Day 94 — April 4th 2021
The Ice Warriors Episodes Five and Six
The Ice Warriors — Episode Five
This episode contains the one moment I’ve always remembered very clearly from this story, because I think it’s one of the most brilliant moments in Troughton’s already fantastic run.
Having trekked all the way to the spaceship, and come close to death in the air lock, Doctor Who finally gets into the ship to negotiate, sees an Ice Warrior and has second thoughts. ‘Thank you very much, that’s very civil of you... Oh, my word!’ says Troughton, and he turns to leave only to find the door already closed.
Oh God, I love it. It makes me laugh every time, and I think of it often. When my last marathon was collected into a book, Gareth Roberts picked this out in his foreword as being the ‘funniest moment in the entire history of Doctor Who’.
I think what makes me love it even more is realising that it’s not a scripted moment — it’s something Troughton has added during the rehearsals. There’s no wonder it feels so right for him! It fits the Second Doctor Who so well, and I was pleased to notice last week that he does a similar thing in The Tomb of the Cybermen too. As with that story, the diminutive nature of the cast really works in the monsters favour — the Ice Warriors really tower over him in these shots, which makes the humour work even more brilliantly because it’s otherwise genuinely quite frightening.
The real highlight of this episode, though, has to be Clent and Penley coming face-to-face, having spent the last four episodes bitching about each other to anyone who’ll listen. I was going to quote their conversation here, but it goes on for so long that I’d end up filling this entire blog entry with it. Instead, here’s my favourite two line exchange;
Clent: ‘We lost contact with the Doctor over an hour ago. I’m afraid there’s no hope.’
Penley: ‘You mean hope happens to be inconvenient. You’ve got to stick to your precious schedule, is that it? You’ve got to wave your splendid ioniser about to prove that it works and never mind about human beings!’
These two are the real heart of the story, and I know I sound like a broken record when I say that the characterisation of them really helps to lift this above being just another ‘base under siege’ tale. I think the production team were aware of that, too, because when they aired a specially-shot trailer for the story after the closing moments of The Abominable Snowmen Episode Six they chose to foreground these two rather than spoil the surprise of the Ice Warriors too soon;
Clent: My name is Clent. I’m a scientist in charge of stopping the Second Ice Age from destroying the European Zone. A complex task at the best of times. A challenge great and hard. One of the most brilliant scientists on my staff has rebelled against the way I run the base, and now he lives the life of a scavenger. A useless, non-productive waste of talent.
Penley: He’s talking about me. I’m the scientist who rebelled. The name’s Elric Penley. There’s no point arguing with a man like Clent. He’s a machine! I chose this existence because… well, because I demand the right to be an individual. Clent may be able to control the glacier, but there’s a far greater menace he hasn’t reckoned with. I mean the creature from the ice.
Sadly the trailer doesn’t exist any more, and the audio for it only survives in pretty poor quality, but it’s a nice curio to have. Special trailers for the stories were something being trialled during the fifth season — we get a nice one for The Web of Fear a little later on, which I’ll talk about when we get there I’m sure.
Something else they’re still trying out at this point is unique ways of doing the titles. When the captions for this story were ordered on DATE, they were in the usual format of ‘Episode One’, ‘Episode Two’ and so on. But X days later an amended order was put in, asking for special title cards renaming the episodes as simply ‘One’, ‘Two’ etc. There’s no paperwork surviving to suggest WHY the change was requested (and the camera scripts still bear the more traditional format), but it’s a fun curio that it happened.
It’s also oddly enjoyable that it’s become the standard for the story. On the Narrated Soundtrack, for example, Frazer Hines introduces the episodes just by their number as though they were titles, and the Doctor Who Magazine tele-snap special uses this unusual format for the story, too, rather than alter it to match the ‘house style’. And I feel like that’s only right. I always call the second story of Season Seven Doctor Who and the Silurians, because no matter how much people might argue that was an error, it’s what appears on screen. Although I suppose by that reasoning I always say The Space Pirates wrong, because it should be “The Space Pirates” instead…
Another 7/10.
The Ice Warriors — Episode Six
I’ve somehow made it all the way to Episode Six without talking about the costumes in this story, which are a spot-on balance of absolutely mental and absolutely brilliant. The costume designer on this tale was Martin Baugh, who joined the series with the last story, making this is first opportunity to design for the ‘future’. I’ll admit that I’m not overly well versed on the comings and goings of the costume designers for the show, and so I’d never considered that this is the reason for such bold designs before. He sticks around until The Mind Robber, meaning he designs all of the programme’s fifth production block, and that makes sense. The ‘futuristic’ costumes in The Enemy of the World and The Wheel in Space are slightly more ‘out there’ than usual, too.
I think my favourite costume in this story is the one which puts me in mind of the BBC2 logo used from 1979 and into the 1980s. I’m also a fan of the little visors they wear when operating the computer. We used to have small perspex stands in a shop I worked in, and I’ll admit to more than once sticking one on my head to pretend I was carrying out the Great Plan of the World Computer.
The more I look at these costumes the more I’m reminded of an often-repeated clip from Blue Peter, when they demonstrated the kinds of outfits we’d all be wearing by the year 2000. They’re perhaps a closer match to the costumes in The Wheel in Space than the ones here, but it’s the same kind of thinking that led to both.
It makes me a bit sad because I don’t think you could do costumes like this on the show these days. Our concept of ‘the future’ has changed in the last 50 years, and any attempt to replicate these costumes today would be mocked. And yet… God, I’d be so tempted! When I take over Doctor Who in the year 2028, I’m 100% committing to bringing this type of costume back. And you can quote me on that.
I’ve not really said much about the direction in this story so far — and I think it’s a case of it being not amazing but not awful either, so I’ve nothing in particular to talk about. Derek Martinus is on duty for these six episodes, and it’s in this final episode that I really see why he’s so often lauded by fans. There’s two sequences in which the Ice Warriors face attack here, and both of them look brilliant.
In the first they’re hit with their own weapon, being controlled by Doctor Who from their ship, and the screen is filled with images of them in pain fading in and out, the cameras swinging. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything quite like this in the series before, and it’s really effective. It’s one of those occasions where you suspect that it shouldn’t work, but somehow it pulls through.
The second is the destruction of their ship as it fills with smoke, and again I found myself really drawn to the shots. Both of these attacks feel like moments that would stick in the memory and been talked about as brilliant had this story been missing. Certainly the image above would have made a particularly arresting tele-snap!
I also reckon that this story proves a significant moment for Doctor Who in the development of his Sonic Screwdriver. I mentioned in the last story that I like to imagine he’s developing it throughout Season Five having realised that it would save him some trouble in his adventures, and I think this episode is the moment he decides to make it sonic. ‘This gun works on the basis that sound waves produce reverberations in the objects in their path,’ he tells Victoria while re-wiring the Ice Warrior’s own sonic device. I like to think he went straight back to the TARDIS after this and started tinkering, having been inspired!
A 7/10 again for this one. I’m pleased to find that I’ve quite enjoyed The Ice Warriors overall, having not really remembered much from the last time around.
