Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors: Four (unusually on screen it simply says 'Four' without any 'Episode' prefix) starts as Victoria (Deborah Watling) stranded in some icy caverns reports back to the Brattanicus Ice Base using the dead scientist Arden's communicator where the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) & Clent (Peter Barkworth) listen to her, she says the Martian Ice Warriors are hostile & she cannot describe the Ice Warriors spaceship engines. The Ice Warrior leader Varga (Bernard Bresslaw) wonders why Clent is so interested in their engines & orders the capture of Victoria. Meanwhile the Doctor volunteers to go to the Ice Warriors spaceship to look at the engines himself & find out whether it is safe to use the Ioniser nearby without them exploding, although safe with Penley (Peter Salis) Jamie (Frazer Hines) is paralysed from the Ice Warriros weapon while the Doctor finds the Ice Warriors are very hostile as he enters their spaceship...
Episode 14 from season 5 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during November 1967, as a six part story only episodes one, four, five & six of The Ice Warriors are now known to exist after the mass junking's & wiping's at the BBC during the 70's although audio reconstructions for episodes two & three are available. Anyway, directed by Derek Martinus this is a big improvement over a slightly forgettable opening episode. The script by Brian Hayles is actually fairly easy to pick up & follow after watching episode one considering two separate episodes consisting of 50 odd minutes of material are missing, there's a fair bit going on in this one with the Doctor, Jamie & Victoria all separated at the start doing their own thing. The story is also standing up much more on it's own merits after episode one which was a dead ringer for The Thing From Another World (1951), overall I liked this episode with some decent Ice Warrior action although I don't like the cliffhanger ending (it's obvious how the Doctor is going to escape) & I don't understand how an Ice Warrior can grab Victoria who both then get caught in an avalanche where the Ice Warrior is killed but Victoria emerges without so much as a scratch on her! I mean for a start the Ice Warriors have huge plates of armour to protect them & Victoria is just a fragile little woman so how/why does she survive & the Ice Warrior is killed?
Considering the low BBC budget I have to say I was impressed with the snow caverns & caves in The Ice Warriors even if being filmed in black and white probably helped, in fact I think the snow & ice covered sets look far, far better than those seen in the horrible Sylvester McCoy story Dragonfire (1987) which was made a full 20 years after this. The Ice Warriors themselves look pretty good & they seem to have the ability to retract their heads into their body armour like a tortoise! They look like huge reptilian humanoid creatures & some may find their constant hissing whispering voices annoying, I thought they sounded suitably sinister. It's also noticeable that the actors mouths are glued to the masks so the mouth movements actually correspond with what they are saying which isn't usually that common with Doctor Who monsters. The incidental music here is also very startling & sounds like a woman screaming!
The Ice Warriors: Four isn't anything overly original but it's good clean sci-fi fun with memorable monsters & some surprisingly good sets. Even with two episode missing it's quite easy to follow the story as it goes, Doctor Who fans should like it & I thought it was pretty good.
Episode 14 from season 5 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during November 1967, as a six part story only episodes one, four, five & six of The Ice Warriors are now known to exist after the mass junking's & wiping's at the BBC during the 70's although audio reconstructions for episodes two & three are available. Anyway, directed by Derek Martinus this is a big improvement over a slightly forgettable opening episode. The script by Brian Hayles is actually fairly easy to pick up & follow after watching episode one considering two separate episodes consisting of 50 odd minutes of material are missing, there's a fair bit going on in this one with the Doctor, Jamie & Victoria all separated at the start doing their own thing. The story is also standing up much more on it's own merits after episode one which was a dead ringer for The Thing From Another World (1951), overall I liked this episode with some decent Ice Warrior action although I don't like the cliffhanger ending (it's obvious how the Doctor is going to escape) & I don't understand how an Ice Warrior can grab Victoria who both then get caught in an avalanche where the Ice Warrior is killed but Victoria emerges without so much as a scratch on her! I mean for a start the Ice Warriors have huge plates of armour to protect them & Victoria is just a fragile little woman so how/why does she survive & the Ice Warrior is killed?
Considering the low BBC budget I have to say I was impressed with the snow caverns & caves in The Ice Warriors even if being filmed in black and white probably helped, in fact I think the snow & ice covered sets look far, far better than those seen in the horrible Sylvester McCoy story Dragonfire (1987) which was made a full 20 years after this. The Ice Warriors themselves look pretty good & they seem to have the ability to retract their heads into their body armour like a tortoise! They look like huge reptilian humanoid creatures & some may find their constant hissing whispering voices annoying, I thought they sounded suitably sinister. It's also noticeable that the actors mouths are glued to the masks so the mouth movements actually correspond with what they are saying which isn't usually that common with Doctor Who monsters. The incidental music here is also very startling & sounds like a woman screaming!
The Ice Warriors: Four isn't anything overly original but it's good clean sci-fi fun with memorable monsters & some surprisingly good sets. Even with two episode missing it's quite easy to follow the story as it goes, Doctor Who fans should like it & I thought it was pretty good.
