Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

The Ice Warriors

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS tumbles into the world’s new ice age, in the third millennium. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria find themselves surrounded by snow and ice, with a human outpost led by a man named Clent. Clent’s staff are Britain’s last defense against an advancing ice shelf, but some of his men are preoccupied with something else they’ve found in the ice – an enormous armored body, larger than most humans. They bring it into the outpost to thaw it out, and when it does, it turns out that the creature is still alive. The so-called Ice Warrior

written by Brian Hayles
directed by Derek Martinus
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Wendy Gifford (Miss Garrett), Peter Barkworth (Clent), George Waring (Arden), Malcolm Taylor (Walters), Peter Diamond (Davis), Angus Lennie (Storr), Peter Sallis (Penley), Bernard Bresslaw (Varga), Roy Skelton (Computer voice), Roger Jones (Zondal), Sonny Caldinez (Turoc), Tony Harwood (Rintan), Michael Attwell (Ishur)

Broadcast from November 11 through December 16, 1967

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Seeds Of Death

Doctor WhoIn the 21st century, mankind has given up rocket-based travel in favor of the T-mat teleportation system – even to the extent of not maintaining any space vehicles in case they’re needed. This almost turns into a fatal mistake when a vital T-mat installation based on the moon loses contact with Earth, after a terrified final message from one of the moonbase crew mentioning a takeover. Even when the T-mat administrators find a barely spaceworthy rocket in the workshop of a sentimental space travel hobbyist, they need one more thing – someone who has the experience necessary to fly the rocket. The Doctor, with Jamie and Zoe in tow, arrives just in time to take on the hazardous mission, discovering that the moonbase is just the first step in another Ice Warrior attempt to colonize Earth by brute force.

Download this episodewritten by Brian Hayles
directed by Michael Ferguson
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Alan Bennion (Slaar), Steve Peters, Tony Harwood, Sonny Caldinez (Ice Warriors), Philip Ray (Eldred), Louise Pajo (Gia Kelly), John Witty (Computer voice), Ric Felgate (Brent), Harry Towb (Osgood), Ronald Leigh-Hunt (Radnor), Terry Scully (Fewsham), Christopher Coll (Phipps), Martin Cort (Locke), Derrick Slater (Guard), Graham Leaman (Marshal), Hugh Morton (Sir James Gregson), Peter Whittaker (Weather station operator)

Broadcast from January 25 through March 1, 1969

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The War Games

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to a World War I battlefield, but upon closer examination they find that the battlegrounds have been recreated on an alien planet. For the next several episodes, the Doctor and company wander through various different simulated wars in Earth history, finally discovering the alien War Lords at the heart of a plot to create an all-powerful army from the most powerful ranks of Earth history’s greatest military forces. Left with the task of stopping the War Lords, as well as returning all of the abducted Earth soldiers to their native times and places, the Doctor reluctantly summons the help of his own people, the Time Lords – and in so doing draws their attention to him as well. After dealing with the War Lords, the Time Lords put the Doctor on trial, the verdict of which will cost him another of his precious lives.

Order this story on DVDwritten by Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Jane Sherwin (Lady Buckingham), David Savile (Carstairs), John Livesly, Bernard Davies (German Soldiers), Terence Bayler (Barrington), Brian Forster (Willis), Noel Coleman (General Smythe), Hubert Rees (Captain Ransom), Esmond Webb (Burns), Richard Steele (Gorton), Peter Stanton (Chauffeur), Pat Gorman (Policeman), Tony McEwan (Redcoat), David Valla (Crane), Gregg Palmer (Lucke), David Garfield (Von Weich), Edward Brayshaw (War Chief), Philip Madoc (War Lord), James Bree (Security Chief), Bill Hutchinson (Thompson), Terry Adams (Riley), Leslie Schofield (Leroy), Vernon Dobtcheff (Scientist), Rudolph Walker (Harper), John Atterbury, Charles Pemberton (Aliens), Michael Lynch (Spencer), Graham Weston (Russell), David Troughton (Moor), Peter Craze (Du Pont), Michael Napier-Brown (Villar), Stephen Hubay (Petrov), Bernard Horsfall, Trevor Martin, Clyde Pollitt (Time Lords), Clare Jenkins (Tanya), Freddie Wilson (Quark), John Levene (Yeti), Tony Harwood (Ice Warrior), Roy Pearce (Cyberman), Robert Jewell (Dalek)

Broadcast from April 19 through June 21, 1969

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 09 Doctor Who

The Curse of Peladon

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, with Jo in tow, tries another of his experiments in getting the TARDIS working – and to both of their astonishment, the time machine roars into life and dematerializes, taking the two to the stormy planet of Peladon. On the eve of its admission into the Federation that includes Earth, Peladon receives delegates from Federation member planets Arcturus, Alpha Centauri – and Earth itself, a delegation for which the Doctor and Jo are mistaken. Also present are the Doctor’s old enemies, the Ice Warriors, though the motives for their presence may not be as sinister as the Doctor fears – and yet when both the delegates and the royal house of Peladon come under attack, the Doctor can suspect no one else.

written by Brian Hayles
directed by Lennie Mayne
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Henry Gilbert (Torbis), David Troughton (Peladon), Geoffrey Toone (Hepesh), Gordon St. Clair (Grun), Nick Hobbs (Aggedor), Stuart Fell (Alpha Centauri), Ysanne Churchman (voice of Alpha Centauri), Murphy Grumbar (Arcturus), Terry Bale (voice of Arcturus), Sonny Caldinez (Sworg), Alan Bennion (Izlyr), George Giles (Captain), Wendy Danvers (Amazonia)

Broadcast from January 29 through February 19, 1972

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 11 Doctor Who

The Monster of Peladon

Doctor WhoThe Doctor brings Sarah to the planet Peladon, a world he last visited with Jo Grant in tow. But it’s a place still plagued by trouble. Queen Thalira, the daughter of the young King that the Doctor met on his previous visit, is facing an uprising among Peladon’s mineworkers. Little does she know, there are also worse threats ahead if the miners shut off Peladon’s export of a vital mineral. Alpha Centauri is still serving as an ambassador, trying to smooth things over, but someone is working against the Queen and the miners – and the mighty best Aggedor may be unable to stop them. This time, are the Doctor’s instincts about the Ice Warriors correct?

written by Brian Hayles
directed by Lennie Mayne
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Ralph Watson (Ettis), Donald Gee (Eckersley), Gerald Taylor (Vega Nexos), Nina Thomas (Queen Thalira), Frank Gatcliffe (Ortron), Michael Crane (Blor), Stuart Fell (Alpha Centauri), Ysanne Churchman (voice of Alpha Centauri), Terry Walsh (Captain), Rex Robinson (Gebek), Graeme Eton (Preba), Nick Hobbs (Aggedor), Roy Evans (Rima), Sonny Caldinez (Sskel), Alan Bennion (Azaxyr), Max Faulkner (Miner)

Broadcast from March 23 through April 27, 1974

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Red Dawn

Doctor Who: Red DawnThe TARDIS takes the Doctor and Peri to a cathedralesque structure on the surface of Mars early in the 21st century at a particularly historic moment – the day of the first American manned landing on the red planet. But NASA’s crew is a motley assortment. Two American astronauts are accompanied by a pair of British civilians, Tanya and Paul Webster, whose only claim to their seats on the mission is their relation to a rich uncle whose financial backing kept the Mars shot from being scrapped. But the Websters’ presence is more than just a favor to the mission’s benefactor. The Doctor, Peri, and the astronauts discover that the elaborate building is an Ice Warrior tomb, guarded by a contingent of Warriors in suspended animation. Paul Webster suddenly shows his true colors: as an ambitious and unscrupulous agent for his equally corrupt uncle, he is on the Mars mission to bring back as much alien technology as he can find. The honor-bound Ice Warriors have a hard time coming to any conclusion other than vengeance – which could kill both the innocent members of the expedition and the time travelers as well. The Doctor feels personally responsible for the entire incident, which might not have happened if not for his presence on Mars.

Order this CDwritten by Justin Richards
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Matthew Brenher (Lord Zzaal), Robert Jezek (Commander Lee Forbes), Maureen Oakley (Pilot Susan Roberts), Stephen Fewell (Paul Webster), Georgia Moffatt (Tanya Webster), Hylton Collins (Subcommander Sstast), Alistair Lock (Zizmar), Jason Haigh-Ellery (Sskann), Gary Russell (Razzburr)

Notes: Georgia Moffatt is Peter Davison’s daughter, but she’s not the first offspring of the leading actor to appear in the series. Sylvester McCoy’s two sons played Haemovores in 1989’s The Curse Of Fenric, and the late Patrick Troughton’s son David made three appearances, a bit part in 1969’s The War Games and much more prominent roles in 1972’s The Curse Of Peladon and 2008’s Midnight. Moffatt would later appear in a 2008 episode of the revived Doctor Who TV series, ironically titled The Doctor’s Daughter, and married the tenth Doctor, David Tennant, in 2011.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Frozen Time

Doctor Who: Frozen TimeAn expedition to Antarctica in 2012 uncovers an unexpected find: an old fashioned British police box, buried under millions of years worth of permafrost. On the heels of that surprising find comes another discovery: a man frozen more or less intact, probably for millions of years…but wearing machine-woven clothes (or at leas the rotting remnants of them). Even more amazingly, the man awakens when he is thawed out, though with little idea of who he is or what he was doing in the ice. The expedition’s financier, Lord Barset?, surprises the scientists on the expedition by wondering aloud if the man is a reptile. Before long, more figures are found in the ice, large and reptilian. The mystery man’s memory gradually returns, enough that he knows that the scaly figures frozen in the ice are very dangerous, and he himself is known as the Doctor. Despite the Doctor’s warnings, Barset orders the huge creatures thawed out. They too reawaken, but the moment they’re back on their feet, they begin a reign of terror, killing almost the entire expedition. The Doctor’s memory continues to return slowly, the result of a self-induced coma to survive being frozen alive, and he recalls that these creatures are called Ice Warriors – and that the enclave of them that has been discovered represents the most warlike of the lot: exiled war criminals put into deep-freeze on prehistoric Earth. Even though they’re millions of years old, modern man won’t be an obstacle when the Ice Warriors renew their craving for conquest. Only the Doctor can stop them…if he can remember how.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Anthony Calf (Lord Barset), Maryam d’Abo (Genevieve), Tony Millan (Professor McIntyre), Gwynn Beech (Harman), Gregg Newton (Ben), Nicholas Briggs (Arakssor)

Timeline: between Valhalla and The Death Collectors

Notes: Frozen Time is based on Endurance, another of the 1980s Audio Visuals adventures starring Nicholas Briggs (who wrote both versions of the story) as the Doctor. Some character names are shared between the two versions of the story, but Endurance concerned itself with Silurian renegades frozen in Antarctica, and dialogue in Frozen Time tries to lead the listener in that direction as well. The 1929 expedition led by Lord Barset’s grandfather may well have encountered Silurians, but they’re nowhere to be found in the Big Finish version of the story; pre-release internet speculation frequently pegged Frozen Time as a Silurian story as well. This story and Valhalla both feature the seventh Doctor flying solo; this came about because of Sylvester McCoy’s tight schedule, since his Big Finish recording days had to be scheduled around his stage appearances in King Lear.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Bride Of Peladon

Doctor Who: The Bride Of PeladonResponding to an Ice Warrior ambassador’s distress call, the Doctor, Peri and Erimem wind up on a doomed ship on a crash course for the planet Peladon, a world the Doctor has visited before. The Ice Warrior’s ship breaks up as it begins to enter the atmosphere, stranding the TARDIS in orbit as the crew cabin plummets to the planet below. On Peladon, a recent tragedy has left the planet without its queen, and a young prince prepares to take the throne on the eve of his wedding to a princess from Earth. But the prince, among others, has been hearing a mysterious voice, bidding all who hear it to offer up a sacrifice of royal blood – and any royal blood, from the arriving princess to Erimem, will suffice to unlock an ancient terror similar to one that the Doctor has faced before.

Order this CDwritten by Barnaby Edwards
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by ERS

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Caroline Morris (Erimem), Phyllida Law (Belldonia); Jenny Agutter (Voice); Christian Coulson (Pelleas), Yasmin Bannerman (Pandora), Nicholas Briggs (Zixlyr), Jane Goddard (Alpha Centauri), Richard Earl (Frankis), Peter Sowerbutts (Elkin), Philip Childs (Foreman), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Miner)

Timeline: between The Mind’s Eye and Mission Of The Viyrans

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Key 2 Time: The Judgement Of Isskar

Doctor Who: The Judgement Of IsskarThe Doctor is whisked away from his adventures with Peri, deposited on a world where time itself has been brought to a halt. Here he meets a young woman who claims to have been brought into existence mere seconds ago. Her mission is simple (to her): find and reassemble the segments of the Key to Time. The Doctor, in his previous incarnation, carried this mission out and inadvertently set this new quest for the Key in motion. The woman, who he names Amy for lack of any other name, is a tracer in humanoid form, capable of “smelling” nearby segmets of the Key. She has picked the Doctor to be her assistant. Their first stop is Mars, at an earlier stage of the planet’s development, when its native life forms are about to meet a destiny that will reshape their peaceful society into the form in which the Doctor knows them better: the Ice Warriors. And the Doctor – and the Key to Time – may be responsible for that drastic change.

Order this CDwritten by Simon Guerrier
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Nicholas Briggs (Isskar), Andrew Jones (Harmonious 14 Zink), Raquel Cassidy (Mesca), Jeremy James (Thetris), Heather Wright (Wembik)

Timeline: between The Bride Of Peladon and Mission Of The Viyrans

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories

Mission To Magnus

Doctor Who: Mission To MagnusA run-in with the Anzor, the school bully who lorded over him at the Time Lord Academy, has the Doctor running scared, to Peri’s amazement. The TARDIS brings them to the planet Magnus, where the divide between genders has left women in charge of the planet with men as an enslaved underclass. The Doctor and Peri also discover that Sil, their old profiteering nemesis, is at work on Magnus, working a play-all-sides-against-the-middle swindle. One of the sides that doesn’t reveal itself until later is a party of rogue Ice Warriors, planning to create an environmental disaster that will make Magnus more suitable for themselves. But even the locals aren’t welcoming the Doctor and Peri’s help this time.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Martin
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Nabil Shaban (Sil), Malcolm Rennie (Anzor), Maggie Steed (Madamme Rana Zandusia), Susan Franklyn (Jarmaya / Tace), Tina Jones (Ulema / Soma), William Townsend (Vion), Callum Witney Mills (Asam), Nicholas Briggs (Brorg / Vedikael / Grand Marshall / Ishka), James George (Skaarg / Jarga / Hussa)

Notes: Nabil Shaban reprises the role of Sil for the first time since Doctor Who‘s 1986 season; to date, all of the character’s TV and audio appearances have been penned by his creator, writer Philip Martin. Martin has written other stories for Big Finish’s audio plays, namely The Creed Of The Kromon, which introduced the eighth Doctor’s alien companion C’rizz.

Timeline: after The Nightmare Fair and before Leviathan

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Deimos

Doctor Who: DeimosThe Doctor and Tamsin arrive in a human-built museum on Deimos, the largest of Mars’ two moons, and the site of a frozen enclave of the now-extinct Ice Warrior species. Only the Ice Warriors aren’t extinct: they’ve reawakened and have begun killing some of the tourists visiting the museum and taking others as hostages. Naturally, the moment that the human administrators on Deimos notice that something is going horribly wrong, it’s easiest to place the blame on the time travelers. The Doctor takes more decisive action, leaving the hapless humans with no choice but to trust him. He allows himself to be captured by the Ice Warriors so he can attempt to negotiate with them directly, but Ice Lord Ssladek is in no mood to talk – and he and his platoon are in a mood to kill indiscriminately. The body count mounts as the Doctor tries to keep either humans or Ice Warriors from being killed, but it all comes down to evacuating every human from Deimos so a last-resort failsafe – a man-made self-destruct mechanism that will destroy the entire moon – can be activated. But then a message is received from Deimos from a human who didn’t evacuate – a human who the Doctor didn’t even know was there. A human named Lucie Miller.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Morris
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Niky Wardley (Tamsin Drew), David Warner (Professor Boston Schooner), Nicky Henson (Gregson Grenville), Susan Brown (Margaret), Tracy-Ann Oberman (Temperance Finch), Nick Wilton (Harold), Nicholas Briggs (The Ice Warriors), Jack Brown (Pilot)

Notes: Phobos is mentioned as a “hippie retreat,” so it would seem that Deimos is set broadly in the same period as the eighth Doctor’s earlier visit to the other moon of Mars, though the two stories don’t necessarily happen in the same year or decade. The Doctor mentions having been present when the Ice Warriors had to abandon Mars; this is a reference to The Judgement Of Isskar, the first story in Big Finish’s Key 2 Time trilogy. There are also references to the Ice Warriors attack on Earth’s moon and takeover of T-Mat (The Seeds Of Death) as being somewhat ancient history.

Logbook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Resurrection Of Mars

Doctor Who: DeimosAfter discovering Lucie Miller’s presence, the Doctor hesitates to detonate the charges that would destroy Ice-Warrior-infested Deimos – giving the Ice Warriors time to disable the charges. The human colonists and even Tamsin, the Doctor’s own companion, are shocked that he’d endanger them all on the mere possibility that Lucie is on Deimos. For her part, Lucie has no idea what’s going on, having been dumped on Deimos after a disagreement with the time-traveling Monk, another Time Lord whose interference the Doctor stopped at Kells Abbey. When the Monk pays Tamsin a visit, he begins to give her a very skewed version of his checkered history with the Doctor, changing her mind about traveling with him. To his dismay, the Doctor has to resort to a more forceful means of coercing the Ice Warriors back into their deep freeze hibernation, which only proves the Monk’s point.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Morris
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Niky Wardley (Tamsin Drew), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Nicky Henson (Gregson Grenville), Susan Brown (Margaret), Tracy-Ann Oberman (Temperance Finch), Nick Wilton (Harold), Nicholas Briggs (The Ice Warriors), Jack Brown (Pilot)

Notes: Big Finish’s web site displays an alternate cover for this story to preserve the surprise of Lucie’s return.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories

Thin Ice

Doctor Who: Thin IceThe Doctor responds to Ace’s request to experience the Summer of Love in 1967 by bringing her to Soviet Russia in 1967, where strangely-helmeted motorcyclists are trying to track down a man who’s stolen classified experimental weaponry. Immediately recognizing the weapon, the Doctor knows that it’s unsafe not just in civilian hands, but in any human hands. At an official reception, the time travelers home in on wildly out-of-place businessman Markus Creevy, who has both personal and professional reasons to be mingling with members of the KGB. He’s employed by the owner of the alien weapons: Ice Lord Hhessh, on a mission to retrieve some of the Ice Warriors’ most sacred relics before humans can defile them with further experimentation. But Hhessh isn’t the only alien on the scene. A Time Lord is operating incognito on Earth, and the Doctor is doing his bidding by letting Ace do most of the work.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Ricky Groves (Markus Creevy), Beth Chalmers (Raina Kerenskaya), Nicholas Briggs (Hhessh), John Albasiny (Major Felnikov), Nigel Lambert (Adjudicator / Wolshkin / Glarva), John Banks (Yevgeni / Yasha Lemayev)

Notes: Originally titled Ice Time, Thin Ice was conceived as the opening story for the ultimately unmade fourth season of Sylvester McCoy’s tenure ads the Doctor, though past interviews and articles have indicated that the goriginal story would’ve taken place in ’60s London. The “Time Lords assessing Ace” plotline was originally a major feature of Earth Aid, which would have been the second story of the unmade 1990 season.

Timeline: after Survival

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Cold War

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS arrives aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine secretly operating near the North Pole in 1983, though the sub and her crew already have problems of their own. This doesn’t stop them from blaming the new arrivals for all of these problems, however. The real problem quickly becomes apparent to the Doctor: the Soviets retrieved a large chunk of ice with something humanoid inside, and thawed it out. The humanoid is an Ice Warrior with a bad reputation: the Martian warlord Skaldak. The Doctor’s attempts to appeal to Skaldak’s feudal sense of honor are useless, since Skaldak perceives the humans’ every act as an attack upon him. Skaldak unexpectedly leaves his armor, slithering around the innards of the sub in his native Martian form, eliminating the sub’s crew one by one. When the Ice Warrior learns that the sub is armed with nuclear weapons, he sees an opportunity to avenge his indignities upon the entire human race… unless the Doctor can stop him.

Order the DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Douglas MacKinnon
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov), David Warner (Professor Grisenko), Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin), Josh O’Connor (Piotr), James Norton (Onegin), Doctor WhoCharlie Anson (Belevich), Spencer Wilding (Skaldak), Nicholas Briggs (voice of Skaldak)

Notes: This is the first Ice Warrior story on television since 1974’s Monster Of Peladon, during Jon Pertwee’s last season as the third Doctor, though at least two other TV outings were planned with the Ice Warriors, Mission To Magnus (intended for the 1986 season with the sixth Doctor) and Thin Ice (a story outlined for the 1990 seventh Doctor season that never was, which also involved relations with the Soviet Union); both unfilmed television stories were later adapted for audio by Big Finish for the Lost Stories range. Big Finish has also pitted the fifth and eighth Doctors against the Ice Warriors in audio adventures. This is the first flesh-and-blood appearance in Doctor Who for actor David Warner, who has provided voices for animated episodes (Dreamland) and numerous audio adventures, even playing an alternate-timeline version of the Doctor himself in Big Finish’s Doctor Who Unbound series.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green