Hulke seems to just cut loose and have a lot of fun here.

It doesn’t start that way, though – in fact, the early chapters are rather brutal. Little additions to the TV scripts (or details that never made it to screen) make for a harsher future, one where transport cells are ‘just large enough for a prisoner to sit down, knees touching the metal door’, the security services use starvation as an interrogation tool and Captain Gardiner knows better than to raise his objections too loudly, and prison governors definitely conspire to encourage and then kill escapees. Even the opening sequence, in which the crew of an attacked cargo ship question the value of endangering their lives for flour, explains the crew’s actions through a bleak hopelessness – they engage in combat because, certain they’re going to die anyway, their only satisfaction is to take others down with them.

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These aren’t just little bits of grit. Increasingly, there’s a sense that this future-society is supported by a half-hidden, half-condoned underlayer of cruelty. The President is clearly queasy about use of the mind probe but only sufficiently to save one girl from its effects, and the technicians who operate it are ‘conditioned to have no feelings for prisoners’ in a way that both acknowledges the lack of empathy necessary to employ such a device and the long-term planning that’s gone into its use. Much might well be made of how Earth is a democracy but it’s a democracy at the heart of an empire (Hulke even throws in the language of ‘dominion status’ to make sure the point isn’t lost) with all the oppressive apparatus that involves.

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Actually, much is made of Earth being a democracy, but Hulke goes out of his way to make it reminiscent of single-party states of the time. The Doctor’s stint in the lunar penal colony serves little plot function but provides the opportunity to paint an environment akin to Siberian labour camps, filled with political prisoners, detained for life without proper trial, who pass the time in artistic pursuits and maintain useful contacts back home. Cross’s sneering comment on Doughty’s ‘intellectual friends’ fits too while also hinting towards the Cultural Revolution that was just winding up. In the midst of the Cold War, this can only serve as a critique of the Western powers’ view of themselves. How different are you and your enemy if you employ the same techniques? And what does it mean to call yourself a democracy if you marginalise and exile all political opponents?

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This would explain why the political systems of Earth and Draconia are made pretty much indistinguishable. Just as the President reflects that ‘If she failed to please her people they would replace her’, so the Emperor is reminded that ‘Emperors have been disposed of before when they displeased the great Draconian families’. Democracy and monarchy seem like odd choices to present as distinct, exclusive social phases (as Hulke does, describing Draconia as having ‘remained a monarchy’ despite ‘advance equal to Earth’s’ in other respects) for a man writing in a constitutional monarchy, but the complete absence of any mention of republicanism or autocracy suggests it’s a deliberate ploy to stop the British reader from investing in any idea that the two sides are really different.

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And that taps into Hulke’s real concern here – how the perception of difference allows for perpetual war. Each side is convinced that they’re utterly incomprehensible to the other, Draconians viewing humans as ‘inscrutable’ and humans finding Draconian body language ‘impossible’ to read. Worse than that, they don’t expect to understand each other, so General Williams presses on with his belief in the Doctor and Jo’s guilt despite the ‘many holes in [his] argument’, the President, despite finding it ‘hard to believe that such a proud people would have fabricated these claims’, persists in believing the Draconians are lying, and the Ambassador’s musing on ‘why should the Earthmen produce such an elaborate lie?’ never receives much consideration. It later transpires that the three-day war between the two empires was triggered by just such attitudes. The humans ‘expected to meet an unarmed civilian ship like their own’ and so, on seeing a battle cruiser, immediately assumed ‘the Draconians were about to attack’ – that’s not a misunderstanding, that’s a flagrant failure in basic research.

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[As a quick sidestep, it’s worth making clear which specific conflict might have been on Hulke’s mind, what with US influence having just been chased out of Vietnam the year before. It’s not so much that Doctor Who and the Space War is a direct commentary on that conflict, but the Vietnam/American War and its rhetoric feels like the prism through which he’s reflecting on war. We’ve already seen Hulke address how the rallying cry of democracy can hide a support for autocratic practices and how fundamental ignorance of the other side allows tension to become outright war but there are also more specific echoes, like the faith in shows of military strength General Williams holds, or the manner in which a President with a huge mandate who hoped ‘to achieve […] good things’ domestically is caught between standing ‘for peace and compromise’ and a military calling for ‘an aggressive inter-stellar policy’.]

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In some ways, though most likely because we see very little of Draconia, the Earth people are presented as the worse of the two parties. They did after all fire first to trigger the last war and the mass of the public are seen to be clamouring for a new conflict. They’re also shown to demean and dehumanise their enemy, slurring them as Dragons. And it’s not just rhetoric. The Doctor and Jo, when mistaken for Draconians, are imprisoned in the animal pen, with Hardy expressing he can see no difference between them and livestock. To top this off, he looks forward to the day when all Draconians have been ‘exterminated’ – it’s never a good sign when you sound like a Nazi, especially in the same breath as denying the humanity of another race.

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This isn’t a natural, moral flaw but an attitude stirred up by the political structures of Earth. When the (hinted-to-be liberal) President is ‘disgusted’ by Brook’s use of the D-word in a TV interview, her reaction seems more informed by envy at her opponent’s freedom to ‘appeal to  people’s emotions’ in a way that would be undiplomatic on her part rather than because she finds his actual language repellent. And it is an extension of how her government treats its own ideological opponents, those in the lunar prison explicitly told they are ‘no longer people’ but ‘things’. Cold War-style democracy functions by narrowing what the definition of a person to those who conform to the government’s outlook and is clearly of a piece with imperial Britain, Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China and Nazi Germany.

But that doesn’t mean Hulke’s attacking democracy itself. It is the Earth president who manages to resolve the situation, and she does it in a way the Draconians couldn’t – allowing different voices to be heard. Before this point, the two sides have skirted around each other, maintaining a polite but ‘meaningless’ diplomacy, but once the President decides ‘It’s time everything was discussed openly’, General Williams suddenly understands his errors and humans and Draconians are able to work together and prevent war. It’s a little glimmer of light that’s almost immediately undercut. As they depart for the Ogron planet, the Doctor asks for the release of the political prisoners on the moon. The President agrees but only on condition of ‘a secure peace’ (indeed, the Doctor only bothers to ask on the condition that ‘war is averted’ – he knows the limits of her tolerance). Hulke is almost conceding that freedom of speech and true political opposition cannot survive periods of international tension.

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However, in the middle of all this bleak rumination on the impossibility of a virtuous society, the Master turns up (Chapter 7 of 12 bears his name and sees him enter) to lighten the mood.

Robert Shearman, looking at the TV episodes, identifies this as the moment when the ‘edge’ of the early episodes melts away and the audience is ‘reassured’. From this point on, there’s the air of a romp in the air. The change of gears is even more enthusiastic in prose, with the chief beneficiaries of Hulke’s more fun-loving side being the Ogrons. As the book goes on, they become more and more prominent and, though Jo may warn they’re not ‘as stupid as they look’, they are predominantly presented as lovably child-like. They eagerly swallow down food, ‘tin-foil and all’, proclaim ‘Food is good’ and encourage Jo to eat well so she can ‘become Ogron wife’ and employ such blunt yet not-quite-right threats such as ‘You keep quiet or I fill mouth with fist’.

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It could all be quite mean-spirited, and does sometimes goes too far, the text casually referring to them as ‘stupidly savage’ with ‘midget minds’ and strongly implying they ‘smell’, were they not so clearly preferable to the Draconians and the Master. It helps that Jo clearly likes them, almost mothering the one she tries to feed, and the relationship between Jo, the Ogron prisoner and a Draconian guard is quite instructive. The cunning captive, who bends his prison bars while the guard isn’t looking, slinks ‘into a corner, innocently taking further items from the food container’ in what sounds so exaggerated a manner he may as well be whistling and looking skyward. It’s actually the Draconians’ prejudice, rather than any cunning on his part, that lets him get away with it, ignoring the advice of a woman and viewing his prisoner as a simple ‘ape-like creature’. He’s even partly responsible for that Ogron’s retrieval and Jo’s kidnap, refusing Jo’s help and even insisting on keeping his gun even as he’s incapable of using it.

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This taps into the wider attitude of the Draconians towards women, introduced in the Emperor’s throne room where ‘No female may speak’. Their culture is immediately diminished by its adherence to such a ‘stupid rule’ and by their inability to enforce it – as Jo continues to partake in the conversation, the Prince is reduced to impotent screaming (looking rather childish next to Jo’s rather sharp and measured declaration that she’ll ‘try and control my natural tendency to expect to be regarded as an equal’) while the Emperor simply forgets, what with Jo offering more valuable contributions to events than most of the men. They end up sounding rather like outdated male figures from a 70s sitcom, with Jo lamenting how they must ‘treat [their] poor wives’, and, just to ram home how ridiculous they are, Hulke even crowbars in a line for the Prince towards the end, still maintaining that Jo could be ‘a very nice person’ if only she learnt ‘to be silent’ and referring to her as ‘The female […] who talks’ – he’s clearly forgotten all about the Earth’s president.

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The Ogrons also show up the Master. He may throw the wonderful put-down ‘Without me you wouldn’t have enough brains between you to make a wheelbarrow’ at them, but they get to completely undercut the overcomplicated manner in which he constantly operates, rewarding his convoluted explanation of how he tracked down the Doctor with a pause and a pithy ‘How you know all this when you not talk to them?’, rather puncturing his boast.

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Like the Draconians, he’s utterly ridiculous. He employs the remarkable alias ‘Special Commissioner Master’, he looks forward to ‘A really exciting space-war’ and pointlessly boasts his ‘genius’ in front of the Ogrons (a genius he shares with only Mike Yarwood, Phil Cool and Rory Bremner). His arrival brings ‘joy’ to his adversaries, which must be a kick in the teeth. On top of all that, we get to see what a fundamentally ‘vain man’ the Master is, admiring ‘his athletic figure’ as it’s complemented by a ‘simple tunic’ and taking every opportunity to flash his ‘perfect white teeth’, and how that feeds into his being ‘wholly evil’. Like a slick businessman, his view of ambition is no different to selfishness, a matter of competition rather than fulfilment, and he can’t quite differentiate charm and nastiness.

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But he’s not just a bit of fun. There’s a genuinely chilling moment when he explains to Jo how she is ‘totally useless’ to him and that he’s not a man to feel any ‘touch of pity for the innocent victim’ so she’d better do as he asks or ‘stop existing’. This moment of transparent psychopathy mixed in with all the bonhomie does a lot to maintain the Master’s dignity. He might only get to appear in the silly half of the book but it’s a little reminder that he was the man behind the harsh world in which the Doctor and Jo were enmeshed in the first half – all that fear and paranoia that turned Earth into a bureaucratic nightmare was but a side effect of the Master’s ‘relentless quest for personal power’. The change of tone that came with his arrival becomes a sign of his dominance over the story rather than a symptom of the reassuring simplicity of his villainy.

This is a rather touching ploy on Hulke's part. Though the Master is due a return in Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos, ‘Frontier in Space’ was Roger Delgado’s last appearance before his fatal car accident and, though Target may have been motivated to get this adventure adapted by the character’s upcoming return in ‘The Deadly Assassin’, there’s evidence Hulke is more concerned with giving Delgado’s portrayal a fitting send-off. He rewrites much of the ending, even compared with what it might have been before Letts took his scissors to anything involving the orange bollock monster, to give the Master some semblance of a conclusion. After all the confusion of the TV climax, we get to see ‘His old spirit [...] returning’ and two wistful cast-forwards to an eternal future, the second closing the book.