#19 (6.23 - 6.28): The Seeds of Death.

The Ice Warriors prepare to conquer the Earth.

6 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 145 minutes. Written by: Brian Hayles, Terrance Dicks (uncredited). Directed by: Michael Ferguson. Produced by: Peter Bryant.


THE PLOT:

In the not-too-distant future (next Sunday A. D.), the Earth is completely dependent on the Travelmat Relay, or "T-Mat." This technology uses a station on the moon to relay people and shipments from one part of the world to another. T-Mat has resolved world hunger and is considered by the governments of the Earth to be entirely reliable.

Which also makes the T-Mat system a perfect vulnerability. With their own planet dying, the Ice Warriors have decided to invade Earth. They don't intend a strict military invasion, however. Instead, a small force under the command of Slaar (Alan Bennion) takes control of the moonbase, planning to use T-Mat to devastate the Earth before their invasion force arrives.

The first stage of the aliens' plan works perfectly. They have control of the moon and, with it, control of T-Mat. Unless the Doctor can find a way to stop them, there is little standing in the way of their conquest...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: For much of the story, his role is surprisingly peripheral. It's a full third of Episode One before he and his companions are even introduced, and they spend the first two episodes just getting to the moonbase! With Patrick Troughton also sitting out Episode Four, this leaves much of The Seeds of Death feeling almost like a New Series "Doctor-lite" story. Episode Three offers a semi-comedic chase scene that allows Troughton to showcase his facility at physical comedy before befuddling the Ice Warriors by telling them, "Your leader will be angry if you kill me - I'm a genius!". His best moment comes in the final episode, however, when he is unarmed and at Slaar's mercy, and yet still emerges as the dominant figure.

Jamie: "Either the Doctor's all right, in which case we've no need to worry, or he's in danger and he needs my help!" Another story showcasing Jamie's protectiveness. At first, it's an active impediment, when he tries to stop Zoe from going through a vent to turn up the base's heating. Both Zoe and Miss Kelly shut him down by pointing out that they have no alternative, leaving him to look (and likely feel) foolish. Later, however, that same instinct leads to him distracting an Ice Warrior long enough for Zoe to help the Doctor, and finally sees him rescuing the Doctor from almost certain death.

Zoe: Thanks to her photographic memory, she's able to navigate the base perfectly. Well, almost - She does get herself and Jamie lost at one point, but she finds the way "eventually," as she points out with a line reading from Wendy Padbury that's wonderful in its mixture of defiance and injured pride. Padbury continues to be a delight in a character that, in other hands, might easily have been insufferable.

Gia Kelly: Miss Kelly (Louise Pajo) is the T-Mat manager who is a lot like Zoe... if you took away Zoe's charm and replaced it with ambition. Kelly is a legitimate T-Mat expert, to such an extent that her supervisor considers her irreplaceable. In the story's opening scenes, before the crisis has started, it's commented that nothing ever goes wrong on her watch, to which she forcefully replies: "I don't let it." Refreshingly, while Kelly is stubborn and not particularly likable, she is also portrayed positively, showing courage and resourcefulness throughout the story.

Fewsham: Terry Scully's Fewsham is essentially Miss Kelly's opposite. The quick sketch we get from early scenes indicates that he's been promoted beyond his ability, and he is resentful and defensive when Miss Kelly complains about the delays his errors have caused. When the Ice Warriors arrive, he surrenders instantly, declaring: "I want to live!" At the same time, Fewsham is not the one-dimensional coward he initially seems to be, with Scully doing an excellent job at showing his mounting horror as he realizes what the Ice Warriors intend for the world.

Phipps: Twenty years before Bruce Willis's John McClane stealthily took on terrorists in Die Hard, Christopher Coll's Phipps did much the same with Ice Warriors on the moon. With the Doctor and company sidelined for the first part of the story, the action is initially carried by Phipps. A tech who managed to escape from the Ice Warriors, he takes refuge in the solar power room, where he constructs a booby-trap that fells a couple of the Martian meanies. He's pushed to the periphery after the regulars arrive, but he still gets a nice bit with Zoe when he briefly gives into the shock of the day's events - reminding us that for all his bravery, this is essentially a computer expert and not a trained commando.

Ice Warriors: The Ice Warriors' second appearance improves upon their first. In The Ice Warriors, they were physically imposing but lacked any real personality. They also spoke too slowly to develop much menace in dialogue, and their lines were not always easy to understand. This story introduces Alan Bennion's Slaar as a member of a separate leadership caste. Slaar's costume is notably less bulky, with the lower half of his face left uncovered.  This allows Bennion to speak much more clearly, and to put both menace and personality into his line readings.


THOUGHTS:

Brian Hayles began writing The Seeds of Death under the impression that Jamie was being written out in the preceding story. When Frazer Hines decided to stay until the season's end, major rewrites were required. Still more rewrites were needed to accommodate a week's break for Patrick Troughton. Eventually, it fell to script writer Terrance Dicks to take care of all the last-minute changes while making sure the story still flowed.

Somehow, The Seeds of Death emerges from this chaos to become one of Season Six's most purely enjoyable entries. Sure, there's plenty of padding; pretty much everything involving the Doctor's rocket trip could have been eliminated just by having him materialize on the moon in the first place. But even most of the padding is enjoyable, thanks to a strong guest cast, engaging dialogue, and unusually well-written characters.

There are so many good roles, I left several good ones out of my "Characters" breakdown. Among these, I would note: Commander Radnor (Ronald Leigh-Hunt), Miss Kelly's beleaguered supervisor; Professor Eldred (Philip Ray), a crusty rocket scientist resentful of T-Mat in general and Radnor in particular; and Osgood (Harry Towb), the experienced and competent controller who has grown to regret recommending Fewsham for promotion. All of the above emerge as three-dimensional individuals, even though one of them only gets a few minutes of screen time.

Like most six parters, there are places where the pacing stumbles. Slaar threatens to kill Fewsham at least one time too many, and characters spend entirely too much time running back and forth across the moonbase sets. But just as it threatens to go stale, the script cannily changes focus and setting in a way that brings in new complications, making the story fresh again.

The result may not be the best story of Season Six, but it's probably the most accessible. The Mind Robber is an oddball tale; The Invasion is a touch long; but this is one that would be fairly easy to show to newcomers as an example of a particularly well-done standard Who story.  This was my third time viewing this story, and I still found it to be a whole lot of fun to watch.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Story: The Krotons
Next Story: The Space Pirates



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#10 (5.11 - 5.16): The Ice Warriors.

The Doctor's attempt to negotiate doesn't go well...

6 episodes Approx. 147 minutes. Written by: Brian Hayles. Directed by: Derek Martinus. Produced by: Innes Lloyd.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS materializes in a future in which advancing glaciers threaten to create a new Ice Age. Humanity is keeping the ice at bay through a network of stations using Ionisers to melt the ice and halt its advance. But at Brittanicus Base, all is not well. The chief scientist, Penley (Peter Sallis), has left the project over disputes with its leader, Clent (Peter Barkworth), and Clent lacks the expertise to keep the machine working properly. If the base fails, the entire worldwide effort will be doomed.

Which makes the timing less than ideal when would-be archaeologist Arden (George Waring) discovers a warrior encased in ice. He believes he has found a preserved Viking corpse - but when he returns it to the base and begins thawing it, the scientists discover that it is actually an alien, an Ice Warrior from the planet Mars. The warrior, named Varga (Bernard Bresslaw) has been trapped in the ice for centuries, but he is alive - As is his crew!

Varga takes Victoria hostage and retreats back to his ship, along with equipment to wake up the others.  Soon, the Warriors and the scientists find themselves in a stalemate. Varga cannot escape Earth without mercury within the base, and the scientists don't dare use the Ioniser for fear that it might ignite the ship's engines and cause a nuclear catastrophe. The Doctor hopes to solve this through negotiation. Varga has another solution: Total annihilation!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though his disdainful reaction to "the great computer" ties in with the technophobic themes of much of the story, he isn't idiotically opposed to technology. He acknowledges the computer as a useful tool, even urging Clent to use it to verify his own expertise in the first episode. But he hates having his judgment made subservient to the machine's. When he leaves the base to confront the Ice Warriors, he expresses hope of being able to reason with them, despite the violence they've already inflicted. Even so, his optimism doesn't stop him from preparing a surprise for his own self-defense. He's hopeful that the aliens will be reasonable, but he's ready for them to be monsters.

Jamie: His attraction to Victoria is made explicit late in Episode One. He responds appreciatively to the revealing outfits of the women in the base, and idly asks Victoria if she would ever consider dressing like that - almost certainly baiting the proper young woman to get the exact reaction he does. When she is kidnapped by Varga, he insists that he has to go after her, not even pretending to listen to Clent's insistence that she is a lesser priority to their main task.

Victoria: Her reputation as a mindless screamer continues to be largely undeserved. Not that she doesn't scream - But as in Tomb of the Cybermen, she does so as a tactic as often as not, as when she screams during an escape attempt through an ice cave in order to bring the ice crashing down on a pursuer. She is certainly frightened, but she responds to a terrifying situation with courage.

Penley: This is a story that has aged less well than some of its counterparts.  In a decade where individualism was clearly seen as the greatest virtue, it is clear that we are meant to see Penley as the most admirable guest character... However, Clent is quite right when he accuses him of being a moral coward. On an assignment whose failure would spell the deaths of millions, Penley abandons his post - To all appearances, for no reason other than a bruised ego!  When this is directly pointed out to him, he effectively says that it's not his problem.  Our guest hero, ladies and gentlemen!

Clent: That said, Brian Hayles' script refreshingly avoids turning Clent into a one-dimensional cartoon character.  He is an overbearing ass, but he's given several moments that show that he's not only that. In Episode Four, he tries to be conciliatory toward Arden, who is blaming himself for having brought the Ice Warrior back to the base. His manner is awkward and halting, showing his unease at giving compliments or lending comfort. But he makes the effort, and that and similar moments make him a far fuller character than might have been the case.

Ice Warriors: The costume may have been notoriously uncomfortable (and it looks it!), but it's visually striking and the slow movements of the warriors make them feel genuinely alien. As in The Power of the Daleks, the story gains mileage from putting the antagonists in a position of weakness. If Clent and his scientists succeed in melting the ice, then the warriors have no hope of escaping Earth, which puts them in a desperate situation from the moment they wake. It doesn't make them less malevolent, and it's made clear early on that they kill ruthlessly when there is no actual need to do so... But their desperation makes their motives plausible, and creates a parallel with the similar desperation of the humans.


THOUGHTS

The Ice Warriors is unmistakably Sixties, from the outfits worn by the scientists in the base to the ridiculously technophobic themes running through the narrative. It so unapologetically a sixties artifact that it's actually rather charming.

It's a decent story, but not as good as the ones preceding it. The first four episodes do a solid job of establishing the different threads.  The advancing glaciers, the Ice Warriors themselves, and Penley's retreat from his duties complement each other even as these strands converge. It takes a little too much time to do it, though.  A subplot with Penley's scavenger friend, the almost fanatically anti-scientist Storr (Angus Lennie), doesn't particularly advance the story, and largely just repeats themes that were better established elsewhere.  There are far too many scenes of Clent deferring to the computer (we got the point in the first episode, thanks).  All of this results in the feel of a good four parter than has been stretched to fill six parts.

There's also at least one genuinely great scene. On learning that the Ionizer can, at full power, melt rock, the Ice Warriors exult about its power as a weapon. The scientists protest that it is no weapon, but a tool. "I see it differently," the warlike alien replies. And at the end, Penley proves the Warriors correct precisely by using the machine as a weapon, exultantly declaring that the Ionizer "can destroy rock" as he turns it against the enemy.  Is it a tool?  Is it a weapon?  Depending on its application, it is clear that it can be both.

Victoria is captured by an Ice Warrior!

THE MISSING EPISODES

Episodes Two and Three of The Ice Warriors were among the earlier missing episode animations. They are not as effective as many of the later efforts, with limited animation and often blocky movements.  Still, it's good enough to allow the visual element for the missing episodes, complete with some enjoyable bits of physical business from the Doctor. That it looks primitive next to more recent efforts does not change how grateful I am that the BBC chose to start down the road of animation.  Without this and The Reign of Terror, we would never have gotten to far more accomplished presentations such as The Macra Terror.

Overall, The Ice Warriors is very much an artifact of its time. Time hasn't touched the basic storytelling of The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Abominable Snowmen, both of which still compel; but this story has to be viewed in part through the lens of the late 1960s. With that in mind, it remains a good "B" science fiction piece, even if it doesn't rise to the heights of its immediate predecessors.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Story: The Abominable Snowmen
Next Story: The Enemy of the World


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