The Ice Warriors

The 1968 Doctor Who story which introduced one of the programme’s major league alien foes – the Ice Warriors. After a good start however, it’s frustratingly repetitive plot in which the characters spend hours asking the same questions, interspersed with some slow action scenes and a monster race which is visually impressive but rather boring when talking. Nevertheless the DVD team have once again done an excellent job at restoring the old film prints to better than new, the two missing episodes are recreated with decent animation, and the extras are good value.

It is the Thirtieth Century and human civilisation is under attack from a new ice age. A network of scientific bases are holding the glaciers back with a device called an Ioniser. At the Britannica base, an already strained team, under the dictatorial leadership of Clent, face two unusual sets of visitors. The first is the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria after the TARDIS has landed outside the protective dome. The second are a group of alien warriors found frozen in the glacier. Christened “Ice Warriors” by the scientists, these Martian reptilian soldiers awaken dangerous and suspicious, and the Doctor realises that their entombed spaceship may pose an even greater threat to Britannicus and maybe even the whole world.

If you have read a few of my Doctor Who DVD reviews, then you may know that I’m particularly fond of the black and white era and the Second Doctor in particular. So it’s particularly disappointing to report that this recently restored story is something of a drag.

We start off brightly enough with some good comedy as the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria scramble out of an upended TARDIS into a snowy landscape. The new ice age and the Britannicus base with its conflict-ridden scientists are efficiently introduced: Clent, the rule-bound, officious leader, Penley, the rebellious but brilliant expert, Miss Garrett, the deputy with conflicted loyalties. When a mysterious warrior is brought in, frozen in a block of ice like The Thing From Another World, and reanimates, gasping for breath and flexing its claws, everything seems set-up for an exciting story. Sadly the remaining episodes become a slow relay race between the Britannicus base and the Ice Warrior’s spaceship, with characters going in search of others and missing them on the way, all to pad out the story. Inbetween the big question is, does the spaceship have an atomic drive or not? This will determine whether or not the humans can switch on the ioniser. But that’s not a very interesting question really. There is little in the way of a moral dilemma for the Doctor or his friends. The story’s other big debate about the computerisation of modern life also becomes sterile pretty early on, with Clent and Penley speechifying whilst the Doctor is mostly concerned with the threat of the Martians.

The Ice Warriors were originally conceived by writer Brian Hayles as Vikings with cybernetic implants. But the production team were looking for a more obvious new monster, especially since they were no longer able to use the Daleks. Terry Nation had taken his metal villains to the USA, hoping to make an original TV series. So the Ice Warriors became armoured reptile men and visually they are undoubtedly impressive, with their height, scaly carapaces and blank eyed helmets. Their hissing voices and lumbering gait made them easy for children to imitate too. However they lack personality. Varga and his troops are just a bunch of military thugs, who order people about and threaten to kill people, but don’t have much of a plan or motivation, let alone a sense of humour. Despite being the last of their race, they don’t have any sense of tragedy. Their return appearances would give their race a bit more depth, especially when they became the Third Doctor’s allies in Curse of Peladon but here they only add to repetitive feel to this story.

It’s an unusually strong guest cast with quite a few familiar faces. Peter Barkworth was a respected leading man from Sunday night dramas like The Power Game as well as a theatre grandee. As the straight-laced Clent he gives a memorable if slightly actory performance full of facial tics and a prominent limp. It’s decidedly odd at first to see a young Peter Sallis after years of watching Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine but he’s fine as the clever, cynically humorous scientist Penley. He’s similar to the Doctor in some ways, but shot through with stubborn pride that puts others at danger. But he’s not as unreliable as Storr, a luddite survivalist who befriends Jamie and Penley but later tries to serve the Ice Warriors too. He’s played by professional Scotsman Angus Lennie, later better known as Shuggie the chef in Crossroads.

There’s a reasonable array of extras. Cold Fusion is the cheerful making documentary in which surviving cast and crew look back warmly at filming the series, whilst Bernard Bresslaw’s son recalls his dad’s pleasure at being cast in such an unusual role and visiting him on set. Meanwhile Beneath the Ice interviews the animators at Pup Ltd about recreating the missing episodes with 2D computer animation, and the challenges of working from a set of stills and a sometimes unclear soundtrack. The animation is on a par with their creditable work on another incomplete Second Doctor adventure The Moonbase. They have also animated a BBC trailer from 1968, where only the soundtrack still exists.

Clips from the 1968 Blue Peter Design a Monster Competition have been used in other DVD extras but here is the unedited version, with classic line-up of John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves. Delightfully the BBC kindly made the winning pictures into actual monster costumes. So the Blue Peter studio is invaded by the Steel Octopus, the Hypnotron and the Aqua-Man, in costumes which whilst childish, are not a hundred miles away from aliens which actually appeared in 60’s Doctor Who. What is most striking about these clips is the school atmosphere, a far cry from today’s matey, talking to the children on their level, version we have now. At one point Valerie even tells the viewers how “disappointed” she is by the entrants who copied their monsters from comics.

Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling once again team up on the commentary track and whilst it is reasonably entertaining, the more interesting commentaries are found on the two animated episodes. Part 2 is a montage of clips from people who are no longer with us, including director Derek Martinus and Bernard Bresslaw. On Part 3, Michael Troughton talks about his father, having recently written his biography and it is full of new anecdotes. For fans who want all possible material, the DVD preserves the original telesnap slideshow which was included on the VHS release to bridge the two missing epiodes. It also carries the traditional information subtitles and photo gallery too.

Is The Ice Warriors worth buying? Have you seen Enemy of the World and Web of Fear yet? If not then I’d recommend seeking them out first, far superior examples of the Troughton era. The Ice Warriors is impressively made, but its wooden, preachy story has dated badly.