The Ice Warriors

The Ice Warriors is a bit of an exception to the normal rule of these Twenty Four Things pieces. Not because it deviates wickedly in the number of Things, because it doesn't, but rather it isn't a story I've seen many times and know front to middle and back to the end. I bought it on video the day it came out, and again on CD when that was released, and yet until today had never actually finished it. But there was a nagging something in my head thing which said it was ripe for TFT so I sat down, notebook in hand, and watched it. It was like research but less boring.

1. Has any story ever got the future more wrong than this one? Invasions that never happened, fashions that were avoided, videophones in the 1980s, a female Prime Minister – all of these can be laughed at now for their inaccuracy but the idea that the world would freeze because there was too little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is too wrong to be funny. We’ll burn before we freeze. Now on with the jokes.

2. Jamie is scolded by Victoria for asking if she would show lots of leg like the women who work in the base. This seems rather unfair as Jamie showed more leg than any companion until Jo (and much of hers was unintentional).

3. Why are so many futuristic computers given voices that are so hard to understand? The people of this century take their orders from the computer and must be forever asking it to speak more clearly. It does get better as the serial goes on though.

4. Hands up everyone who wants a vibrochair.

5. The Ice Warriors as presented here are large, slow, lumbering creatures who speak strangely and carry guns. Just like Americans.

6. Leader Clent’s outfit makes him look like an unmasked La Parka. (See)

7. There is some lovely slapstick when the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria get out of the toppled Tardis. I bet the script just said "they leave the ship" and they made the rest up during rehearsals.

8. As they are wandering through the corridors of the old house slash scientific base there is a nude statue on display in the background. Disgusting.

9. The avalanche in the first episode (aka "ONE") is remarkably effective for the era in which it was shot. Lots of rapid cutting, convincing camera shaking and stunt snow.

10. When the Ice Warriors are first discovered it is either thanks to prescience that the chirpy digger with the moped helmet and goggles correctly guessed their name, or an entire species was named by a chirpy digger with a moped helmet and goggles.

11. Leader Clent as much as says that everyone in the world knows about the eco-disaster that has befallen the planet. He then asks the Doctor to explain it to him in under 45 seconds in order to prove he is a bona fide scientist.

12. The control room has several screens displaying maps of the world. A useful addition to the nerve centre of a global project. But why has someone added a smoky filter to all the images? There’s always one person arsing about in Photoshop while everyone else is working.

13. The scene with the chemical dispenser is charming and amusing but in an ecological parable it might’ve been better had the Doctor not tossed his cup on the floor when he’d finished with it.

14. And how exactly does that machine work anyway? There is a standard telephone dial but it lets you input chemical formulae. Ten holes, thirty six numbers and letters. Hmm. An early form of predictive text perhaps.

15. Victoria’s escape from the warrior in FOUR is possibly the slowest chase in television history. At one point she appears to run too far, rushes back to meet him and then manages to hide from him in plain sight.

16. Storr’s plan to befriend the killer aliens on the principle that "my enemy’s enemy is my friend" is flawed in only one way. The befriending killer aliens part. Aside from that it is great.

17. Speaking of Storr, he claims he’s lived in that area all his life and yet he’s the only one with a Scotch accent. Either he’s putting it on to add credence to his scavenger lifestyle or there are no Scotch scientists to man, woman and person the base.

18. There is a curious moment in FOUR when the Doctor is talking to Leader Clent via the hand-held communicator he has been given. Somehow the Doctor is able to walk away from the communicator when he’s finished. Either he has deceptively long arms or the communicator is on a piece of string and he is able to reel it in in time for an Ice Warrior to confiscate it later.

19. When the Doctor is trapped in the airlock and the air pressure is being reduced to zero, the gauge on the wall jerks and tumbles like a wino. It’s more than half way down by the time Varga reaches 3 in his ever popular "counting from one to ten" routine.

20. A future where all decisions are made by a super computer is somehow a lot less frightening than one where all decisions are made by a group of fundamentalist Christian millionaires in Washington.

21. Everything seems so rushed – it’s as if a glacier managed to take everyone by surprise.

22. The Doctor’s claim in SIX that the sonic gun would affect the Warriors more because he believed they had a higher fluid content is absurd. What on earth makes him think they are more watery than people? Worse still, he follows it up with the far more sensible sounding point that their helmets would amplify the sound waves. Thereby making his first claim sound even more silly.

23. Still, the vibrations caused by the sonic gun do make the warriors wave their arms and hit themselves in the head so all is forgiven.

24. And I can’t leave without mentioning that when Walters has his major spaz-out in SIX he reminds me a lot of Ian Levine.