Despite the hypno-noise making the Master appear as every scary monster from the last two seasons that the production team could lay their paws on (though, for some reason, no jelly creatures were used), Jo resists it.
Jo: "It doesn't work on me any more!"The Master: "Congratulations, my dear. I seem to have failed again."Jo: "Yes, you do, don't you? Never mind, you can't win 'em all."
This completes Jo's character arc from when she was hypno-eyesed by the Master at their first meeting. Then she was but a pawn in the game between two Time Lords, now she stands up to the Master as, if not an equal, certainly as an experienced time-traveler. The myth that Companions don't undergo character development in Doctor Who is certainly not true of Jo Grant.
The Doctor is on the earth spaceship with the Prince and General Williams when they get attacked by a Draconian spaceship. General Williams shouts "Dragons!" even though the Prince is right there beside him.
They escape the attack, but need to make repairs to the ship. The Doctor volunteers, leading to this dialogue exchange:
General Williams: "No doubt you're a qualified space engineer too, Doctor?"Doctor: "Naturally."
Here we see Malcolm Hulke blending his writing style with that of Terry Nation, so the next episode is not too much of a jarring change of gears. This scene is blatantly padding, but is kept exciting by the Doctor having to make the repair and then get back inside the spaceship before the pursuing Draconian ship catches up with them.
Jo escapes from her cell and steals the Master's hypno-noise box. She sends a message to the Doctor using the Master's space telephone. But this is exactly what the Master wanted in order to set his trap for the Doctor, so when Jo has done that he comes in and captures her again. The spaceship lands and the Master sends out Ogrons to capture the Doctor.
The planet is a classic quarry location. The Ogrons ambush the Doctor and the landing party, but they are scared off when a strange and terrifying creature appears at the top of the ridge.
The Master is on his space telephone, finishing his conversation in such a way that we don't find out who he was talking to, or even what they sound like. How curious...
Another spaceship lands, and is spotted by the Doctor's party. They continue trekking towards the Master's base, but the Doctor is uneasy and says
"I've got a feeling... Some sort of premonition."
This, in combination with the mystery of who the Master was talking to in the previous scene, helps to build up the suspense. The Master intercepts the Doctor's party and stands atop the ridge to talk to them:
The Master: "Hello, Doctor! So here you are at last, eh?"General Williams: "Surrender or you'll be shot down!"Doctor: "No, he's unarmed."The Master: "Unarmed maybe, but not unaccompanied. I've brought some old friends along to meet you."
The Daleks are here! It's easy to forget when you are familiar with this story, or this season, but this is an amazing twist, especially since we are well into the final episode by now.
General Williams orders his mannys to fire, but the Daleks fire first and exterminate all the extra mannys. The named characters get captured and put in the same cell as Jo. Jo still has the Master's hypno-noise box, which she gives to the Doctor to use. He appears to the Ogron guard as a Dalek, which then lets them out of the cage.
The Daleks have returned to their ship, but they still telephone the Master to tell him
Dalek: "WE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER HYPERDRIVE AND RETURN TO OUR BASE. DO NOT FAIL THE DALEKS."The Master: "Right, we'll see who rules the galaxy when this is over. 'Do not fail the Daleks' indeed. You stupid tin boxes."
I wonder if failing the Daleks is what they put him on trial for at the start of the TV Movie?
General Williams and the Prince separate from the Doctor and Jo, the former to escape and warn their peoples about the Daleks, the latter to get to the TARDIS.
The Master and several Ogrons ambush the Doctor and Jo, but the Doctor turns the hypno-noise on them. The Ogrons all run away, but the Master has time to shoot the Doctor before he also flees (although he doesn't run away so much as disappear in between shots - this scene is very confusingly edited considering that it is basically the climax of the story), and the Doctor collapses, wounded.
Luckily they are right outside the TARDIS, so Jo can help the Doctor stagger inside. He puts his paws on the console, and tells Jo
"Telepathic circuits... sending a message to the Time Lords."
We see a shot of the TARDIS spinning in space as the theme music starts up, because this story ends on a cliffhanger!
Imprisoned counter: Doctor 1, Jo 1
Final total: Doctor 10, Jo 10
What's so good about Frontier in Space?
It's possible to imagine a version of Frontier in Space without the Master in it. General Williams is an obvious alternative for being the main baddy, either causing the war to gain power for himself, or revenge against the Draconians for the last war, or else hypno-eyesed by the Daleks into W-wording for them (if this still needs to precede Planet of the Daleks). The Doctor could ally with Professor Dale and the Peace Party (who otherwise completely disappear from the plot once the Master appears) to escape from the moon, while Jo stays on Earth and perhaps makes contact with the Peace Party there. Maybe Willie Caine, who also hasn't been in it since episode two, could return and help them?
You would still have a witty script by Malcolm Hulke, one of the best writers of this era of Doctor Who, and an interesting sci-fi plot and setting. The Draconians would still be there, with all of their potential as one of the more three-dimensional alien races to appear in Doctor Who (I'm sure I'm not the only one to be surprised that they didn't appear again in the TV series after this story), and you would still have the twist at the end that, if nothing else, would make this story memorable.
But would it be as good without the Master in it? In a word: no. Because you would miss out on the charismatic central performance by Roger Delgado, and the dynamic he has with the Doctor and Jo, established through their earlier encounters and continued here, in such a way that every scene they share lifts the story up a level. The scene where the Master rescues the Doctor; the scene where the Master pretends to be on the side of "law and order" in front of the Draconian Emperor; the scene where Jo resists the Master's hypno-eyes; and so on. And it would hardly have the same resonance to see General Williams regretting that killing the Doctor using a long-range missile strike lacks a "personal touch." Every one of the eight stories in which Roger Delgado appeared as the Master was lifted in a similar way, and it is tragic that there would be no more such stories after this one.
Frontier in Space was clearly never intended to be the Master's final story, or I'm sure they would have given him a better send off. The story itself lacks a proper ending - deliberately so - because of the need for it to run straight into the following one, which meant that setting up the Dalek plot took precedence over resolving the Master's plot. This unintended consequence then ends up being, if only retroactively, Frontier in Space's biggest weakness - that the era of the first (and best) Master ends this way.
Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis
The clearest manifestation of the padding in this story is in the number of times the Doctor and Jo are captured, imprisoned, and then escape, for which it is somewhat notorious. The final total of my count was that they were each imprisoned 10 times, and even though for many of those the Doctor and Jo were together (so it is not 20 separate instances), it is still easily more than once an episode on average.
Episode two is by far the worst for this, and must take most of the blame for the story's reputation. Things improve significantly after the Master appears (as things usually do) in part three, but I also think this is one of those stories that benefits from not being watched in one go, when the incidences of imprisonment early on in the plot could make it feel as though they are happening constantly and non-stop throughout.
If the Doctor and Jo getting captured and escaping repeatedly is the bad sort of padding, there is also the more enjoyable kind when writer Malcolm Hulke expands upon the setting of the future Earth and Draconia. He also takes the opportunity to put in callbacks to previous Doctor Who stories (most obviously in the scene in episode five when the Doctor and Jo are talking to cover their escape attempt), including all of his own stories except for Doctor Who and the Silurians. This is a little self-indulgent, but they are really only 'Easter Eggs' for the benefit of cats who have been paying attention, and wouldn't spoil the story in any way if you didn't catch what they were a reference to.
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