DOCTOR WHO-THE ICE WARRIORS

 

DOCTOR WHO-THE ICE WARRIORS one

 

Note that in the titles, the words ICE WARRIORS does not show up until the specially filmed ice and snow mountains do, along with their haunting vocals, specially made or found music that is quite interesting. Also the word EPISODE does not appear, just the number ONE across the entire screen!

 

BTW in the last episode, before it started, the narrator said, “Now, the final part of DOCTOR WHO AND THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN.” Thought that was worth commenting on. ALSO: in TOMB, which I may have forgotten to comment about: the Doctor, Jamie and Parry peer around a corner, one head at a time, THREE STOOGES style. It’s repeated here with the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria.

 

A lot of slapstick also happens here, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO style as the Doctor stands on something to get out of the overturned TARDIS and we hear Jamie yell that the Doc is standing on his head and then the Doc falls back inside! AND when Jamie’s coming out, his knee is on the Doctor’s hand! BTW this might be the ONLY time the TARDIS doors open outward. It also slid a little upon landing AND made only the briefest materialization sound (NOTE that in many Hartnell stories, it made no sound at all or the humming sound normally associated with the inside of the Ship!).

 

THIS is also maybe one of the first stories to have a lot of the world/time zone the travelers will appear in have a lot of exposition and/or scenes for a long time BEFORE the TARDIS appears. Not sure this is a great thing: I mean before this we encountered the worlds/times AT THE SAME TIME as the Doc and company. It does have a refreshing feel to it though.

 

With such a snowy environment depicted so well, I wonder why they didn’t do the same thing for the last story…but that had more actual location shooting and looked great for it. Here, we get indoor stuff posing as outdoor stuff but it’s no less interesting. There’s more comic stuff inside the base as the Doctor had wandered in and immediately detects the problem with the near explosion and solves it in less than thirty seconds or so. And ingratiates himself with the leader Clent. Not sure about the whole sub plot with Penley and Storr (needed sub titles to understand them AND the whole base staff in their first scenes). The avalanche is impressive though but then again, it was impressive when done by FLASH GORDON some twenty plus years before.

 

Once the entire thing is established, the talk gets briefly boring but then we have Jamie resting and contemplating Victoria in short skirts (and she being resistant) just before the cliffhanger of the Ice Warrior coming to life as it defrosts!

 

All in all, Troughton and Hines and everyone really, are in great form here. Oh AND THERE’S A WOMAN IN A HIGH POSITION IN AUTHORITY AND CONTROL so is this PC? Well, only if you use the term PC? In any case, Troughton’s quite good in this and funny and he and his companions keep the whole thing moving and fresh and funny.

 

Everything is set into position for a great story in a great setting. There’s some argument about what year this is set in and oh, that brings up the fact that for a time travel show, DOCTOR WHO, most times, rarely bothered with telling us the year of when these stories happen! Even when it was a historical setting, sometimes the year was left vague or unknown or didn’t match the historical events for THAT year. For futuristic stories, it was told LESS. This would be such a growing problem (for various reasons) that by the time UNIT became a regular thing, the show didn’t know if it was set in the 1970s or the 1980s or anywhere in between those! Or even the 1990s!

 

In any case, everything here is set for a great story. Great episode one. Love this episode! DW is probably best during some of its first episodes of most stories. This story, and this episode in particular, is almost like parts of THE THING. BUT….what’s with the wolf howling though?

 

I know the BLOOPERS site spotted a mike and shadows and edges of the camera and stuff, but honestly they were not glaring and I was too engrossed to notice…although during the lengthy exposition scene just after the Doctor stops the glaring alarming problem with the power source, I did get kind of sleepy.

DOCTOR WHO-THE ICE WARRIORS  Two and Three

 

 

DOCTOR: Well, he's a scientist and a bit inclined to have his head in the air. You know what they're like.

 

JAMIE: Aye, I certainly do.

 

Some, most likely most of the production team at the time of THE ICE WARRIORS, considering DW an anthology. I never really understood that but for now. In these two episodes, the Doctor acts as the worker who is working to solve a most impossible scientific problem…while everyone else has the conflict and the action. Victoria is kidnapped by the Ice Warrior and in the first cliffhanger gets to see this named Warrior releasing his comrades from the ice and in the second cliffhanger is unaware a huge sonic canon is pointed directly  at her from the buried/unburied spaceship of the Ice Warriors! Jamie and Arden get to follow the Ice Warrior to try to free Victoria and Arden gets killed and Jamie almost killed.

 

The dramatic conflict, other than all that above, is between Penley, the human mind who left the base and won’t help AND Clent, the man who consults only computers and doesn’t trust anyone! In the middle is Jane Garrett who goes to Penley for help and finds out about this so called Omega Factor (not the show, Penley’s way of handling the ionizer). TIMELINK made a fuss of the Doctor making a fuss when he hears the name Omega (the Time Lord ? the Dalek?) but honestly there’s no real shock on his face or mind so that’s moot.

 

The other conflict is if the spaceship’s reactor is activated, it will not work well with the ionizer.

 

Although Victoria is very afraid through all of this, it’s hard not to feel sorry for her and it’s easy to see why she leaves not soon after this story (I believe she has this story, the next, and FURY and that’s it). She goes through a lot: the Daleks killed her father, a Cyberman almost dragged her into the tomb, and the Yeti almost killed her while Pad did hypnotize her, not to mention being a hostage for most of this story! At one point, she even thought Jamie was dead! And he seemed to be. It’s not clear but…did the Ice Warriors just let her walk out of their spaceship?

 

As usual, ABOUT TIME has a huge THINGS THAT DON’T MAKE SENSE section and there are some doosies. Science wise, mostly.

 

Again, the episodes aren’t action packed but they move faster than anything on video in the UK at that time and they do tell a story and have an interesting, if scientifically wrong, premise.

 

Gotta love Jamie and Victoria and the Doctor though. They really do seem to care about each other a lot. The Doctor even says at one point, “If anything happened to Jamie, I’d never forgive myself.”  I can’t recall any other Doctor saying something like that (Fifth should have said it about Adric, who helped him more than fans might have you believe).

 

There’s also a quick, marvelous bit when the Doctor, discussing Arden, says, “Well, he's a scientist and a bit inclined to have his head in the air. You know what they're like.” Jamie looks at him and says, “Aye, I certainly do.”

 

 

 

 THE ICE WARRIORS Four and Five

 

Separately the Doctor is reunited, first with Jamie and then with Victoria. In a funny moment, the Doctor finally enters the Ice Warrior spaceship and is all bravado and thankful for being allowed to enter and confident as he talks without looking and then…he sees the towering warrior, and says, “OH, MY WORD!” He then tries to retreat and the door has already closed behind him. Not sure if he knew Victoria was captured again or not but he was about to leave! Patrick is, again, most funny in this episode and quite in command/not in command. He knows how to talk to people, this Doctor without making them angry. He knows Clent relies too much on the computer and later, in ep 5, so does June! June and Clent both seemed about to take the risk and use the ionizer to stop the glaciers but then…after Penley and Jamie return, they do an about face and will wait as suggested by the computer. Their whole world is the computer.

 

Jamie spends both episodes paralyzed in the legs and with a headache from the Ice Warrior attack on him.  Victoria, although she spends most of the time re-captured and purposely distracting the Ice Warriors by crying at the Doc’s request, is really quite effective here. She claws a new hole in the ice to escape from but then…screams loudly during an avalanche, possibly bringing down the ice on herself and killing the Ice Warriors that has a grip on her wrist.

 

Storr, the dummy, saves her…as he’s going to the aliens to get help for Jamie AND to unite with them against the scientists. Not only does he get Victoria recaptured, he gets himself killed. What a dope. One of the dopiest characters in all of non-Moffat DW.

 

Victoria is the one who throws the stink bomb into the Ice Warrior’s face in the cliffhanger which ends quite excitingly as the Doctor tries to keep the hand of the creature away from the sonic cannon’s firing button! The cliffhanger to ep 4 was the Doctor being trapped in the airlock until the pressure builds as a means of getting him to talk. The Doctor goes there without a gun and even as Clent and June protest his doing so.

 

Penley saves Jamie by bringing him on a stretcher sled to the base…he had to leave his home anyway as the glacier was going to slide into it and destroy it. A pathetic looking bear comes at them in what could have been an interesting action scene but only proves sort of…well, on the cheap and pathetic. It was much better in the book.

 

The whole way Penley and Clent treat each other is annoying and ends with Penley and Jamie being tranquilized because they dare protest for Clent and June Garrett to go against the computer and wait in order to save Victoria and Jamie.

 

The Doctor is being the Doctor here in all ways. It’s quite fun. The chase through the ice caves against poor Victoria…quite fun. A word about her: it might be more realistic to have the reactions Victoria has rather than some super heroine like Ripley from ALIENS or Rose or River or Amy or Vastra. So maybe any of us, man or woman, would react b whimpering, screaming, complaining….

 

 

Nothing to complain about these two episodes other than the bad science about Mars…they’re both entertaining and fairly fast paced. I still think six episodes are far too long for any DW story and find that the guest characters that seemed fresh and interesting, by the end of ep 5, now seem annoying and confused. Time to move on TARDIS!

 

Oh and there seem to be a few shadows of boom microphones and/or camera rods.

 

 THE ICE WARRIORS Six

Well, the Doctor and Penley save the day, the Doctor first though. Jamie gets back on his feet; Victoria goes back to the TARDIS before the story ends; and the Ice Warriors, who previously stated they had no fuel to take off, seem to have some power now (?) and…that’s about it. The whole thing comes to a rip roaring end with a confrontation that includes everyone except the Doctor and Victoria facing the Ice Warriors but it is he gets them to retreat. At one point during this story, the Doctor was mentioned as being human and he started to say, “As a matter of fact…”  So basically, the Doctor uses the Ice Warriors device to draw them out of the base and back to their own spaceship, where they find the device disabled and the humans use the ionizer to save the earth from the glaciers and destroy the Ice Warriors whose ship blows up in a minor explosion despite our being told it could have been a huge one! And another man is killed (and maybe even others when the records part of the base is obliterated …by the Doctor!). Okay.

 

All in all a good story and worth the time but still probably an episode or two too long as will be the case until Tom Baker’s time probably.