Ice Warrior

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Doctor Who race
Ice Warriors
Type Reptilian humanoids
Affiliated with Ice Warriors
Home planet Mars
First appearance The Ice Warriors

The Ice Warriors is the name given to a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptile-like beings in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The race originated on Mars, and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors[1] where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. The name Ice Warrior is not the name of their species, but was applied to them by an Earth scientific team in the Martians' first on-screen appearance.

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[edit] Physical characteristics

The Ice Warriors are reptilian humanoids, their scaly skin and features usually hidden under heavy armour. They have large, claw-like hands on which are mounted sonic weaponry, and their voices are a highly sibilant whisper due to the different composition of Earth's atmosphere. Two types of Ice Warrior are seen in the series, the rank and file Warriors, and an officer class, which fan lore has christened Ice Lords (with at least one being referred to as a "Lord" on screen). The main difference between the two is the design of their armour, with the Ice Lords wearing a lighter, more flexible version than those of the Warriors.

[edit] History within the show

Due to the time-travelling nature of the television series, the Doctor would encounter the Ice Warriors out of sequence relative to his timeline. Their first on-screen appearance was in the 1967 story The Ice Warriors, set at a time in the future when the world was in the grip of a new ice age. A scientific team sent to halt the advance of the glaciers discovered a spacecraft buried underneath the ice, where it had lain for thousands of years together with its Ice Warrior crew. The Martians revived and attempted to take over the scientific base, but were defeated by the Second Doctor and their ship destroyed as it tried to take off. No date is given for this story on screen, but the Radio Times listing for the serial placed it at the year 3000. Some fans have suggested placing the story around 5000, since The Talons of Weng-Chiang[2] mentions that an ice age happened around that time.

Their next appearance was in the 1969 serial The Seeds of Death,[3] which took place in the mid-21st century. In that story, the world had grown dependent on the matter transmission system T-Mat. An Ice Warrior strike force seized control of the T-Mat relay on the Moon, using it to send the titular seeds to Earth, which were designed to alter the planet's atmosphere to be hospitable to Martian life. The plan was foiled by the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Zoe, and the invading Martian fleet was sent into an orbit around the Sun.

By the time of 1972's The Curse of Peladon,[4] the Ice Warriors had renounced violence (except in self-defense) and become respected members of a Galactic Federation that included Earth, Mars, Alpha Centauri and Arcturus. When the Third Doctor encountered them on a diplomatic mission to decide the admission of the planet Peladon to the Federation, he was initially distrustful, believing them to be behind an attempted sabotage of the proceedings. However, the culprits turned out to be someone else.

In the 1974 serial The Monster of Peladon[5] (which took place fifty years after Curse) the Ice Warriors returned to Peladon as Federation peacekeeping troops. The leader of the Martian troops, Azaxyr, was working with Galaxy 5, which was at war with the Federation. Seeking a return to the race's warrior past, he tried to impose martial law and take over Peladon, but was stopped by the Peladonians, who were aided by the Third Doctor. Curiously, in this appearance, Azaxyr referred to his troops as Ice Warriors. Neither Peladon serials give dates, but the Virgin New Adventures novel Legacy[6] by Gary Russell placed them as taking place around the 39th and 40th centuries.

A possible unseen adventure involving the Ice Warriors is alluded to in Castrovalva.[7] The newly-regenerated and still unstable Fifth Doctor regresses to an earlier personality (probably the Third Doctor) and memory, saying, "Not far now, Brigadier, unless the Ice Warriors get there first!" However, due to the Doctor's mental state, it is not clear if it is an actual memory or the product of a confused mind. The final New Adventures novel, The Dying Days[8] by Lance Parkin, features a 1997 invasion of Earth by the Ice Warriors, and also states that the Brigadier had not encountered them before.

In the 2005 Christmas special, "The Christmas Invasion"[9] (set on Christmas Eve, 2006), Major Blake of UNIT mentions that the invading Sycorax look "completely different" from Martians. If he was referring to the Ice Warriors, this implies some familiarity with them by the military during the early 21st century.

On 5 July 2006, The Daily Mirror reported that "insiders" had said that the Ice Warriors will appear in the opening episode of Series 3 of Doctor Who in 2007.[10] However, executive producer Russell T. Davies denied this, telling Doctor Who Magazine, "I love the Ice Warriors, but they're not coming back"[11], and the episode, "Smith and Jones",[12] did not feature the Ice Warriors.

[edit] Other appearances

The Ice Warriors are one of the "monsters" that have made repeated appearances in Doctor Who, as well as in the spin-off media. In the series itself, they made cameo appearances in the serials The War Games and The Mind of Evil.

The Ice Warriors did not appear on television after 1975: two proposed reintroductions after this were abandoned due to external events. They were supposed to be featured in the never-produced Sixth Doctor serial Mission to Magnus which was commissioned for the cancelled 1986 season. Similarly, they were also supposed to appear in season 27, in the serial Ice Time by Marc Platt, which would have written out the Seventh Doctor's companion Ace. However, as the series ceased production in 1989, the story was never produced. The plot for Ice Time was to have a more fantasy-based take on the Ice Warriors, with an Ice Lord being reborn from his armour in Swinging London and fighting a rival Ice Lord that had pursued him through time.

The Ice Warriors have also appeared in numerous spin-off media, including novels, comic strips and audio plays. The canonicity of Doctor Who spin-offs is uncertain.

The Ice Warriors make several appearances in the Virgin New Adventures. Transit by Ben Aaronovitch did not feature any Ice Warriors in a significant role, but its background included the aftermath of a Thousand Day War between Earth and Mars that had spun out from the events of The Seeds of Death and forced many of the Ice Warriors off Mars. The aforementioned Legacy was a sequel to the Peladon stories, and again featured the Ice Warriors as members of the Federation. It was also clarified that their home in that time period (stated as the 40th century) was a planet called New Mars.

GodEngine by Craig Hinton was set shortly after Transit, and concurrently with The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It introduced a non-martial culture within Martian society. In this novel, a group of religious pilgrims (who worship the Osirians) attempted to make peace with humans, while a group of Warriors secretly worked with the Daleks.

As mentioned, The Dying Days featured an Ice Warrior invasion of 1997 Earth. The novel also revealed that, after the Mars Probe missions (seen in The Ambassadors of Death, 1970), Earth accidentally made hostile contact with the Ice Warriors. Earth brokered an agreement to never return to Mars, with the British intelligence services covering up the fact that Mars had a breathable atmosphere so as to discourage further exploration attempts.

The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Fear Itself (which is set shortly after humans colonise Mars) mentions that native Martians (never named explicitly as Ice Warriors) have been forced into poverty and homeless by humans, expect for a few who have resorted to terrorism to reclaim their planet.

In the Doctor Who comic strip published in the Radio Times in 1996, an Ice Warrior named Ssard became a companion to the Eighth Doctor, together with the human Stacy Townsend. Ssard's introductory strip dealt with a "medieval" period of Mars's history. Stacy and Ssard reappeared in the BBC Books novel Placebo Effect by Gary Russell, where the two were married. In the monthly Doctor Who comic strips, an Ice Warrior named Harma is part of Abslom Daak's Dalek-killing band, the Star Tigers. Another Doctor Who Weekly back-up strip, Deathworld(#15 and #16)featured a conflict between the Ice Warriors and the Cybermen.In the story 4-Dimensional Vistas (Doctor Who Monthly #78-83), the Fifth Doctor and his new companion Gus Goodman discover the Ice Warriors at an Arctic Base, allied with the Meddling Monk and planning to use a giant crystal to create a sonic cannon.

In the Big Finish audio play Red Dawn, NASA's first manned mission to Mars encounters a small band of surviving Ice Warriors who had been placed in suspended animation to defend the tomb of Izdaal, the greatest warrior of the Martian race. According to this story, previous unmanned Mars probes had brought back fragments of alien technology and DNA, and scientists had gone so far as to create human/Martian hybrid clones. This story, set in the 21st century, appears to depict the first full contact between humans and Ice Warriors. This is difficult to reconcile with The Dying Days, and may support the idea that the novels and audios take place in separate parallel universes.

Another audio play, Frozen Time, sees the Seventh Doctor and a human expedition discovering a group of Ice Warriors frozen in the Antarctic. These are revealed to be criminals deliberately imprisoned there as punishment. Also The Bride of Peladon saw the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem encountering an Ice Warrior.

The Ice Warriors made an appearance in the Benny Summerfield audio The Dance of the Dead, and the new gardener on the Braxiatel Collection is an Ice Warrior named Hasst.

[edit] Appearances

Television
Novels
Audio plays

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Ice Warriors". Writer Brian Hayles, Director Derek Martinus, Producer Innes Lloyd. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1967-11-11-1967-12-16.
  2. ^ "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". Writer Robert Holmes, Director David Maloney, Producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1977-02-26-1977-04-02.
  3. ^ "The Seeds of Death". Writer Brian Hayles and Terrance Dicks (uncredited), Director Michael Ferguson, Producer Peter Bryant. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1969-01-25-1969-03-01.
  4. ^ "The Curse of Peladon". Writer Brian Hayles and Terrance Dicks (uncredited), Director Lennie Mayne, Producer Barry Letts. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1972-01-29-1972-02-19.
  5. ^ "The Monster of Peladon". Writer Brian Hayles, Director Lennie Mayne, Producer Barry Letts. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1974-03-23-1974-04-27.
  6. ^ Russell, Gary (1994). Legacy, Virgin New Adventures. Virgin Books. ISBN 0-426-20412-3. 
  7. ^ "Castrovalva". Writer Christopher H. Bidmead, Director Fiona Cumming, Producer John Nathan-Turner. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 1982-01-04-1982-01-12.
  8. ^ Parkin, Lance (1997). The Dying Days, Virgin New Adventures. Virgin Books. ISBN 0-426-20504-9. 
  9. ^ "The Christmas Invasion". Writer Russell T. Davies, Director James Hawes, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 2005-12-25.
  10. ^ Nicola Methven. "DOCTOR NEW", Mirror.co.uk, 2006-07-05. Retrieved on 2006-07-05. 
  11. ^ Cook, Benjamin (2006-09-13 cover date). "BRAVE NEW WORLDS". Doctor Who Magazine (373): 35. 
  12. ^ "Smith and Jones". Writer Russell T. Davies, Director Charles Palmer, Producer Simon Winstone. Doctor Who. BBC, London. 2007-03-31.

[edit] External links

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Ice Warrior television stories
Second Doctor
Third Doctor
Minor appearances