By Jessica Holmes

After their run in with a bunch of snowmen, the TARDIS team are gonna have to keep their cool—this time, they’re up against The Ice Warriors. This story comes from Brian Hayles, who previously gave us The Celestial Toymaker.

EPISODE ONE

The episode opens on a glacier. We can immediately tell we’re in the far future by the music that opens up the episode. It’s either a theremin (the most futuristic of instruments) or a woman doing a really good impression of one. In the future, all music will sound like this: oooOOOooo

Amidst all the ‘oo’ing, we have Earth caught in the grip of a second ice age. Keeping the advancing glaciers at bay is a network of scientific bases manning ‘ioniser’ devices. However, one of those bases is about to fail–and about to lose Europe to the ice.

The Doctor makes a bumpy landing when he first arrives, with the TARDIS toppling over on an ice floe. So, he can’t steer and he can’t park. Does the Doctor even have a licence to drive this thing? Well, he might take a bit more care in future, as getting OUT of the toppled TARDIS proves a painful (but funny) endeavour.

His companions are amazed by, of all things, the plastic dome protecting the base from the elements. There’s plenty of plastic inside the TARDIS, I don’t know what’s so special about more of it. Shinier, I suppose.

They couldn’t have chosen a better time to pop in, as the Doctor immediately realises how close the equipment is to failing. A timely bit of gung-ho meddling (the Doctor’s specialty) saves the base’s ioniser from going kaput, and gives us a chance to meet a few characters. Inside the base, we’ve got the leader, Clent (Peter Barkworth), a man whose ambition and overreliance on the computer to tell him what to do outstrips his actual ability to lead. Under him is a very enthusiastic senior scientist/amateur archaeologist Arden (George Waring), who at this moment is leading an expedition on the ice, and he’s made a discovery that might rewrite human history: an ancient warrior, long buried in the ice!

He’s not alone on the ice, though. Out in the cold we’ve also got Penley (Peter Sallis), a maverick scientist who defected from the base for whatever reason, and his pal Storr (Angus Lennie), who is…there to give Penley someone to talk to, I suppose. They don’t do much at the moment other than skulk around and discuss the other characters, providing helpful (if a bit transparent) plot explanation.

Clent recruits the Doctor as his new head scientist (to replace Penley), and we soon learn that a sudden drop of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere brought on this wee cold snap. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We went and made plants obsolete by making artificial food to feed the rapidly expanding population, which for some reason caused a drop in carbon dioxide levels. It wasn’t until later that I suddenly realised this does not actually make sense. Plants breathe IN carbon dioxide and breathe OUT oxygen.

This is primary school stuff.

Oh, and if the base fails and the glaciers advance over Europe, not only will people die but it will upset the balance of power! However will the world cope without we Europeans to boss them around?!

Arden brings his ice warrior in from the cold, and the Doctor soon notices that the warrior’s helmet has some sort of electrical wiring on it. This is no ancient Earth warrior, not with that level of technology. He goes to warn the base’s leaders, leaving Jamie and Victoria alone to banter about the scandalously skimpy (by Victorian standards) outfits the base’s ladies are wearing. Jamie approves (typical bloke), while Victoria is appalled (typical Victorian). And she certainly has no intention of wearing anything like that, much to Jamie’s disappointment. It’s a fun little moment, rudely interrupted by a frosty fighter waking up from his nap.

We’re off to a fun start here! The chemistry between the TARDIS crew is bubbling nicely, and the setting is pretty interesting.

EPISODES TWO AND THREE

Unfortunately we had some bad weather the couple of weeks these episodes were on, and my reception was so spotty I ended up missing a lot of them. However, I’ve managed to piece together a fairly cohesive overview from my own notes and the notes some friends made. Bearing that in mind, let’s continue.

The Ice Warrior’s got up on the wrong side of bed for sure.  The first thing he does upon waking up is knock Jamie out and abscond with Victoria.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is trying to sell the base’s commanders on his ‘alien astronaut’ theory about the warrior’s origins. They’re prepared to accept the idea, and become eager to continue excavating. Where there’s an astronaut, there’s a spaceship, and where there’s a spaceship, there might be a reactor that could restore their ioniser to full power.

Elsewhere in the base, the Warrior asks Victoria how long he was buried in the ice. The Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw, who you might know from the Carry On… films), explains that he’s from Mars. His ship crashed, and he and his crew were buried in an avalanche. He tells her that he intends to retrieve them and return to the red planet.

Pretty reasonable I’d say, Jamie-clobbering aside. Then again, if I was knocked out in an avalanche and woke up in an unfamiliar location a few millenia later, I might panic and do something silly like that too.

It’s quite annoying trying to understand him, though. He has this rather grating habit of hissing between (hiss) every (hiss) word (hisssss…).

Which he delivers in a hoarse whisper.

Someone should offer him something to drink.

Having woken up from his involuntary nap, Jamie accompanies Arden onto the glacier to search for the Warrior’s craft. There’s a bit of pointless meandering as they go back and forth to retrieve excavation equipment.

Meanwhile, Varga makes Victoria help him find a power pack, so that he can wake his buddies up with a little electric shock.

Clent walks in on the pair of them, so Varga knocks him out and runs off with Victoria. He doesn’t have much of an excuse this time. That’s just rude.

Taking Victoria out onto the ice, Varga immediately sets about thawing out the rest of his crew. Soon one Ice Warrior becomes five. Rather than saying thank you to the nice lady and jetting off back to Mars (it’s a bit chilly this time of eon), the Ice Warriors start talking about setting a trap. It’s like an asthma convention with all this rasping.

And Jamie and Arden walk straight into the Ice Warriors' ambush. Arden takes the brunt of the blast, killing him, and knocking Jamie unconscious (again).

Poor Jamie’s brain can’t be doing well from all these knockouts.

Watching all this from a distance, the runaway scientist Penley decides to intervene. Waiting for the Ice Warriors to retreat with a hysterical Victoria, he drags Jamie back to his base in a plant museum (of all things).

Taking a break from acting all damsel-in-distress-ish, Victoria finds her initiative and sneaks away from her captors. She retrieves Arden’s communication device and manages to contact the Doctor, who is aghast to learn of Arden’s death and Jamie’s uncertain fate. However, the Ice Warriors have noticed her absence…and are about to use her for target practice.

Final Thoughts

So far, I’m enjoying The Ice Warriors…in between the dull bits, at least. Once again we have this issue of scenes being egregiously padded out in order to stretch the length of the episodes. The plot becomes like butter scraped over too much bread.

As far as the general overarching structure of the plot, it looks like we’ve got another of those serials where a small group of people in an isolated location are under attack from the Big Bad Monsters outside. A base-under-siege, basically. It’s a solid standard plot, though I hope it doesn’t become too overused. There have been a few Doctor Who serials (especially under Troughton) that use this as the basis of their story. Just swap out the setting and the monster, and they begin to look suspiciously similar.

Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this wraps up. I’ll check in with you all again next month to conclude The Ice Warriors.