Now the new status quo has been created for this “Season 6B” Doctor run we plunge head-first into… an admittedly fun run-around with the Ice Warriors and the Brigadier on Earth. Well, it was a unique concept while it lasted I guess! On its own its not a bad story for the record, but it does seem a little too “back to basics” for only the second story in the run. Oh well, let’s take a look…
Wrath of the Ice Warriors starts with the TARDIS materialising on a UNIT firing range and The Doctor (Michael Troughton) meeting local Scottish girl Sheena Flynn (Lucy Goldie), followed shortly by meeting up with The Brigadier (Jon Culshaw). As per usual with this type of coincidence Lethbridge-Stewart is investigating reports of monsters attacking from the deep. This worries The Doctor as on his way to Earth he spotted a large armada of ships waiting near Jupiter, and his fears are made worse when they encounter the creature as its an Ice Warrior named Skaar (Mark Elstob). It’s a simple enough set up as The Doctor and UNIT manage to capture Skaar after The Doctor uses its obsession with radio equipment to trap it and gather UNIT to his location, but as Skaar is being transported the soldiers are attacked and Skaar is rescued.
Not to go too deep into spoilers but we soon find out that he wasn’t rescued but kidnaped by his own kind, a separate faction led by Ice Queen Zelanda (voiced by Katy “Jo Grant” Manning, for some reason!) and in true Peladon fashion Skaar is actually one of the peaceful and honourable Ice Warriors while Zelanda’s faction is of the old ways and wishes for nothing more than to head to Mars and reclaim her throne, a right she was denied when she was frozen in stasis and exiled (so long ago that she is unaware of her home planet’s fate).
It has some good twists and turns, there are scenes on an Ice Warrior ship deep underwater and even towards the end on the surface of Mars itself, so it keeps itself going at a strong pace, with the core cast all doing a really great job. It may not feel very “Season 6B-ish” (although Raven (Emma Noakes) does reappear and reveal it was all the mission towards the end…) but it’s a really fun story nonetheless!
The Continuity:
This cover doesn’t get any less boring the second time…
I’m not going to list all the Ice Warrior stories but I will say that this does make two bits of dialogue in later TV stories make sense, retroactively. In the Third Doctor’s debut story, “Spearhead From Space”, The Brig tells Liz Shaw that there have been “two attempts to invade Earth” making the Cybermen invasion in “The Invasion” one and this the other; and in the Fifth Doctor’s debut story “Castrovalva” while suffering from post-regeneration issues he impersonates the Second Doctor and mentions fighting the Ice Warriors alongside the Brigadier, so we can now assume some 6B memories got pushed to his mind during its muddled state. Love bits like that, completely pointless in the long run, but a good laugh!
The Ice Queen was first seen in the Twelfth Doctor TV story “Empress of Mars”, though retroactively this its first appearance now, I guess!
Overall Thoughts:
Wrath of the Ice Warriors may not have been much of a Season 6B story but it was a great Second Doctor Ice Warrior story, with some good twists and turns and some great work from the guest cast. Highly recommended!
The big twist is that Zelanda had pulled the “I’m just a helpless alien trapped on your world” act on Sheena and it was the latter that tipped off Zelanda’s men as to where Skaar was. The Ice Warriors and the large Armada of alien mercenaries do land on Mars only to find it an empty shell, then we get some UNIT in space suits action, which is fun to imagine, before Zelanda threatens Sheena’s life at a cliff edge only to end up tumbling down it herself.
In the end Raven says that The Doctor does always work best with a companion, hinting that the next adventure will be where The Doctor reunites with Jamie, I assume…
Hogan Reviews 