10.3 Frontier in Space

This had a couple surprises that I was not expecting. The Master and his minions the Ogrons came back, and then the surprise ending was the arrival of the Daleks.  I really wasn't expecting that.  To me this storyline is twelve episodes long, and they're just trying to trick us by making us think that it's two different plots.  Posh!  Have the decency to make it twelve episodes with one title!

I liked that the Draconian prince was wary of Earth, and did not want a peace treaty.  However, after his adventuring with the Doctor, he turned into a better alien, dropped the hostility and began working with the humans, once they all realized that they were being deceived by a third party.

 

Basically the Master is creating war between the Draconians and Earth, so that they will destroy each other and then the Master can take over the world.  This is such a classic Master plot.  He's tried to create a war before and it didn't work out.  He thinks he can do it this time around probably because he is backed by the Daleks, the most notorious and evil aliens in history.  I think he forgets that so far the Daleks have been unsuccessful in their plot to take over the universe too, so he's got about a 99% chance that it won't work.  It's worth a shot, though!  I can't blame him for not trying!

One thing that I haven't yet worked out, is that it is unclear to me if the Master has some sort of affection for the Doctor, and doesn't really want him to die.  I think the Master has had multiple opportunities to kill the Doctor, or let him be killed, and he's intervened in some way.  Does he really want him dead?  The Daleks were ready to kill the Doctor, but the Master tells them to wait so that the Doctor can witness the destruction of Earth/mankind.  Or maybe the Master really wanted him to suffer psychologically.  It's hard to tell.  I really want to know the Master's history and how he became such a bad boy.

According to my expert viewer, they did not intend to have the Master play a role in this, but they worked him into the script at the last minute.  This surprises me because he played a very large role in it.  The Master tries to hypnotize Jo, but she's trained herself to resist him.  You go girl!  The Master's plan just isn't going the correct way.  The Master also seemed super confident about having those two as prisoners on board his space ship, but that didn't go so well.  When will he ever learn?

Of course the Master would be reading The War of the Worlds.  Next up: Lord of the Rings.

We got to see Pertwee in a prisoner outfit for about 10 minutes.

At the end of this episode, I was afraid that the Doctor was going to regenerate.  He is staggering around and asks Jo to bring him into the TARDIS.  The Doctor then sends a message to the Time Lords, and he falls over. 

Next Up: Planet of the Daleks