Unexpected Chuckles

Big Gay Longcat reviews Star Trek: By Any Other Name

This mostly forgotten episode came towards the end of the second season of Star Trek, sandwiched between two more famous episodes, Patterns of Force (a.k.a. the one with the planet of Nazis) and The Omega Glory (a.k.a. the one with the Yangs and the Kohms). There's not much to make By Any Other Name stand out on its own merits, except perhaps for one line of amusing dialogue, but it is possible to draw an interesting parallel between its plot and a similar one (although handled much better) in the second season of Blakes 7.

The episode wastes no time getting to the (piece of the) action, with not even time for Captain Kirk to make an establishing Captain's Log entry. Along with Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and two other mannys, Captain Kirk has already beamed down to a planet answering a distress signal. They find two mannys, Rojan and Kelinda, are there already. Rojan thanks them for coming so quickly, and then immediately demands Captain Kirk surrender. Uh-oh!

Captain Kirk thinks it is a joke, bu then Rojan and Kelinda press their belt buttons and this pewpewpews our heroes so that they all have to do standing-still acting. This is a cliffhanger, which for Star Trek means it is time for the title sequence.

Rojan releases them and tells Captain Kirk he needs his ship to take them

"To your neighboring galaxy, which you call Andromeda."

because

"It is our home."

They are not really mannys, they are alien Kelvans.

When asked why they came here to this galaxy, Rojan tells them that "within 10 millennia" there will be too much radiation in their galaxy for them to live, so they needed to boldly go where no Kelvans had gone before to find another galaxy to live in or, as Rojan puts it, "conquer and occupy."

On the Enterprise we see more of Rojan's Kelvans teleport in (accompanied by a silly, bouncy sound effect) and pew all the mannys there.

Even Lt Leslie, so we know it's serious!

Back on the planet, Rojan says they have the leet technology skillz to speed up the Enterprise so that it can reach Andromeda in only 300 years, instead of the "thousands" that Captain Kirk thinks it would take them. Mr Spock is impressed and says it is "fascinating."

The Kelvans' own ship was destroyed by the "energy barrier at the rim of your galaxy." Captain Kirk quietly mentions that

"I know, we've been there."

which is a continuity reference to the early episode Where No Manny Has Gone Before. The galactic barrier would go on to appear once more in the third season episode Is There in Truth No Beauty? so that they could reuse the same SFX yet again.

Captain Kirk tries to make friends with Rojan and offers the possibility of assistance from the Federation and uninhabited planets to colonise. But Rojan is a baddy, and he says

"We do not colonize. We conquer. We rule!"

Captain Kirk and his landing party are put in prison. Mr Spock attempts to use a "Vulcan mind probe" (no, not the Vulcan mind probe) to trick Kelinda, who is guarding them. She comes in and Captain Kirk knocks her out, and they steal her pewpewpew device from her belt and then escape. They are then pewed and recaptured straight away by Rojan.

Rojan decides to "punish" Captain Kirk by executing the two non-regular characters, both of whom are, of course, wearing red - this became a Star Trek cliché for a reason, after all. When Captain Kirk protests, Rojan says

"I think we're somewhat alike, Captain. Each of us cares less for his own safety than for the lives of his command. We feel pain when others suffer for our mistakes."

As evidence that this is an overlooked episode, I offer that this example isn't mentioned (at least at time of writing) on TV Tropes, even though many more flimsy examples are.

Rojan's minion Hanar pews the mannys and turns them into irregular dodecahedrons. Rojan takes them and crushes one, saying that manny is now ded, but the other gets unpewed and "restored" to life.

The remaining mannys are put back in the prison, where Captain Kirk takes time to make a Captain's Log entry before talking to Mr Spock about his experience from when he Vulcan mind probed Kelinda. Mr Spock thinks the Kelvans aren't really mannys - something confirmed to us viewers when we saw Rojan talking to Hanar and asking "How do humans manage to exist in these fragile cases?" - and Mr Spock says they are really

"Immense beings, a hundred limbs which resemble tentacles. Minds of such control and capacity that each limb is capable of performing a different function."

I think my friend Cthulhu would like that bit, but he is having an eternal lie-in and so he missed it.

When Dr McCoy asks why they look like mannys, Captain Kirk jokes

"Immense beings with a hundred tentacles would have difficulty with the turbolift."

That also explains why they didn't choose to become cats even though cats are best. That and to avoid drawing comparisons between this episode and Catspaw I suppose, mew.

Kelinda asks Captain Kirk about flowers, and says that on their planet they had crystals that grew and looked like flowers, called "sahshir." Captain Kirk says

"'A rose by any other name.'"

Clang! He goes on to explain:

"A quote from a great human poet, Shakespeare: 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'"

By the next scene they are on the bridge of the Enterprise and heading towards the galactic barrier. Mr Spock, with Scotty backing him up, suggests blowing the ship up to stop the Kelvans, but Captain Kirk isn't keen.

Captain Kirk makes a Captain's Log entry in which he says that

"Spock and Scotty have devised a suicide plan to stop the Kelvans. They have rigged the ship to explode on my signal."

Even though Rojan and another Kelvan were beside him the whole time, they are good sports and pretend not to hear him. Later on Rojan claims to have detected Mr Spock's plan - he doesn't say how, but I think we can guess...

The ship flies into the barrier, cue lots of flashing lights and shaking of cameras. Once through, the Kelvans start turning all of the crew who they don't need to make the ship go into irregular dodecahedrons, starting with Uhura, then Chekov, then the non-regular characters - most of whom get pewed off-screen. Only Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and Scotty remain unpewed.

Mr Spock figures out the Kelvans' weakness, which he sums up for Captain Kirk's (and our) benefit as

"They have taken human form and are therefore having human reactions."

This is shown to us in the form of one of the Kelvans really enjoying his noms, to which Dr McCoy quips

"If he keeps reacting like that, he's going to need a diet."

Captain Kirk's plan is to confuse the Kelvans by stimulating their senses, until they are distracted enough to steal all their pewpewpew devices. Do they have any catnip on board?

Scotty starts by getting one of them drunk, resulting in the most famous line from this episode - although even this is largely because of callbacks to it in later Star Trek.

"What is it?"

"Well, it's... er... it's green."

We see inside Scotty's quarters in this episode, and they are as stereotypically Scottish as you might expect, with him having a kilt and a set of bagpipes on his walls. Even the incidental music tries to sound Scottish when in this room.

Meanwhile, Captain Kirk has a different approach:

Captain Kirk: "I wish to apologize."

Kelinda: "I don't understand, Captain."

Captain Kirk: "For hitting you. I'm sorry."

Kelinda: "That is not necessary. You attempted to escape as we would have."

Captain Kirk: "Yes, well, I don't usually go around beating up beautiful women."

Kelinda: "Why not?"

Captain Kirk: "Well, there are better things for men and women to do."

We can all see where this is going. Well, all except Kelinda...

Kelinda: "Like what?"

Naughty Captain Kirk. Even though Kelinda figures out that Captain Kirk is trying to seduce her, she still likes it, and kiffs him back until Rojan comes in. When Captain Kirk leaves, Kelinda demonstrates the kiff on Rojan, leading him to say

"Very odd creatures, these humans."

Lol. Rojan then goes to talk to Mr Spock about it, who suggests that Rojan is jealous. Rojan denies it.

Mr Spock: "Captain Kirk seems to find her quite attractive."

Rojan: "Well, of course she is!"

Mr Spock: "You are not jealous?"

Rojan: "No!"

Mr Spock: "Nor upset?"

Rojan: "Certainly not."

The Kelvan protests too much, methinks. The rift widens when Kelinda goes to Captain Kirk and asks him

"Would you please apologize to me again?"

Mr Spock stirs things further by telling Rojan they are together - Captain Kirk and Kelinda are together, I mean, not Mr Spock and Rojan. The plan might have succeeded that way round, but I suppose we'll never know, mew.

Rojan goes to Captain Kirk and starts a fight with him. While they are still fighting, Captain Kirk tries to persuade Rojan that he has become too used to being a manny to return to his own planet and be accepted.

"Look what's happened in the short time you've been exposed to us - what do you think will happen in three centuries? When this ship gets to Kelva, the people on it will be human. They'll be aliens. Enemies!"

He again offers Rojan help from the Federation, but this time Rojan replies

"You would really do that? You would extend welcome to invaders?"

"No. But we would welcome friends."

So the episode ends with Captain Kirk making new friends, and Kelinda says she owes an apology to Rojan. Naughty Kelinda.

The Kelvans, aliens from the galaxy of Andromeda who wish to invade our galaxy to conquer the Federation and who have taken on the form of mannys even though that is nothing like their true form, share a lot of similarities with the aliens from the Blakes 7 episode Star One.

Did Blakes 7 copy this idea from Star Trek? Are they maybe even supposed to be the same aliens? If you wanted Star Trek and Blakes 7 to be set in the same universe (presumably so that you could have Avon and Captain Kirk meet without having to jump through too many hoops) then they could be, and you could take Orac's line about the Federation building their space minefield because of "a contact, sometime in the past" as referring to the events of By Any Other Name. However, for all the similarities between the two series, there are differences too - no galactic barrier is in evidence in Blakes 7 to help keep the aliens out, for a start.

And even if the resemblance isn't coincidental, so what? Star Trek spinoffs would later borrow from Blakes 7 in much the same way in return - the most famous season-ending cliffhanger of Star Trek: The Next Generation is extremely close to Star One's season-ending cliffhanger.

Anyway, it's not as if Chris Boucher could only have gotten the idea from watching Star Trek. Monty Python's Flying Circus had Blancmanges from the planet Skyron in the galaxy of Andromeda invading the Earth as well. And while they didn't look like mannys, Mr and Mrs Samuel Brainsample did.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode Six

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.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode Five

There's almost no recap of the previous episode, which is surprising - especially in a six-parter, when they normally take every opportunity they can for some padding.

At the Draconian court the same situation as on Earth is playing out in parallel, with the Emperor as cautious as the Earth President was, and the Prince playing the part of General Williams in pushing for a war. This is a clever way of quickly establishing the similarities between them.

The Master, the Doctor and Jo enter, and the Doctor introduces himself to the Emperor. This is an iconic moment, worth quoting in full:

Doctor: "My life at your command, sire."

Prince: "How dare you address the Emperor in a manner reserved for a noble of Draconia!"

Doctor: "Ah, but I am a noble of Draconia. The honour was conferred on me by the 15th Emperor."

Prince: "The 15th Emperor reigned 500 years ago."

The Master: "Your Majesty, do not be taken in by this ridiculous story."

Emperor: "Be silent! There is a legend among our people of a man who assisted the 15th Emperor at a time of great trouble, when we were almost overwhelmed by a great plague from outer space. But you could not be that man. No Earthman lives so long."

Doctor: "Your Majesty, this man that you speak of, was he not known as the Doctor? And did he not come to this planet in a spaceship called the TARDIS?"

Emperor: "He did."

Jo obviously didn't know the Draconians before this story, and the Doctor couldn't use the TARDIS again until after she was already his Companion, so this suggests the Doctor must have visited Draconian before his regeneration and exile to Earth - it is lucky for him they don't have any pictures of that time, or he would find it even more difficult to convince them.

The Doctor goes on to tell the Draconians about the Master's plan (masterplan?), but when Jo tries to back him up she is told

"Silence! Females are not permitted to speak in the presence of the Emperor."

Now I know Malcolm Hulke wrote this story, but nobody told me that Ben Steed was the script editor for it.

All the Master can do is deny the Doctor's accusations. The Emperor seems to believe the Doctor, so the Master tries a different approach:

"I too welcome your wisdom, your Majesty. Nobody could be more devoted to the cause of peace than I. As a commissioner of Earth's interplanetary police, I have devoted my life to the cause of law and order. And law and order can only exist in a time of peace."

The Doctor follows this with the punchline:

"You feeling all right, old chap?"

Lol. Another spaceship lands claiming to be from Earth, but it makes the hypno-eyes noise from earlier. Ogrons run in and rescue the Master, but the Doctor knocks one out so that when the others have gone and the sound fades away, the Emperor sees it is really an Ogron and not a manny.

The Prince continues to act like General Williams when he threatens to use the mind probe on the captured Ogron. The Emperor sends the Doctor, Jo, and the Prince to go to Earth to show the Ogron to the President.

On board the ship, Jo talks to a Draconian guard about the Ogron prisoner:

"Hey, you know, you want to be very careful of him. He's not as stupid as he looks. I know, I know, women aren't allowed to speak. You know, I think it's about time that women's lib was brought to Draconia."

This is ironic because she is speaking to an extra who is not allowed to speak back to her.

The Master's (new) spaceship is following them, and the Master talks to an Ogron:

The Master: "I'd like to try and take the Doctor alive if possible. If not, I'll blast him out of space. Pity though."

Ogron: "You do not wish to kill him?"

The Master: "Of course I do! But I don't know... rocket fire at long range, it's... I don't know. Somehow it lacks that personal touch."

Lol. The Doctor, not realising it is the Master's ship, telephones the master to ask who they are. The Master puts on a komedy policemanny voice to answer him, because he is a master of disguise.

The Master fires missiles at them, and then sends the Ogrons to board them. They rescue the captured Ogron, and in exchange manage to capture Jo, but then the Master spots yet another spaceship approaching, this time "an Earth battlecruiser," so they withdraw and fly away, leaving the Doctor and the Prince behind to get arrested by the mannys on the Earth spaceship.

In a nice change from the way this story has operated so far, we don't see the Doctor and the Prince get imprisoned, it just cuts directly to them talking to the President and General Williams on Earth. Even without the Ogron as evidence, the President believes the Doctor enough to go along with his plan to "mount an expedition to the planet of the Ogrons."

Planet of the Ogrons? Isn't that the name of the next story?

General Williams has forgotten that he isn't meant to be the main baddy any more, and refuses to go along with the President. This leads him into having an argument with the Draconian Prince:

Prince: "How can we expect help from a man such as this? This is the man who deliberately caused war between our people!"

General Williams: "That is untrue!"

Prince: "20 years ago, you destroyed a Draconian ship that had come in a mission of peace."

General Williams: "A ship that was about to open fire on us when we were damaged and helpless."

Prince: "They came in peace as had been arranged."

General Williams: "Then why didn't they answer my signals?"

Prince: "Their communications equipment had been destroyed in a neutron storm. The same neutron storm that damaged your ship!"

President: "Is this true?"

Prince: "I have read the records of my father's court. It is the truth."

General Williams: "But why a battlecruiser? The agreement was that both ships were to be unarmed."

Prince: "Naturally we sent a cruiser. How else should a nobleman of Draconia travel? But its missile banks were empty. The ship was unarmed."

This is very similar to the events that would, years later, be used as the backstory for the war between mannys and Minbari in Babylon 5. If I were a suspicious cat, I might even say they were suspiciously similar.

This is enough to make General Williams realise how wrong he has been. He switches completely to siding with the Doctor and the Prince, and even insists on leading the expedition. Unusually for Doctor Who, the Doctor plays virtually no part in helping General Williams come to his realisation in this scene, merely being present as the Prince and the General figure it out between themselves.

The Master takes Jo to his base on the Ogron planet, where he also has the TARDIS. He says

"I'm going to set a trap for the Doctor and you are going to help me."

Then he tries to hypno-eyes her, just like he did back in Terror of the Autons, even bringing back his music to help him. Jo responds by reciting nursery rhymes, so the episode goes a bit Once Upon A Time for a moment, with the Master repeating "you will obey me" while Jo counters with "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."

The Master gives up and his music trails off to show he has been beaten and can no longer hypno-eyes Jo. So then he resorts to turning on his hypno-noise, to see if that will be more effective.

Cliffhanger!

Imprisoned counter: Jo 1

Running total: Doctor 9, Jo 9

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode Four

The Doctor is rescued by the Master, who says

"I'd hate you to come to any harm, you know."

Lol. The prison's Governor is acting like more of a baddy than the Master, sentencing the Doctor and Professor Dale to a year in solitary confinement, which is a kind of prison for when you're already in prison.

The Master helps the Doctor again, by confronting the Governor and threatening him.

The Master: "I think that those two prisoners were telling the truth. I think that your trustee, Cross, was helping them."

Governor: "Why should he do that?"

The Master: "On your instructions."

Governor: "That is an outrageous suggestion..."

The Master: "Oh come, Governor. You rid yourself of a politically dangerous prisoner, and foster the legend that escape is impossible in one go. I must congratulate you."

Governor: "You're being very impertinent."

The Master: "Suppose I were to support the Doctor's demand for an official inquiry? Some very awkward questions could be asked."

Governor: "I have nothing to fear."

The Master: "Haven't you? Oh, come, Governor."

This is an example of why the Master is such a brilliant regular character, and so much more than just an antagonist for the Doctor.

Again he gets his way, and the Doctor is released into his custody just as Jo was. He tells the Doctor of all the crimes the Doctor is accused of committing on Sirius 4, to which the Doctor replies

"I seem to be quite the master criminal, don't I?"

Lol.

The Doctor is taken to the Master's spaceship, where there is a big cage that Jo is already inside, and the Doctor soon joins her. The Master says

"Well, Doctor, this is an interesting reversal. I remember your once visiting me when I was in prison."

The Doctor asks why he is still alive, and the Master makes a cryptic reference to his "employers" being "most interested" in him. Oh noes, that means the Master has had to get a job!

The spaceship takes off and flies over some stock footage of the moon's surface, then into space. The Doctor and Jo start trying to escape, even though the Master is watching them over the "closed-circuit television" (his ship has all the latest technology). To pass the time the Doctor starts making continuity references to previous stories, which bores the Master so he starts reading his book.

(I love how he still has his gloves on while reading, so cool. Purr.)

The Doctor gets out of the cell, and Jo has to keep talking so the Master doesn't notice what they're up to. She waffles on for quite a while, Katy Manning giving a good portrayal of somebody who is improvising:

"Lethbridge-Stewart, hey! As far as he's concerned I've been absent without leave all this time. I'm always telling you that you've no idea where you're going in that TARDIS of yours. I mean, you're supposed to be getting me back to Earth, right? And we keep landing up in one terrible situation after the other. I mean, when I get back, I'll probably be court-martialed, and then I'll be put in a cell again."

Not surprising that this is at the forefront of her mind, mew...

"That's if we do get back, and the way things are going, it doesn't look like it. But if we do get back, I'm telling you one thing, right here and now. I'm never going back in that TARDIS with you again. But if we do get back, I really do think you ought to be a bit more reasonable with the Master. I mean, he keeps offering you a share in the galaxy, or whatever's going on, and you keep refusing him and playing dirty tricks on him. But, you see, the trouble is with you is, well, you're so stiff-necked. I mean, you've got to realise that this time the Master has won. You might as well make the best out of a terrible situation. I mean, look at it now. Here we are..."

It is at this point the Master turns the volume down so he doesn't have to listen to any more. But we do.

"Goodness knows where he's taking us to. I mean, just a few of those Ogrons is bad enough. Can you imagine... I mean, imagine a whole planet of them? Still, I suppose it's all my own fault really. I mean, if I hadn't asked my uncle to pull those strings and get me that job, I'd never have landed up in this mess in the first place. You know, some people think that it's very romantic working in intelligence. Oh, but my goodness, I could tell you it's not. I mean, they think that I run around all day with terrific-looking James Bond types going to suave dinner parties. Oh, but I don't, you know. I mean, either I'm with the Brigadier and I'm doing the filing at HQ, which is very, very difficult, or else I'm running around making tea and being general dogsbody. I mean, the times come really when I'm..."

By this point the Doctor has managed to get a spacesuit on and open the airlock to get to the outside of the spaceship. 

The Master, who is blissfully unaware of the Doctor's escape attempt, makes "a sharp course correction" while the Doctor is still outside, and this causes the Doctor to let go and begin floating around in space. He gets back to the spaceship and climbs about on it for a bit until he gets back inside through a different space door.

The Master eventually notices the Doctor has escaped so he gets a gun and goes to where Jo is still in the cage. He makes her get into the airlock, and threatens the Doctor that he will "open the outer door and hurl her into space."

We see that there is another spaceship flying towards the Master's, but the Master and the Doctor are unaware of it because they are too busy confronting each other. The Doctor manages to sneak up on the Master and disarm him of his gun, and then they fight until the Master manages to get to the airlock buttons.

The airlock opens and some Draconians come in with Jo and, mistaiking the two Time Lords for mannys, capture them both to take them to their planet Draconia. The Master ends up in his own cage, along with the Doctor and Jo, but from there he sends a secret signal to another spaceship, where we see there is an Ogron. This new twist in the plot isn't really much of a cliffhanger, but it is where the episode ends, with a shot of the back of an Ogron's head.

Imprisoned counter: Doctor 2, Jo 2, Master 1

Running total: Doctor 9, Jo 8

Oh, and did you see what they did there? The Master is reading The War of the Worlds because he's trying to start a war between the worlds of Earth and Draconia, lol!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode Three

The Doctor and Jo run away but get recaptured by the mannys and put straight back in their cell. Time for me to increment the imprisoned counter already.

General Williams gives an implicit warning to the President that she will be replaced if she does not declare war on the Draconians. This kind of thing makes him look a lot like like a baddy, and even more so when he decides to use the mind probe on the Doctor. 

But the Doctor outwits it by telling the General nothing but the truth so the mind probe doesn't do anything to him, and eventually it blows itself up, just as the Doctor predicted last episode.

The President decides to send the Doctor to the "Lunar Penal Colony" on the moon, which is full of members of the "Peace Party" who are all there "forever" (more evidence that the Earth Federation is an evil one like in Blakes 7 rather than a good one like in Star Trek). The Governor there tells the Doctor and other prisoners

"There's one rule here: you do as you're told. If you behave yourselves, you'll be reasonably treated, but you have no rights and there is no means of escape. You'll do well to remember that you're here for the rest of your lives."

Oh noes, that last bit means they won't let the Doctor out even if he regenerates.

General Williams and the President have found criminal records for the Doctor and Jo, these have clearly been faked up (using Space Photoshop?) by "the Commissioner from Sirius 4" because when he comes in the Commissioner is revealed to be...

The Master!

Well, this story just got much better. General Williams was being made to look so obviously like the secret baddy behind the Ogrons that it is a neat twist for it really to have been the Master all along. He wants the President and the General to let him take the Doctor and Jo to Sirius 4 with him, and he says, with irony that is evident only to the viewers at home,

"You may rest assured, General Williams, they will be perfectly safe with me."

The Doctor is already trying to escape from the moon, but hears that nobody has escaped before and those that tried ended up ded. These scenes would be more dramatic if the Doctor and his fellow prisoners weren't drinking from sippy cups at the same time.

Jo is still on Earth, and gets visited in her cell by the Master. His first line to her is

"Penny for them, Miss Grant?"

almost as though they were old friends.

Jo: "How did you know we were here in the first place?"

The Master: "Well, after they'd attacked the cargo ships, the Ogrons returned to their planet, taking their loot with them. Now imagine my surprise - and my delight - when I found that they'd brought me the Doctor's TARDIS."

Jo: "And why are you taking us with you?"

The Master: "Oh, need you ask? How could I leave two dear friends in such dire straits?"

In the end Jo agrees to go with the Master, almost as though they were old friends.

The Doctor tells some of his fellow prisoners what has happened to him, until one of them believes him. He is Professor Dale, who is planning an escape of his own - right now! Despite only having just met the Doctor, he already believes his story so much that he lets the Doctor in on the escape attempt.

The Professor and the Doctor go to where there are two spacesuits, but 

because there is no air for them. The manny who pretended to be helping the Professor, Cross (I mean his name is Cross, not that he is cross, although he may well be that too), then locks them in the room. The Doctor realises something is wrong before the Professor does and shouts at him

"They're depressurising. Don't you understand, man? They're pumping out the air!"

Cliffhanger!

Imprisoned counter: Doctor 2, Jo 1

Running total: Doctor 7, Jo 6

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode Two

Willie orders the Doctor and Jo be locked in the hold (again). Jo starts planning for their escape as soon as Willie goes back to his own ship:

"Right, we'll give it a few minutes, then I'll start groaning and pretending I'm ill. When he comes in, you can use your Venusian Karate."

The Doctor isn't keen on this idea, and prefers to wait until they're taken back to Earth where he thinks they have a better chance of finding out what's going on.

There they're taken to meet General Williams, who doesn't believe their story off-screen. If there's any padding in this story (if!) just remember that the makers of this story chose not to show any of the General's not being charmed or persuaded by the Doctor or Jo during this bit. Instead we see him reporting back to the President where he tells her they are "Draconian agents." He's been watching too much Sandbaggers if you ask me.

Speaking of which, Willie is taking the Doctor and Jo to another prison where he hints at the dystopian nature of the Earth Federation:

Willie: "I'm going straight back to my ship. I don't want to get mixed up with security. It's not healthy. Look, I'll give you a piece of advice..."

Doctor: "Yes?"

Willie: "Sooner or later, you're going to tell them everything. They'll use the mind probe. You talk to them now. You'll save yourselves a lot of trouble."

You might expect the Doctor to say something along the lines of "no, not the mind probe!" but in fact he isn't worried about it at all. Willie leaves him and Jo in the cell, where he tells Jo a story to take her mind (probe) off their situation:

Doctor: "Did I ever tell you the story about how I was once captured by the Medusoids?"

Jo: "What are they?"

Doctor: "Medusoids? How can I describe them to you? Well, they're a sort of hairy jellyfish with claws, teeth and a leg."

Jo: "Erk!"

Doctor: "Anyway, they put me under one of these mind probes things, you see, and tried to get me to tell them where I was going. So, I said I was on my way to meet a giant rabbit, a pink elephant and a purple horse with yellow spots."

Jo: "What happened?"

Doctor: "Well, the poor old machine just couldn't believe it, had a nervous breakdown."

Jo: "And then what happened?"

Doctor: "Well, they put me under another one of these mind probe things and the same thing happened."

Jo: "But you weren't telling the truth? I mean, you weren't really going to meet a giant rabbit, a pink elephant and a... what was it?"

Doctor: "A purple horse with yellow spots. Yes, I was. You see, they were all delegates for the third intergalactic peace conference."

Jo: "How did you get away from these things?"

Doctor: "Well they had to turn me loose eventually."

Jo: "Why?"

Doctor: "They ran out of mind probes."

Lol.

The President and General Williams confront the Draconian ambassador with their latest accusations (not a rocher in sight), including that the Doctor and Jo are his agents, but he doesn't know what they are talking about. The Doctor and Jo are brought in, where the Doctor immediately points out all the flaws in General Williams's theory, and then gets so annoyed at the General that he says to him

"Allow me to congratulate you, sir. You have the most totally closed mind that I've ever encountered."

The Doctor had obviously not visited the Earth of 2016 by this point.

The Doctor and Jo are put back in prison. The Doctor tries to use the sonic screwdriver to escape, but he only sets off an alarm instead.

The Draconians want to question the Doctor and Jo because they think they might tell them what the mannys' plan is, so they plan to help them escape while the ambassador is very careful to not explicitly order his assistant to arrange it. There is some very neat dialogue in this scene, and it helps establish that the Draconians can be devious but they are not outright baddys.

That said, maybe "devious" is too strong a word, since their rescue/kittennap plan involves shooting manny guards in broad daylight, then making off with the Doctor while allowing Jo to run to another group of guards shouting

"It's the Draconians!"

This doesn't stop the President and General Williams interrogating Jo again, with questions like

"When were you recruited? How many agents do they have on Earth? What are their plans?"

If I ever make another list of actors who could have made a good Number 2 in The Prisoner, General Williams will not be on it. He's even too stupid for A Change of Mind.

The Doctor is taken to the Draconian ambassador, who tells him

"We know that you are both agents of the Earth government."

but he quickly modifies this to being a conspiracy led by General Williams.

"If you tell us the details of General Williams' plan, we shall be able to expose him to your President. There will still be a chance for peace."

Even when the Doctor tells them about the Ogrons, they don't believe him. Eventually he has had enough and escapes, getting out onto location where the Draconians chase him until he gets captured by the Earth guards. Back to the cell...

Jo hears the noise from episode one, which leads into a scene where the Ogrons attack the mannys, who see them as Draconians. We mostly see the Ogrons as they really are, except for a couple of shots from the POV of mannys when they are replaced by Draconians, which is enough to make the point. The Ogrons break into the prison, including smashing down the door like a Drashig, and the episode ends with them breaking into the cell to point a gun at the Doctor and Jo.

Imprisoned counter: Doctor 4, Jo 4

Running total: Doctor 5, Jo 5

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Frontier in Space Episode One

Frontier in Space is the third story of season ten of Doctor Who, and the sixth of the Pertwee Six-Parters. It was first broadcast in 1973 and stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and is, sadly, the final story in which Roger Delgado appears as the Master.

The name "Frontier in Space" is obviously a reference to Captain Kirk's famous line

"Space: the final frontier."

That would mean that a frontier in space is a frontier in a frontier.

It starts with a spaceship flying in space, which nearly hits the TARDIS. The mannys in charge don't know it is the TARDIS, but we viewers at home see and hear it just enough to recognise it. It helps that in the next scene it materialises on the spaceship, where Jo says

"Only you could manage to have a traffic accident in space."

Lol. The plot gets going quickly when Jo sees another spaceship out the window, and then hears a noise that makes it go all blurry for a moment.

The mannys on the bridge also hear the noise, and it has the effect of making them see a different spaceship model... er, or should that be a different model of spaceship? Not much better put like that, is it? They think it is "Draconians" which made my friend Dragon start paying attention to this story. He was even more interested when the Doctor goes to meet with the ship's crew, but the manny he meets hallucinates that the Doctor is an alien (well, a different kind of alien) and shouts out "Dragons!"

Jo sees the same manny as the Doctor, but she hallucinates that it is a Drashig, which is either a continuity callback to the previous story or else it was simply the easiest monster for the production team to lay their paws on.

The two spaceships link up and the crew send a message to Earth asking for help, which links up this scene with a scene set on Earth.

There the Earth President and a Draconian Prince are accusing each other's spaceships of attacking their spaceships, while at the same time denying the other's accusation. The Draconian says

"The treaty between our two empires established a frontier in space."

Clang!

"We have never violated that frontier. You have invaded our part of the galaxy many times."

Also present is General Williams, who is quickly established as being more aggressively hostile towards the Draconians than the President, despite her obvious resemblance to Servalan - the future Earth and setting of this story seems like it could be a forerunner of the Federation of Blakes 7.

The Doctor and Jo are prisoners on the spaceship and are locked in the ship's hold. Neither Jo nor the Doctor understand what is going on, but he sits down and tries to calmly figure it out, quickly deducing that the mannys have mistaiken them for Draconians (although this should not have been a mystery to him seeing as he was present when a Draconian appeared on the crew's monitor to demand their surrender), who he has met before.

Jo: "Yes, but why do they mistake us for these Dragons?"

Doctor: "No, Draconians. 'Dragons' is rather an unflattering nickname."

Dragon is insulted by this, and says unless these Draconians can fly and breathe fire, they ought to consider themselves honoured to be mistaiken for dragons.

After a moment's consideration he added without using spaceships or rayguns.

The Doctor has also deduced that the noise they heard caused the hallucinations.

Another scene set on Earth sees the President and General Williams watching a newsreader doing some world-building. If Russell "The" Davies had been in charge back in the '70s this would probably have been a robot Angela Rippon or Richard Baker.

The crew prepare to defend themselves as their enemy does a classic slow-cutting to get into their spaceship. We see that they are not Draconians but rather Ogrons, returning from Dave the Daleks (not counting their cameo appearance in Carnival of Monsters). This explains why the supposed Draconians spoke so slowly when issuing their ultimatum to the mannys - a clever clue dropped in before their reveal.

The Doctor has just about finished using the sonic screwdriver to effect and escape when one of the crew comes to fetch them to use as hostages. The Ogrons break in and start shooting the mannys with their pewpewpew guns, and they also pew the Doctor. Luckily for him they are not using the same pewpewpew guns as they did in Dave the Daleks, so he only falls over instead of being disappeared.

When the Doctor wakes up, Jo tells him that the Ogrons stole the ship's cargo and the TARDIS. Both the Doctor and Jo think the Ogrons must have been W-wording for somebody else, because they are too stupid to have come up with the plan themselves, lol.

The Earth rescue ship arrives and sends a message to the ship.

"Earth battle cruiser to Earth cargo ship number C982. We are now approaching you. Do you read me?"

I know that voice, it's...

It's Willie Caine from The Sandbaggers to the rescue! He boards the ship with his mannys and asks what happened. The crew are too embarrassed to admit that they were fooled by Ogrons, so they lie about the Doctor and Jo being to blame. One of them shouts

"They were helping the Dragons! They're traitors!"

So Willie and his mannys point their guns at the Doctor and Jo. It's not great, but it will have to do as our cliffhanger.

Frontier in Space has a reputation of the Doctor and his Companion spending a lot of their time getting captured and escaping, even more so than other Doctor Who stories, in order to fill up the six episodes. So let's keep a running total of how many times they get imprisoned over the course of it.

Imprisoned counter: Doctor 1, Jo 1