Doctor Who The Ice Warriors
It is
the far future and because everyone eats food in the form of pills
people stopped growing crops (?) this reduced the carbon monoxide in the
atmosphere and heralded a new ice age. To stop the onslaught of the ice
the world government have created the ioniser an…. um… ill defined…thing
that uses energy in the form of heat to melt ice. (duh)
Unfortunately like much new and interesting technology the ioniser
requires a genius scientist to keep it from not exploding and killing
everyone. I’m not sure how the salesperson spun that as a feature not a
bug but Europe apparently bought one anyway. It is made clear that this
is a very computerised society with people so used to having computers
check their actions that they have become totally reliant upon them. It
is here that the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land. Coincidently just as a
strange creature has been found encased in ice during a routine
scientific survey of the glacier. The creature has been in the ice for
thousands of years and yet the Doctor spies electronic connections on
its helmet. This is an Ice-warrior and as we quickly learn it is
from Mars. It immediately kidnaps Victoria, hides her in a cupboard and
starts interrogating her, somehow it gets information out of her through
all the screaming and moaning and decides that it will get its brothers
out of the ice and take this world for its own.
There
is a lot to like about the Troughton era, the obvious affection that
Jamie and the Doctor share is heart-warming, Troughton’s nuanced
portrayal is a good enough reason alone to watch the episodes and the
Ice Warriors are an interesting if flawed enemy that do get much better
in later serials. But whilst it’s possible to empathise with Victoria
her complete uselessness in the face of any kind of opposition and her
proclivity to scream should anything even remotely strange startle her
is grating here. She really is much better in Tomb or the Cybermen where
she shows some backbone. No, I wouldn’t like being kidnapped by a Martin
either but I think I’d stop whining about it eventually.
Audio:
Is quite good, sometimes suffering from someone being a little off-mic
it’s still really quite good
Video:
Picture quality is excellent but of course what everyone wants to know
is, is the bloody animation any good? The BBC have been fairly
inconsistent with their release of incomplete serials, the fans want
them and until we have the technology to reanimate the actors involved
and get them to recreate it then unfortunately animation is really the
way to go. Although my mind was almost changed on this when I saw what
passed for animation on Reign of terror earlier this year. When “The
Invasion” came out 2006 I thought “great this is really good, not
perfect but it will get better”. Unfortunately it’s just been getting
worse as Cosgrove Hall the company who did that animation went out of
business and apparently unnamed flash animators had a go at Reign of
Terror.
Fortunately The ice warriors is no-where near as bad as reign of terror,
it’s not perfect, but it’s probably on par or better than The invasion
and is a step back in the right direction and looks like it has been
animated by someone with a passing understanding of anatomy, lighting
and movement.
Now we
have also seen the new animation for the 10th planet and that
looks different in style again with a slightly Manga feel. It’s this
inconstancy that might make the fans turn back to the audio versions of
adventures.
Special Features:
Two
documentaries are on here one focusing on the making of the Ice Warriors
and what a terribly ambitious script it was for the money that the BBC
was prepared to lavish on Doctor Who and another about the process of
animating the missing episodes which is actually fairly good.
