DOCTOR WHO: At the FRONTIER IN SPACE, We Say Hello to Me and Goodbye to the Master

“FRONTIER IN SPACE” – Season 10, Serial 3, Story 67 – Written by Malcolm Hulke; Directed by Paul Bernard and David Maloney (uncredited) – The Third Doctor and Jo get embroiled in the Master’s plot to get Earth and Draconia involved in an interstellar work. There’s lots of going back and forth and lots of “we don’t believe you” and “why should we believe you.” And yeah, it’s one of those classically padded serials that takes too long to get anywhere, but there’s a lot of good here, too, and a bit of sad. Because This Is The Final Bow For Roger Delgado As The Master.

There is no official goodbye, unfortunately. The Master’s plan begins to crumble at the hands of the Doctor, his hired Ogrons panic and flee, and the Master shoots the Doctor in the head and then runs off in the growing confusion.

And that is the last we see of Roger Delgado. A few months after this final appearance, Delgado was tragically killed in a car wreck in Turkey, and the Master wouldn’t be seen on screen again until 1976 (THE DEADLY ASSASSIN) and not again with a human face until Anthony Ainley took over the role in 1981 (THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN). It must have been a noticeable absence for regular viewers at the time, as Delgado’s Master had been a consistent presence since his debut two years earlier (TERROR OF THE AUTONS).

Delgado was almost always entertaining, almost always able to bring the most out of the sometimes incredibly daft scripts he was given. The script for FRONTIER IN SPACE is an average one but in the scenes where the Master is placed alongside the Doctor and Jo, he shines.

One of my all-time favorite Master scenes takes place near the end of FRONTIER, when he’s captured Jo for the second time and plans to use her to trap the Doctor. First, he tries to hypnotize her, but she rebuffs him by reciting nursery rhymes. He’s foiled but gains some respect for “Miss Grant,” so he tries to use his fear-inducing machine on her, and again, she proves herself too mentally strong for that machine. He can’t help but be impressed, and I had a sudden desire to see The Adventures of the Master and Jo Show.

Delgado is great playing off the Doctor, too, and he feels so integrated into the Pertwee/Manning personality dynamic this time around that even after all these appearances I really found myself wishing for more. For not the first time you get the sense of a shared bond between the two Time Lords and a reason why, even though the Master keeps trying to kill the Doctor, there’s feelings between them. This relationship between Pertwee’s Doctor and Delgado’s Master is a clear inspiration for the Tennant/Simm relationship during the relaunch.

The plot of FRONTIER is workmanlike is concept and sometimes dreary in execution. The Master is manipulating hostilities between Earth and Draconia by using a fear machine to get each side to think the other is attacking them, when really it’s the Ogrons doing all the attacking and raiding. This leads to some really, really tedious time on Earth. The Doctor and Jo are believed to be Draconian spies by the Earth forces, and no matter what they say, they’re not believed. The Earth President is inclined to want peace, her main military chief is inclined to want war, and thus he continually acts like a roadblock. It gets a bit frustrating because we have to see it over and over again. Once is really all we needed to see to get the point.

Once the Master shows up, Malcolm Hulke’s script does its darnedest to keep things going, and FRONTIER is one of those odd serials that feels bloated at the beginning rather than the end. There’s a bit too much back and forth, but at least there’s movement. When we get to the end we get a really interesting twist; instead of the Doctor defeating the Master and having a pretty bow put on the story, the Daleks show up out of nowhere, the Master shoots the Doctor, things get chaotic, and Jo helps a wounded Doctor into the TARDIS where he sends a telepathic warning call to the Time Lords. It’s a rather exciting final few minutes, and doesn’t just lead into the next serial – it shoves everyone forward into PLANET OF THE DALEKS.

FRONTIER is a serial, then, that sits on the other side of mediocre. It’s not great, but it’s not bad, and it’s well worth watching for all of the great interaction between Pertwee, Manning, and Delgado. In fact, their interaction does elevate the serial beyond the tedious political bits and if you’re looking for some good old fashioned WHO, you could do a lot worse.

It also has a bit of special meaning to me, as this was the serial being broadcast when I was born. Not, you know, in the room when it was happening, but it was during this run that I emerged into the world, which means the first episode of DOCTOR WHO broadcast after I got a name featured the Master and the Daleks.

I’m sure 1 day old me would have been mighty impressed.

DOCTOR WHO: The Food Fight Narrative Strategy of THE TIME MONSTER

“THE TIME MONSTER” – Season 9, Serial 5, Story 64 – Written by Robert Sloman (and Barry Letts); Directed by Paul Bernard – Season 9 comes to a close with the return of the Master. This time he’s trying to bring Kronos through time from Atlantis to … well, to do whatever the Master always wants done. The Third Doctor, Jo, and UNIT get involved with the TOMTIT experiments, and they end up getting sent back in time to Atlantis. (Bonus points for you if you hear Huey Lewis singing in your head every time you hear the phrase, “back in time.” Double bonus points if your start giggling when you hear “TOMTIT.”) There’s a whole lot going on here without much of anything going on. Because This Story Isn’t So Much Padded Out As It Is An Exercise In Padding.

Probably the best thing you can say about THE TIME MONSTER on first watch is that it exists.

With all of the missing DOCTOR WHO episodes and serials out there, we should treasure these early serials that we have in hand, especially one that offers some enjoyment. The problem with TIME MONSTER is that it’s one of those serials that just sort of meanders around for six freaking episodes, so by the time you’re done watching it, you’ve spent 2 1/2 hours watching a basic little plot play the Energizer Bunny.

So should we quickly dismiss TIME MONSTER as a “watch it once and forget about it” serial?

Not at all. THE TIME MONSTER would be a horrible serial to show a new fan to DOCTOR WHO, but if you’re a long-term fan of the show, there’s a lot of really amazing little moments that will make this serial a rewarding watch. You need to forget the plot, though, because this is like nearly every single Master plot from the Barry Letts era. The Doctor helps UNIT, they uncover some wacky plot of the Master, UNIT disappears while the Doctor and the Master battle it out.

Concentrate, instead, on all the little moments that make TIME MONSTER a bit of fun amidst all the sameness. TIME MONSTER is like the written version of a food fight, where everything ends up getting thrown against the wall. I don’t normally like to take these episodes point-by-point, but I’m going to do it this time in order to point out the bright spots:

One: The Doctor/Jo relationship. Man, the more I watch and rewatch these old Third Doctor serials, the more I love Jo Grant. She’s such a positive force in these serials that even when she plays the scream queen I’m usually willing to overlook it because she offers so much. Take the early stages of TIME MONSTER; when her and the Doctor are going back and forth and she’s forced to play the Questioning Companion, she pleads, “I know I’m rather dim, Doctor, but could you please explain it to me?” Then, in her very next scene, she’s explaining bits of Atlantis to Captain Yates like an expert, but with her own twist: “You know, like the Minotaur and all that Cretan jazz” she says to him. Later, when the Doctor is putting some new device together, Jo insists she knows what he’s doing. “Do you?” he asks skeptically. “It’s … um … it detects disturbances in the time field,” she says.

The Doctor’s look of surprise and pleasure, and his earnest, “You’re learning!” bring a wonderful smile to Jo’s face. In the modern Who, the Jo/Doctor relationship would have a bit of a romantic feel to it, but here – perhaps because of the time, perhaps because of the difference in age – it’s a much more father/daughter or professor/student relationship.

It’s so critically important that Companions have their own personality given how much they all have in common due to their role on the show; Jo definitely has her own personality, and it’s a great one.

Also, the yellow go-go boots don’t hurt.

The Doctor has his own moment, too, in TIME MONSTER. At the end of the serial when the Doctor and Jo are trapped in some dungeon in Atlantis, the Doctor tells Jo of his childhood. It’s such a great scene that it’s almost worth sitting through all of this routine plot just to get to it. The Doctor speaks of his home as boy: “We lived halfway up a mountain and behind us lived a hermit under and old tree.” The Doctor tells Jo of his blackest day, when he hiked up that mountain on a grey, grey, grey day to ask the hermit the meaning of life. The old man pointed to a daisy that was growing on the mountain, and the Doctor sees the daisy through his eyes. When he made his way back down the mountain he saw that the grey rocks were full of color and the slushy white snow was actually shimmering in the sunlight. Pertwee is fantastic relaying this story, and I absolutely believed that he’d lived this moment. It’s wonderful acting from Pertwee, one of his very best moments.

Two: UNIT is as awesome as ever. By this point, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, and Captain Yates all have established personalities, and they’re all in full force in TIME MONSTER. The Brig alternates between being out of his depth and totally in charge, Yates is an affable chap who’d rather spend all his time in the company of Jo Grant, and Benton is the man-of-action with a run of bad luck. All three of them typically play off one other character here. For the Brig, it’s the Doctor, of course. For Yates, it’s Jo. There’s a really wonderful bit after the Master tries to blow up the TARDIS and Yates is bloodied from his near escape; when Jo gets there she moves right to him, her left hand going to his stomach to provide comfort. It’s the kind of blink-and-you-miss-it acting technique that comes from working together so much and understanding how these characters feel about one another. As for Benton …

Three: The Master vs. Benton bits in this serial are quite amazingly good. On the whole, this is one of Benton’s better go-rounds. The Master tries to trick Benton to get out of the room he’s guarding by pretending to be the Brig on the phone. Benton dutifully leaves his post at the command of “the Brig” but then circles back to the room out of the Master’s sight to wait for him. When the Master enters, Benton gets the drop on him, and is both surprised and impressed at Benton’s trick.

Four: There’s two bits with the TARDIS that are noteworthy. The first is that the interior gets a redesign for the episode, as the white walls of the control room are now made of bright, white bowls. It’s ugly, and according to the alternate subtitle track on the DVD, it never appears again. The second (and this is really exciting considering this past season’s THE DOCTOR’S WIFE) is when the Doctor explains to Jo that the TARDIS is alive. The Doctor mentions that it only seems to take a long time to get somewhere because of “her” mood. “You talk as if she were alive,” Jo laughs. “Depends what you mean by alive,” the Doctor smiles back.

Five: This serial’s tag-alongs: Dr. Ruth Ingram and her assistant, Stuart Hyde. These two are some of the best one-offs during this era. They have a wonderful running playful squabble over feminism. Ruth definitely has her back up when it comes to gender equality, and Stuart knows how to play off it to get what he wants, such as when he goads her into running an experiment without their boss (the Master masquerading as “the Professor”) giving them his permission. When Benton gets added to the mix, his militaristic masculinity adds a new dimension to the debate, and their reaction to Benton being turned into a baby (yes, a baby) is priceless. Good stuff.

Six: Roger Delgado has rarely been better as the Master. His interactions with Ruth and Stuart, the Doctor, Benton, and Jo are all top-notch. When he thinks he’s killed the Doctor his joy is palpable and infectious, despite its wickedness.

All of this adds up to some really enjoyable TV if you know what you’re looking for during the first four episodes of the serial. The blah plot is a downer, but the interactions are a winner. When the action switches to Atlantis, though … ugh, the serial takes a nosedive to nowhere.

THE TIME MONSTER is one of those serials that gets both better and more frustrating the more you watch it. I really like all of the interplay at the start even if the plot doesn’t move me, and even if the whole Atlantis angle is tired and uninteresting. It’s unfortunate the show shuts down the UNIT angle 2/3 of the way through the plot (I’d have loved to see the Brig in Atlantis), but the interactions between the characters overcome the lameness of the villain (a big, white, floating human/bird thing called Kronos) and the formulaic nature of the plot.

And with that, Season 9 comes to a close.

For all DOCTOR WHO reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety, please visit the Doctor Who Review Index page. Thanks!

DOCTOR WHO: Defeat THE DAEMONS and Their Allies with Five Rounds Rapid

“THE DAEMONS” – Season 8, Serial 5, Story 59 – Written Credit to “Guy Leopold,” actually written by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman; Directed by Christopher Barry – The Third Doctor, Jo, and UNIT get caught up in the Master’s plan to raise Azal, an ancient, alien Daemon who came here a long, long time ago and has since convinced everyone he and his palsy walsies are the Devil.

After the fantastic Season 7, Season 8 took a major step back as the show took a bit step into the formulaic waters of Master-driven threats. The intelligent, capable Liz Shaw was replaced with the spunky and likable Jo Grant, and it was as if the entire narrative plot slowed down to accommodate her presence. This isn’t to say the downturn in quality is Jo/Katy Manning’s fault because I really like Jo. I think her honest, desperate-to-prove-herself-capable persona is incredibly endearing, but while this season has Jo serving as the “something for the dads,” in Season 8 the plots took care of the dad’s interest.

Not that they’re complaining about Katy Manning, necessarily.

The downer of a season ends on a decided up note however, as the fantastic DAEMONS closes out the season with a bang. Unlike anything in the Pertwee Era to this point, DAEMONS is the first serial to really foreshadow the greatness of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes/Baker I days of horror. The Doctor spends his time scoffing at the idea of the supernatural, but the conventions of the supernatural seep through every pore of DAEMONS. This serial is a step below some of the masterpieces of this kind of story (PYRAMIDS OF MARS, CURSE OF FENRIC), but its influence will stretch all the way out to THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET/SATAN PIT 35 years later.

The Master makes yet another appearance, but it’s his strongest of the season. He’s involved right from the start here, as Barry Letts must have realized he wasn’t fooling anyone with the Master’s mid-serial appearance anymore. The Master is trying to raise Azal, a powerful daemon who’s really an alien, and there’s plenty of spooky ceremonies and wearing robes and convincing the townsfolk to do what he wants. Delgado is at his manipulative best here, pulling all sorts of strings to get his plan to come to fruition.

There’s a different vibe to the episode with UNIT, too. The Brig takes off at the start of the serial, leaving Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton in charge. When the two officers commandeer the Brigadier’s helicopter to go check out the big goings on at the Devil’s Hump (where the Doctor and Jo have gone), they do it in non-military clothes for some reason. It’s a little thing, seeing Yates and Benton as civilians and not soldiers, but it really adds to the episode. It allows you to think of them as actual people, a realization made easier by the serial largely sidelining the Brigadier for the bulk of the serial.

Almost everyone takes a hit here, making the stakes seem very real. The Doctor gets frozen, Jo almost gets sacrificed, and Benton gets attacked as the Master’s townsfolk minions and the daemon Azal do their worst. Damaris Hayman is top-notch as Miss Hawthorne, the local witch who tries to stop the uncovering of Azal, and who manages to get Benton to dance. There’s a gargoyle walking around doing Azal’s bidding and UNIT’s attack on him sets up one of the Brig’s all-time quotes when he orders one of his soldiers to attack it: “Jenkins. Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid.”

I love Pertwee’s Doctor throughout this episode. He’s both completely willing to dismiss the supernatural out of hand and yet able to recognize potential danger masquerading as supernatural. He actually teaches here, explaining how humans have taken the alien Daemons and misinterpreted them through the years, making the show both fantastic and incredibly grounded.

THE DAEMONS can be a bit tough to watch because so far it exists solely as a VHS copy but this is a very solid serial. Clearly the high point of Season 8, it’s not hard to understand why Pertwee has called this episode his favorite.

(A final note for regular readers. This will be the last classic DOCTOR WHO review for at least a month. The next serial in line is DAY OF THE DALEKS, which is set to be released a month from now. Also, part 2 of Series 6 is due to start before then, and so I’ll either be reviewing the Matt Smith episodes on Sunday and a Pertwee serial mid-week, or just wait to start Pertwee’s third season until after the end of Series 6.)