The Ice Warriors

The Earth is gripped in another Ice Age, this one of its own making due to climate change; humans have effectively broken nature and are fighting a desperate battle against it. When the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to the Britannia Ioniser base they find a scene of chaos: one of the scientists vital to the operation of the ioniser has walked away from his post and the glaciers are no longer being held off. Everyone defers to the judgement of the world central computer, treating it as a god, but when aliens with an unknown space ship are discovered within the ice it cannot cope with the dangerous options. Meanwhile, the aliens - Martians frozen for thousands of years - awaken and take Victoria hostage, and intend to take what they want to survive.

I love these aliens. These guys are just the stuff of classic nightmares: huge inhuman armoured reptilian aliens with a menacing hiss when they speak. I think a big part of their appeal comes from them being known as Ice Warriors as opposed to Martians, although they themselves do not use the phrase. In fact, the naming of them is arguably racist in a modern interpretation, but it is never brought up as such in the series, at least in the classic years. Still they don't really deserve to have their feelings

Thug

spared; they pretty much go on a terror and murder spree and Victoria as their prisoner witnesses several murders at their hands. Their leader, Varga, seems to have a slight soft spot for her though and menaces her a lot but doesn't seem like he wants to kill her... not so for his subordinate Zondal, though. They realize early on that they have physical strength and intimidation as an advantage over the humans, but their motive is basically fear that the humans will attempt to capture them and keep them from returning to Mars. There are five Ice Warriors in the story, only two of them - Varga and Zondal - speak, and the other three are more thug-like in design and say nothing, so it's clear there is some kind of caste system on Mars.

Seems there is one on Earth as well, if the base staff are anything to go by. There's no real year given but it looks to be far future when that lovely weather control system from The Moonbase is either defunct or just useless otherwise the Ice Age would have been prevented. Human society has progressed to a state where everyone has handed their free will over to a computer to make their decisions for them, but there are a few like the deserted scientist Penley who break from the system to live as individuals. I wouldn't go so far, though, as to say the people are complete robots nor have they been enslaved as such; they chose to let the computer think for them and live logically (which makes me think this society has its roots in the logicians in Tomb of the Cybermen) and they see the people outside the system as savages. Clent, the leader of the base, is very much a political leader, and he depends on order and structure to get the job done. Penley's defection makes him rely on Miss Garrett more, although she's pretty sycophantic and is really no more a free thinker than he is. The Doctor obviously doesn't go over well with these people at first; he's seen as a subversive although they have to admit that his intelligence makes him an incredible asset.

The Doctor is the only one, though, who is successful in dealing with the Ice Warriors - without him there the whole ioniser operation would have been destroyed and the ice would have moved on. He uses proper science to identify a vulnerability in the Martians based on their home planet's atmosphere and further figures that their bodies have a high fluid content which makes them vulnerable to their own sonic weapons. Penley himself realizes that they would also be susceptible to intense heat and humidity, a vulnerability which will plague the Ice Warriors throughout their appearances in the series regardless of the media.

The first time I ever saw this was at a fan event in the early 90s; at the time episodes 1, 4, 5 and 6 had only just been recovered and some pretty grainy fan copies were circulating and I watched as best I could, and enjoyed them later when I got my own copies. I had already read the novelization so I was ready for the plot elements I missed but there were a lot of visual treats to delight in, like the complexity of some of the sets, and the vastness of the ice passages where Turoc pursues Victoria. And then there's the customized opening titles with high fluting siren song and sounds of wind blowing over a montage of frozen wasteland shots, and the episodes simply titled as ONE, FOUR, FIVE and SIX. Brilliant visuals. It came out on a VHS with the missing TWO and THREE merged together with soundtrack and telesnaps but when it arrived on DVD the missing episodes had been reconstructed in fantastic simple yet effective animation so it could be enjoyed as true to the original as possible.

So with the season starting with a return of the Cybermen and then introducing the Yeti and the Ice Warriors, the season is truly earning its mantle of "the monster year". But just as it gets going, it takes a bit of a turn, but before going there I have a couple books to work into the project.

NEXT EPISODE: DREAMS OF EMPIRE