Synopsis:
Earth has abandoned conventional modes of transport and is no longer interested in space travel. Instead, it relies totally on T-Mat - a form of instantaneous travel utilising matter transmission. People simply step into a T-Mat cubicle and are transported to their destination, and goods are sent around the globe in the same way.
The system is operated from a central control complex near London, connected to regional centres in cities across the planet. A vital relay station is located in a base on the Moon.
Recently there have been a number of problems with the system, which appear to emanate from operations on Moonbase. Controller Gia Kelly arranges for senior technician Osgood to travel there to sort out the issues. She blames these on a new assistant controller named Fewsham, whom Osgood had recommended for promotion but who she believes isn't up to the task.
Her superior, Commander Julian Radnor, arrives at T-Mat Control soon after Osgood has departed for the Moon with some assistants. Miss Kelly assures him that everything is under control.
Shortly after Osgood arrives on the Moon, an alarm sounds to indicate that an external airlock door has been opened - though no-one is scheduled to be outside the base.
Technicians Phipps and Locke rush in, terrified at what they have just seen. Alien figures appear at the entrance to the control room, and another technician named Harvey is shot dead when he panics and tries to flee.
At T-Mat Control, assistant controller Brent informs Kelly that the system has come to a halt. She tries to contact the Moonbase by video-link.
Osgood at first refuses to obey the instructions of the alien arrivals. Then, when he pretends to help, he sabotages some controls - only to pay with his life.
Radnor demands to know what is going on, and Kelly reports the loss of video-link with the Moon.
The TARDIS materialises and, on operating the scanner, the Doctor and his companions initially think that they have materialised in space when they see a Cosmonaut appear on the screen. When the Doctor adjusts the scanner, they discover that they are actually in a museum dedicated to space travel and so venture outside. Looking around, Zoe activates a video display which gives a presentation on T-Mat.
As it comes to an end, they suddenly find themselves confronted by an elderly man, armed with a laser pistol.
Fewsham tells Slaar, the leader of the aliens, that he is unable to repair T-Mat or the video-link. They will need the services of Miss Kelly. On being threatened with death if they cannot help, Fewsham explains that there is an emergency link to Earth, which is less damaged. He and the others are ordered to fix it and Slaar withdraws, leaving a guard outside the door.
Phipps and Locke are resistant to helping the aliens, but Fewsham is too scared to disobey.
Radnor is informed by Kelly and Brent that the problem with T-Mat can definitely be traced to Moonbase, which they are unable to contact. The only way of getting there would be by conventional means - a rocket. When Brent mentions that such things are only to be found in a museum these days, Radnor has an idea...
The Doctor and his companions have discovered that they are in the workshop of Professor Daniel Eldred, which he has turned into a private museum now that space travel is a thing of the past. He had been a pioneer in rocketry, like his father before him.
The Doctor wins him over by showing great enthusiasm for his displays and agreeing with his views about the short-sightedness of abandoning conventional travel means. Eldred blames T-Mat for putting a stop to his work - but he hints that he is still carrying on with something by himself.
On Moonbase, Locke and Phipps are trying to repair the video-link so that they can warn Earth.
Radnor turns up at the museum with Miss Kelly. He was once a close colleague of Eldred's, but abandoned him to join the T-Mat project. He tells the professor that the authorities have been aware for some that he has been secretly preparing a rocket for flight. He explains the problems at T-Mat Control and asks to know how advanced Eldred is with his spacecraft. He wants to use it to get a repair team up to Moonbase. A message is passed on from T-Mat Control that food shortages are already occurring.
Eldred explains that his rocket - ZA-685 - is nowhere near ready, but the Doctor and Miss Kelly offer to help and Radnor promises unlimited resources as well. Grudgingly, the old man accepts - seeing the irony in an old-fashioned rocket having to come to T-Mat's assistance.
Locke has repaired the communications link with Earth, though audio only. He manages to report that they are in desperate trouble and that Osgood is dead - before the equipment is pulled away by a clamp-like hand.
Slaar has returned to the control room. He summons a guard and orders Locke killed.
An Ice Warrior enters, and shoots the technician dead...
Written by Brian Hayles
Recorded: Friday 3rd January 1969 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 25th January 1969
Ratings: 6.6 million / AI 57
VFX: Bill King & Trading Post
Designer: Paul Allen
Director: Michael Ferguson
Guest cast: Louise Pajo (Gia Kelly), Ronald Leigh-Hunt (Radnor), Philip Ray (Eldred), Terry Scully (Fewsham), Harry Towb (Osgood), Ric Felgate (Brent), Christopher Coll (Phipps), Martin Cort (Locke), Alan Bennion (Slaar), Steve Peters (Ice Warrior), John Witty (Computer Voice)
Critique:
As The Ice Warriors had proved popular, Brian Hayles began working on another story featuring his creations. This was titled "The Lords of the Red Planet" and was set on Mars, in the city of Gandor. Martian society was composed of the ruling Gandorians and the Saurians, who were a slave-race. Gandorians were humanoid in appearance but with reptilian scales on their faces. Their monarch was Queen Veltrena who was fully human-like - genetically engineered by a scientist named Quendril. Only he and a warlord named Zaadur knew this. The Gandorians were a dying race, unable to reproduce, and Quendril was experimenting with rejuvenation techniques to save them, whilst Zaadur wanted to colonise other worlds. Exploratory missions to other planets had been sent out - one of which had been Varga's. Because they were humanoid, the Doctor and his companions were treated favourably at first by the Gandorians, but soon got involved in the political in-fighting which developed between factions loyal to Quendril and Zaadur. The Saurians were being bio-engineered to become Ice Warriors, and the Doctor befriended one named Vargason, who eventually sacrificed himself to defeat Zaadur.
At this stage it wasn't known who the new female companion would be, so Hayles dubbed her "Dolly" as a placeholder name.
The story went through a number of drafts, which added other characters into the mix and made the Queen Quendril's daughter, and Jamie at one point was to have found himself her pet. The Gandorian / Saurian element was dropped.
Hayles was paid for his story outline, but it was decided not to develop it any further.
Having just taken over as Script Editor, Terrance Dicks then approached Hayles for a different Ice Warrior story, to be titled "The Seeds of Death".
This was set on the Earth and Moon of 3000 AD. It opened with the Ice Warriors already in control of the Moonbase, with Fewsham being ordered to send Warriors to Earth by T-Mat to plant Martian spores. These would germinate four weeks later and prevent plants from producing chlorophyll through a hereditary virus. There were two Martian warlords on the Moon, described as more intelligent and more humanoid than the Warriors previously seen. Slaar appeared first, but was then joined in the second episode by his superior Visek. It was Dicks who had suggested the warlords, in order to make the Ice Warriors more interesting as characters.
Eldred was an eccentric space museum owner, and the rocket piloted by the Doctor and his companions was one of his exhibits. The TARDIS landed on the launch pad of his museum, and he knocked out the travellers with a gas-gun and tied them up, rather than simply point his weapon at them.
Miss Kelly was a male character, who was assisted by a female PR officer named Mary Burcott.
Hayles was initially asked to include the new male companion Nik, who was to be introduced in the previous story - "The Prison in Space". Later, he would be told to change this to Jamie, then back to Nik, then back to Jamie again. He also had to incorporate a holiday for Patrick Troughton and have the Doctor absent from Episode Four.
As scripts arrived, Dicks and Derrick Sherwin became increasingly worried that it wasn't turning out as they hoped. There were also concerns about the number of sets required, and the amount of filming suggested. Adding to this his late delivery of scripts for the second half of the story, Dicks stepped in to restructure the whole story, whilst retaining elements of Hayles' work on the first two instalments only.
He was paid for these, along with some rewrite fees for later instalments, but otherwise the story was taken out of his hands. Through his agent Hayles complained of the last minute changes he had been asked to make, but Dicks argued successfully that he had been briefed in good time.
Feeling bad about how the writer had been treated, Dicks did contact him and was pleased to hear that he bore no ill feeling about events - and the pair would work together again in the 1970's on the Peladon stories (though Dicks would have to heavily rework the second of these).
In his new scripts, Dicks wanted to hold back the appearance of the monsters to the cliff-hanger, so stage directions had characters looking directly into camera whilst the actor playing Slaar was to remain just out of sight. Fans would be able to guess the villains from the mirror distortion effect and sound their weapons made as they killed people.
Dicks decided not to mention any date on screen though the Doctor recognises an ion jet rocket model in the museum as being from the 21st Century.
Eldred was to have stated that this was the rocket which first put men on the Moon - but this line was dropped when it was realised that NASA might get there in the very near future.
The only filming required for this opening episode was the model work undertaken at Ealing on Friday 13th December. This was for shots of the Earth and Moon which would be used as part of the title sequence.
Initially it had been planned that the BBC VFX team would handle the effects, but they were understaffed at this time and, because of the extensive effects needed for the story, it was decided instead to contract the work out to Bill King's company.
Two versions of the Earth / Moon shot were filmed - one with the Earth in the foreground and the other with the Moon in this position. Which version was used depended on the setting for the opening scene of each episode.
On Monday 23rd December, a single shot was taken of an Ice Warrior firing its gun, which would be used as an insert throughout the story.
The main guest artist was Ronald Leigh-Hunt who had been working on Freewheelers since 1968, and who was well known to audiences for playing King Arthur in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, which had starred William Russell. All of the cast were actors who had worked with director Michael Ferguson before on other productions. He had directed Alan Bennion in a tour of Oliver Twist, for instance. Terry Scully was a friend whom he had directed in Z-Cars, and Philip Ray had been a regular on soap The Newcomers, several episodes of which Ferguson had worked on.
The director liked to have a fun-run during rehearsals where the cast ran through the script as quickly as possible whilst doing silly voices or accents.
Costumes were handled by Bobi Bartlett, and make-up by Sylvia James, whilst designer Peter Allen was new to the programme.
Dudley Simpson once more provided the incidental music, having already established a drumbeat theme for the Ice Warriors for their debut. His compositions were then enhanced with radiophonic effects from Brian Hodgson.
We'll discuss the Ice Warriors and Slaar next time, when they make their appearance proper.
The first episode would use only three main sets, apart from the TARDIS console room of which we only see a corner comprising two walls, one of which is the photographic one, and the console. The new sets were T-Mat Control Earth, Moonbase Control, and Eldred's space museum. The latter was dressed with a number of props, some of which had featured in the series before such as the Doctor's Astral Map, the Dominator drill and part of the Gravitron.
During afternoon rehearsals on the first studio day, publicity photographs were taken of Slaar, an Ice Warrior, Osgood and Fewsham, Miss Kelly and Radnor.
The regulars retained their costumes from The Krotons, Padbury's PVC-paper outfit having been repaired since its last outing.
Recording ran from 8.30 - 10pm, and began with the opening captions playing over the Moon / Earth model shot.
A locked-off camera was used to show people disappearing and reappearing in the T-Mat cubicles. Stuntman Alan Chuntz played the unlucky technician Harvey. As with The Ice Warriors, the deaths were recorded by having the camera point at a reflection of the actor on a piece of flexible Mirrorlon, which was then prodded from behind to produce the rippling distortion effect. Harvey's death was recorded out of sequence at the end of this scene.
A number of images from various photographic agencies were used to show some of the exhibits in Eldred's museum, such as Leonardo Da Vinci's drawing.
Photo captions had also been prepared showing the T-Mat capsule superimposed over photographs of Westminster Bridge, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Street, to be shown as part of the T-Mat presentation video.
John Witty, who was providing the computer voice, also narrated this video. He was an announcer as well as an actor.
Alan Bennion was given a radio mike for his dialogue, and Ferguson used POV shots for the people he was addressing to conceal Slaar's appearance until the climax.
"Hey, look at the size of this one, Doctor"
"Yes, my word, Jamie, look at that... Very large"
It's not quite the "Would you look at the size of that one, Doctor..." / "Yes, that is a big one..." we'll get later but, when it comes to double-entendres, Troughton and Hines did like to slip one in...
It is noticeable that the Doctor and his companions take a very long time to get into the story, and then only feature in a few scenes on the same set once they do. It's also the shortest episode of the six, so we can clearly see Troughton's desire for a reduced workload being granted this week.
Michael Ferguson liked to experiment visually, and we will see this throughout the story. Characters are sometimes framed through bits of set, and we have a lot of over-the-shoulder shots as well as figures with their back to camera, facing the characters who we are supposed to be listening to.
Of those characters, Fewsham is clearly the most interesting. We learn a lot about him in just this episode. He has only recently been promoted but is clearly out of his depth, as there are problems with T-Mat before the Ice Warriors turn up. Gia Kelly obviously doesn't rate him, and it was on Osgood's recommendation that he was given the task - which is presumably why it is he who is being sent to sort things out.
He's made out to be cowardly, but then he has just seen his chief supporter gunned down, followed by technician Harvey. (As soon as you see these stunt guys, you're just waiting for them to go flying across the room or take a fall).
The other main characters are more stereotypes - the ice maiden, the eccentric professor and the no-nonsense, military commander. The young woman is, however, in a position of authority and has great technical skill.
The audience of the day would have been bemused by the idea of Earth having abandoned space travel, as the space race was big news at the time. This story was broadcast during the Apollo missions, between Apollo's 8 and 9. Astronauts would set foot on the Moon for the first time later that year.
The Seeds of Death is widely considered the best of the Ice Warrior stories of the classic era. This is mainly because we have more of them and they have a lot more to do, and because they now have a spokesperson leading them in the form of Slaar. (We'll call him an Ice Lord, as this is what fandom has dubbed this officer class of Martian).
As well as their debut being a popular story, a return for the Ice Warriors was inevitable as the costumes had been very expensive to produce, and money was tight this season. Indeed, this will be the final story of the 1960's to feature monsters, thanks to the cost of creating them. After this there will be three months of purely humanoid villainy.
- The ratings get off to a very slow start. This episode will have the weakest viewing figure of the whole story.
- As mentioned above, this is also the shortest of the six episodes, running to 23' 11".
- Ronald Leigh-Hunt would soon be reunited with Wendy Padbury on the Southern Television adventure series Freewheelers. He returned to Doctor Who in 1975 to play Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen.
- Christopher Coll will be back as Skybase One guard Stubbs in The Mutants.
- Harry Towb will later play McDermott, who is memorably suffocated by a plastic chair in Terror of the Autons.
- Martin Cort had featured in a number of roles in The Keys of Marinus, most notably playing Aydan. He was also a Voord, and the mechanical knight in The Screaming Jungle.
- Ric Felgate was the director's brother-in-law. Ferguson had previously employed him as journalist Roy Stone in The War Machines, and will later cast him as astronaut Van Lyden in The Ambassadors of Death.
- Steve Peters was billed simply as "Alien" in Radio Times, to conceal the return of the Ice Warriors. A background artist in The Romans, he would be used by Ferguson again as one of The Ambassadors of Death, as well as featuring as a space pirate in the very next story.
- Radio Times once again opted not to include any special feature on the new story, simply including a small photo of Troughton (from The Power of the Daleks) to illustrate the opening episode on the daily listings page. We'll be seeing similar images a lot in RT over the next few months.
- However, the issue dated 3rd October 1968, covering the Midlands region, had included a significant profile piece on Hayles to promote a play of his, in which he stated that he had been working on a new Doctor Who story.
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