The Ice Warriors FOUR

The one where the humans wonder what the Ice Warriors have got, while the Ice Warriors wonder what the humans have got...

Zondal is very eager to fire the cannon and destroy Victoria. Varga flicks the switch and... the cannon retracts, and Varga adds: "Not yet." Oh. It's one of those really bad cliffhanger resolutions where, if we'd stayed watching last week for just a second or two longer, we'd know there was no danger at all. It's like those equally as awful cliffhanger resolutions where the baddie is just about to shoot the goodie, and then someone else runs in and says: "Stop! I need them alive!" It's such a deflating anti-climax with next to no narrative reward at all. It's lazy writing when a situation is contrived just to provide a cliffhanger every 25 minutes, but it actually has no rhyme, reason or, in this case, logic.

Varga would rather Victoria be allowed to report back to the base just long enough to pique the curiosity of the humans, so that they send their cleverest people to the Warriors so that Varga can ask them what sort of reactor they're using (Varga likes asking questions). In turn, the humans are very keen on finding out what sort of propulsion unit the Martian spaceship has, in case it reacts explosively to their ioniser. It's all a bit silly and plodding and mechanical. I mean, the Ice Warriors are 7ft tall monsters with unconquerable might and firepower. Why don't they just smash their way into the base and find out everything they need to know by force? Brian Hayles is treading water terribly here, at the story's midway point.

Martin Baugh's costumes for Varga and Zondal are stunning, sculpted beautifully and looking every inch the formidable armoured warriors they are. The costume for Turoc is slightly less successful, looking as he does like a sort of hippy version of an Ice Warrior, while Rintan and Isbur just look plain stupid. The costumes are different to the "hero" costumes, with silly top-heavy bobble-heads and mouth parts which make them look like they've been sculpted by Aardman Animations.

However, Bernard Bresslaw and Roger Jones do great work making Varga and Zondal as strange and unnerving as possible, in particular their use of jerky neck movements and the accentuated scaly lips. They also sink their heads into their bodies, retracting their necks like turtles, and all of this makes the monsters wonderfully alien and unusual. I guess back in 1967 Doctor Who didn't have a monster movement adviser like New Who's Ailsa Berk, so all credit to the actors inside those cumbersome costumes for putting so much effort in!

The best thing about this episode is Turoc's pursuit of Victoria through the glacier, which is directed by Derek Martinus with tension and creativity. Dudley Simpson's plinky-plonky background music adds an element of danger reminiscent of the jungle, and the constant ice collapses are pulled off relatively well, meaning the whole sequence (shot on film to add gloss) feels real and dangerous. Deborah Watling, if nothing else, can sell fear well, and the various camera shots showing Turoc lumbering or looming up behind her are superb.

The Doctor, after dialling up vials of water and ammonium sulfide on the quaint chemical dispenser, decides to go unarmed to the Warrior ship to ask them what sort of engines they've got, which is a typically brazen thing to do. But it's also pretty naive, because, as Clent rightly points out, the Warriors have shown themselves to be "utterly ruthless" thus far, so why should they listen to him? The Doctor hopes the Warriors will welcome him into their ship as a guest rather than a prisoner, and while it's all very amusing and sweet, he's just being annoyingly naive. They abducted Victoria, bashed Clent and Jamie senseless, stole scientific equipment, murdered Arden and attempted to murder Jamie. Why on earth would the Doctor think his plan is going to work?

Some other things about this episode:

• What's the very last thing you would do if you were running away from a deadly alien monster who was searching for you? That's right, what you definitely wouldn't do is scream your head off so that the deadly alien monster knew exactly where you were and could find you. Stupid Victoria.
• So rather than having his brain explode, like Arden, Jamie has only been given a banging headache by the Warriors' sonic gun. His central nervous system has also been affected, rendering him temporarily paralysed. Hmmm... At least I've finally got to the bottom of how Jamie's wearing his kilt under that protective uniform. It does indeed ride up at the crotch, which means that, instead of swapping his kilt for something more suitable like trousers, Jamie would rather go out onto the glacier flashing his inner thighs, and maybe much, much more!
• Penley and Storr refer to Jamie as "the boy", which is a refreshing but still poorly written reversal of the usual use of "the girl" for the female companion. Nobody ever bothers to learn or have the respect to use the companions' names in times like this. Jamie is merely "the boy", despite him being approximately 22 years old here.
• It's interesting to note that, so far at least, the characters refer to the aliens as "Warriors" rather than Ice Warriors. At this early stage in our experience of the creatures, they are only referred to as Ice Warriors (by Walters and in the story title) because they were found frozen in the ice. There's no reason to actually label them as Ice Warriors, as obviously comes to pass...
• I've decided that Wendy Gifford (Miss Garrett) is terribly melodramatic sometimes, even going so far as to bite her lip in fear at one point.

The cliffhanger is another example of Brian Hayles's reliance on cliche and contrivance. The Doctor refuses to answer Varga's questions while standing in the airlock, so Varga threatens to remove the atmosphere from the airlock unless he answers his questions (because he does like to ask questions) within 10 seconds. Ah, that age old device of giving someone a set amount of time to do as they're told - or else! Proper monsters and villains just make demands, and if they're not met, they kill and move on. But Varga prefers to count up to 10 before dispatching his enemies.

Silly.

First broadcast: December 2nd, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Turoc's pursuit of Victoria is handled very well by Derek Martinus. Victoria deserves to be caught though, for screaming her head off.
The Bad: The costumes for the "lesser" Ice Warriors really are a bit rubbish.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: FIVE...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: ONE; TWO; THREE; FIVE; SIX

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-ice-warriors.html

The Ice Warriors is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Ice-Warriors-DVD/dp/B00CD492ZU.