The Ice Warriors is the partly missing third serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 11 November to 16 December 1967. In this serial, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) arrive on Earth during a second Ice age, where a research team has discovered an alien Ice Warrior preserved in a block of ice. The Ice Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw) awakens his crew and comes into conflict with the base and its members.
The serial was written by Brian Hayles, who at the time was interested in the concept of life on Mars. The discovery of a mammoth in a block of ice by the Berezovka River in 1901, in conjunction with the interest, inspired the creation of the titular Ice Warriors. The Warriors would be highly popular with viewers, and would recur in several later stories in the series.
The Ice Warriors has been met with a positive response from critics, with the Ice Warriors and the story's cast performances being particular highlights, though various aspects of the story have been criticised. In the years following the serial's airing, its episodes were destroyed by the BBC, resulting in them becoming missing from the company's archives. Though four of the story's six episodes were recovered in 1988, the other two currently remain missing. These episodes would be reconstructed via animation for a DVD release of the story in 2013.
Plot
The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) arrive at a scientific base in the distant future, where Earth is plagued by a new Ice age. The base is largely managed by a computer system (Roy Skelton) which tells the base's members how to proceed. The Doctor helps the base's research team, led by Clent (Peter Barkworth) with an ioniser device, which is used to slow the progress of glaciers rolling over Great Britain. The Doctor soon after examines a recent discovery found in a glacier by scientist Arden: An alien Ice Warrior frozen in a block of ice. The Ice Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw), revives from the block and takes Victoria hostage.
Varga reveals he is from the planet Mars, and that he has been frozen for millennia. Varga revives a number of Ice Warriors from the ice and assigns them to excavate their spaceship. Jamie and Arden (George Waring) discover the excavation, but are ambushed by the Warriors on their way back to base, killing Arden. Penley (Peter Sallis) and Storr (Angus Lennie), two scientists who abandoned the base due to disliking its reliance on the computer, take Jamie back to their home while Storr goes to reason with the Warriors, leading to Storr's death. The Doctor sets out to rescue Victoria from the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor is able to rescue Victoria as Varga prepares an assault on the base via a sonic cannon. Penley brings Jamie back to the base, and though the Doctor kills one of the Warriors, Zondal (Roger Jones), who is preparing to fire a sonic cannon, Zondal is able to activate it as he dies. The blast only causes minor damage, but Varga threatens another blast unless the humans surrender. The two sides arrange a peace meeting, but due to the interference of Walters (Malcolm Taylor), a technician who tries to shoot the Warriors, the talks fail. Varga dismantles the ioniser reactor to get power for the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor and Victoria adjust the sonic cannon so it will only harm the Ice Warriors while Penley alters the temperature and atmosphere controls in the base so it becomes uncomfortable for the Warriors. Varga and the other Warriors retreat, but disable the cannon. Despite Clent's hesitation to disobey the orders of the base's computer, the Doctor and Penley recalibrate the ioniser to destroy the spaceship, and the ship explodes, destroying both the Warriors and the approaching glacier. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria depart as plant-life emerges through melting snow.
Production
Writing and design
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. Writer Brian Hayles ended up creating the new monsters. He was interested in life on Mars and thought the idea of a race of reptilian humanoids was a plausible concept. 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. Victor Pemberton worked on this story as a temporary script editor, though would end up leaving the role soon after, feeling that scripts for the show were lacking in quality and that he wanted to return to writing, while also feeling that Hayles was resistant to edits to his scripts. Derrick Sherwin would subsequently take over as script editor. 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. while Angus Lennie portrayed Storr.
Filming
Although Hayles had written the scripts so most of the filming could be done in studio, director Derek Martinus would shift some of the recording to Ealing Studios to give a greater feeling of space to the sets. Filming began on 25 September 1967, and would overlap with the filming of some episodes of The Abominable Snowmen. Stock footage was used for backgrounds depicting the icy landscape of the story. Viewing figures for the story were an improvement on the prior serial, The Abominable Snowmen, with The Ice Warriors also garnering a decent audience appreciation rating. In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the Ice Warriors and the story's guest cast, though felt the story's setting lacked a good sense of relation to each other. Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times praised the main cast's performances, though felt the story's message about humanity's overreliance on computers did not age well. John Sinnott of DVD Talk reviewed the story's DVD release, feeling the story to be slow-paced and focused too much on the conflict involving the computer, while also feeling the story had many logical holes. However, Sinnott praised Troughton's performance, the set design, and the Ice Warriors as antagonists. Starbursts Paul Mount praised the performances of the cast, as well as the Ice Warriors, though found the story to be overly long.
Following this serial's airing, the Ice Warriors' popularity would lead to a sequel story featuring them being produced. The Warriors would subsequently act as a recurring alien species throughout the show's television run.
The programming committee of the public German TV broadcaster ZDF refused unanimously to buy the series after watching The Ice Warriors for a test. Reasons given included the decoration, costume design, and writing. Subsequently Doctor Who remained relatively unknown in German-speaking countries.
Commercial releases
In print
In March 1976, Target Books published a novelisation by Brian Hayles of this serial. The animation for the serial was designed to greatly resemble the original story in terms of quality, with the story's set and character designs based off existing visuals for the story.