In which the Doctor, Bill and Nardole learn that NASA have discovered a message on Mars. Written across the surface, using boulders, is "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN". They take to the TARDIS and travel to the planet as it was in 1881 when the message first appeared, materialising in an underground tunnel where they find a breathable atmosphere. Bill plunges down a hole in the ground and the Doctor sends Nardole back to the ship to fetch some rope. Once inside, the TARDIS suddenly dematerialises on its own. He is unable to control it, so the Doctor and Bill are trapped on Mars until he can sort it out.
The Doctor is confronted by an Ice Warrior, whilst Bill encounters a British soldier named Catchlove in the gallery below.
The Doctor meets another soldier - an officer named Godsacre - who reveals that the Ice Warrior is a friend, who his men have named "Friday", after the Robinson Crusoe character. The Warrior has a distinctive scar down his helmet.
The TARDIS has arrived back at St Luke's University. Unable to operate it himself, Nardole reluctantly approaches the Vault to seek help from Missy.
The Doctor and Bill are reunited in a cavern in which the British soldiers have established their camp. Friday acts as a servant to them. At dinner, Colonel Godsacre and Captain Catchlove reveal that they had been on a mission in South Africa where they had come across a crashed spaceship and its injured pilot - Friday. The Ice Warrior had convinced them that it could give them access to great mineral wealth if they helped it repair its ship. They could come with him to Mars, claiming the planet for their Empress and take what precious metals and gems they wanted.
They were now methodically mining the tunnels beneath the surface in search of the wealth which Friday had promised. To aid them, they are using some of his technology in the form of a huge sonic cannon which they have nicknamed the "Gargantua".
Despite being the senior officer, the Doctor notes that Catchlove does not treat Godsacre with the customary respect due a superior, but Godsacre does not react.
The gun's operators - Sergeant Major Peach and privates Jackdaw and Vincey - succeed in breaching a rock wall and find a huge chamber beyond. It appears to be a burial vault. Large crystal sarcophagi line the walls and in the centre is a funeral bier on which lies a golden statue of a female Ice Queen.
On discovering what has happened, the Doctor attempts to make peace - telling the Queen that she should accept the help of the humans. However, one of the soldiers panics and opens fire, so Iraxxa declares war.
Catchlove wants to use the Gargantua against the Warriors, but Godsacre agrees with the Doctor on making peace. The Captain reveals to the rest of the men that their Colonel is really a coward. He always wears a neckerchief, which hides the fact that he survived a botched hanging for desertion. He is locked up in a cell with the Doctor and Bill as Catchlove takes over.
The Ice Warriors attack the soldiers by burrowing up through the ground behind their defences. Peach is killed, and Catchlove flees by throwing Vincey into their path to aid his escape. The young man perishes. Despite his loyalty to his Queen, Friday has come to respect the Doctor and it frees him and the others from the cell. Bill attempts to negotiate with Iraxxa giving the Doctor time to come up with a plan. He takes control of the Gargantua and threatens to destroy the ice Warrior hive unless a peaceful solution is found. Catchlove dons a spacesuit and hold the Queen hostage, intent on stealing the spaceship which they have been building on the surface to get back home. Godsacre shoots him dead, then offers himself to Iraxxa. He will submit to execution if his men are allowed to go free. The Queen admires this act, and finally agrees that the humans are worthy of making peace with.
Mars is dying, so the Ice Warriors must relocate. The Doctor sends out a message for help, which is answered by an inhabitant of Alpha Centauri, who welcomes the Martians to the Galactic Federation. Godsacre and his surviving men will leave with them. Before they go, they leave the message on the surface that will later be found by NASA.
The TARDIS suddenly reappears, and the Doctor is shocked to find Missy at the controls...
Empress of Mars was written by Mark Gatiss, and was first broadcast on Saturday 10th June 2017.
Gatiss had previously reintroduced the Ice Warriors in Series 7 with Cold War, and had always intended to revisit the aliens at some point. He had successfully added a lot to their mythology via references in some of his earlier stories, though his decision to show that they wore armour and were really badly CGI'd Gollum-like creatures underneath did not go down quite so well.
What Gatiss had not planned was that his next Ice Warrior story would feature in Series 10. The original plan for this year had been to produce a sequel to Series 9's Sleep No More. This would have been set on contemporary Earth, with businessmen devising the same sort of technology which Rassmussen would create in the far future. Unfortunately Sleep No More had been panned by fans and critics, and there was no appetite for more of the same.
Knowing that he was likely to be departing from the series alongside Steven Moffat, Gatiss therefore reverted to his Plan B. He had always wanted to write a story that featured a mash-up of his favoured Victorian period with the Martians. Back in 2013 he had had to fight to bring them back, as Moffat thought them boring - too slow moving and lacking expression.
Moffat agreed to a second Ice Warrior story only if Gatiss could come up with something new, and this included the notion of a female Queen figure.
An obvious inspiration for this story is the third Ice Warrior appearance - The Curse of Peladon. It can be seen as a form of prequel to the Peladon stories, showing how the Martians came to be part of the Federation in the first place. As a bonus for long-term fans, we have a cameo by Alpha Centauri - possibly the same one who will be encountered by the Third Doctor. It is once again voiced by Ysanne Churchman who worked on the earlier pair of stories.
It may even be that the human soldiers will be the descendants of the people of Peladon, or at least be one of the reasons for Earth being such a prominent member of the Federation - one of their number being given the senior assessment role, despite Centauri's low opinion of the planet.
Another inspiration, beyond earlier Doctor Who stories, is the 1964 film Zulu, which starred Michael Caine and Stanley Baker. This provided the Victorian redcoat soldier detail, as well as inspiring some of the foot soldier characters.
NASA finding a message from Victorian explorers on another world was inspired by H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon - where modern astronauts find a Union Jack flag and other evidence of a previously unknown Victorian expedition. Gatiss played the inventor Cavor in a BBC 4 adaptation of the book, which had previously been filmed by Ray Harryhausen in the same year Zulu was released.
The guest cast is headed by Anthony Calf, playing Colonel Godsacre. He had featured in the series before - back in 1982 when he had played the squire's son, Charles, in the opening section of The Visitation.
Catchlove - who was inspired by the bullying Flashman character from Tom Brown's Schooldays - is played by Ferdinand Kingsley, who is the son of actor Ben Kingsley. He was concurrently appearing in the Victoria series on ITV, which starred Jenna Coleman as the young monarch.
Iraxxa is performed by Adele Lynch.
Jackdaw is Ian Beattie, who had appeared alongside Gatiss in Game of Thrones.
Sgt. Major Peach is played by Glenn Speers.
Bayo Gbadamosi plays Vincey. The programme came in for some criticism for the casting of a black actor as a Victorian soldier, but Gatiss was able to provide evidence that this was no anachronism.
Richard Ashton plays the Ice Warrior Friday. With a change of mask he played some of the other Ice Warriors, along with regular monster performer Jamie Hill.
We also have a brief cliff-hanging cameo from Michelle Gomez, as the Missy story arc is set up for the conclusion of the series.
Overall, a much more enjoyable Ice Warrior story than the derivative Cold War. We finally see the Warriors on Mars, and learn something more of their culture. The nods to past stories are an added bonus.
Things you might like to know:
- At one point it had been thought that Winston Churchill might feature in this story, as actor Ian McNeice had contacted Gatiss to ask if he could make a return to the series. The Victorian setting put paid to this.
- The setting also precluded Gatiss reusing his Grand Marshal Skaldak character.
- Another idea had been for the story to be set on Peladon, as Gatiss was inspired by the current Brexit referendum in the UK (the entry of the UK into the EU having been an inspiration for the first Peladon story).
- This is the third Ice Warrior story to feature one of their number having crashed their spaceship on Earth. They really are such dreadful pilots that you have to wonder how they ever came to have an Empire...
- The soldiers' portrait of Queen Victoria is an image of the royal as portrayed by Pauline Collins in Tooth and Claw.
- Until William Russell (97) reprised the character of Ian Chesterton in 2022, Ysanne Churchman had been the oldest actor to appear in the revived series, at 92. There is a 43 year gap between appearances for Alpha Centauri - another record broken only by the Great Intelligence (45 years).
- Anthony Calf had also appeared on a Big Finish audio in 2007. It was an Ice Warrior story.
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