Plot:
The North Pole, 1983. A Soviet submarine finds a prehistoric creature in the ice and the crew take it onboard. When defrosted, it turns out to be an Ice Warrior, Grand Marshal Skaldak. The Doctor and Clara arrive just as things are kicking off, and the sub is sinking. They are separated from the TARDIS which dematerialises without them because of a (frankly rubbish) defence mechanism. The Doctor helps the crew manoeuvre the sub onto an underwater rock ledge to halt their descent. Skaldak, at first disbelieving that he's been frozen for thousands of years, puts out a distress signal, but gets no reply. The crew attack him; he escapes by slipping out of his chained-up armoured suit, and kills a lot of the crew. Desperate and seeking vengeance, and having learnt about Mutually Assured Destruction from one of the crew,the warrior attempts to fire the sub's missiles to instigate a nuclear holocaust. The Doctor and Clara try to persuade him to show mercy, then the submarine starts to rise to the surface, caught in the tractor beam of a Martian spaceship that has arrived to take Skaldak home. There's also a lot of talk about honour and war, and much singing of 1980s pop songs.
Context:
I watched this one Sunday afternoon with two of the kids (boys of 17 and 13) from a disc in the Complete Seventh Series Blu-ray box set; the youngest was out at a friend's birthday party. The eldest commented at the start that the random number selection method had a sick sense of humour (we watched it when the news of the search for the lost submersible Titan, and its tragic conclusion, was fresh in everyone's mind).
First Time Round:
I first saw this story on the day of its debut broadcast on BBC1, 13th April 2013. It's over a decade ago now (somehow) so I suppose I could be forgiven for being hazy on the details, but I can remember specifics of first seeing Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant episodes. It's only from Matt Smith onwards that my recall fails. This could be because the returned series was a tad less special for me, having become part of the televisual furniture, or it could be that I had more going on in my life outside of favourite programmes, with the day job busier and having three kids by 2013. Or both. In the past, I've shared different anecdotes about watching Doctor Who in other periods instead, but I've pretty much run them out now. Coincidentally, though, we're in the process of clearing out the garage. Disposing of lots of junk,I came across a cache of old journals. I've kept them periodically through my life, and happened to be doing so in 2013. I looked at the relevant date and found this entry "I've worked from home all week; should I be going into the office more? Knackered though - [Third child's] teething. Work's going okay, anyway." I checked back for the previous two weeks, and forward for the next five, and there was no mention of watching any Doctor Who story of the run. I then realised I already knew this but had forgotten (dodgy recall again) as I'd dug out the same journal for reference in a blog post years before (in 2017, for The Crimson Horror). On balance, I'm glad. Even for an enthusiast like myself,I think it would be a bit sad to be writing about watching TV in a diary; not that my life was scintillatingly interesting or anything, as you can tell from the entry quoted.
Reaction:
This will seem a bit off topic at first, and it's maybe because they had a Greatest Hits just come out at the time of watching, but I kept thinking of the Pet Shop Boys when I viewed Cold War. They are one band originating in the 80s that wasn't name-checked by the Walkman-wearing comedy professor played by David Warner who has a healthy appetite for decadent Western pop; the 1983 setting is just a little too early. Nonetheless, there's an echo in my reactions to this and writer Mark Gatiss's other Doctor Who stories and reactions to the music of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. My fandom for ver Pets is the only thing to reach anything like the fervour of my obsession with Doctor Who. As someone in possession of a great and detailed fan knowledge of the synth duo, I know something that may surprise those without such knowledge: they mean it, man. Many think that they are arch, dead-pan comedians who record, say, a kind of anti-Presley version of the Elvis number Always on my Mind (which they covered in 1987) with icy reserve as a statement somehow subverting rock n' roll and its icons. In his novel About a Boy, Nick Hornby demonstrates this attitude, having his commitment-phobic protagonist at one point shut himself off from the feelings and compromises of other people and take solace in Pet Shop Boys music as "he wanted to hear people who didn't mean it". This is a false impression. Neil Tennant felt he put lots of feeling into the vocal of Always on my Mind, he wasn't trying to subvert anything - he just has one of those voices.
I think I've previously been guilty of thinking the same of Gatiss, that his stories were pastiches, cover versions of Doctor Who stories past (in this case, 1967's The Ice Warriors), superficial without deeper resonance. Now, I'm thinking maybe he's just got one of those (authorial) voices. It's a very well made story, and what appears on screen is glossy. The physical model work of the submarine is superlative; the cast are amazing. As well as Warner delivering the goods in a gift of a role, Liam Cunningham is more than dependable in the role of the sub's Captain; then, pretty much every other role is an early or at least earlier appearance for someone who's now a TV household name (James Norton, Tobias Menzies, Josh O'Connor). All men of course, but that's forgivable this time, given the setting.It's a clever setting too; Doctor Who's done sequences on a submarine once before (in The Sea Devils) but not for a long time, and the interiors in the studio create a sublime verisimilitude (with an impressive amount of water being tipped onto the cast). The modern version of the Ice Warrior costume is a solid, faithful recreation, but then depicting the (CGI) Martian creature outside his armour does something new with this old enemy. The regulars are generally well served with Jenna Coleman particularly given some nice scenes to be plucky and brave. It's probably not fair to call this a pastiche cover version, clearly a lot of work has gone into it, including in the scripting; but, I still feel it's lacking something.Am I getting it wrong like those people doing a hasty surface read of Pet Shop Boys songs? Let me look a bit deeper.
I can see that playing with old elements in a new scenario was something that was very important to Gatiss - he went to great lengths to persuade an unconvinced showrunner Steven Moffat on the benefits of bringing back the Martian turtlenecks after so long, when Moffat only saw them as the epitome of the slowly lumbering retro Doctor Who monster. Gatiss does a good job of countering that, showing that they can be nimble and wily. The Ice Warriors come with a bit more baggage from Who history than other monsters (which I'll go into more detail on in the Deeper Thoughts section below), as they have been - almost unprecedentedly - allowed to develop. In their 1970s stories, they turned against their monstrous ways, and became peaceful. Because of this, Gatiss didn't have a lot of wriggle room with forming the story.To justify bringing them back, he couldn't just structure a fun race-against-time actioner where the monster could be any interchangeable menace. So, he has to have characters bang on about codes of honour at least for a bit. It's a good choice to generate this material out of the contemporary events in the wider world in 1983, but it's still not as interesting as action scenes with people trapped on a sub with a monster. This is probably the reason the story doesn't quite work for me. It's too good a premise to use with an Ice Warrior - it needs a monster without that baggage, so it can be focussed and have a purity of purpose. Famously, in a singles collection in 2003, the Pet Shop Boys divided their songs into those that they thought were pure pop, and those that aspired to be art. Cold War tries in its way to be both,when it probably needed to pick a side. It's not lacking something, it's doing too much. I'd have preferred, in this instance at least, a story that was more superficial.
Connectivity:
Cold War and The Krotons are the only two TV Doctor Who stories thus far to refer to the HADS (Hostile Action Displacement System) that can be set for the TARDIS. Both stories also feature aliens that have been stranded on a planet for generations.
Deeper Thoughts:
What took you so long? As mentioned above, the Ice Warriors had not appeared for a good while in Doctor Who before their 2013 return in Cold War. The gap since their most recent previous appearance (way back in 1974's The Monster of Peladon) was 39 years. This is by my reckoning the Silver medal winner, the second-lengthiest return thus far of any monster or villain to TV screens in Doctor Who's history. Nothing's ever that simple with Doctor Who stats, though, so it could be classified as Bronze - if you assume that the Yeti in The Five Doctors was not animated by the Great Intelligence as it usually is, then the Intelligence was away for 44 years between 1968's The Web of Fear and 2012's The Snowmen. If not, then Gold goes to the Macra. Thanks to a throwaway joke by Russell T Davies in his script for Gridlock,making the fearsome creatures stalking the motorways of New New York the same creatures that featured in one early Patrick Troughton story, there were four decades between the two (and to date only two) attacks of those giant crabs, pipping Mars' finest by a year. Davies could have picked almost anything, though - the story wasn't about the Macra, and indeed the script has to briefly explain why they don't act anything like they did in 1967. Generally, though, returns in that period were more planned and integrated: in the early days of the returned series from 2005, Davies tended to bring back one or two old monsters or villains a year to provide a big event story in the middle or at the end of the season, with modern redesigns perfect for marketing and merchandising opportunities.
The producer in the 1980s, John Nathan-Turner, had done something similar in that decade. As such, the gaps were often not that lengthy, as the monster or villain had been rebooted before. The shortest gap for someone between popping up in the classic and then new series would be the Master, as he appeared in the Paul McGann TV movie in 1996 before returning in 2007, only 11 years between them. I don't really count the Daleks' appearance in that story (they aren't shown, and the voices heard sound nothing like Daleks), but they and the Cybermen were around towards the end of the 80s anyway, so they were only away for a relatively shirt 17 and 18 years respectively, not much longer than the show itself was unavailable as an ongoing series in which they could be showcased. Beyond those big three,who are likely always to crop up eventually in any new era of the show, it comes down to how popular characters might be to a writer or producer, or how good a fit they were for a particular story idea: Davros (20 years away between 1988 and 2008), the Sontarans (23 years, 1985 to 2008), and - usually treated as villainous by the series - the Time Lords (23 years, 1986 to 2009) are next most popular by this measure. The Sea Devils were away for 38 years before returning in 2022, the Zygons were away the same length of time before returning in 2013 for the 50th anniversary. The Autons were not seen on screen for 34 years before kicking the relaunched series off with Rose in 2005.
There was a near miss in the 1980s when the Autons almost made a comeback; like The Ice Warriors, they were lined up to be in stories before the 1986 season was postponed and rethought. It's hard to see why a great concept like the Autons feature so rarely in Doctor Who (unless I'm missing anything, they have only featured in four stories in 60 years). The Ice Warriors haven't fared much better, but with them it's a bit easier to understand. It's the baggage I mentioned in the Reaction section above. They were once warlike, though bound by various codes of honour, then later turned to peace and became members of united galactic groups; there are still some breakaway groups who do not follow the peaceful leadership that most do, and are not above killing and enslaving people.Notwithstanding the time it would take to cover all that in a story, it would anyway seem like they re a rip-off of the Klingons from Star Trek who went through the same development, word for word, in the 1980s. Of course, that was over a decade after it was done in Doctor Who (it's most likely a coincidence). It's just personal taste of course, but I always found the Klingon-centred episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation the most boring; perhaps too many Ice Warriors stories might have ended up the same. As it is, nobody but Mark Gatiss has written a story for them in the new series era and he's only done two.All that could change in the next few years of course. We could see large green men from Mars back in Doctor Who again in the Ncuti era.
In Summary:
It's a MAD MAD MAD MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) world!
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