his wingman Bloodaxe see what looks like a shooting star. They ride out to where it came to Earth, and find a small space capsule which contains a warrior in a metal helmet. The Time Warrior, after claiming Earth for the Sontaran empire, enlists Irongron’s help, promising to give him new fangled weapons which will help him overcome any of his enemies. And all this in the first 6 minutes or so.

Using this time to set up the situation with Irongron and Linx, the Sontaran, means that when we do cut straight to UNIT we don’t need a long exposition scene telling us about disappearing scientists – we work out what is happening, and put two and two together to link it with Linx. It also gives a little more time to introduce Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane, played by the late beautiful and talented Elisabeth Sladen, is a journalist, who is posing as her Aunt Lavinia, a famous scientist, to investigate exactly what is going on. When another Scientist, one Professor Rubeish, a scientist who is a prime example of the ‘dotty old fool’ variety thereof, disappears, the Doctor uses a doohickey to get a fix on where he has gone. Sarah goes rooting about in the TARDIS, just before the Doctor decides that it’s a case of tally-ho, the game’s afoot, and sets off after him. Amazingly the TARDIS makes a near perfect landing.

At the end of episode 1 Linx raises his helmet and we get our first sight of the head of a Sontaran. The Sontarans, although not always used to the best advantage, would reappear another 3 times in classic Doctor Who, in “The Sontaran Experiment”, “The Invasion of Time” and “The Two Doctors”. One interesting fact is that their appearance changed, slightly but noticeably each time they appeared – which doesn’t really matter than much apart from the fact that they are supposed to be a cloned species that are absolutely identical to each other. The Sontarans, although the last of the great recurring monsters to appear in classic Doctor Who (by which I mean the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Sontarans) they would actually appear in the post 2005 series before the Ice Warriors were exhumed.

The action, then, remains in the medieval milieu. Irongron wants ‘modern’ firearms so that he can attack and defeat his near neighbour Edward of Wessex. Sarah Jane, after escaping from Irongron’s clutches with the help of the Xeron leader from “The Space Museum”, Jeremy Bullock, who plays Hal the Archer. It’s quite forgiving of him since Sarah Jane distracts him when he is about to shoot Irongron, and thus ensures that he is captured and his life is in danger. Thus when they reach the castle of Edward, we find that in fact on the side of the goodies we have Lord Beardy of Weirdy, Lady Dot of Cotton and Sir Boba of Fett. June Brown is a terrific actress who has rightfully received plaudits for her long lasting role in “Eastenders”, and while Lady Eleanor isn’t the meatiest role she’ll ever have played she imbues her with a certain steeliness which mirrors Sarah’s own , for it’s Sarah who persuades Edward to stage an attack on Irongron.

Episode two sees the meeting between Linx and the Doctor which reveals his plan. His capsule has some elementary time technology, which enables him to seize scientists from the 20^th century – that-s the furthest range that the power source of his capsule will allow. The scientists are then fitted with mind control devices, and used either to carry out the necessary repairs on Linx’s capsule, or to fashion the firearms that Linx has promised Irongron. The Doctor reveals, for the first time, that he is actually from Gallifrey, prompting Linx’s famous observation that the Time Lords have great power, but lack ‘the morale to withstand a determined assault’. And from that throwaway line will come one of the less successful Tom Baker stories in the shape of “The Invasion of Time”. That’s in all of our futures for now, though. It’s been a while since we’ve come back to the issue of whether you can change history or not. The only previous time in Jon Pertwee’s tenure was in “Day of the Daleks”. The third Doctor’s reaction to Linx is completely consistent with his reaction to the Monk in “The Time Meddler” – his meddling with Earth history would be disastrous, and he will not allow it to happen.

In fact, the more I think about it the more the comparison to “The Time Meddler” seems an apt one. There’s the obvious connection with the setting – alright, there’s more than 100 years between 1066, and the dawn of the 14^th century which is when this one is set, but that’s really not a great difference in terms of the culture and society of the times, certainly not as far as Hollywood or TV drama is concerned anyway. Then rather more subtly, there’s the tone. Yes, there are some nasty things that happen in this, or that nearly happen, I should say, but overall the tone of both is of a historically based romp, with a vein of comedy and fun running through it. Not that Linx is a comic character as the Monk is. But in “The Time Warrior” the funny lines are spread out between several of the characters, thus we get Irongron’s memorable description of the Doctor as ‘a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose’, and then when The Doctor tells professor Rubeish that he is looking for Sarah, ‘I’m looking for a girl’, Rubeish muses ‘I would have thought he was a bit old for all that.’

Now, a short digression, which will, hopefully, make sense in the fullness of time. Superman, the archetypal superhero was created in the early 30s by schoolboys Jerome Seigel and Joe Shuster, and eventually sold to DC comics where he made his first appearance in Action Comics no. 1 in 1938. When he first appeared, Superman didn’t fly, and once of the claims made about him was ‘nothing short of a bursting (artillery) shell could pierce his skin’. Soon his super leaps became flights, and the claim had been changed to ‘not even a bursting shell could pierce his skin’. Superman soon became so super that it was totally unbelievable that anyone could ever so much as inconvenience him, let alone defeat him. Which is why the writers of the time came up with the concept of kryptonite. For those unfamiliar with it, basically Superman was sent to earth from his home planet of Krypton by his parents when he was a tiny baby, because Krypton was about to explode. Kryptonite is pieces of the core of the exploded planet. At first there was just kryptonite – which came to be known as green kryptonite, a short exposure to which robbed Superman of his powers, and a long exposure to which would kill him. In time this would be joined with other colours of kryptonite which would have different effects.

Now, what this has to do with Doctor Who is that the more powerful a monster, the more there needs to be a kryptonite, a weakness which can be exploited to defeat them. With the cybermen, to pick one example, their ‘kryptonite’ has been, at different times, radiation, gravity, acetone, gold and so on. Now, in “The Time Warrior” Sontaran kryptonite comes in the form of the probic vent. Remember, the Sontarans are a genetically engineered species, and instead of the inefficient refuelling means we humans use, that is, eating and drinking, they refuel through an orifice which is called the probic vent. Now, the probic vent is really and truly the only part of a Sontaran that is vulnerable- extremely vulnerable as it happens. So, bearing in mind that they are a genetically engineered species, their designer must have been having a really bad day when he decided to put the probic vent on the back of their necks, where they can neither reach it, nor see any danger approaching it. It’s the only real criticism that I have  of the Sontarans, that their kryptonite is so obvious. Linx isn’t defeated because he is outthought, or out-technologied by the Doctor. He is defeated because Hal the Archer gets one lucky shot at the probic vent. And it’s a shame, since the Sontarans otherwise have a hell of a lot going for them. In most ways they are more interesting and far more adaptable than, by way of comparison, the Cybermen. Could you ever see a cyberman being used in the same way as the revived series has used Dan Starkey’s Strax for comic effect as a member of the Paternoster Gang? I rest my case.

All in all then, if we’re prepared to lavish praise on Robert Homes – and I am – we must also apply criticism where it is due. So this isn’t quite an all-time Holmes classic for me. But it is what it is, a very enjoyable slice of late-Pertweeana, and there’s much to enjoy here.

What have we learned?

Practically everything important we’ll need to know about the Sontarans

Sarah-Jane Smith is as gutsy and brave as Jo Grant, but more feisty too. She’s a keeper. 

Season 10

Here’s the ratings for the stories that made up season 10: -

DWM Mighty 200/ 2014 poll

The Green Death – 39/30

The Three Doctors – 58/51

Carnival of Monsters – 62/64

Frontier in Space – 113/ 127

Planet of the Daleks – 118/ 123

My Ratings

The Green Death

The Three Doctors

Carnival of Monsters

Planet of the Daleks

Frontier in Space

Yes, I tend to agree with the ranking in the 2014 poll, although I agree with both polls that there is precious little to choose between “Frontier in Space” and “Planet of the Daleks”. I am so delighted that fandom in general rates “The Green Death” so highly. It’s a serious candidate for the best Pertwee story so far as far as I’m concerned. In a way it’s quite ironic that in this, the first season in which the Doctor has been able to travel freely since the end of the first story of the season, “The Three Doctors”, the finest story is actually an Earth based, full blown UNIT story – possibly the last great UNIT story, although we shall make our own minds up about that as the next couple of seasons progress. Well, for me one of the keynotes of the season was the Doctor’s gradual realisation of just how fond he was becoming of Jo Grant – the instances of him being a pig towards her have been noticeably far fewer. His leaving scene at the end of “The Green Death” was actually one of the strongest scenes of the era, and proved that when given the opportunity, Pertwee could do quiet emotion just as well as Hartnell or Troughton.

As a whole season, season 10 had more variety than any Pertwee season so far, more variety than any other season since season 6, Troughton’s last, and maybe even season 4. Maybe it is the benefit of hindsight that makes me say that “The Green Death” had something of the feeling of the end of an era. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks would still be around in season 11, but both were coming towards the end of their time on the show. In Dicks’ case, Robert Holmes was being groomed to take over as script editor and shadowed Dicks throughout season 11. According to Richard Molesworth’s biography, Holmes used to joke that this meant him doing the work, and Terrance Dicks popping in to see how things were coming along on the way to the golf course. Holmes and Dicks were friends, so I’m sure that this was an exaggeration, but nevertheless it did reflect that the show was heading in a new direction. For example, it’s telling that there will be no UNIT story totally set on 20^th century Earth in this season – the two ostensibly UNIT stories , “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” and “Planet of the Spiders” involve time manipulation and travelling through space respectively.

That’s all ahead of us. For now, we can look back on season 10, a season that was a transitional one, with some great highlights, and while some of the stories will never be among my personal favourites, all of them were consistently watchable. 

69: The Green Death

Before Watching

Of “The Green Death” I remember precious little at the moment, other than giant maggots and slime. And Jo Grant leaving. I was quite upset about that at the time, not realizing that, just as Jon Pertwee would be soon replaced by an even greater Doctor, Jo Grant was to be replaced by an even greater companion. Just my opinion, of course. But I’m right.

This is one of the last UNIT stories, and one of the last Pertwee stories set entirely on Earth. Maybe this is why I can remember so little about it when compared against, let’s say the other stories of the 10^th season.

“The Green Death” was scripted by Robert Sloman, whose other contributions towards Doctor Who were writing “The Daemons” in conjunction with Barry Letts, the show’s producer, and Jon Pertwee’s last story, “Planet of the Spiders”. Now, regarding “The Daemons”, any story with Roger Delgado’s Master in it has an unfair advantage before it starts, and when I watched it recently I found it an enjoyable enough romp. For me, “Planet of the Spiders” hasn’t fared so well, although I promise to give it a fair hearing when I sit own to watch it again in a couple of weeks’ time. Really, as I’m a confirmed arachnophobe it should have given me the willies, but those spiders just weren’t convincing enough. There was too much padding, especially in the chase scene with Lupton, where Jon Pertwee was given his head and allowed to use a range of vehicles, none of which seemed all that necessary. There was yet another Time Lord we’d never heard of before, who apparently was the Doctor’s mentor, and who helped the Doctor regenerate. Sorry – this is meant to be a review of “The Green Death”. I’m just hoping – well, I’m just hoping that this is better than “Planet of the Spiders”, otherwise it could be a long 6 episodes.

After Watching

Wow. I loved this. I mean, maybe this is just me, but be fair, wasn’t that terrific? Which is a weird thing for me to say when you think that I didn’t think that much of it when it was first transmitted. But then I was 9 years old at the time, I suppose, and a lot of it must have gone over my head. All of the principals are in marvellous form here, and it kind of showed for me that when a Unit story worked it could be really good – in fact there’s probably a good argument for saying that this was the last really good Unit story.

As a story, the basic premise isn’t that promising. This is what it boils down to. A giant sentient supercomputer going by the acronym BOSS takes over the head of multinational chemical company. (actually you could say that it takes over the head of the Head of a multinational chemical company) The company pumps industrial waste into a disused section of a coal mine which kills anyone who touches it, yet also it alters the DNA of maggots, and said maggots become three foot long armour plated acid spitting super-maggots, and tunnel out of the mine after it is closed off by explosives. This is all part of the supercomputer’s plan to subjugate humanity, and impose order and regulation upon a chaotic world – you get the drift. Yet for all the seeming drawbacks of this particular scenario it is actually exceptionally watchable.

With the megalomaniac supercomputer this is crossing ground which has already been well trodden in “The war Machines”, and will be well trodden again in years to come. Yet for me, BOSS works a lot better than WOTAN ever did. For one thing, it turns out that this computer does have a personality. A rather smug, arrogant and barking mad personality, granted, but it does make for a more interesting story. It has a couple of good lines as well, telling Stevens, its human catspaw “That's how you get your kicks like the good little Nietzschean you are.” You don’t get lines like that in your average Terry Nation.

Watching it, I was surprised how really rather sickening and repulsive the green pulsating goo and the maggots still looked today. Watching the documentary in the extras with the BBC DVD, I was intrigued to see that the maggots weren’t all, as I had previously heard, made from condoms. Actually the special effects people used a variety of several different construction methods including glove puppet and mechanical puppet, depending on the kind of shot that was required. The results are effective, and considering the time that this story was made, really rather remarkably so. Less so the adult insect. It really wasn’t brilliantly realised , and the flying effects were not good. Thankfully they didn’t last that long. I had to chuckle when the creature was brought down dead, and the Doctor examined it saying “What a beautiful creature!” I do wonder how Jon Pertwee managed to keep a straight face saying that one.

While we’re raising the few negatives there are about this story, as we now know, this is where the third Doctor sows the seeds of his eventual destruction by visiting Metebelis Three after threatening to do so for ages. Now, the studio jungle scenes are as good as always, but as for the gigantic avian feet and talons that swoop on the Doctor – well, I’m sorry, but it’s a no from me, Simon. It is rare, though, for such an inconsequential moment in one serial to come back and be used in the way that it is a season later. There’s a strange and inconsistent use of CSO at one point. Most of the scenes on the hillside outside the mine were clearly shot on location. However there is one which makes such obvious use of CSO that it looks ridiculous. All I can think of is that they must have found late on that they needed to reshoot the scene, and didn’t have time and money to go back on location to do it. Oh, and while I think of it there’s the obligatory UNIT “bomb the hell out of them” scene. This scene was a good example of the principle  - if you can’t do it well, then do something different -.

Helicopter Watch

The bombing run is carried out by a tiny one man helicopter, and it’s so unimpressive it would probably have been better just to have the Brig being told over the phone that the bombing run had been completed.

I’ve lived in South Wales for the best part of three decades now, and so much of it must have rubbed off on me that I can get rather defensive about bad accents and patronizing clichés. This does all start off a little bit like it should have been titled “How Green Death Was My Valley” But I found that as the show went on this didn’t seem quite so much of a problem. Not accent wise, anyway, since there’s quite a few really genuine Welsh accents in the mix. I noticed good old Talfryn Thomas when the Doctor descended into the mine for the first time.  I remembered him from being a guest star in a few episodes of “Dad’s Army”. Now I can tell you from personal experience that his accent is the real McCoy. The exteriors looked dead right for the South Wales valleys too – probably because that’s where they were filmed.

Since we’re mentioning performances at this point, we’ll talk about the guest stars. Now there’s definite on-screen chemistry between Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan who  play Jo Grant and Professor Jones, but then that’s hardly surprising since there was off-screen chemistry between them at the time as well. I believe that they were engaged at the time, although the relationship ended. A mention for Tony Adams, making an early TV appearance here as one of Stevens’ flunkeys. He disappears about halfway through the story, because he was taken ill, but this didn’t have any hugely detrimental effect on his career. He went on to play Doctor Neville Bywaters in General Hospital, and then Adam Chance in theat perennial favourite of lovers of bad TV, Crossroads. Acting bouquets, though, go to Jerome Willis, who plays Stevens. He is a terrific villain, and to add to that, his conversion to the light at the end of the story was convincing enough to make his sacrifice at the end rather moving.

How did people view this story’s eco agenda when it was first shown? I ask the question because it just seems right on the money today. When the story was written, alternative ‘clean’ energy, edible fungus and textured vegetable protein, and the dangers of genetic modification were all on the agenda, but pretty much on the fringes of national consciousness, while it’s fair to say that they all firmly in the mainstream today. As a result you don’t have to be a genius to see that this story has a remarkable resonance when you watch it today.

We can’t ignore the fact that this is Jo Grant’s last story. It’s always been fairly clear to those of us who look for that sort of thing, that Jo has confused feelings towards the Doctor. He is obviously a father figure towards her, yet at the same time her feelings are a lot more complicated than that. So when she meets a rather hippyish, young, long haired, Nobel prize winning scientist called Professor Jones, with whom she gets off on the wrong foot at their first meeting, it’s pretty much a given that we’re going to be hearing wedding bells – well, engagement bells anyway, at the end of the story. Actually this does give us a really rather good end to the story. The Doctor slips away from the engagement party, and gives a rueful look as he drives Bessie away into the twilight. He’s going to be lonely, we know. What we don’t know at this point is that in the very next story he’ll get the pleasure of the company of wonderful Liz Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith. Ahh, the lucky swine.

What Have We Learned?

Even at this late stage the production team were capable of pulling a great UNIT story out of the bag.

Today’s Science fiction can sometimes become tomorrow’s science fact.

 

68: Planet of the Daleks

Before Watching

There’s a body of opinion that suggests that this story is a virtual retread of “The Daleks” from the first season. In fact I wouldn’t mind betting that this was the story that, when he asked the production team what they thought about it, they replied – We love your story Terry – we loved it every time you’ve sold it to us in the past. – Well, I cannot tell a lie, I liked this one when I watched it as a kid. I like the escape from the city where the Doctor and his Thal companions all made a sort of parachute/balloon affair and used it to ascend the rising hot air in a ventilation shaft. Very cool.

My recollection of that this story dovetailed out of “Frontier in Space”, and that the two stories worked together more closely than any two others since The Space Museum/ The Chase. We’ll see about that. A shout out for Bernard Horsfall as well, who plays one of the Thals – always brings a little bit of class to any role he plays does our Bernard.

After Watching

Right then. If you have watched every Dalek story so far, as I have, and then you watch the first episode of “Planet of the Daleks”, then maybe you’ll be struck by just how much of this seems familiar. It’s almost a case of being ‘Now That’s What I Call Daleks” – even though one of the Daleks themselves don’t appear until right at the end of this first episode, and it’s disabled when it does. Look at what we have – a jungle planet (The Daleks’ Master Plan) - Thals (the Daleks)- killer plants (Mission to the Unknown) – the crew, who are about to die, saved by medicine/treatment provided by the locals (The Daleks) – invisible aliens (The Daleks’ Master Plan). Despite all of these familiar Dalek trappings, we are actually in an original story – either the Doctor, or the Time Lords with whom he communicated at the end of “Frontier in Space” has steered the increasingly reliable TARDIS to Spiridon, the planet where the Daleks are massing their army for the attack on Earth. So at least the first episode sets out what’s going to happen very clearly. The Doctor must first of all recover, persuade the Thals into an alliance, find out what the Daleks are actually up to, and put a spanner in the works for them.

I had to laugh at the first cliffhanger. The Doctor and the Thals discover a round dent in the ground. There is obviously an invisible thing there. The Thals produce a couple of spray paint cans. “What’s that?” asks the Doctor. Oh, for God’s sake, Doc, it’s a flippin’ spray can! -is not what the Thals reply, sadly, - and they begin to spray the creature which – shock horror – turns out to be a Dalek! This might be a shock to the Doctor, although considering the last episode it shouldn’t – but why it would come as a shock to viewers, when the story is called “Planet of the Daleks” is something more of a mystery.

Speaking of Thals a moment before, there’s an interesting juxtaposition between two of the actors who play them. Both recur in several Doctor Who roles. On the one hand we have Bernard Horsfall – and on the other we have Prentis Hancock. Now, my admiration for Bernard Horsfall as a guest star is a matter of record in earlier volumes, so I won’t go on too much about that. However, if I single him out, I probably should probably single out Prentis Hancock as well. He made his first appearance in the show in “Spearhead from Space” where he didn’t stand out one way or another. However as Vaber the Thal in this he’s been giving a typical Prentis Hancock performance – extremely intense, and that’s for every single line that he’s given, right up to the point where you want to just give him a slap and tell him to stop overacting and calm down. I watched “Planet of Evil” a few weeks ago on The Horror Channel, and he was a main character in that, playing it exactly the same way. We’ll look at that one in more detail when we get to season 13. As I recall he did the same as Paul Morrow in “Space 1999” although it’s such a long time ago that I watched this my memory may well be at fault here.

You know, a funny thing happened as I watched this story. With each successive episode I found my cynicism subsiding, and a growing willingness to say, yes, maybe this is rubbish, but it’s good rubbish. I’m guessing that this is partly due to nostalgia. Thus, since I clearly remember being thrilled as a kid when the Doctor and the Thals – who now included a woman, Rebec, from another crashed Thal ship – rising to safety using a polythene chute as a parachute cum hot air balloon in a dalek air vent, I took a guilty pleasure in watching it again now. By the end of episode 4 I realized that I was actually enjoying it quite a bit more than I had enjoyed “Frontier in Space”, and frankly I wasn’t expecting that.

It took a while, but eventually that old Dalek favourite, deadly plague/bacteria designed to kill a huge section of the native population (Dalek Invasion of Earth) eventually raised its head. Which actually made me start to wonder what the invisibility thing was all about, apart from the fact that Terry Nation did like his invisible monsters. After all, they’re on Spiridon because it’s a convenient place to build a giant fridge to chill your Dalek army until you’re ready to invade the next planet. So the invisibility thing really is a red herring, although it does provide a scene whereby the ‘good’ Spiridonian who saved Jo’s life earlier releases the deadly bacteria in a sealed room, so that if the two Daleks inside the room open the doors, then the whole Dalek city will be contaminated. After being shot, he turns visible, and we see that his head looks just a tiny bit reminiscent of a Cardassian (that’s one from Deep Space Nine, and not the awful Kim and her tribe).

Where’s the swings there’s also roundabouts. Or to put it another way, while the story had me on its side by about halfway through episode 4, it lost me again pretty soon afterwards. Bernard rounds upon Rebec for coming on this ‘suicide’ mission. Why? Because he loves her. Ah, bless. Then we have the night on Spiridon, which certainly seems to last a good 12 hours to me. It’s obvious padding, I’m afraid, and generally episode 5 drags its heels towards its weary conclusion. Old Prentis throws a major wobbly when Taron/Bernard says he has to wait until later to play with his explosives, and so on and so forth. At last, the Dalek Supreme having arrived, they get to attack the city, with the obligatory splitting up of the Doctor and the companion. The Doctor goes off with the Thals, while Jo goes off with a member of the New Seekers.

I should say something about the Dalek Supreme here. My immediate thought when I saw it was that this was very like one of the film Daleks, what with its rather wide bumper, and much bigger headlights, and a check in The Television Companion reveals that it was actually adapted from a film Dalek that Terry Nation had in his possession. There you go. The Dalek Supreme looks quite impressive in his black and gold livery, although in one scene his dome wobbles up and down as he’s talking which is somewhat less impressive. Generally the Dalek Supreme is an interesting addition to the Dalek mythos. We only really started to get an explicit idea of the Dalek chain of command in The Evil of the Daleks, where we met the impressive, though impotent, Dalek Emperor. Now he was clearly different from the other Daleks. In this story, though, the Dalek Supreme, when killing a Dalek who was responsible for not capturing the Doctor and Thals, states that the Supreme Council will not tolerate failure. All of which opens up some interesting questions, namely, what are the Daleks doing having Supreme Councils? Who are on the Council? How did they get there? Who voted them in? It just doesn’t quite sit right with our concept of the Daleks as basically a Fascist dictatorship.

Well, anyway, there we are. The Doctor and his Thal friends manage to set off an ice volcano which buries the Dalek Army, and will take several centuries to melt through. Handy that. The New Seeker, who turns out to be a Thal called Latex, or something like that, clearly has the hots for Jo (ah – back to “The Daleks”) and proposes to her, but she refuses, saying that she wants to go home. In case we missed the point, when the Doctor is basically offering her the choice of all the planets in the universe, she brings up an image of Earth on the scanner, and tells him she wants to go home. A subtle way, I would say, of preparing us for her farewell in the very next story.

What Have We Learned?

Daleks shut down a) when they are in extreme cold – and b) when they’re invisible. 

67: Frontier In Space

Before Watching

It must have been about 1972 or 1973 that there was a BBC Special Effects Exhibition at the Science Museum in London, which featured an excellent display of costumes and props from Doctor Who. Now, we didn’t have a lot of money as a family (cue violins in background) and never went away on holiday, but what my Mum did try to do to make up for it was to provide us with as many interesting days out as she could, Growing up in the West London suburbs there was usually something interesting waiting at the end of a tube journey, and this wonderful exhibition was one of them.

I mean it was actually really great. I can remember going into a room which had a full sized TARDIS console, and Tardis panels on the walls. That was amazing. There were Daleks, an Invasion Cyberman costume, and some of the best costumes from recent years. Now, you have to remember that the early 70s right through to about Terror of the Zygons was a golden age of alien design for Doctor Who, unsurpassed until the 2005 revival in my opinion. There was an Ogron, a Sea Devil, and a Draconian, and I fancy that “Frontier In Space” may even have been the story broadcasting at the time we went to the exhibition. So you can imagine they made quite an impression on me, and are still one of my favourite Doctor Aliens after all these years.

Off the point a little, if we fast forward to 1982, nine years later, my brother and I decided it was high time that we paid a visit to the Doctor Who Exhibition on the Golden Mile in Blackpool. The 18 year old me frankly couldn’t quite match the sense of wonder the 8 and a half year old me had felt at the earlier exhibition. Well, we’d had a very long train journey which was made none the better by the price I had to pay for a slice of British Rail coffee. In fact the one lasting memory I have of the Exhibition is of looking at the Omega Mark II costume, to be seen in the next season’s opener “The Arc of Infinity” and asking what the hell they thought they were doing if they were bringing Omega back. When I actually got to see “Arc of Infinity” some 5 months later, I realised just how right I was to be sceptical, but we’ll come to that story in due course. Meanwhile, “Frontier in Space”. This was another of those stories whose titles were changed by Target for the novelisation, and so if you’re looking for this one you need to look for “Doctor Who and The Space War”. Malcolm Hulke, as he usually did, novelised his own scripts. He usually made a good job of it too, and this one was no different as I recall, however there was one particular passage which always made my brother and I chuckle. At one point Jo has been captured by the Ogrons, and her captor obviously has designs upon her, and brings her food, while uttering these sweet nothings, “Eat good, get big, become Ogron wife.” Ah, sweet. I can’t wait to find out if that line ever was said on screen.

After Watching

Well, we had to wait until episode 6, but then the answer to the great question was found. The Ogron who brings Jo her food when she’s in captivity on the Ogron home planet does not say “Eat good, get big, become Ogron wife” – so that’s purely an invention for the Target novelisation.

How, then, do we arrive at a fair assessment of “Frontier in Space”? In some ways it’s the archetypal space opera from the Pertwee years, and yet in other ways it is very much a one of a kind. It’s the last Master story for one thing. It was shortly after this was filmed that Roger Delgado was tragically killed in a car accident, and so the mooted last confrontation story between the Doctor and the Master never actually came to pass.

The plot is rather thin, but not difficult to follow. The TARDIS materialises upon an Earth cargo spaceship. There is a strange noise, and the ship is attacked. The crew, and Jo, believe that it is Draconians who attack the ship. The Doctor, though, with his resistance to the sound, can see that it is in fact Ogrons who do so. The Draconians control a rival space empire to that of Earth. The two empires have been at war in the past, but there exists an uneasy peace between them at this moment in time. Now, if you’re thinking that this sounds rather like the situation between the Federation and the Klingon Empire in the original series of Star Trek, then you’re not the only person to think so. We’ll look at similarities between the Klingons and the Draconians a little later.

Someone or something is using the Ogrons to try to foment war between the two empires. Now, we’ve seen the Ogrons before in “Day of the Daleks”, and so we know that they’re too dumb to come up with this kind of plan for themselves. The natural assumption is that it’s the Daleks who are behind this plan, and so when they do get round to turning up, at the dog end of episode 6, it really doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Now, my memory may well be at fault here, but I’m sure that the BBC had already showed them turning up in a trailer before episode 6 was even broadcast as well, so again, it wasn’t exactly a shock to see them.

Not that it’s the Daleks who are actually carrying out the plan to manipulate the two empires to war. This is the doing of the Master, who doesn’t actually turn up until episode three. Once the Master does appear we do get into a swings and roundabouts situation. Yes, Roger Delgado is as watchable and as enjoyable as ever. The problem is that once the Master arrives, the action becomes as predictable as ever. Prior to his arrival, there’s a lot of toing and froing between the Earth president, who is being urged towards war by her meathead advisor General Williams, and the Draconian embassy. The Doctor is passed around from pillar to post with nobody believing him, until the Earth president tires of him and sends him off to life imprisonment on the penal colony on the moon.

So, the Master poses as the leader of an Earth Colony. He has manipulated Earth records to show the Doctor and Jo as master criminals on his planet, and has the president agree to them being handed over into his custody. They are space jacked by the Draconians, and in an audience with the Emperor, the Doctor reveals that he was made an honorary Draconian nobleman 500 years ago for services rendered. A party of Ogrons rescues the Master, but crucially leaves one of their number behind, which finally convinces the Draconians of what is happening. The Doctor and the crown prince take the Ogron to convince the Earth President, but the Master attacks, and when they repel him, he has taken the Ogron and Jo back to the Ogron home planet. The Draconian prince wins the meathead Williams over to his side, and they mount a covert mission to said Ogron home planet. The Master reveals that the Daleks are behind his plan. The Doctor frees himself, Jo, Williams and the Draconian, and sends them back to their respective empires to muster forces to resist the Daleks. He is grazed by a shot from the Master’s gun, and after returning to the TARDIS, which the Master had brought to the Ogron planet, sends a telepathic message to the Time Lords, and collapses. Phew.

This story manages the remarkable feat of being at the same time too short for 6 episodes, and also too long for 6 episodes. There’s not really enough story in the first 5 episodes to sustain 5 episodes. On the other hand, there’s really too much in episode 6, and it means that the ending is rather unsatisfactory. Apart from anything else, there really isn’t a proper ending. We think that Williams and the Draconian crown prince will get home safely and warn Earth and Draconia about the Dalek threat. But we don’t actually know, and what’s more, we will never find out. And so although “Frontier in Space” and “Planet of the Daleks” are not the first pair of stories to dovetail together, for me they are the first pair that dovetail without the first story being properly resolved. If we take “The Space Museum” and “The Chase”, the situation on the planet of the Xerons has clearly been resolved. Partly this sense of dislocation is caused by the abrupt way that we saw the last of Roger Delgado’s Master. That’s nobody’s fault other than a cruel and untimely death on a car crash, but it is a terrible shame that there was no great and final showdown, which many people connected with the show have said was being planned. In the end of episode 6 the Master does what he has always done so far – watched his schemes begin to collapse around him, and done a runner while the going was good, although this time he took a pot shot at the Doctor as he was running, which caused the injury which is carried forward into the next story.

That’s the manic 6^th episode. In the 5 episodes prior to that it was a particularly good story if you like prison scenes. The Doctor and/or Jo were locked up in several different locations including more than one spaceship, an Earth prison cell, a penal colony on the Moon, and a cell on the Ogron planet, and that’s just the ones I can remember. Which does smack a little of a lack of imagination. For me this is what stopped “Frontier in Space” actually being the classic that I maybe thought it was when I watched it back in 1973. The concept, of an agent provocateur deliberately and covertly trying to provoke war between two great powers is an interesting one, and it means that the story is constantly watchable, but never really becomes what it could have been. For example, General Williams’ sudden conversion to the cause of peace would be a lot more believable had we but heard a little more about his past history with the Draconians, which might have made his conversion seem just a little less Damascene and a little more believable. Then there’s the Earth president. You now, I can’t really make up my mind whether Malcolm was making a stand against the prevailing tone of the Pertwee era so far, which is certainly chauvinistic, even if it isn’t misogynistic, by having a woman President. On the other hand, he might just be using this as a sign of how far in the future we are – President of the Earth? A woman? This can only be the future. The way that the President is continually browbeaten by the meathead Williams, and the fact that in one of the scenes she is lying on a couch, having a head massage from her female PA kind of makes me think it’s the latter rather than the former.

Right, let’s get back to the Draconians. I made the point earlier that it’s possible to draw comparisons between them and the Klingons from Star Trek. Of course, when you say the Klingons you need to define exactly which Klingons you’re talking about. The Klingons that appeared in the original series, that is the only Klingons we had experienced by the time that “Frontier in Space” was broadcast were essentially humanoids with funny eyebrows, played by blacked up actors. There was maybe a suggestion of something Asiatic about them, but that was about it. To a ‘man’ they were pretty aggressive meatheads obsessed with warfare. Which isn’t really like the Draconians. Now, some 6 years after “Frontier in Space” a Klingon ship appeared in the beginning of the film, and everything had changed. This wasn’t an exploration of Klingon culture by any stretch of the imagination, but now the Klingons had their strange, ridged, inhuman foreheads, and their peculiar facial hair. In “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and films such as “The Undiscovered Country” we gradually learned a lot more about Klingon culture. They lose their role as out and out villains, and instead come across as a noble race, obsessed with honour, their concept of which seems to be at least suggested by the Samurai code of Bushido. Which also sounds like the Draconians. It’s worth stressing again, though, that the Draconians came before this version of the Klingons. I think that the Draconians were an interestingly conceived alien race, and their design, and appearance was as good as it gets in classic Doctor Who, and it’s maybe a little surprising that they were never to reappear in classic Doctor Who. If I was asked I’d hazard the opinion that this comes down to two things. Firstly, that the Draconians, despite their alien appearance, are not monsters, and it’s probably easier to write stories about out and out monsters, and secondly, that it seems to me that something happened to alienate Malcolm Hulke from Doctor Who. Having co-written “The Faceless Ones” and “The War Games” for Patrick Troughton he wrote at least one story for each of the 5 seasons of Jon Pertwee. He would write “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” for season 11, Jon Pertwee’s last season, and then that would be it and he would never contribute again. A great pity.

All in all, then, it’s a curious piece of work is “Frontier in Space”. It strives for something of the epic style and sweep of “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, with the Master in the Mavic Chen position, and the Daleks pushed almost totally into the background. At times it almost makes it as well – it’s certainly a more convincing ‘space opera’ than we’ve seen for a long time in the show. As a stand-alone story, though, it falls some way short of the gold standard for me. Which is a shame, because I loved it when I first saw it.

What have we learned?

The Doctor is an honorary noble of Draconia – and The Master isn’t.