OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 185
STORY NUMBER: 039
TRANSMITTED: 16 December 1967
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors
TELESNAPS: The Ice Warriors: Six
The Doctor struggles with Zondal but he manages to fire the weapon before collapsing. Varga demands Clent's surrender but Clent negotiates with him for face to face talks. Walters struggles under the pressure and goes to smash the computer before Miss Garrett stuns him. The Doctor begins work on the Martian sonic cannon. Varga, Isbur and Rintan arrive at the base and start to talk with Clent. Walters starts to regain conciousness and aims a weapon at Varga but is killed by a warrior. Varga demands the fuel from the reactor. Miss Garrett is forced to run the Ioniser down to a safe level. The Doctor has modified the sonic cannon to affect liquids theorising that the Ice Warriors have a higher water content than humans. Penley awakens in the sickbay and leaves. Making his way to the control room he sees the warriors within and raises the temperature and humidity levels making things very uncomfortable for them even before the Doctor fires the sonic cannon at the base forcing their retreat. The Doctor destroys the sonic cannon controls for the ship before he and Victoria leave. When they return to the base Penley overrides the computer's decision and activates the Ioniser at full power forcing back the glacier and destroying the Martian vessel.
Yeah, that wasn't too bad an episode but you could see the "Humans triumph by making a decision over the computer" coming a mile off. There's a lot of mucking about and repetition in this story as a whole, I wonder if it might have worked better as a four parter rather than a six?
The Ice Warriors was novelised by it's author Brian Hayles and was the third Troughton story to see print. Almost every Doctor Who hardback in my local library advertised it on the back but they didn't have a copy so I was very keen to find it in paperback in the shops. To this day I'd swear it's better than the TV story. An Audiobook version is currently available. The Ice Warriors was released on Video in November 1998 for the show's 35th anniversary. The set contained all four surviving episodes, a partial telesnap reconstruction of the 2 missing ones, a cd of the soundtrack of both missing episodes, a documentary on the missing episodes and the sole surviving episode of the Underwater Menace. I was at this point getting increasingly keen to see Web of Fear part 1 so was annoyed that wasn't used instead of Underwater Menace. A Soundtrack CD of all 6 episodes was released in August 2005 with narration by Fraser Hines. This is one of those times when you look at something on the Internet and go "How much?" when you what people are paying for it now!
We've done well so far this season: 9 of the 16 episodes exist. Sadly only 4 episodes exist of the remaining 24 in the season.
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