By Jessica Holmes

It’s not every day that you come across a title equally applicable to a Doctor Who serial and a PSA about the dangers of cannabis, but look what we have here: "The Seeds Of Death". With Brian Hayles back in the writer’s chair and a return to the base-under-siege format, do we have a good story sprouting, or a dud?

Let’s take a look.

In Case You Missed It

"The Seeds Of Death" is set in Earth’s future, where technology has progressed to the stage that humanity can transport themselves and their goods around the world in the blink of an eye. The system’s called T-Mat. Think, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ (Before the Trekkies get me, let me state for the record that I am fully aware that nobody ever actually says that.) Essential to the operation is their moon-base, which itself can only be reached by T-Mat, because humanity in its wisdom has abandoned conventional space travel. Gee, wouldn’t it be awful if something were to happen to it?

Say, for example…an alien invasion?

Enter the Doctor. Arriving on Earth in a museum dedicated to the history of space travel, he soon runs into its curator, Professor Eldred (Philip Ray). Eldred, an ex-rocket scientist, is less than friendly at first, but warms up once the Doctor unleashes his inner dorkness. It really is endearing.

Meanwhile at the T-Mat London base, T-Mat operators Commander Radnor (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) and Gia Kelly (Louise Pajo) grow uneasy about their sudden inability to contact the moon-base and the interruption in service. If they want to check up on their moon-bound colleagues, they’re going to have to find alternative transport. But in a world where traditional space travel is obsolete, where might they find a rocket ship?

Why, a museum of course.

The pair visit Eldred’s museum, and get a bit of an icy reception. There’s no love lost between ex-colleagues Eldred and Radnor. Eldred is understandably a bit miffed about his life’s work being rendered obsolete, and therefore refuses to help Radnor with his T-Mat troubles.

However, at that moment a transmission arrives from the Moon. The technicians attempt to tell their colleagues what’s happened, but they’re caught red-handed by their captors, the Ice Warriors, and cut off. Of the three still-living technicians on the base, one is killed on the spot, another flees, and the third agrees to help the Ice Warriors to save his own skin.

Not knowing the full details but realising that something is very wrong, the Doctor attempts to persuade Eldred to allow Radnor and Kelly to make use of his prize exhibit: an (almost) functioning rocket ship. Radnor offers whatever resources are necessary to get it space-worthy, but Eldred is still reluctant to help.

As for the obvious question, why not take the TARDIS? The Doctor doesn’t exactly have a good track record on piloting it. He’d probably miss the moon by a million miles—or a million years. However, he knows enough about rocket ships that he could pilot one to the moon, and his friends could help. Radnor and Kelly are understandably concerned about their would-be astronauts. You’ve got the bloke who looks like he just walked off the set of the Three Stooges, a teenage girl, and a man who seems to have only recently learned of the very existence of rocket ships.

It doesn’t inspire confidence.

And they don’t even have spacesuits for their amateur astronauts.

Or helmets.

Nevertheless, they get the rocket space-worthy (ish) extraordinarily quickly and the ship blasts off, almost immediately losing communications with Earth.

Extreme g-forces might not be comfortable, but they do result in very funny facial expressions.

Speaking of Earth, the Earth side of the emergency T-Mat link comes back online, though all they can do is send something to the Moon. Taking the hint (and failing to consider the potential dangers), Kelly immediately sends herself and a few extra men to lend help.

The Ice Warriors remain hidden, and their collaborator, Fewsham (Terry Scully), meets her when she arrives, telling her that his commander went mad and destroyed the T-Mat system. He needs her help to repair it, and of course she’s only too happy to oblige.

Meanwhile the escapee, Phipps (Christopher Coll), rigs up a radio transmitter and tries to contact Earth again, instead finding the Doctor, and he’s able to help guide him into landing the rocket as he explains to him about the invasion.

Kelly soon gets T-Mat back up and running, learning too late that she’s just played straight into the hands (claws?) of the Ice Warriors, who immediately kill her assistants. Unable to T-Mat herself back to Earth, she flees into the bowels of the moon-base.

The Doctor meets up with Phipps, and quickly comes to the conclusion that in order to stop this invasion going any further, he has to put T-Mat out of action permanently.

He tells Jamie as much, and to get the rocket ready for takeoff. Unfortunately the rocket motors– I’m sorry, motors? I thought rockets didn’t have motors. It’s essentially a tube sitting on top of an explosion. They’re simultaneously very simple and hideously complicated.

Anyway. The rocket motors are out of commission. Jamie and Zoe go to look for the Doctor, and instead find Phipps and Kelly. Phipps shows Jamie, Zoe and Kelly his method for dealing with any Ice Warriors who come across him: a heat-trap, channelling the base’s solar power to a small area to effectively melt them.

As for the Doctor, he infiltrates the Ice Warriors by using the tried and true method of acting so completely pathetic that even a Dalek would probably offer him a blanket and a nice cup of tea.

He learns that the Ice Warriors have a purpose in mind with the T-Mat. They need to use it to send something around the world. Seeds. Exploding seeds. Seeds…of death! (Insert thunderclap here.)

One blows up in the Doctor’s face as he tries to examine it, knocking him unconscious.

And then the Ice Warriors send a seed to London…

Incuriosity and Obsolescence

So, there’s a pretty obvious theme emerging in this serial: obsolescence of old technology, and the dangers of new technology making us complacent.

Though the T-Mat system is undoubtedly more efficient than any conventional means of transportation, in entirely abandoning old methods, humanity has rendered global infrastructure frighteningly fragile. Planes, trains and automobiles? No thanks, say the people of future Earth. Never has it been easier to get medical supplies and food aid where it’s most needed, but with the T-Mat system down, millions are now at risk of death. And by the end of the serial it appears to have only been out of action for a day or two at the most. How much longer can society hold itself together?

Humanity in this serial is perilously short-sighted. It shows in their approach to global infrastructure, and it also shows in their attitude to the concept of space travel and exploration. Radnor and Kelly respect Eldred’s work in the field of space travel, but as a stepping stone to the creation of T-Mat, rather than for its own sake. In viewing the current T-Mat system as the endpoint of all advancements in transportation, they’re missing the potential of combining rocket travel with T-Mat. Sure, rocket travel is comparatively slow and expensive, but you’d only need to go somewhere once to set up a T-Mat booth, then you’d be able to come and go as you pleased. The possibilities are limitless. Off-world colonisation? Easy peasy. No need to worry about the practicalities of getting building supplies and colonists to Pluto if you can just zap them there. Scientific exploration? You could pop over and collect some samples from Mars and be home in time for tea. Resources? There are many large, metallic asteroids in our Solar System. Set up shop there, with instant transportation of materials to and from Earth, and you’ve got a licence to print money. And maybe you can give Earth a break from having chunks gouged out of her, to boot.

These ideas are the product of a layperson giving the topic a good five minutes of thought. Smarter people could probably come up with more. By assuming our latest innovations are the furthest we can possibly go in a particular area, we close ourselves off to new opportunities.

This is the crux of the character conflict here. Radnor and Kelly see Eldred as old-fashioned, but if anything they’re more stuck in their ways. There is a sense of practicality to the point of troubling incuriosity in the pair of them. They have no interest in rocket travel beyond their immediate need. Will they rediscover their curiosity by the end of the serial, or will short-term thinking prove the end of space travel—and maybe even the human race?

Final Thoughts

I’m enjoying this serial so far. It’s a base-under-siege, but decent enough. It’s at least using the format to have an interesting discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of rapidly advancing technology. And I suppose it has been a while since we last had a serial in this format, so I can’t complain. The format wasn’t really the issue, just its overuse.

However, the story does also suffer from a couple of real problems. Too often does the plot slam to a halt for a character to explain what the audience could easily enough infer from the events on-screen. Stage setting is good, but not at the expense of the story.

He's behind you! Ice Warriors apparently can't turn their heads.

Also a pain is the blatant padding. There are more than a few scenes that go nowhere, which I struck from my summary because they really didn’t matter in terms of plot or character development. Scenes that are dull to watch are dull to write about, and there are unfortunately a few of those sprinkled throughout.

All that said, I’m mostly enjoying it. We’ve got some interesting characters (I’ll give you my full thoughts of them once the serial is over) and some cracking music to set the mood. With the action starting to pick up, I have high hopes for the latter half of this serial to be stronger than the beginning.

But we’ll have to wait and see.