The Ice Warriors

I never answer questions until I am addressed properly.

The Ice Warriors is a very standard Second Doctor story with a literal base-under-siege story and a hulking alien menace. In fact, as the New Series took off, the Ice Warriors themselves became something of a touchstone joke in that if they were brought back, it would be the end of the show as they were reverting to the stereotypical "man in rubber suit" monster. Given the Slytheen, I think that was a bit of a dumb joke to begin with and Cold War was an excellent revival of the Ice Warriors, killing the joke even further. As for the original story that spawned them...

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria materialize upside down in snow station. Entering the base, the Doctor assists the team in preventing the reactor from exploding. The team is in charge of using ionizing radiation to push back the spread of glaciers, threatening to overwhelm Earth. Director Clent thanks the Doctor for his help and then asks him to come talk to him while he rests.

Meanwhile, a survey team from the base discovers a body frozen in the glacier. They cut it out and bring it back to the base for study. One of the team is lost in an avalanche but the others survive. They are observed by two men who have gone feral, one of whom breaks his arm in the avalanche.

In Director Clent's room, the Doctor learns that the spread of the glaciers came about due to a major decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and that the team uses ionizing radiation to carefully melt the encroaching ice. He impresses Clent who asks the Doctor to stay on as the former chief scientist has disappeared (he is one of the feral men outside). The Doctor agrees to help.

The survey team arrives and the body begins to thaw. The team thinks it might be some early civilization but the Doctor is concerned as he observes futuristic elements on the body's armor. He follows Clent and the team out and as Jamie and Victoria chat, the Ice Warrior begins to wake up. He knocks Jamie down and drags Victoria out, questioning her as to the state of things.

The Doctor warns the station crew of what he has found when Jamie enters telling them that the creature has escaped. The scientist Arden and Jamie are dispatched to find both Victoria and the Ice Warrior's ship as the ionizer could cause it's engines to explode which could contaminate the whole region in radiation.

The rogue scientist Penley sets the arm of his companion Storr in a plant museum where they are hiding out. Penley decides to head back to Britannia Base to get medical supplies for Storr. Upon entering, he sees the Ice Warrior (named Varga) drag Victoria back to the medical bay. Victoria sees him but manages to avoid having him discovered. In the medical bay, Victoria and Varga find the electrical equipment which revived him. They are happened upon by Clent but Varga knocks him out and leaves, taking Victoria as a hostage.

Penley enters the medical bay and grabs the drugs he needs. He also grabs smelling salts to revive Clent when the Doctor enters. The Doctor takes the salts and works on Clent. He asks Penley to stay and help but Penley dismisses him, noting that Storr will die without his help. As Clent comes around, the technician Miss Garrett enters to inform them that the Varga and Victoria broke through the perimeter and are heading to the glacier. Clent elects to wait until morning to redirect Arden and Jamie due to the dangers of night travel.

Taking the equipment, Varga finds the location of his ship and his crew members. He uses the electrical equipment to begin to revive them. Once the crew is revived, Varga orders his men to make a tunnel in the ice to the ship and to lay a trap for the humans.

Penley and Storr are visited by Miss Garrett who tries to convince Penley to come back and help. Penley refuses, noting Clent's slavish routine to computers and his own desire to keep his humanity. After she leaves, Penley goes to investigate the Ice Warriors.

Arden and Jamie discover the cave the Ice Warriors have created and are gunned down. Arden is killed but Jamie is only wounded. The Warriors leave the bodies to see if any other humans come. Penley sees the attack and drags Jamie back to the plant museum. Storr is unhappy about it but Penley nurses Jamie who repeatedly tries to get up to rescue Victoria. He eventually passes out from the pain.

Back at the base, the Doctor successfully solves the ionizing problem with the help of some of Penley's notes. Clent is happy and tries to implement things immediately but the Doctor and Miss Garrett stop him as they still don't know where the Ice Warrior ship is. They try to raise Arden on the communicator but get no response from him. They do get a response from Victoria who has snuck out of the ship. She tells them that Arden was killed but she doesn't know about Jamie. The Ice Warriors watch her and prepare to kill her with the exterior gun.

Varga intercedes and orders them to keep her alive for information as they are out of fuel and will need more. He sends a warrior out to collect her but she runs into an ice tunnel. The tunnel dead ends and when the warrior catches her, she screams causing a small cave in. The warrior is buried but she only partially. However, she still is caught in his grip and calls out for help.

Back at the base the Doctor decides to go out to the ship himself, arming himself only with a radio and a vial of ammonium sulfate. At the same time, Storr elects to go to the Ice Warriors for help with Jamie, believing that they were provoked by the men at the base. Penley goes after him, convinced the Ice Warriors are hostile.

Storr hears Victoria's cries for help and goes down the passage to look for her. Penley does not and proceeds on to the ship entrance where he meets the Doctor. He tells him that they rescued Jamie and Penley and the Doctor head back to the plant museum. There the Doctor examines Jamie and asks Penley to take him back to the base for full treatment as he has to go back to the ship.

Storr frees Victoria but goes on with her to the ship where the Ice Warriors take her back inside. When they learn that Storr is only a Luddite local, they kill him as he brings them no value.

The Doctor arrives shortly after this and gains entry to the ship. The Ice Warriors take him prisoner and he is reunited with Victoria. The Doctor learns that there is risk if the Ice Warrior ship is hit by the ionizer but he also learns they are out of fuel. The Ice Warriors decide to attack the base with their sonic gun to force the humans to yield the fuel they need.

Penley drags Jamie across the ice in a sled. They are briefly impeded by a bear but make it to the base. Once inside, Jamie pleads for them to help the Doctor and Victoria while Penley confronts Cleff on his slavish devotion to the computer decrees. Cleff is paralyzed with indecision as the computer will not offer a solution to either using the ionizer and risking blowing up the Martian ship or standing down and letting the glacier crush the base. Penley and Jamie are stunned and taken to the medical bay.

The Doctor uses his ammonium sulfate to knock out the Ice Warrior guarding them but he still manages to fire the sonic gun, damaging the base. Oblivious to the Doctor's release, Varga leads his remaining men into the base to take the reactor fuel for their own engines. Cleff tries to stall for time, but cowers as the warriors take control.

The Doctor rewires the sonic gun to a higher pitch to use against the Ice Warriors. At the same time, Penley turns up the heat, disorienting the warriors. The Doctor fires, injuring the warriors and knocking the humans unconscious. He signals the base, making Varga aware of what happened. As Varga and his men retreat to the ship, the Doctor destroys the sonic gun and he and Victoria flee to the base.

With the glacier almost on top of them, the Doctor informs Cleff that they have no choice but to use the ionizer and take the risk that they won't set off a nuclear explosion. Cleff still demurs so Penley takes the controls and uses the ionizer. The Ice Warriors make the mistake that the heat signature is a small amount of remaining fuel powering the engine up. However the ionizer eventually melts the ice and the ship, killing the Ice Warriors inside. Because it was out of fuel, the explosion only releases a small amount of background radiation, easily absorbed by the atmosphere.

Cleff leaves Penley in command as he prepares to file a report on what happened. When the look to see if the Doctor will consult, they find he has gone along with Victoria and a recovered Jamie. The TARDIS subsequently disappears.

Analysis
I would say that The Ice Warriors has good points and bad points. Despite their clunky design, the Ice Warriors are a fairly menacing villain. They don't feel over the top evil, but cold and calculating with little regard for humans. What's more, there are almost no points where they seem dumb so that someone can get the drop on them. The Doctor knocking out the gunner is played for comedy and there is one point where Victoria should clearly have been seen when fleeing from the pursuing warrior, but these are small exceptions. I didn't particularly care for the constant hissing voice but it did seem less noticeable when the warriors were incorporated more fully into the scenes starting in Episode Four.

The Doctor and the supporting cast were all pretty good as well. The weakest link was Victoria who was absolutely useless in this story. She was whiney and shriek-y for the entire story. I know she was the damsel-in-distress for pretty much the whole story, but the intonation of her voice and her constant speech as though on the verge of tears was just tiresome to listen to.

I actually would have liked more development with Cleff and his love affair with the computer. I get that his deferment to the computer to make decisions was a driving factor in why Penley was on the outside and against him, but I feel like the story would have benefited with a bit more development along this line. I get the feeling that there was commentary being made of society at the time, especially with mid-level manager types, like Cleff, who are useless administrators unless someone or something clearly gives them orders to do so. There is a kernel of an interesting idea with Cleff so dependent on technology that he ceases to function mentally without it. I would have liked more of that.

I will say that this story is rather padded. It is six episodes with Episodes Two and Three only available in recon (or animation). But there is a recon that combines Episode Two and Three into one 15 minute episode. The fact that the BBC could do that demonstrates how much filler there is. I think this story could easily have been cut to four episodes and still had time to develop the situation with Cleff's dependency.

I was actually comparing this story to The Sensorites in my mind, having just watched it recently. The Sensorites is also six episodes and it can be argued that it too has filler in the middle. But in The Sensorites I felt a natural flow from one crisis to another as they worked to resolve the overall story. There wasn't a whole lot of doubling back and giving characters a run around just for the sake of filling time. In The Ice Warriors, you get a bit of that. There is no point in Victoria's escape except to ensure that Penley runs into the Doctor by himself. Storr would have been killed by the Ice Warriors either way and Victoria ends up a prisoner again at the end of it. It was just a way to give an action sequence as well as a cliff hanger that filled additional time.

Taking a more positive tack, the writing was fairly sharp I thought. The interaction between the characters was witty and there weren't a lot of scenes where characters would just talk for the purposes of exposition. There were the occasional clunkers with Penley and Storr's conversation in the plant museum or Miss Garrett and her rather fawning ways over both Cleff and the computer, but these are exceptions. My own favorite moment was when the Doctor was preparing to head to the Ice Warrior ship but talked about how urgently he needed something from the chemical producer and it ended up being a glass of water. It was a good moment of levity and well played by the actors both building tension and then defusing it with a dry joke.

As far as an overall recommendation, I'm a bit torn. There is a lot of positivity to the story and I never felt like it was bad when I watched it. However, the padding and the problems I had with the sound made watching it a bit of a struggle at times as I found myself starting to lose interest at a couple of points. Unfortunately, I think I need to go on the lower end of the scale, especially as I found Victoria just so unappealing in this story. Again, it's not bad and I wouldn't object to watching it again, but there are so many better Second Doctor stories to choose from, even with 2/3s of this story existing.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5