73: The Monster of Peladon

Before Watching

If I had been a wee bit older when this one was shown I might have been tempted to ask – does the world really need another Peladon story? To which the answer would probably have been – no, it doesn’t, since it never got another one after this.

Now, actually, the basic premise of the Doctor returning to the scene of a previous adventure is pretty fresh and novel, and it’s remarkable to think that it hasn’t really happened before. Well, alright, the TARDIS did return to the Ark at the end of its 600 year voyage, but then that was all part of the same story. Alright, so the Doctor has been to the Detsen Monastery before “The Abominable Snowmen” but that’s a plot point, and not a televised adventure so it doesn’t count. The Doctor’s returns to Gallifrey I suppose will count when he gets round to them.

After Watching

Last time out was Malcolm Hulke’s last contribution to the TV series, and this time we saw Brian Hayles’. Brian Hayles has, it’s probably fair to say, a mixed track record. His first script for Doctor Who was “The Celestial Toymaker” although it’s only fair to say that what was seen on screen was Gerry Davis’ rewrite of Donald Tosh’s rewrite of Brian Hayles original script. The Donald Tosh rewrite was so extensive that it was agreed that he would receive the screen credit, while Brian Hayles would be credited as having supplied the original idea. He then went on to write “The Smugglers”, the story which recast the Historical genre in the mould of historical adventure linked to a time period, rather than Historical genre linked to a specific event. Finally, in Season 5, the Monster Season, he hit paydirt with the Ice Warriors. They debuted in the story which bore their name. In season 6 they returned in his story “The Seeds of Death”, and then in season 9 in “The Curse of Peladon”, where the great surprise of the story was that they had actually renounced their old warrior ways, and were now acting as galactic peacemakers if anything. So we end with this story, a return to Peladon, and the last story featuring the Ice Warriors actually to be produced during the classic series.

With the exception of Earth it’s difficult to think of hardly any planets which the Doctor has already visited more than once. He visited Skaro in both “The Daleks” and “Evil of the Daleks”, but the Skaro of the latter is from a much later time period than the Skaro of the former, and there’s very little that the two have in common. “The Monster of Peladon” on the other hand takes place a mere fifty years after the events of the earlier story. There’s even one carry-over character, Alpha Centauri. In functional terms it is a useful plot device having Alpha Centauri return, since it saves a great amount of tedious toing and froing in the early episode with the Doctor having to prove that he is who he says that he is. In a way, Alpha Centauri is this story’s psychic paper.

There’s one big plus to doing a sequel story like this, and one big minus. I’ll start with the plus. If you use virtually the same setting for a story as one from a couple of seasons earlier, than you can reuse a lot of sets  and costumes. (Presumably you still have them in storage. If you don’t, then it’s a complete waste of time. ) Theoretically this should make it a cheaper show to produce, and save you money which you can put into the budget of the other shows in the production block. On the other hand it does put you under constraints. It requires a very careful eye to be kept on continuity, because if anything is said or done that contradicts the earlier story, people are definitely going to notice, and they’re going to get upset about it. So how well does “Monster” do as a follow on to “Curse”?

It’s often said that “Curse” was inspired by the UK’s impending entry to the EEC. By the same token “Monster” seems inspired by the Government’s industrial relations problems with the Miners which led to the 3 day week. (Me? Miners’ side of course, brother.) So on Peladon it is 50 years after the end of “Curse” and thus 50 years into Peladon’s membership of the Federation. The Federation is mired in a long standing war with Galaxy Five. (They would have picked on Galaxy Four, but the Drahvins and Rills would have bored them into submission). Peladon is rich in the mineral trisilicate which is essential to keeping a modern fleet of star cruisers going, or whatever the Federation called their space warships. The miners on Peladon are getting bolshie though, and surprisingly it’s nothing to do with the two tone afros which seem to be part of essential Peladon miner uniform. No, their beef is that for 50 years the Peladonian nobility have been enjoying the benefits of Federation membership, and getting fatter and richer on the profits than they were already, while the poor old miners are having to work harder than before for no commensurate rise in their standard of living. That’s not just my opinion, the Doctor actually says this when he’s giving the Queen a few home truths. I’ll come to her shortly. Now, what makes it even worse for the miners is that an apparition of their god beast Aggedor has started appearing in the mines, and when it does, a miner usually gets vaporised in a heat ray.

So essentially what we have is a simple little political parable, isn’t it?  Wrong. Or rather, there is a political parable there, but it’s not so neat and simple as it sounds, since there’s quite an ambiguous attitude towards the miners in the story. For one thing they are shown as not exactly cowardly, but they are very quick to swear to fight to the death, and then run a mile at the first hint of trouble soon after. Not only that, but they are shown as rather sheep like, and I’m not just referring to those hairdos either. They have a leader, Gebek, who is the voice of reason, talks sense, is calm and brave under fire, and is dedicated to his fellow miners. Then they also have a meathead called Ettis, who has a loud voice and a small brain. Ettis has ‘I’ll get you all slaughtered’ written all over his face, and yet the miners are at times just as ready to listen to Ettis and follow him as they are with Gebek. So the message is a rather patronising one of – these miner chappies, salt of the earth and all that, and yes of course, something should be done for them, but for Heaven’s sake don’t let them think for themselves since they’re not all that bright.- Not that the nobility, represented in the person of Chancellor Ortron come off a great deal better. He is an obstinate patrician, conditioned with the idea that those who are not of the nobility are inherently inferior to those who are, yet this position is intellectually undermined by the fact that he tries to manipulate Queen Thalira, who , as royalty, he should view as being that much better than he is, unless he is a hypocrite, which he is.

Speaking of Queen Thalira, she is the daughter of King Peladon from ‘Curse’, whom she says died when she was very young. Apparently there can only be a ruling queen when there is no male heir of the royal line. Queen Thalira is played by Nina Thomas, who is rather decorative, but starts so insipidly that it’s difficult to take her seriously when she later begins to develop a backbone. I’m not really sure how to view this. The Doctor’s suggestion that she takes a few lessons from Sarah Jane, and Sarah Jane’s little speech about Women’s Lib seems dreadfully forced and to be honest somewhat patronising when I watch it in 2015. But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe this was actually quite progressive in 1974. A part of me says that while it is frankly rather cringe making to watch now (although I still think that ‘there’s nothing only about being a girl’ is a pretty good line) at least the story is maybe acknowledging that it has been guilty of some rather rampant chauvinism in the past. I honestly don’t know.

There is a story here too, mind you, and it isn’t just a random collection of characters making some rather heavy handed, quite paternalistic political points. The story, as such, is complicated by the presence of an Earthling mining engineer called Eckersley, played by Donald Gee, who was last seen in “The Space Pirates”, and Alpha Centauri, who is now the ambassador to Peladon. It is the original Egghead here who contacts the Federation and asks them to send in some ‘peace keeping’ forces. The Ice Warriors, led by one Azaxyr, turn up almost immediately. The thing is, they were already there on Peladon, hiding out in the trisilicate refinery, and they are not Federation Forces at all. In fact they are not even official Ice Warrior troops. We eventually learn that they are a breakaway Ice Warrior faction who long to return to the old ways of slaughter, conquest and bloodshed. The corrupt Earth mining engineer Eckersley has hatched a plot with them for them to declare Martial Law on Peladon, bully the miners back to work, then sell the trisilicate to the Galaxy Five forces, thus making Eckersley the richest and most powerful man in the Galaxy. If he had a waxed moustache he’d have been twirling it when he announced this. It is Eckersley who created the Aggedor projector/heat ray machine.

Let’s consider the way that the Ice Warriors come across in this, their last appearance in the classic series. In a way, Brian Hayles was always onto a loser bringing them back in this story. In “The Ice Warriors” the warriors themselves had a kind of motivation for what they did. In “The Seeds of Death” this had developed into out and out evil malevolence and desire for conquest, which was accompanied by the usual incompetence we’ve come to expect from evil malevolent aliens bent on conquest. Then in ‘Curse’ they had developed as a species, renouncing conquest, taking their place within the Federation and showing that they were clearly some way along the road to Enlightenment. There was nowhere left to go with them for Brian Hayles, short of making them bad again. OK, so we get the tacked on explanation that this is a breakaway faction, but there’s no getting away from the fact that this seems like a renunciation of the bold and effective step that he took with them in the previous story. Which is a mistake.

So, when the Ice Warriors’ brutality and their ultimate aims of domination of Peladon become clear, we see the Monarchy, the bourgeois nobility, the guards (military) and the proletariat all throwing in their lot with each other to defend the Peladonian way of life, a way of life with which a lot of them are by no means satisfied, by the way. Now, I’d be charitable and say that this is a clever comment by Brian Hayles on the way that throughout History rulers and politicians have used war and conflict to distract people’s attention from the issues at home which they are failing to deal with and thus cling on to power. But the way the Doctor comments approvingly on this development rather makes me think it isn’t meant to be viewed ironically like this. The Ice Warriors and Eckersley are defeated by a combination of the Doctor’s superhuman ability to resist Eckersley’s security systems to use the Aggedor projector and the heat ray against the Ice Warriors, and the determination of the people of Peladon to fight together and defeat the Ice Warriors. As a bonus, once the Ice Warriors are defeated Galaxy Five immediately opens negotiations for peace, since they know they can’t possibly win without the trisilicate that Eckersley was going to send them.

Let’s examine the end of the story immediately prior to the Doctor’s departure. Queen Thalira virtually begs him to stay on as her advisor and Chancellor. He refuses, saying that she doesn’t need anyone to tell her what to do now. Right, if this story was serious about making a point about feminism, or showing any feminist credentials, then it should have been Sarah to say this, and not the Doctor. Even more so, once it had been said, then that was the time to leave. However they don’t. The script compounds this by having the Doctor suggest the miner Gebek as the next Chancellor. On the surface this looks like the dawn of a new era of class equality and opportunity on Peladon. It is nothing of the sort. Queen Thalira pays a patronising tribute to Gebek’s excellent qualities , then says there has never been  a chancellor who has not been a member of the nobility before. Firstly the Doctor tells her not to worry about old fashioned thinking like that. This is the second point at which he needs to stop talking and leave immediately. But he doesn’t. He ruins the whole thing by saying ‘anyway, you can always give him some sort of title.’ It’s a throwaway line, but it illustrates so much of what is wrong about ‘The Monster’ of Peladon as a political parable. For essentially the Doctor has just given Thalira carte blanche to maintain the whole unjust system. By giving Gebek a title, she would reinforce the idea that the top jobs are only for the nobility, since she has to make Gebek one. Where this old class system survives, for example in the UK, it does so because it allows the exceptional individual to arise from among the proletariat, but absorbs them into the elite before they have a chance to effect any real change. Yes, there is no reason why a politician who has not attended Oxford or Cambridge University should not become Prime Minister. Precious few of them ever have done so, though.  Just my opinion, of course, and feel free to disagree.

If you are totally apolitical, and view this just as an adventure story about aliens fighting, some with future weapons, some with swords, then frankly it’s a bit of a tired old slog at 6 episodes long. If you try to view it as a political text it’s a lot more interesting. Albeit rather more muddled. You see, while it makes noises about political change, about giving the poor old miners a fair deal, it is actually far more conservative, in fact far more reactionary than that. It is never really a criticism of the semi feudal/semi proto-capitalist society that Peladon actually is, and in fact the only solution to the class conflict in the story that is offered is to take the one effective member of the proletariat, and graft him into the reactionary and ineffective nobility, thus making them more effective and as a result, more powerful. Interesting, and frankly, rather indefensible. Feel free to disagree.

What Have We Learned?

Get a few miners to stop striking, kill a few Ice Warriors, and you too could find yourself in the House of Lords. 

61: The Curse of Peladon

Before Watching

I set myself a little challenge before I sat down to write my little ‘before watching’ preamble. Take a piece of paper, and write down as many words to do with The Curse of Peladon as you can think of in one minute. This is what I came up with – Ice warriors, furry monster, David Troughton, Hard Boiled egg with an eye, Venusian lullaby, miners, bad haircuts, proposal of marriage. I was impressed – I didn’t think that I remembered that much about it. The furry monster is named, if I recall correctly, Aggador (dor – dor , push pineapple , shake the tree). David Troughton, last seen in “The War Games” plays King Peladon, and the Hard Boiled egg is one of the more extravagant alien designs for Doctor Who, being Alpha Centauri from, er, Alpha Centauri. The Venusian Lullaby is what I think the Doctor uses to tame Aggador, the miners are the ones with the bad haircuts which make them look like they are doing a very bad impression of Dickie Davies (ask your parents or grandparents to explain that cultural reference). Mind you, it does occur to me that I could be mixing up this story with the sequel, “The Monster of Peladon”, but time will surely tell. I’m sure that the King, believing Jo to be a princess, proposes marriage to her in the last episode, but she turns him down. We know who she really has the hots for, don’t we? That’s right. Begins with D and ends with Octor.

After Watching

At the start of the story it appears that the Doctor is really starting to get somewhere with the TARDIS repairs, since he says that this is a test flight to Jo. Now, I do have a bit of a problem with this. The Doctor said clearly in “The Claws of Axos” that he’d had all of his memory of dematerialisation theory wiped by the Time Lords, and so even if he could have got the TARDIS working – not impossible but highly unlikely since it needed the Master’s expertise to make even a short hop in The Claws of Axos, and even then the Time Lords set it to continually return to Earth – even if he could have got it working, he wouldn’t have known how to work it anyway. Now, ok, at the end of the story the Doctor ruefully reflects that it was probably the work of the Time Lords that allowed him to make the trip, but I just found this post hoc explanation a little clumsy and half hearted.

I’m told that this story was inspired by the UK’s entry into the EEC, which was only a year away when the story was broadcast in January 1972.I understand that, but it’s very hard to see David Troughton’s dashing young King Peladon as Edward Heath. What a horrible thought. Right, the test flight of the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Jo to Peladon, at exactly the time that a delegation from the Galactic Federation arrives to decide upon whether Peladon will be allowed to join or not. Now, if we’re taking the European anaglagoy a step further, there’s no guarantee that this story would necessarily be saying that joining the Federation/EEC would be a good thing, although it soon becomes clear that this is exactly what it’s saying. The Federation? Would that by any chance be inspired by Star Trek? We all know that when it comes to Space, Federations – good, Empires – bad. Although since we live in the UK hereditary monarchies are obviously fine by us as well. Which is just as well since Peladon is a hereditary monarchy, although it’s far from a constitutional one. The king’s word is law, which is fine when you have a good liberal monarch like Peladon. It’s Peladon (the king) who wants Peladon (the planet) to join the Federation. He has two advisors, who irresistibly remind me of the little angel and devil that used to pop up on Tom’s shoulders now and then in the Tom and Jerry cartoons to symbolise whenever Tom was on the horns of a moral dilemma. Torbis, the Chancellor, representing temporal power, is the angel, trumpeting the benefits of joining the Federation, and Hepesh, the High Priest, representing organised religion, is the devil, trumpeting the need to maintain the ancient tradtions of Peladon. You can only take the analogy so far, mind you, since the Torbis the angel is murdered not long after the start of episode one, and Peladon alone represents the forces of progress on Peladon. So while it may be a little bit of a cliché to have the representative of organised religion being the most reactionary character, setting his face against progress and in favour of the maintenance of the status quo, it’s still quite satisfying, since this is exactly the sort of thing that we tend to want to see the Doctor standing up against.

The delegate from earth has not yet arrived, and so the Doctor poses as said delegate, making Jo out to be an Earth princess whom he has brought along to serve in an observer capacity. This is shades of the way he assumes the identity of the Examiner from Earth in “The Power of the Daleks”. As one of the delegates who will decide on Peladon’s application to become a member of the Federation the Doctor joins possibly the most diverse set of alien beings seen in one story since “The Daleks’ Master Plan”. There are , firstly Alpha Centauri – from Alpha Centauri, which is a star rather than a planet, but we’ll let that go-  who is sort of a cross between Doctor Octopus (from Spiderman), Humpty Dumpty and a shower curtain, Arcturus from Arcturus (likewise) who is a cross between a hostess trolly, a selection of black boxes and lava lamps, an upturned goldfish bowl, and a shrunken head sitting in a nest of green sticks, and two Ice Warriors from Mars.

Hepesh it turns out isn’t just against the idea of joining the Federation, he is actively trying to prevent it by driving the delegates away. He invokes the spirit of Aggedor, a sacred beast of Peladon, which is really a beast he   caught and trapped on the other side of the planet. Although the Doctor is originally convinced that the Ice Warriors are up to skulduggery, it transpires that it is none other than delegate Arcturus. He has been in cahoots with Hepesh, seeing Peladon’s exclusion from the Federation as an opportunity to give Arcturus which is lacking in minerals the chance to fully exploit the mineral wealth of Peladon. This wrong footing over the Ice warriors is actually one of the cleverest things about this story, and not something to be expected from the fairly strait laced adventure stories that Brian Hayles served us up in the last two Ice Warriors stories. Jo has never met them before, but the Doctor has told them of their previous desire to conquer the Earth, and when Jo confronts them with this, Izlyr, who wears the smoother armoud with the bigger helmet denoting him as the leader, confirms that they were previously a race of warriors, but now they have changed and seen the folly of their ways. So more Nice Warriors now then? The amazing thing is that for this story at least, this is absolutely true, and Jo is right when she cautions the Doctor against assuming that the Ice Warriors must automatically be the villains of the piece.

Ah, Jo. It’s easy to get annoyed for Jo in this story, for she does and thinks so much that is right at times, and yet all she gets from the Doctor is abuse because she runs along to save him when he is singing a Venusian Lullaby to Aggedor to tame him. When it turns out that it is not the Ice Warriors who have been responsible for the mayhem I’d have forgiven her if she took his sonic screwdriver, and, with the words ‘ I told you so!’, shoved it right up his mighty proboscis. Her loyalty to the Doctor seems total at this point in the development of her character. After the Doctor has been caught in the secret temple to Aggedor he is accused of sacrilege, a crime against which it is not even permitted to make a defence. Huh? Jo pleads with Peladon not to impose the death sentence, and the laws of Peladon being what they are, all Peladon can do is to commute the Doctor’s sentence to one of trial by combat. Jo has asked him to do more, and to go further to prove to her that she can believe in him. By failing to do that he guarantees that Jo will not accept his eventual proposal of marriage. He failed to act to save the life of her beloved Doctor, that’s enough for a start. But even more than that, he failed to act LIKE the Doctor, who would surely have forgotten about what it says in the statute books, and in Jo’s eyes, by failing to act like the Doctor in that situation he has proven himself unworthy of her.

So, after Hepesh’s final act of rebellion is defeated when he is mauled by an enraged Aggedor, Jo just has time to reject Peladon’s proposal, and it’s all aboard the Skylark for a quick trip home. And as a story? Well, it isn’t the Third Doctor’s first trip to an alien planet, but it’s the first of any great interest, the first which makes a serious attempt to depict at least something of an alien society. “The Curse of Peladon” works through good pacing, and once again, being a 4 parter helped tremendously with this, and a willingness to convey just enough through info dumping expositions, and never when it would get in the way of the story.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor, although perfectly charming when he is ready to show it, can act like a pig to Jo at times. 

48: The Seeds of Death

Before Watching

May I give you a piece of advice? Never, ever watch a classic Doctor who story you have never watched before in the presence of those members of your family who are not fans of classic Who (which for most of us probably means all of them)

This is a little tip I worked out three or four years ago, the first time that I ever watched “The Seeds of Death”. It was being shown on one of the cable channels and I watched the first episode while it was on, and recorded the others. I started viewing episode 2 on a time I was alone in the house, but by episode 3 my wife and eldest two daughters had returned home, and that’s when the comments started. Now, it’s one thing if we’re watching a story I already know, since I can devote enough of my attention to refuting some the comments they make with such witty rejoinders as – why don’t you shut up – and – he who pays the mortgage chooses the channel – etc. , but when you’re watching a story you’ve never seen before you just can’t afford to have your attention diverted away from what’s going on on the screen.

What makes it worse is that they will inevitably draw undue attention to the shortcomings in terms of plot, acting, costume, special effects and anything else that they can find to criticise. Which has the effect of making it relatively impossible to give the story a fair hearing. Well, that was the effect it had on me, anyway. So I’m in the situation of remembering chunks of the story, but having some quite significant gaps in my memory (which I like to think of as’ shouting breaks’ ). I also have it down in my memory as something really rather disappointing, but again, this may simply be the effect of the company I had to put up with while I was watching it. I certainly hope so.

After Watching

If I hadn’t already known that this story featured the return of the Ice Warriors, then the story itself did go to some lengths to conceal the identity of the monsters du jour for the first ten minutes. The only clues are firstly, the credit at the start of the show that showed it was written by Brian Hayles, and the reptilian hissing made by the unseen alien in the first few minutes. Actually I rather like the way that we saw through the alien’s eyes when it first appeared.

The Ice Warriors. Let’s have a look at their plan. They aim to take over Earth – naturally enough. This involves using the Earth’s T-Mat system, which has its control centre on the Moon  - more about that afterwards – to transport the eponymous seeds to major population centres in the cold and temperate regions of the Earth.  When the seeds burst open they exude gas, and spores of a fungus which creates foam (a la “Fury From The Deep”) and absorbs the oxygen from the atmosphere. In a short space of time this will reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere to by 80%, which will make it unbreathable to humans, but just right for Ice Warriors, and the planet will be ripe for conquest by the Ice Warrior invasion fleet. OK? Appropriately evil behaviour, and not at all inconsistent with what we’ve already seen in “The Ice Warriors”

In “The Ice Warriors” the warriors all had similar costumes and armour. I say similar rather than identical, since one of them did have a noticeably big head in proportion to its body. That armour doesn’t seem to have been used this time, and that’s probably just as well. In the previous story the Warriors were led by Bernard Bresslaw’s Varga, but his armour was exactly the same type as the others. In this one we see the first appearance of what I’ve heard called the Ice Lord armour. This may be a bit of a misnomer, since the term is never used in this story, and I think in “The Curse of Peladon” the character in the same costume, played by the same actor (Alan Bennion) is just called a Lord. This involves wearing a larger, smoother domed metal helmet, and what looks like a fairly ordinary dark jumpsuit, gloves and boots. It does introduce the idea that the Ice Warriors may have a social structure and a hierarchy, which adds a little depth to them, and this is all to the good. It doesn’t explain why the Grand Marshal, whose head we see on a video screen, is wearing a similar helmet to the leader’s, but his has some large sequins stuck to it in places.

The basic problem with the script is a point which it actually does acknowledge for itself. The plot revolves around the fact that at this particular stage of earth History, mankind has forsaken all other means of transport in favour of the T-Mat instantaneous transportation system. I’m not saying that if a wildly improbable thing like real functioning matter transmission were ever invented that it wouldn’t rapidly become extremely popular, and supercede many other forms of transport, but it just wouldn’t see people abandoning other forms of transport completely. The coming of the Railways was widely hailed as the death knell of the canals, but although railways certainly superceded canals, the fact is that the canals are still there, and people still use them. The cnals themselves didn’t mean that people ever stopped completely using a horse and cart. The car never completely killed the bicycle. So anyway, we have the whole of the world’s economy 100% dependent upon this one form of transport. Where is the control based? That’s right – on the Moon. Pretty much the one place you have no other means of reaching if the system breaks down. Now, fair play to the script, more than one character points out the absolute stupidity of this, but none of it explains how mankind would have been stupid enough to design the system in this way in the first place.

Of course, the real reason for taking this stupid decision is that it allows us to have another ‘base under siege’ story. Yes, we’re never going to have another season like Season 5, when the vast majority of stories in the one season all adhered to this same format, but nobody seems to have told Brian Hayles that this sort of story is sooooo last year. And why not? Season 6, with 2 stories to go, has certainly been a season of variety. There were similarities between “The Dominators” and “The Krotons” but there were notable differences as well, and two very different and rather wonderful stories in between in “The Mind Robber” and “The Invasion”. By way of contrast we have here a story which seems in many ways a rerun of some of the memorable features of stories from the last two seasons. You liked “The Moonbase” because it had a moonbase under attack? No problem, this is also set on a moonbase – AND – partly set in a world weather control station, although this one is on Earth. You liked the Ice Warriors? – no problem, all present and correct. Loved the foam in “Fury from the Deep”? We got more foam in this story than you can shake a stick at.

Well, OK, the story is formulaic to an extent, but there are just a couple of interesting touches. The leader under pressure role is actually shared out between Ronald Leigh-Hunt’s Commander Radnor, and Louise Pajo’s Miss Kelly, who takes over once we get to the moon as Radnor fades more into the background. There’s an interesting twist on the traitor character here too. Fewsham, played by Terry Scully, is very quick to help the Ice Warriors, then he helps the Doctor, Zoe, Jamie and Miss Kelly escape back to Earth, but does no return himself, and starts helping the Ice Warriors again, yet then it is his deliberate actions which enables the Doctor to know the Ice Warriors’ overall plans, and to defeat them.

None of which is to say that this is a classic, because it isn’t. It is a perfectly functional and watchable story of the probably overdone base under siege story. It suffers, like all bar the very best six parters, from a little obvious padding – it seems to take an awfully long time to get the Doctor and companions to the Moon in the first place, and other than giving us one cliffhanger there is no reason whatsoever why they need to spend so much air time in the rocket. I would also say that the Ice Warriors’ plan to use the transmat is unnecessarily complicated – why not just land covertly and leave the seeds? Here’s another plot hole which is actually central to the plot. Harry Towb, a well-known face in British films and TV shows of the 60s and 70s, plays the technician Osgood. When the Ice Warriors invade the T-Mat moonbase, Towb Osgood disables the T Mat for which the Ice Warriors kill him. After which it turns out that only Osgood was skilled enough to repair it – none of the other technicians there know how to fix the T Mat. What? You have a base of personnel, and only one of them can fix the damn thing? What the hell are all the others there for? Making the tea? Generally the look of the story didn’t detract, although the men ‘s uniform is a bit strange – the bands on their legs make it look as if they are wearing their underpants outside their trousers. Oh, and the temperature control on the moonbase, which Zoe uses to kill some of the ice warriors is like a little sailing ship’s wheel – the sort of thing you get a little barometer inside. Very incongruous in these surroundings. Once the temperature gauge reached 50 celsius it shouldn’t just have been the Ice Warriors who started dying either – that would have killed the humans as well. While I’m carping, I must draw attention to the climax of the story. The seeds and foam are destroyed by water. Really? One question – what’s ice made of? And another fleet being destroyed through manipulation of a radio signal, oh please. Don’t these idiots ever learn?

“The Seeds of Death” is not alone in having some fairly obvious plot holes, and none of these are essentially fatal to the story. Going back to the last time that I watched the story, it was ruined for me by the barrage of comments from my nearest and dearest, some of which were fair, but some of which weren’t. Without that running commentary I found that I could actually start to enjoy this story for what it is – a decent Doctor who adventure story, with some quite impressive monsters, the Doctor and companions in real jeopardy at times, and some exciting action.

What Have We Learned?

The Production team were determined to get their money’s worth from the ‘Fury from the Deep’ foam machine.

The Ice Warriors do have a hierarchy – the higher you go the smoother and more spangly your costume gets. A bit like Strictly Come Dancing.

39: The Ice Warriors

Before Watching

Now, as it happens I do not recall ever reading the Target novelization of this story, even though I can clearly remember it sitting on my brother’s bookshelf. I’m not really sure why. I know that Brian Hayles had twice had stories produced which were heavily rewritten – in the case of “The Celestial Toymaker” and “The Smugglers”. However this story introduced his most lasting contribution to Doctor Who – the eponymous Ice Warriors. Having grown up with the Third Doctor I have clear memories of them in the two Peladon stories. However, I think that I should also say that a couple of years ago I watched “The Seeds of Death”. I made the mistake of watching it with two of the non-we (my wife and eldest daughter), and had to put up with jibes about some of the special effects, and the at times funereal pace of the story, without really being able to come up with good responses – in my opinion at the time the effects were rather, er, crappy, and the story was pretty slow. Or so it seemed. Well, that was The Seeds of Death, which we’ll come to in due course. For now, though, it’s The Ice Warriors, and this one must have had something going for it or they would never have brought the eponymous warriors back for a second story. Would they?

After Watching

We are now in the middle of the 5^th season, the so-called ‘monster season’. And therein lies my problem with “The Ice Warriors”. If I was watching this in a vacuum, if you like – or not as part of a developing season, I have no doubt that I’d be happy to just accept it for what it is, and be able to dwell on the positives, which undoubtedly exist. The trouble is I am watching it as part of a developing season, and as a result this all feels awfully familiar, even though I’ve never seen it before. Let’s have a look at what I’m on about here, shall we?

The brusque and opinionated leader who starts cracking up under the pressure? Check.

He’s called Clent in this story, but he’s clearly conforming to a type established in the first two Cyberman stories with Cutler and Hobson. Having said that, though, Clent as a character is a cut above the previous two mentioned since he’s played by the brilliant Peter Barkworth, about whom I’ll say more later on.

The base under attack from alien nasties? Check.

At first this looks rather similar to the set up in “The Tenth Planet” – although it isn’t because it’s considerably further in the future. The basic premise to the story isn’t a bad one at all – the Earth is in the grip of another Ice Age, and the base is one of several in the line of the advancing glaciers, using ‘ionisation’ technology to halt the advance and turn it back. Some of the scenes outside the base are actually fairly impressive – there’s copious amounts of ice and snow about, which makes you wonder whether there wasn’t any in The Abominable Snowmen because they’d set it all aside for this one.

Big, lumbering, alien nasties who have better technology than the humans, but are rather stupid. Check

Even today Bernard Bresslaw’s Varga the Ice Warrior looks pretty impressive. Fair play to Bernard Bresslaw, he’s certainly best known for comedy, having taken a number of roles in Carry On films, and also in the 60s TV sitcom “The Army Game”, but he brings more than just an impressive physical presence to this role. The sibilant menace of his reptilian voice is somehow at odds with his massive frame, yet it becomes all the more effective for that. They’re all big lads, the actors playing the 4 Ice Warriors, but there is something strange going on with some of their costumes. Bernard Bresslaw’s is very impressive, and well proportioned, as is one of the others. But the other two costumes – well, how should I put it? Either their heads are too big, or their bodies are too small, or a bit of both, and they do look slightly ridiculous, especially when the 4 are all together and you can’t avoid making the comparison.

The Alien nasties have a basic but fatal weakness. Check.

With the Tenth Planet Cybermen it was radiation, and with The Moonbase Cybermen it was nail polish remover (and gravity). With the Ice Warriors – well, it’s pretty obvious really when you think about it. Just turn the central heating thermostat up.

The amazing piece of technology which can be turned on the alien nasties to save the day. Check

They called it the Gravitron in “The Moonbase”. In this one it’s the Ioniser. This is the machine that melts the glaciers by , er, ionising them. Quite a bit of the story is held up waiting for Clent to discover whether he can use the Ioniser against the Ice Warriors’ ship – if it has atomic engines he can’t, if it doesn’t, then happy days.

Well, you can maybe see where I’m coming from now. There’s just so much in this story that we’ve seen before. It’s a bit of a shame, considering that what the story does, it actually does pretty well, and arguably better than the predecessors that I’ve mentioned.

What Have We Learned?

In the future, before the Earth gets burned to a crisp by solar flares, it’s going to be frozen to death by a new Ice Age