Episode 183: The Ice Warriors (4)

Synopsis:

Victoria has slipped out of the Ice Warrior spaceship and has found Arden's comm-link. As she talks with the Doctor and Leader Clent, she is unaware that the Martians' sonic cannon has her in its sights...

Zondal is keen to open fire, but is overruled by Varga, who wishes to hear what is being discussed. He is intrigued by Clent's insistence on knowing about their engines. As Victoria has brought people from the base in search of her already, she may do so again and he wishes to question one of the scientists.

The Warrior Turoc is sent outside to recapture her.

She sees him emerge from the ship and so takes flight deeper into the glacier, which is honeycombed with tunnels.

At the base, the Doctor realises that he will have to go and discover the nature of the spaceship engines himself. He uses a chemical dispenser to produce a vial of ammonium sulphide. Clent is dismissive of this but the Doctor points out that the aliens come from a planet with a mostly nitrogen atmosphere.

The Leader does not want him to leave as he has only just assumed Penley's role, but the Doctor tells him and Miss Garrett to go ahead and prepare for full ionisation. He will take a comm-link and report on his findings once at the spaceship, where he intends to let the Martians take him prisoner.

Victoria has dropped her communicator and goes back to find it. The glacier is unstable due to the ice movement, and there are frequent collapses. 

Turoc seizes her just as a major quake shakes the tunnels, and he is killed under an avalanche of falling ice. Victoria is unharmed, but left gripped in his clamp-like hand.

In the plant museum Penley is concerned about Jamie. He has just come round again and his fever has broken, but his pulse is weak. He tells them of his quest to rescue Victoria and, when he speaks dismissively about the base and its personnel, Storr believes him to be a kindred spirit.

When Jamie tries to get up, however, he discovers that his legs are paralysed.

Varga becomes concerned when Turoc fails to return with Victoria. He needs her to lure another from the base. Not only does he want to know why they are so interested in their engines, but they have discovered that their fuel supply has depleted over the centuries. They must learn what kind of power source the base uses, to fuel their ship.

As it was the alien weapons which harmed Jamie, Storr decides that the only way to help him is to seek their aid. He refuses to heed Penley's warnings about how dangerous they are, thinking they will see him as an ally against the base.

Penley goes after Storr but loses him on the glacier. Instead he encounters the Doctor, on his way to the spaceship. He tells him about the injured Jamie, and takes him to the plant museum to see him. 

There, the Doctor is able to convince Penley that he must set aside his differences with Clent and take Jamie to the base for treatment. The museum is increasingly threatened by the glacier and will be buried very soon anyway.

Storr meanwhile has come upon Victoria. He frees her from the dead Warrior's grip but she then discovers that he is going to see the Martians - and she must come with him.

Varga and Zondal are checking on the sonic cannon when Storr appears with Victoria. When they learn that he is not a scientist and has nothing to do with the base, they kill him.

At the base, Miss Garrett is shocked to discover that Clent has no back-up plan should the Doctor fail in his mission. The glacier is continuing to surge towards them, and time is running out.

The Doctor arrives at the ice cavern and knocks on the spaceship door, demanding to be let in.

The outer door is opened and he enters an airlock, where Varga appears on a monitor and begins questioning him. 

When he refuses to answer, the Ice Warrior begins to reduce the atmospheric pressure...

Data:

Written by Brian Hayles

Recorded: Saturday 11th November 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 2nd December 1967

Ratings: 7.3 million / AI 51

VFX: Bernard Wilkie with Ron Oates

Designer: Jeremy Davies

Director: Derek Martinus

Critique:

The draft script made much of the Ice Warriors' built in sonar equipment. Turoc used this to trace Victoria through the ice tunnels, whilst a different tone was used when he operated the spaceship door.

Two Warriors were seen working on the dismantled engines, and the engine bay was a specific set.

The sonic cannon was originally to be a stand-alone piece of kit, resting on an air-bed, and could be rolled out of the door into the ice cavern.

Turoc was described as moving clumsily due to his bulk. Brian Hayles specified the effect of the Warrior weapons - "if possible a refraction effect suggesting disintegration".

The first day of filming for the pursuit of Victoria took place on Thursday 28th September, the first day on which the Ice Warrior costumes were used. Earlier in the day they had filmed their resurrection from the ice.

The ice tunnels were composed primarily of sculpted polystyrene, though more rigid sections were set up when Debbie Watling and Sonny Caldinez had to interact with them. For the ice walls which had to be smashed, toffee glass was used.

More filming took place the following day, which included the avalanche which leads to Turoc's demise. Again toffee glass was used for the ice fall, with the camera shaken to simulate the tremors running through the glacier.

Unable to sit down in his bulky costume, Caldinez was supplied with a resting board to lean against between takes.

Watling was happy to be reunited with him, as he had been very protective towards her on The Evil of the Daleks.

Monday 2nd October saw the completion of the sequence, with Angus Lennie present as Storr. He was first filmed rescuing Victoria, then being shot down by the Warriors - the first use of the iconic Mirrorlon distortion effect from a production point of view, though it would first be seen by the public in the third episode.

Designer Jeremy Davies recalled being unhappy with the glacier interior sets at the time, but was pleasantly surprised by how effective they were on later viewing the episode for the DVD release.

Bernard Bresslaw and Roger Jones pre-recorded their dialogue on the first day of rehearsals for the fourth episode.

Patrick Troughton missed the Friday rehearsal day when he attended Ealing for filming for the following story.

The reprise of the cliff-hanger was remounted in studio on Friday 11th November, and some of the scenes originally set within the spaceship were moved to the ice cavern since the sonic cannon was no longer going to be a stand-alone prop which had to be pushed out the door.

As with the ice fall on film, cameras were shaken to show the glacier moving - both on the plant museum set and the ice cavern, with lightweight debris being dropped on both. Jablite snow fell as the Doctor approached the spaceship.

Varga appears on a monitor in the airlock in the closing scenes. Bresslaw was actually standing on the base laboratory set for this, seen only in tight close-up.

The end credits rolled over shots of the Doctor's horrified reactions to the airlock depressurisation.

We've already mentioned how Victor Pemberton thought this story rather dull, and there were criticisms about pace and lack of incident both at the time and when the episodes were later released onto VHS and DVD.

For the debut of one of the best remembered monsters, the Ice Warriors have been relatively underused up to this point, and we are now over the halfway point of the story. Only Victoria has interacted with the aliens so far, who only turned up on mass at the end of the second instalment. It is only in the final two episodes that they have any major interaction with the Doctor and the base personnel.

Victoria wasn't well used in the previous story - with the obsessive desire to visit Padmasambhava's inner sanctum seemingly included just to give her something to do in the middle episodes.

This has been a much better story for her, with Jamie more on the side-lines for a change. Injured last week, he spends this entire episode lying on his back in the plant museum, with Hines enjoying only a couple of scenes.

The Doctor has also had very little to do in Parts Two and Three. He has been left hanging around the base with Clent watching events on a screen - only finally getting out onto the glacier this week. First he is reunited with Jamie at the plant museum, and then he has his first meeting with Varga, albeit only via monitor.

Apart from the Victoria / Turoc chase set-piece, this episode is very much one that sees the story tread water.

Trivia:

• The ratings see only a very small drop on the previous week, but the appreciation figure remains stable. It varies only between 50 - 52 over the course of the entire story.
• The Radio Times published on 23rd November, the programme's fourth birthday, included a piece about an exciting new competition which would be featured on Blue Peter on the afternoon of Monday 27th: to design a monster that could beat the Daleks. The programme included a filmed sequence from The Power of the Daleks. It was stated that "Doctor Who" himself would judge the entries, and the winners would be put on display at the forthcoming Daily Mail Boys and Girls Exhibition - and might even make it into the show itself. The competition announcement actually made the news the next day, with political cartoonists suggesting Labour's Harold Wilson as a potential rival to the Masters of Skaro.