Classic Who Catch Up

I have been a big fan of Doctor Who since it’s revival in 2005 but was too young to have watched the original series. On this blog I shall be recording my thoughts on every story from 1963 onwards!

25: The Ice Warriors 

Format: 6 episodes, each 25 minutes long

Team TARDIS:

• Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
• Jamie (Jacobite Rebel from 1746)
• Victoria (Lost both her parents)

Story: The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on Earth in the far future to find that the planet is in the grip of a second ice age. Scientific outposts are scattered across the globe, fighting desperately against advancing glaciers that threaten to send the world back into prehistory. In one outpost the ice warriors’s ship is stuck inside the glacier and it’s a race against time to stop both the glacier and the ice warriors.

What I liked: 

• The TARDIS lands at an angle, which is always good.
• The idea that humans caused an ice age by inventing artificial foods and stop growing plants.
• The Doctor can make any chemical he wants and so makes water because he wants a drink!
• Peter Salis is brilliant (he’s the voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit these days)
• Computers cannot takes risks.

What I disliked:

• Episode 2/3 no longer exist fully. Audio and images only, though done rather well.
• Music at the beginning is horrible.

Overall thoughts:This could almost have been a New Who story. Excellently written and acted with brilliant ideas about the possible future of the Earth. The Ice Warriors are properly sinister aliens and the Doctor was his usual brilliant self. Loved every minute of it.

Next Time: I’m skipping a few of the largely incomplete stories but next I shall be watching The Web of Fear: yetis in the underground!