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

Farewell, Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo de Roberto

Aug 23 2017
Farewell, Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo de Roberto

Today's viewing marked the end of Roger Delgado's tenure as the Master. Born with the rather impressive name of Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo de Roberto, he truly left his mark on Doctor Who with his enduring performance. He was originally intended to return in one more story, The Final Game. Tragically he was killed in June of 1973 while working on location in Turkey for a French mini-series. He was in a chauffeur-driven car with two other technicians when the car went off the road and into a ravine. It was a terrible, terrible accident that largely influenced Jon Pertwee's decision to leave the show the following year. As I have said before, I had never seen any of his stories prior to this project. Having now viewed all eight of his stories, I absolutely understand why he remains so beloved among Doctor Who fans.

As for the end of this particular story, let's talk about that.

Frontier in Space - Episodes 5 & 6

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The last two episodes of this story clip right along, and thankfully are largely done with the entire "prisoner" element. Taken to the Draconian home world, the Doctor finally manages to convince them that Draconia and Earth are being set up to fight a war by some third party. The Master escapes with a ship of Ogrons, and shortly thereafter the Doctor, Jo, and the Draconian prince leave for Earth to try to stop the war. Along the way Jo is once again kidnapped, taken away by the Ogrons and delivered into the hands of the Master. After visiting Earth, and finally convincing the war-hungry military chief of the entire deception, a mission is launched to rescue Jo at the Ogron planet. There, the Master's true employers are revealed: The Daleks! I was absolutely shocked. I mean, not really, I knew that this story bleeds directly into the following story titled Planet of the Daleks, so of course they were going to show up at the end. But their big reveal was a  huge moment, and well done.

Unfortunately, once the Daleks are revealed as the true architects of the recent chaos the Master is simply shoved to the side, story-wise. He is more or less just left behind on the Ogron home world as the Doctor and Jo rush off in the TARDIS in order to warn the Time Lords of the impending Dalek war. As such, Roger Delgado gets no fitting send-off, he just gets pushed offscreen never to be heard from again. Obviously that was not the true intention, and he would have been back a few stories later, but that opportunity was lost after his tragic accident. An actor of his stature deserved a much better departure, but who could have known?

All in all I didn't think much of Frontier in Space. It wasn't bad by any means, but it really did feel like three hours of setup for the real story to follow. There were some great political dynamics that were explored, what with the whole "inevitable" war being based on nothing but a stack of lies, fears, and misperceptions. But in the end it really doesn't pay off as a story on its own merit. Presumably the war was averted, as both the Draconian prince and the Earth military leader were sent back to their respective home worlds with proof of the deception. But ultimately there was just no there there. Only a large pile of deck chairs being relentlessly rearranged until the Daleks finally showed up to kick of the real story.

The good news is, the next one is apparently a direct sequel to the original Daleks story from the First Doctor's era and is written by Terry Nation himself, returning to the series for the first time in nearly eight years. As a general rule I am not a big fan of Dalek stories that aren't either Dalek Invasion of Earth or Genesis of the Daleks, but hopefully this next one can convince me otherwise.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Third
Companion(s): Jo Grant
Episode(s): Frontier in Space - Episodes 5 & 6
Steps Walked: 7,050 today, 1,178,739 total
Distance Walked: 3.66 miles today, 581.47 miles total
Weight: 263.22 lbs (five day moving average), net change -44.08 lbs


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