One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

Here There Be Dragons

Aug 21 2017
Here There Be Dragons

Happy Great North American Eclipse Day, everyone! I assume that you were all smart enough not to look directly at the eclipse without proper precautions, lest you end up blind like the Twelfth Doctor (spoilers!). I enjoyed a luxurious day off from work today, spending a fair chunk of time working on a LEGO Saturn V rocket. I only made it through the first four (out of twelve) bags of parts, so it will be a while yet before I am finished. I also watched the first two episodes of Frontier in Space this morning.

So let's talk about that.

Frontier in Space - Episodes 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story follows on directly from Carnival of Monsters, in that Jo is still wearing the exact same outfit. It opens with the TARDIS materializing in space directly in the path of a spaceship just about to jump into hyperspace, and then quickly dematerializing and rematerializing inside the spaceship's hold. Unfortunately, rapidly thereafter the ship is attacked by an alien vessel. The attack, however, is accompanied by a strange sound which ultimately turns out to be some kind of "fear ray" that causes people to see their worst fears. The pilots of the Earth cargo ship see a Draconian battleship attacking them, and see the Doctor and Jo as Dragons (an ugly slang term for Draconians), whereas Jo sees the pilots as Drashigs still running loose from the Miniscope. It turns out that the rapidly-expanding twenty sixth century Earth empire is bumping up against the Draconian empire, and while there is currently a peace treaty between the two governments both sides are accusing the other of a series of treaty-violating attacks.

In actuality the ship is attacked by Ogrons, who were last seen in the employ of the Dalek empire in Day of the Daleks. The Doctor (correctly) deduces that someone is trying to instigate a shooting war between Earth and Draconia, but even when the Doctor and Jo are dragged back to Earth nobody will listen to him. Written in the midst of the Cold War, this story serves as a not-very-thinly-veiled parable about paranoia and the folly of political maneuvering with no trust on any side.

By the end of the second episode the TARDIS is long missing, having been confiscated by the Ogrons during the spaceship raid, and the Doctor and Jo are in the midst of being kidnapped from an Earth prison by Ogrons masquerading as Draconians.The true Big Bad has yet to be revealed (but it's totally the Master).

I don't know whether to refer to this as a six-parter or a twelve-parter. This and the next story are grouped directly together, one flowing directly into the next, but they are two separate stories with different titles. In either case, one would expect a fair bit of padding to be going on. Happily, there hasn't been much of that so far. That being said, it's usually in the middle third that a story like this begins to really sag, so we'll see how tomorrow goes. Carnival of Monsters is a really tough act to follow. Speaking of the Twelfth Doctor above, I do know that this story is one that Peter Capaldi lists among his favorites, so that is encouraging. I've got another three weeks of viewing before I start hitting stories I have seen before, so I am really keen to enjoy this new-to-me material for just a little while longer.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Third
Companion(s): Jo Grant
Episode(s): Frontier in Space - Episodes 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 6,736 today, 1,164,778 total
Distance Walked: 3.31 miles today, 574.29 miles total
Weight: 262.92 lbs (five day moving average), net change -44.38 lbs


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