The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Natives of Mars, the Ice Warriors wear bio-mechanical armour to protect themselves from attack and temperature fluctuations. In their debut, the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors, they fought the Second Doctor. Two years later, they reappeared in The Seeds of Death. In 1972's The Curse of Peladon, they were allied with the Doctor, reverting to antagonists in The Monster of Peladon two years later. The Ice Warriors did not appear again on-screen until the show's 2005 revival series in the episode "Cold War" (2013), followed by the 2017 episode "Empress of Mars". They have also appeared in spin-off media for the series.
Writer Brian Hayles created the Ice Warriors out of his interest in life on Mars at a time when the production team was looking for new recurring antagonists. The Ice Warriors were conceived as something akin to cyborg Vikings. Designer Martin Baugh, inspired by their name and influenced by crocodiles, designed them to appear reptilian; this prevented the species from being visually similar to another fictional species who were cyborgs, the Cybermen. The costumes for the Ice Warriors often proved heavy and cumbersome for actors during filming. For the show's 2005 revival, showrunner Steven Moffat originally did not want the Ice Warriors to return, only allowing them to come back after writer Mark Gatiss pitched the idea of an Ice Warrior outside its shell. The Ice Warriors received a design overhaul for the revival but were largely the same visually; "Cold War" also showcased the creature beneath the armour.
The Ice Warriors have been received positively, and are among the series's best-known antagonists despite the large gaps in between their appearances. Their design and role in the two Peladon serials, as well as in "Cold War", have been the subject of commentary and analysis.
Appearances
Television series
alt=An image of the planet Mars. It is round and has a largely red color. The top and bottom of the planet are coated white.|thumb|An image of the planet Mars, which the Ice Warriors hail from in-universe
Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television series that began in 1963. Its protagonist is the Doctor, an alien who travels through time and space with travelling companions in a ship known as the TARDIS. When the Doctor dies, they undergo a process known as "regeneration", completely changing their appearance and personality. Throughout their travels, the Doctor comes into conflict with many alien species and antagonists.
The Ice Warriors are a reptilian warrior race from Mars who wear bio-mechanical armour which protects them from attack and hostile temperature conditions. They are equipped with sonic weapons mounted into the wrists. and are ruled either by an "Ice Lord" or an "Ice Queen".
Classic era
The Ice Warriors first appeared in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors, set on Earth during a future ice age in the year 3000. The hibernating crew of an Ice Warrior spacecraft buried underneath the ice are revived by a scientific team. The Second Doctor thwarts the Warriors' attempt to take over the scientists' base. The Ice Warriors returned for the 1969 serial The Seeds of Death. In this story, mid-21st century Earth has grown dependent on the matter transmission system T-Mat. An Ice Warrior strike force, seeking to conquer Earth, sends seeds through the T-Mat that are intended to make Earth more suitable for Martian life. After this plan is thwarted by the Second Doctor and his companions, the invading Martian fleet is sent into orbit around the Sun.
In 1972's The Curse of Peladon, the Ice Warriors have renounced violence and become members of the "Galactic Federation", an alliance of several races. A group of them are part of a delegation sent to negotiate the planet Peladon's entry into the Federation. The Third Doctor initially suspects that the Ice Warriors are behind an attempt to sabotage the proceedings but accepts that they have changed after the Ice Warriors save his life. With their help, the Doctor foils a plot to prevent Peladon's admission. A sequel, The Monster of Peladon, aired in 1974 and is set 50 years after the events of The Curse of Peladon. Here, the Ice Warriors are depicted serving as Federation peacekeeping troops. Their leader, the Ice Lord Azaxyr, is secretly working with an enemy of the Federation and seeks to return to the species' warlike past. Azaxyr tries to impose martial law and take over Peladon but is stopped by the Peladonians and the Third Doctor.
Revived era
The 2013 episode "Cold War" sees an Ice Warrior named Grand Marshal Skaldak, found frozen in a chunk of ice, being discovered by a Soviet nuclear submarine. Skaldak, frozen for thousands of years, believes his race is dead and that he is the last of his kind. He attempts to obliterate humanity using the submarine's nuclear warheads; he relents after the Eleventh Doctor's companion Clara Oswald reminds Skaldak of his daughter, whom he had told her about previously. An Ice Warrior ship soon arrives, and Skaldak, seeing his race still alive, departs with them as he deactivates the warheads.
The Ice Warriors reappear in the 2017 episode "Empress of Mars". In it, Victorian-era soldiers find a crashed Ice Warrior ship and wake its sole inhabitant, "Friday", from suspended animation. Friday brings the soldiers to Mars, where he discovers Mars has become unable to support life since he went into suspended animation. Friday tricks the soldiers into re-awakening the dormant Ice Queen, Iraxxa, and a hive of Ice Warriors. After initial combat, the soldiers' colonel, Godsacre, negotiates a peace. The Twelfth Doctor calls the Galactic Federation to pick up the remaining Ice Warriors from Mars so that they will join the Federation in the future. 1992's Transit; 1994's Legacy; 1996's GodEngine and Happy Endings; 1997's The Dying Days; and 2011's The Silent Stars Go By. 4-Dimensional Vistas (1983), which sees the Fifth Doctor combatting the Ice Warriors and the Meddling Monk; and the Seventh Doctor strip A Cold Day in Hell (1987–1988). An Ice Warrior named Harma appears in the comic strip Star Tigers as an ally of Abslom Daak. The Ice Warriors appear in several audio dramas published by Big Finish Productions, including Red Dawn (2000), Frozen Time (2007), The Bride of Peladon (2008), The Judgement of Isskar (2009), Deimos (2010), The Resurrection of Mars (2010), Lords of the Red Planet (2013), and Cold Vengeance (2017).
Many of these spin-off appearances have been described by author Ivan Phillips as an example of a creature in the series that takes mysteries presented on-screen that were subsequently expanded upon in spin-off material. Stories such as these expanded on concepts not elaborated upon in their on-screen stories, such as the nature of the Ice Warriors as cyborgs and the origin of the species and its ruling class.
Conception and development
1960s
The Ice Warriors
alt=A model of an elephantine creature with two long tusks. It is kept in a large glass case, and it is sitting on its back legs on top of some rocks. |thumb|A model of the mammoth discovered at the [[Berezovka River|Berezovka river that inspired Hayles to create the Ice Warriors, as seen on display at the Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg.]]
In early 1967, while preparing for the show's fifth season, the Doctor Who production team was looking for a new alien race, specifically a bipedal creature, to complement popular antagonists such as the Daleks and Cybermen. In some accounts, the new species was meant to replace the Daleks, who were scheduled to be written out of the series at the time. As well as Hayles's interest in Mars, he was inspired by a story of a mammoth found preserved in a block of ice by the Berezovka River in 1901, which gave him the idea of an alien being revived after being similarly discovered.
Costume designer Martin Baugh was inspired by the name "Ice Warrior", as it made him think of a hard, armoured creature. He saw the creatures as like crocodiles and thus made them appear physically reptilian in nature; and Baugh's change was done to avoid confusion with the Cybermen, also cyborgs. Taking inspiration from descriptions of the Ice Warriors' Viking-like helmets, Baugh envisioned their armour as central to their appearance, akin to a bipedal turtle. He suggested the Ice Warrior costumes be cast in fibreglass. an idea attributed to him that would be used in subsequent serials. Author Graham Sleight describes this voice as suggesting the Ice Warriors are uncomfortable within Earth's atmosphere, adding character to the species.
The Seeds of Death
The popularity of the Ice Warriors led to a sequel to their debut story being produced. The first plan for a sequel was titled The Lords of the Red Planet and would have revealed the Ice Warriors to have been genetically engineered by another Martian species named the Gandorans. This was replaced by The Seeds of Death. For this serial, new costumes were built featuring the slimmer head introduced late into The Ice Warriorss filming. Ice Warrior dialogue was pre-recorded due to difficulty speaking in the costumes.
Revived era
"Cold War"
alt=An image of a lightly bearded man, sitting at an interview panel with a microphone close to his face.|thumb|[[Mark Gatiss (pictured) was responsible for the Ice Warriors' return in the show's revival]]
For the 2005 Doctor Who revival, showrunner Russell T Davies had wanted to bring the Ice Warriors back. However, barring a brief mention in the 2009 episode "The Waters of Mars", He also believed the show did not need to reach into its back catalogue of antagonists for ideas anymore. Writer Mark Gatiss, a big fan of the Ice Warriors, had pitched their return for many years. He convinced Moffat to allow for their return, as the pitched story involved them being seen without their armour, which had not yet been done in the series. Millennium FX's Neill Gorton, in charge of the redesign, gave the Ice Warriors a bodybuilder physique, styled the armour to resemble plating, and removed the fur present in the original design. The Warriors' hands were also altered so that the clamps did not resemble those of a Lego minifigure. The costume was made of flexible urethane rubber instead of fibreglass like the original, since urethane is more durable and more comfortable to wear. The costume was made to fit Spencer Wilding, who physically portrayed the Ice Warrior Skaldak. Nicholas Briggs voiced Skaldak, with Wilding miming the words on-set.
"Empress of Mars"
Gatiss announced the Ice Warriors would return for the revival's tenth series in 2017, hinting at the introduction of a "new kind of Ice Warrior" that would appear in his episode "Empress of Mars". Gatiss had originally planned to write a sequel to his 2015 episode "Sleep No More". However, since many of the show's regulars were departing at the end of that series, Gatiss was unsure of his future with the show. He thus decided to produce a story depicting the Ice Warriors on Mars, which he had always wanted to do. Moffat agreed only if Gatiss could introduce another interesting concept for the species, which led to the introduction of a female Ice Warrior, a first for the series. This was incorporated as the character Iraxxa, an "Ice Queen" whose concept was inspired by the Ice Lords.
Reception
Since their debut in the 1960s, the Ice Warriors have been considered one of the most iconic and successful of the show's alien antagonists. Author Graham Sleight has noted the Ice Warriors' popularity and fondness among viewers of the series despite their infrequent appearances on television, Burk and Smith? credited the serial with giving the Ice Warriors greater depth and shifting how alien species were perceived on the show as a whole, the pair stating that the story allowed for alien species in the show to have "more nuanced motivations" that did not require them to act as antagonists.
The return of the Ice Warriors in 2013's "Cold War" was commented on by reviewers. Several critics praised Skaldak's role in the story, Critics were more mixed on the usage of the Ice Warrior outside of its armour; some reacted positively to the use of this gimmick within the story,