Saturday 21 March 2015

Frontier in Space

Doctor Who is a lovely example of the wise adage, ‘Less is more’, along with the philosophy, ‘Wise adages are for wimps, let’s give it a try anyway.’ Every now and then, its makers decide to go epic, grand, Cecil B. DeMille crazy. The temptation is there: your canvas is the size of the history of the Universe, can you really restrict your painting to one corner at a time? And when Doctor Who goes epic, the running time always goes up – possibly to stretch the budget a bit further, possibly to fit in extra world-building and character stuff.

From The Daleks’ Master Plan to The End of Time, via Evil of the Daleks, The Invasion and The War Games, with Day of the Doctor thrown in for good measure: small is beautiful but big is special. And so with Frontier in Space and its sequel Planet of the Daleks.

These last two are interesting, in that they’re essentially a remake of that big Hartnell mega-story. Future dystopias, Global Presidents struggling to hold onto power, prison ships, weird-looking aliens in galactic peace treaties, and the Daleks: they’re all here. The Monk has been supplanted by the Master. Jo, like Katarina, is imprisoned in an airlock, though she comes out of that a bit better. It’s a bold idea, for an era without VHS: to return to the ideas, and ‘reimagine’ them for the new era.

They skipped the Dixon of Dock Green parody, but then, life isn't fair.

I’m a big fan of The Daleks’ Master Plan, and a 1970s tribute is justified. I wouldn’t have minded another remake with Davison, Ainley, Davros and Beryl Reid – and another with Smith, Kingston and some CGI Varga Plants. The Pertwee era brings swagger, helped by some familiar faces and ideas: look at Jo Grant, chewing gum in her calf-length platform boots, telling the Doctor off for a ‘traffic accident in space’, then asking whether the Earth Empire is the same one she saw on Solos, and are the Ogrons working for the Daleks...?

It’s a very good story for Jo. She gets a lot of funny lines, two good outfits, she talks sense to the Draconian Emperor and puts the Master in his place: ‘Oh well, can’t win ‘em all!’ In fact, she gives us perhaps the big moment of the story, even the season. Rejecting the Master’s hypnosis, she then overcomes his little box of frights. This is a story about the power of fear, but ‘It doesn’t work on me any more,’ says Jo.

It’s a timely bit of progression, with only two more stories of Ms Grant still to enjoy. When a companion isn’t scared any more, it’s probably time for somebody new.

Unfortunately, it’s not timely in a narrative sense. Really this should be the conclusion of the story, not thrown away as a cliff-hanger resolution. It’s typical of a story that never quite knows when it’s underway. Rather peculiarly, the Daleks travel across space to wave from a cliff-top, then set off for home: a twist delayed too far, another cliff-hanger missed. This is the thing about over-extending Who: it never ends well. Or, it might end well and open well, but for several episodes in the middle you’ll be checking your watch.

Never when Roger Delgado is onscreen, though. I’m not big on the Doctor having a recurring nemesis, but there’s no two ways about it – this works. Has worked. It’s the end of an era. The end of a true peer for the Doctor, now that the Brigadier’s been rewritten as a military buffoon; the end of a superb, sharp counterpoint to the Doctor and Jo’s almost oversweet moral certainty; the end of a delicious performance, which Malcolm Hulke supplies with endless riches: the Master has more character moments, victories and funny lines than the Doctor's had all season.

Perhaps that's the real reason this story never quite galvanises. The Doctor fades into a rather bland hero: even his outfit seems less dandyish, somehow, shirts less frill-fronted, frock coat less frockish.


But of course, the story’s not over – not in any sense. In the last five minutes, where nothing makes sense, the Doctor is fatally wounded. In a Tenth Planet-esque effort of will, he clutches the console, desperately contacting the Time Lords. The Tardis flies into the darkness – the atmosphere is grave – the scene is set...



No comments:

Post a Comment