The Ice Warriors is the partly missing third serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 11 November to 16 December 1967. In this serial, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) arrive on Earth during a second Ice age, where a research team has discovered an alien Ice Warrior preserved in a block of ice. The Ice Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw) awakens his crew and comes into conflict with the base and its members.
The serial was written by Brian Hayles, who at the time was interested in the concept of life on Mars. The discovery of a mammoth in a block of ice by the Berezovka River in 1901, in conjunction with the interest, inspired the creation of the titular Ice Warriors. The Warriors would be highly popular with viewers, and would recur in several later stories in the series.
The Ice Warriors has been met with a positive response from critics, with the Ice Warriors and the story's cast performances being particular highlights, though various aspects of the story have been criticised. In the years following the serial's airing, its episodes were destroyed by the BBC, resulting in them becoming missing from the corporation‘s archives. Though four of the story's six episodes were recovered in 1988, the other two currently remain missing. These episodes were reconstructed via animation for a DVD release of the story in 2013.
Plot The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) arrive at a scientific base in the distant future, where Earth is plagued by a new Ice age. The base is largely managed by a computer system (Roy Skelton) which tells the base's members how to proceed. The Doctor helps the base's research team, led by Clent (Peter Barkworth) with an ioniser device, which is used to slow the progress of glaciers rolling over Great Britain. The Doctor soon after examines a recent discovery found in a glacier by scientist Arden: An alien Ice Warrior frozen in a block of ice. The Ice Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw), revives from the block and takes Victoria hostage.
Varga reveals he is from the planet Mars, and that he has been frozen for millennia. Varga revives a number of Ice Warriors from the ice and assigns them to excavate their spaceship. Jamie and Arden (George Waring) discover the excavation, but are ambushed by the Warriors on their way back to base, killing Arden. Penley (Peter Sallis) and Storr (Angus Lennie), two scientists who abandoned the base due to disliking its reliance on the computer, take Jamie back to their home while Storr goes to reason with the Warriors, leading to Storr's death. The Doctor sets out to rescue Victoria from the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor is able to rescue Victoria as Varga prepares an assault on the base via a sonic cannon. Penley brings Jamie back to the base, and though the Doctor kills one of the Warriors, Zondal (Roger Jones), who is preparing to fire a sonic cannon, Zondal is able to activate it as he dies. The blast only causes minor damage, but Varga threatens another blast unless the humans surrender. The two sides arrange a peace meeting, but due to the interference of Walters (Malcolm Taylor), a technician who tries to shoot the Warriors, the talks fail. Varga dismantles the ioniser reactor to get power for the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor and Victoria adjust the sonic cannon so it will only harm the Ice Warriors while Penley alters the temperature and atmosphere controls in the base so it becomes uncomfortable for the Warriors. Varga and the other Warriors retreat, but disable the cannon. Despite Clent's hesitation to disobey the orders of the base's computer, the Doctor and Penley recalibrate the ioniser to destroy the spaceship, and the ship explodes, destroying both the Warriors and the approaching glacier. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria depart as plant-life emerges through melting snow.
Production
Writing and design In early 1967, while preparing for the show's fifth season, the Doctor Who production team was looking for a new alien race, specifically a bipedal creature, to complement popular antagonists such as the Daleks and Cybermen. In some accounts, the new species was meant to replace the Daleks, who were scheduled to be written out of the series at the time. Writer Brian Hayles ended up creating the new monsters. He was interested in life on Mars and thought the idea of a race of reptilian humanoids was a plausible concept. As well as Hayles's interest in Mars, he was inspired by a story of a mammoth found preserved in a block of ice by the Berezovka River in 1901, which gave him the idea of an alien being revived after being similarly discovered.Hayles was commissioned on June 26, 1967 to write the story, which would have six parts, with the story quickly landing on the setting of a second Ice Age. The serial's storyline followed a format used by producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis in which a small cast of characters were kept confined on a small set while attacked by a monster. Victor Pemberton worked on this story as a temporary script editor, though would end up leaving the role soon after, feeling that scripts for the show were lacking in quality and that he wanted to return to writing, while also feeling that Hayles was resistant to edits to his scripts. Derrick Sherwin would subsequently take over as script editor. By July 6, it was unclear which story was meant to open a new production block following production of The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967). Originally intended to be the first story of the season, The Ice Warriors was shifted down to follow The Abominable Snowmen (1967) in the season's story order. As a result, a line was included referencing the prior serial.
Costume designer Martin Baugh was inspired by the name "Ice Warrior", as it made him think of a hard, armoured creature. He saw the creatures as like crocodiles and thus made them appear physically reptilian in nature; according to some accounts, Hayles had conceived them as cyborg Vikings, and Baugh's change was done to avoid confusion with the Cybermen, also cyborgs. Taking inspiration from descriptions of the Ice Warriors' Viking-like helmets, Baugh envisioned their armour as central to their appearance, akin to a bipedal turtle. He suggested the Ice Warrior costumes be cast in fibreglass. The final costume used a two-piece fibreglass shell, heavy latex rubber for the arms and legs—with the former ending in clamp-like hands—and matted fur between the joints and at the hips. Red Perspex was used to act as the eyeholes of the helmets, and the actors' eyelids behind the mask were painted a dark green. Plans to have the eyes glow were dropped due to concerns that it would overheat the actors. The final costumes were tall.
The scientists' costumes were also designed by Baugh. Described as "psychedelic", Baugh designed them under the idea that clothes in the future would be sprayed onto a person. Baugh based these costumes on circuitry imagery in New Scientist magazine, as well as the work of French fashion designer André Courrèges. The main cast of Troughton, Hines, and Watling would continue to use their outfits from The Abominable Snowmen for this story, though Watling would gain an additional cloak.
Casting and characters
Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, and Deborah Watling reprise their main cast roles as the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, and Victoria Waterfield, respectively. Peter Sallis portrayed Penley, while Angus Lennie portrayed Storr. Arden is portrayed by George Waring, and Walters is portrayed by Malcolm Taylor. Peter Barkworth portrays the base's leader, Clent, while Wendy Gifford portrays Jane Garrett. Roy Skelton voices the computer that is used on the base.
Bernard Bresslaw portrayed the Ice Warrior Varga, and is credited with creating the Ice Warriors' whisper-like voices, which would be retained in subsequent stories. Tony Harwood plays another of the Ice Warriors, and also fills in for Bresslaw in some scenes shot while Bresslaw was busy filming Carry On Doctor (1967). Sonny Caldinez also portrays an Ice Warrior, and would return to play members of the species in the subsequent serials. Filming Although Hayles had written the scripts so most of the filming involving the glacier could be done in studio, director Derek Martinus would shift some of the recording to Ealing Studios to give a greater feeling of space to the sets. Filming began on 25 September 1967, and would overlap with the filming of some episodes of The Abominable Snowmen. Stock footage was used for backgrounds depicting the icy landscape of the story.
The base control room, filmed at Lime Grove Studios, used table props seen in 1964's The Sensorites, which were decorated with oscilloscopes. A map depicting glacier movement, used as a backdrop, was displayed using a projector, though the map prop projected was accidentally destroyed during the second episode's filming and had to be recreated. In the centre of the control room was the prop for the computer, operated from inside by an actor. Three total operators operated the prop at different points during the story's production.
During filming, Martinus requested changes to the Ice Warrior costumes, specifically less bulky helmets, since the costumes did not allow for much head movement. He also wanted the Ice Warriors' sonic blaster weapons to be built into the costume. The helmets of all five Ice Warrior costumes produced for the serial were made smaller, though some were changed more than others, with Bresslaw's in particular being adjusted as he was the main Ice Warrior performer. Filming would eventually wrap on 25 November 1967.
Composer Dudley Simpson was brought on to produce the episode's soundtrack. Simpson had previously worked on The Evil of the Daleks (1967), and re-used leitmotifs from Victoria's theme from that serial for The Ice Warriors. The Ice Warriors had predominantly percussion-heavy music play in several scenes where they appeared on-screen. Vocals were recorded by singer Joanne Brown for a track titled Ice Music, heard both during an Ice Warrior chase scene and during the story's opening titles.
Martinus, fearing being "pigeonholed", would leave his role as a director for the series following this serial, returning for 1970 serial Spearhead from Space. Despite his initial reluctance to work on the story, Martinus would later claim it was his favorite story he had directed from the series.
Broadcast and reception
Episode is missing
Unusually, the word "episode" was dropped from each episode number in this serial. The serial's first episode aired in an earlier time slot than usual to account for BBC's Festival of Remembrance coverage that evening. Viewing figures for the story were an improvement on the prior serial, The Abominable Snowmen, with The Ice Warriors also garnering a decent audience appreciation rating.
The story was still being offered for sale by 1974, but by 1978 the serial was marked for destruction by the BBC and believed to have been destroyed. The serial's videotapes were believed destroyed by 1969. In August 1988, recordings of the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes were recovered from a cupboard in Villiers House in Ealing, while BBC Enterprises was in the process of moving out of the building. The surviving episodes were later aired at various events over the years.
Reception and legacy