The Ice Warriors

This is a tremendous production in all respects. The costumes really stand out straight away as superb and believable. They are stylishly and expertly made especially for the humans and also for the Ice Warriors. The acting and characterisation is of a high standard throughout with guest parts well written and acted providing realistic and interesting characters. The Ice Warriors are brilliant new 'monsters'. The TARDIS crew main cast are on great form and the script is fantastic. The story itself is great fun with plenty of action but also intelligent and thoughtful science fiction. There are ideas of humans over-reliance on machines, people torn between just running away from a system they dislike or fighting to change it, relationships with aliens (those different to us) and the threat of war and moral questions which result. More than that though it is just a fine example of a very well produced, exciting story with great villains and three dimensional characters.

This is top notch Doctor Who. I have heard it compared to 1950s sci fi horror The Thing From Another World (which was remade as The Thing), this is not entirely wrong in that the story contains an alien preserved in ice which is then thawed out but this is not at all derivative, it purely shares an aspect of that story just as the ideas of nearly every science fiction story all share some aspect or other with at least one other story. The Borg in Star Trek for instance are quite close in concept to the Cybermen (and all cyborgs in sci- fi) but it does not make them rubbish because they are done differently enough and are good in their own right.

This story over its 6 episodes has way more going for it and way more ideas than just the alien in the ice premise. It is a perfect example of an alien menace adventure. The only significant flaw for me is a tiny bit of the scientific explanation regarding the ice age in Episode 1 which slightly diminishes that episode (and I would like to retcon that personally by a little dialogue editing) but apart from that this is near perfect Doctor Who.

My Ratings: Episode 1 - 9/10, Episodes 2-6 - 10/10

Overall: 9.83/10

While being considered a classic monster, the Ice Warriors don't have too many Classic stories with them as the main antagonist. But by far the best of them is their very first story with the Second Doctor appropriately titled "The Ice Warriors". While being another very standard 'base under siege' story that was very common in the Patrick Troughton era, 'Warriors' tweaks things considerably in that while the main menace certainly are threatening they aren't the biggest threat to the story. The TARDIS team of the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria land far into the future when Britain is in the grips of a new Ice Age. When a survey team finds a martian buried deep in the ice (whom they dub an 'Ice Warrior' by it's look), they have no idea the danger and problems they are about to add to their situation. As soon as the warrior Varga is waken up, it wastes no time in waking up other of its race, kidnapping Victoria, and preparing for what he assumes will be an attack by the humans. It's up to the Second Doctor and team to stop them as well as diffuse the growing situation between human and warrior. The story is an interesting if a very imperfect. The length of this story in six parts does it hamper it somewhat in a good chunk of the story is padding that could've easily been cut. The setting while interesting isn't utilized very well and the explanation of why the Ice Age happenned will make scientist heads pop with stupidity. But the Ice Warriors are very well realized here especially for the era in memorable brutality and the main TARDIS cast is great as always with wonderful performances from Troughton, Hines, and Waterfield. Not many other Classic Ice Warriors stories can really match up to this one in terms of tone and intrigue and thus "The Ice Warriors" remains the best Classic Who appearance for the reptilian martians.

This story finds the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria arriving at a base in the 31st Century in the middle of a new ice age that threatens to destroy the Earth. The Doctor is quickly recruited to help, but before he can do anything, an Ice Warrior awakens and kidnaps Victoria.

This is a very good introduction to the Ice Warriors, in the first of their four appearances in the Classic series. Here, they are at their most brutal and intimidating with little of the redeeming characteristics that would emerge in later stories. There's also a very real conflict over the role of computers that's certainly has its moments. There also are some very well-asdone performances.

The story does suffer from padding as we as a few extraneous moments, however overall, it's a wonderful story that sets up the Ice Warriors as a strong and memorable foe for the Doctor