Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (58 page)

So now I’m watching a reconstruction of the still-absent episode three, and I’m obsessing about what we can’t see here. The pictures suggest that the thawing Martians in the blocks of ice looked absolutely terrific, whilst the ambush of Jamie and Arden – and the unceremonious way they’re cut down – is pretty brutal. Arden’s death, surprisingly, comes only after he’s shown pangs of conscience for no particular reason – he’s not even reported the death he treated so glibly in episode one, and the last time we saw him, he was demonstrating vaulting ambition and anticipating personal glory. But if nothing else, Arden’s sudden inclination to fret gives Peter Barkworth a chance to stumble as Clent tentatively attempts to show some humanity in response. It’s a brilliant piece of characterisation – subtle, consistent and multi-layered, this is one of the series’ finest guest performances up to this point.

And it’s Clent who begins to really spell out this story’s central conflict: that of science verses humanity. He insists on checking the Doctor’s findings with the computer (a move that Troughton crossly resents), and talks of colleagues, not friends. The challenges they’re facing are somewhat typical Doctor Who adventure and jeopardy – one of the companions has been taken hostage, another has been shot and there are deadly aliens thawing out – but the likes of Clent, Penley and Miss Garrett make the proceedings pop off the screen.

Oh, one more thing... Penley has been keeping notes on The Omega Factor, has he? It’s good to know that an intimate knowledge of 1970s telefantasy featuring Louise Jameson will be vital when the world’s under threat. (You and I, Rob, might end up becoming indispensable experts come the environmental apocalypse.)

April 3rd

The Ice Warriors episode four

R:
I’m in a good mood. Because this – and another bumper two episodes after it! – actually exist in the archives, and I can watch them as moving pictures on my telly screen. You know, the way they were intended. It makes me much more forgiving of their faults. (God knows how I’m going to respond to the series after we reach The War Games; I’ll be so overjoyed to be in a world free of blurry telesnaps that I’ll probably love
everything
, just on principle. Watch this space.)

So, yes, intellectually, I think episode four has a few problems. It’s that midway point in a long serial, so not very much really happens. Victoria escapes from the Ice Warriors, but is recaptured in time for the closing credits. The Doctor sets out for the Ice Warrior spaceship – but only gets there in time for the episode ending. And what an episode ending! Simply by refusing to be civil, and answering a perfectly innocuous question, the Doctor faces death and a contrived cliffhanger. If I were watching this by telesnap alone, I’m not sure I’d be getting much out of it. But with all the pictures in place, I can see how good Derek Martinus’ direction is. On paper the sequence where the Ice Warrior Turoc lumbers after Victoria should do the Ice Warriors’ credibility no good whatsoever, emphasising that they can’t move very fast and have an alarming blind spot when people hide directly in front of them. But Martinus makes the slow heavy lurch of the Ice Warrior very intimidating – and coupled with Dudley Simpson’s terrific music, there’s a real tension to these scenes where a terrified Victoria runs for her life.

And there are some great moments. The social awkwardness of Clent, trying to express just how much he’s come to value the Doctor – Peter Barkworth is quite brilliant in this scene. The casual cruelty of Storr’s death, as the Ice Warriors assess his uselessness and dispose of him so peremptorily that their victim has only seconds to realise his life is in danger. The eagerness that Angus Lennie (as Storr) shows when finding in Frazer Hines a soulmate, someone who also cannot understand the science of the base, and the way that he throws away his life trying to help this new friend. And, as ever, best of all, the calm authority with which Patrick Troughton takes on the responsibility of talking to the alien aggressors – firmly telling his frightened friends that he refuses to take weapons with him. That he looks in his fur coat just as primitive as the hapless Storr, and that he too is parroting the naïve belief that he can reason with the Martians, can hardly be lost on us.

T:
This adventure continues to run the whole gamut of philosophical issues, using what could have been a bog-standard contest with some reptile men to focus on weighty issues such as science versus nature, technology versus humanity and man verses alien. Clent in particular is something of a marvel; lesser writers would have made him either an obstinate figure with whom the Doctor butts heads, or a helpful, sympathetic leader – yet in one scene here, he’s both. He bullies Victoria in his efforts to find out what type of engines the Martian spacecraft uses – part of an effort to determine whether or not it’s safe to use the Ioniser against the encroaching glaciers. But then, when the Doctor says he’s going to personally investigate the matter, Clent gets all vulnerable and human – he can’t quite bring himself to make a rousing speech that will keep the Doctor from going, looks to Miss Garrett for help at one point and finally snaps out his acquiescence. I hate to think that the nuances of Peter Barkworth’s brilliant performance would have remained lost had these episodes not surfaced – Penley’s description of his former boss is great (“He’s got a printed circuit where his heart should be”), but Barkworth evolves the character into so much more than that.

The chief drawback to all of this wonderful character texturing, for me at least, continues to be the scruffy Storr (whose name, by the way, sounds like the monikers of Martians to come). He’s a berk – someone who takes his anti-science views to such an extreme, he’s blinded to all reality and pragmatism about the topic, and ends up looking like a stupid idealist. In short, he’s an ill-educated loudmouth who gives the environmental lobby a bad name. Just look at how he chides Penley because the Martian weapons were “scientifically designed”. Well, duh – so’s your cooker, you numpty! I can’t help but feel that Storr isn’t in the story because he’s a serious component of the unfolding discussion about man’s relationship to technology – instead, I suspect he’s just there as collateral damage, someone the Ice Warriors can bump off to remind us of their cold matter-of-factness. And it
does
work in that regard – Martinus famously cast shorter actors here as the humans, and seeing Bresslaw tower over little Angus Lennie is visually impressive. Matters get sickeningly terrifying when Storr is caught between Zondal and Varga as if he’s a frightened rabbit, and they end up blasting him down after assessing his uselessness (or, rather,
non
-usefulness). In death, at least, Storr is a stark demonstration of the warriors’ dispassionate soldiery.

Overall, I’m finding so much to like about this story. The sturdy, visually impressive sets look great on film, the chase scene is terrific, Bresslaw wonderfully looks like he’s having a kip (as his head sinks into his body carapace like a turtle), and there’s that superbly stylised music. It’s an ethereal female voice contrasted with the sudden chomping, clunking solidity of a... er, is it a glockenspiel? Well, it’s a voice and an instrument anyway, which work at odds to underline the themes of the story in a neatly distinct fashion.

The Ice Warriors episode five

R:
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m really enjoying my journey through Troughtondom. But it may well be a mark of the fact that the series has by now given itself over entirely to monster-led sci-fi japes, that there are fewer genuinely stand-out performances given by guest actors any longer. The stories are falling into certain types, and therefore the characters do too – in principle, there’s little to distinguish General Cutler from Hobson to Leader Clent, they’re all gruff leaders of bases under siege. Looking back at The Moonbase, I wouldn’t necessarily fault Patrick Barr for his bland performance, because he merely played within the limits of the stereotype he was given.

So when Peter Barkworth gives his take upon a similar role, the fact that he mines so much from it is extraordinary. He’s playing a man in an impossible situation, and goes from grim resolve to dreadful panic within moments. In one scene he’s attacked by Penley for giving up hope, and then attacked by him minutes later because he’s too hopeful. It’d be so easy for Clent by now to be nothing more than a series of tics – and we’ve seen so many characters recently descend quickly into insanity (Cutler, Lesterson, Maxtible, Klieg) that we’re quite prepared to add another loony to the list. But it’s the way that Barkworth ferociously holds onto his character’s dignity that is so impressive, sometimes in spite of the script. There’s that very funny moment when he tries to rally his troops about him, only to be met by flat indifference from Walters – and Barkworth makes this attempt at optimistic cheerleading something that is genuinely touching. He makes the indecision of the character come to life quite brilliantly, understanding full well that any course of action he follows could be considered suicide. By this stage we can see perfectly clearly how the story must end, that the Ice Warriors can only be defeated if Clent pulls himself together and uses the Ioniser – and all these outbursts of angst are just delaying the inevitable. But Barkworth makes his agonies feel like a real character journey. And that’s helped by the terrific encounter he has with Peter Sallis’ Penley. Both Penley and Clent have spent so much time demonising the other, it’s a jolt to realise this is the first scene they share on screen together.

I think Brian Hayles’ script is so clever and thoughtful too – it’s a story about the dangers of inaction (rather like the Yeti story was a month ago), but that it makes passivity so exciting is really rather an achievement. The Ice Warriors is a bit like The Moonbase, but with greater exploration of the themes it raises. Like the Cyberman story, it’s all focussed around a weather-controlling device being threatened by a bunch of monsters – and how, in the end, turning the device upon those monsters will win the day. But whereas the only dilemma The Moonbase offers is in the practical difficulty of how to play the Gravitron upon the lunar surface (done in the end by pressing a button they’d forgotten – phew, that’s okay then), with only lip service paid to the environmental dangers that might cause, The Ice Warriors is all about being given the solution to the problem and then not having the guts to implement it. In that way, the familiarity of the setting and the predictability of the plot are being acknowledged and discussed. This is The Moonbase rewritten with brains.

It’s not all furrowed brows, though. Troughton at last gets to act off the big reptile monsters – and his first instinct upon seeing the giants, to run in the other direction, is very funny. And the scene he plays with Deborah Watling, plotting the use of a stink bomb as Victoria pretends to cry and he blows his nose, is a perfect bit of comedy.

T:
Well, thanks for doing your job so well... you haven’t left
me
with an awful lot to say, have you? So, all right, let’s talk about the Ice Warrior costumes. They’re imposingly bulky yet manoeuvrable, very sturdy looking and convincingly alien. It’s a conundrum, though, as to where the armour stops and the warrior begins. Their outer shells look like genuine reptilian outer casings, but the helmets do seem to be just that – helmets. They’re wired up for starters, and we can see the mouth below. So unless the
only
thing they wear is a hat, surely their main carapaces must be armour too? And yet, the armour seems hairy at the top – who wears hairy armour? And their hands must be gloves, as they have a laser gun attached. So is
everything
we see armour, apart from the space for their mouths? It
must
be, in which case, we’ve got to ask by what quirk of Martian culture they made their armour to look reptilian. (Human armour, after all, usually doesn’t try to pretend to be skin.) Or (I’m getting an idea here), maybe they augmented themselves and are effectively cyber-reptiles, with technology grafted onto their heads and a gun onto their hands. Unless the new series revisits the warriors, we might never get a proper answer to these questions, but either way – it’s a stunning and iconic design, isn’t it?

Otherwise, the plot continues to give us an expertly crafted dilemma. It’s a brilliant damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario where the central dilemma boils down to “Act against the aggressors and you might die; don’t act and... well, you’ll probably die.” It allows all the characters involved to flourish, and the scene between Clent and Penley is especially marvellous – Barkworth aims certain barbs directly at Sallis, then opens out the argument and uses as a propaganda speech to underline his authority and undermine Penley’s position. This man would be brilliant in the boardroom (playing some form of, I dunno, Power Game perhaps). Miss Garrett is interesting too – the admiration that she displays for the central computer contains such reverence that it borders on the worshipful, and makes her seem automaton-like.

One character that’s usually overlooked, though, is the cynical Walters, whose regional accent is quite rare at this point in the series. When Clent suggests that Walters didn’t expect he’d be dealing with ice monsters when he volunteered for his job, Walters’ response – that he didn’t volunteer actually, but was drafted – echoes a similar exchange in the M.A.S.H. movie, so acclaimed for its satire. And yet, little old Doctor Who had already done it three years earlier.

April 4th