4 out of 5

Directed by: Derek Martinus

The show turned into something special with Patrick Troughton, finally sloughing off the kids’ adventure hour to become a legit – if still gleefully camp at times – show with exciting stakes and non-grating characters.  And more and more during Doctor Two we get the emergence of actual sci-fi; not just ideas-with-robots but taking concepts and filtering them through the genre to provoke thought.  True, the man vs. machine debate that’s hammered home rather obnoxiously in The Ice Warriors is tired, especially today, and it’s taken to some humorous extremes in this six parter (like, I’m pretty sure it’s okay to use a computer to do math), but writer Brian Hayles – who’d already shown some creative flair with his invention of The Celestial Toymaker – confidently stuffs his script with intelligent conversation on the debate, as well as a convincing pseudo-science justification for the circumstances which necessitate it.

In The Ice Warriors, DW and crew jump forward to an ice-coated-Earth future, brought about by decreased fauna, cleared for housing the growing population.  The team happens into a monitoring station which is currently embroiled in considerations regarding fending off encroaching glaciers, led by their leader Clent (Peter Barkworth, playing the role with effective terseness), who’s rigorously bound to feeding parameters into a central system for rulings on any given X, Y or Z… a policy which has caused some contention with former members of the crew.  The Doc inserts himself into things, as he’s ought to do, and impresses by making some bright decisions without that dang computrons help.

Elsewhere, members of the station uncover, in the ice, what they assume to be an ancient creature.  Thawing it out doesn’t turn out well, unfortunately, as it turns out to be all power mad and from Mars and…  Okay, the ‘Ice Warriors’ line of reasoning, when their fellow Martians are de-iced, is pretty loosey-goosey, and they never quite come across as a threat, what with their whisper-speak and apple bottoms, but they create an interesting catalyst for that man and machine juxtaposition – the computer calls a stalemate because the logical decision involves the computer going bye-bye – and also prompt an interesting comparison between the Warriors’ own search for power and Clent’s need to be the decision maker.

Jamie is knocked out and Victoria kidnapped for much of this, but when they’re around, the say intelligent things.  Troughton kicks mucho ass and wears his wooly jacket.  Martinus does a lot of inventive things with his camera, including some surprising action and panning shots.

While the actual plot of The Ice Warriors isn’t necessarily convincing, it’s built from a satisfyingly complex web of ideas, and moves at an exciting clip, with the drama coming moreso from the fate of the station and its inhabitants than the creatures-of-the-week…  Which ain’t a bad thing, as it means we get three-dimensional characters and a fleshed out world for them to exist in.