The Seeds of Death Episode Six

The one where the Doctor confronts Ice Lord Slaar...

The ubiquitous use of the BBC foam machine in the Troughton era really reached its zenith in this episode, having been used to perhaps its advisable limit in Fury from the Deep. Here, the foam loses all sense of threat as a deadly alien fungus and simply becomes a giant playground for Patrick Troughton to play in. It's all very silly and drawn out (parts of the reprise are still being shown three minutes in!), and forms part of a greater atmosphere of slapstick  in this episode's opening minutes.

The acres of foam aside, Troughton resorts to gurning, oohing and aahing, and generally fooling around in a misplaced attempt to sell the jeopardy, while inside the weather control bureau, Frazer Hines is embroiled in a Benny Hill-style runaround playing peekaboo with an Ice Warrior, and Wendy Padbury is sliding around the corridors in an endless sprint for the front door. By the time Zoe opens the door and the foam floods into the bureau, the Doctor with it, Padbury has already succumbed to the silliness of it all and is clearly seen laughing her head off!

For all the Keystone Cops craziness though, the first eight or so minutes of episode 6 are pretty relentless, with a monster chase, as well as a gunfight and a marvellously realised special effect where the Ice Warrior zaps a shield door with his sonic laser. The Ice Warrior actually comes across as convincingly formidable for once too, with the heavy gunfire bouncing off him (love the bit where he just flicks his head to the side in the face of a point-blank bullet). There's even the briefest of shots (at 7mins 15secs) where the Warrior strides purposefully towards camera, making it look as strikingly threatening as they do in 21st century Who.

The rest of the story involves the Doctor rigging up some clever tech to combat the Ice Warriors on foot (look out for the bit where he touches two live wires together, in a rehearsal for his fourth self's "Do I have the right?" speech!), and then facing off against Slaar on the moonbase in a classic Doctor vs alien finale scene. Troughton doesn't really get many of these, and this one's handled well, with him chirpily reeling off all the efforts made to defeat Slaar and his kind. "I ordered you to be destroyed!" hisses the Ice Lord. "Well you weren't very successful, were you?" retorts our hero.

The Doctor's final defeat of the Ice Warriors might be said to be somewhat callous - sending the Martian fleet hurtling into the Sun's orbit must be among the very nastiest demises for an Ice Warrior - but as he points out, they were threatening to wipe out mankind. When it comes to it, Earth always was defended, no matter which incarnation was present. Nevertheless, Radnor sending soldiers with flamethrowers to the moon to finish off the stragglers seems particularly nasty.

What is rewarding is the humiliation of Slaar, a proud and noble Ice Lord who is told in no uncertain terms by his Grand Marshall what an absolute failure he's been. And I love the bit where Slaar insists that nothing can go wrong, to which the Doctor says: "There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip" (which Troughton delivers in a delightfully throwaway manner!).

The story ends with the threat defeated, and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe slipping away quietly back to the TARDIS, the most common way to end all Troughton era stories. This Doctor doesn't like goodbyes...

The Seeds of Death is a thoroughly enjoyable caper with some fabulous aliens with a workable invasion plan, but the real star of the serial is director Michael Ferguson, who treats almost every shot like it's a film. His fascination with light and shade, silhouette and contrast, is startlingly effective, and there's imagination and flair in almost every scene. There's an underrated star turn from Terry Scully as the troubled Fewsham, and although Brian Hayles's script takes a few wrong turns (the sudden disappearance of characters such as Phipps and Sir John Gregson for instance, as well as the convoluted reasons for disabling and reprogramming T-Mat), it makes for a satisfying sequel to The Ice Warriors. Best story since Fury from the Deep (maybe there's a foam theme here?).

First broadcast: March 1st, 1969

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Slapstick aside, the first third of the episode is breathlessly paced.
The Bad: Too much foam.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (story average: 8.2 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Space Pirates...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five

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.com/2014/03/the-seeds-of-death.html

The Seeds of Death is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Seeds-Patrick-Troughton/dp/B01I076ZYO.