The next Thirteenth Doctor story has arrived (or did a few months ago…) and it’s time for the Thirteenth Doctor to meet the Ice Warriors, but more interestingly for this long… long time fan of the Big Finish side of Doctor Who it also sees the return of sarcastic policewoman Patricia Menzies after a long absence. What’s the story like outside of continuity references? Very good, as it turns out!
The story kicks off with a good old fashioned crashing spaceship and local authorities scrambling to sort the situation out, but given in this era of the show both UNIT and Torchwood are no more it’s up to the local police to deal with it, including Superintendent Menzies (Anna Hope), who at least has some experience with alien encounters, plus two other officers in Constable Hughes (Mark Elstob) and Sergeant Sykes (*sigh*… Nicholas Briggs doing a dodgy Northern accent…) They soon get help though as The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and Yaz (Mandip Gill) arrive, though the latter is surprised to hear her sister Sonya (Bhavinsha Parmer) is being held by the police for trying to enter the scene and leak the evidence of alien life. The relationship between Yaz and Sonya is explored really well here, Sonya is angry that Yaz ran off without telling anyone, including her, and is convinced she’s hiding the whole alien travel thing. Yaz eventually admits both the alien thing as well as her feelings for The Doctor to her, which was somewhat controversial given she wasn’t supposed to have done that until the end of the TV run, but hey-ho…
As Yaz, Sonya and Sykes track an escapee alien The Doctor and Menzies head into the ship, eventually finding out it belongs to the Ice Warriors, with Vazlyr being on the ship and reporting that the escaped Ssorl was a fugitive that must be stopped, seemingly confirmed when he kills Hughes, even though Hughes drew on him first. All things may not be as they seem though…
It really is a fun story, with a great performance from Anna Hope as always and some really good scenes between the sisters, plus some fun alien invasion Who-ness.
The Continuity:
Always fun seeing… um, hearing newer Doctors encounter foes they didn’t get to on TV.
Sonya Kahn first appeared in, ugh, “Arachnids in the UK”, and appeared a few times in the TV series afterwards. On that note she mentions horribly on-the-nose Trump parody Jack Robertson from that story and “Revolution of the Daleks” was discredited and humiliated to the point of vanishing from public consciousness, which is great because they were clearly pushing him to become President and go full-Trump parody so I’m relieved we’ll be spared from seeing/hearing that… Weirdly the old chestnut of “Yeti in the Underground” is brought up once again as proof that humanity just won’t retain their memory of alien invasions, that’s a reference to Second Doctor TV classic “The Web of Fear”.
Menzies on the other hand first appeared in Sixth Doctor and Charley audio story “The Condemned” before reappearing in “The Raincloud Man” and “The Legacy of Time”, as well as non-Charley Sixth Doctor audio “The Crimes of Thomas Brewster”. Most of these adventures are mentioned by The Doctor here to prove she was really him, if you know what I mean. Funnily enough The Doctor was confused that she was with Charley when she met Menzies, which makes sense as the Sixth Doctor Charley adventures were changed in his memory, so to The Doctor Charley was an Eighth Doctor companion only. Given it was so long ago she just brushes it off though!
The Ice Warriors first appeared in, well, “The Ice Warriors”, a Second Doctor TV story and went on to make too many appearances throughout the series history to list. I will say that removing the armour being a thing was exclusive to Eleventh Doctor TV story “Cold War” until now, so that’s a bit more specific (and slightly spoilery? Sorry!)
Overall Thoughts:
“The Hallamshire Incident” was a really fun hour of Doctor Who, with Menzies reminding everyone why she was such a great character and Yaz and her sister adding some good and well acted emotional weight to the story. Can’t really fault it, it’s a perfect example of what it is, so fine: take your 5 stars!
To the surprise of very few by the time we got to the reveal, it turns out that Vazlyr is actually the criminal and he’s trying to put his ship into meltdown to clear the planet and send it into an ice age (the usual Ice Warrior MO, to be fair) where as Ssorl is actually one of the honourable Ice Warriors who’s trying to stop him. Eventually Ssorl and The Doctor do save the planet and stop Vazlyr but Ssorl loses his life also, managing to convince The Doctor to put on his Ice Warrior suit in order to protect herself from the blast, which was a fun idea.
Once the crisis is over Yaz promises her sister she’ll keep in touch this time and not keep any secrets, while Menzies and the sadly surviving Sykes reveal the idea of a police division set up specifically to deal with aliens, headed by Menzies herself (another spin-off range, perchance?)