June 25: "Cold War"

An alien warrior, frozen in the ice for thousands of years, excavated by humanity and thawed -- revealing that the warrior was dormant, not dead.  A small group of people in a confined area, under siege from the resuscitated warrior.  That warrior threatening to destroy the world thanks to nuclear power.  Yes, Mark Gatiss has chosen to remake another Troughton story: this time it's The Ice Warriors.

I mean, I suppose if you're going to reintroduce the Ice Warriors after 39 years then why mess with success (although you start to wonder how many Ice Warriors were accidentally frozen on Earth -- but then maybe Varga and his group were sent to look for Grand Marshal Skaldak and they were also trapped), but it does mean you start forming comparisons between the two stories.  The Ice Warriors had an underlying theme of people versus computers; "Cold War" is (I think) exploring the idea of mutually assured destruction, but it hardly does anything with that idea beyond a basic threat.

Grand Marshal Skaldak takes off his helmet. ("Cold War") ©BBC

The primary purpose of "Cold War" is indeed to bring back the Ice Warriors, and at this they do a good job.  The redesign is fairly minor -- the silhouette and colors are the same (beyond a more metallic sheen), although they've gotten rid of the "fur" -- and so Skaldak is instantly recognizable.  Gatiss has also incorporated some of the later character developments, so the Ice Warriors aren't evil per se, but Skaldak is portrayed as particularly militaristic -- but still with a sense of honor, which is in keeping with where we left the Ice Warriors.  (All that said, I still kind of miss the hissing voice.)  They even do one better, by finally confirming that the Ice Warriors wear armor and showing us the true face of a Martian.

Of course, that's where part of the problem lies; not the fact that they showed us an unarmored Martian, but that this leads to an extended sequence where Doctor Who "does" Alien.  In principle there's nothing wrong with that, but the fact of the matter is that they're going out at 6pm on a Saturday and so they can't make this as terrifying as it needs to be.  So while shots of the unarmored Skaldak creeping up on people and pulling them up into the ceiling are tense, they're not the pure unadulterated terror that's required to make this approach work.  We need to see the bodies and feel the fear for this to really come off, but they can't do that.

The other part of the problem is that Mark Gatiss gives us this background of heightened tensions between the US and the Soviet Union (this is explicitly set in 1983, the year of Able Archer and the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars")) and then hardly does anything with it.  There seems to be little in the way of rampant paranoia -- the only one who exhibits this is Stepashin, and he's portrayed as a warmongering nut -- and they don't draw any explicit parallels between the two situations (the global one and the one on the sub).  In fact, it looks like they start to go down a more interesting road, as Stepashin tries to convince Skeldak they're both alike and should help each other, but then Skeldak kills Stepashin off screen and leaves that road frustratingly untraveled.  So instead we get an unsatisfying Alien homage that leads to a standoff between the Doctor and Skaldak that could have happened at almost any point during the Cold War (the obsession with early '80s New Romantic music notwithstanding).

It's not all bad, of course; we've got a really great cast -- Liam Cunningham does a nice job as the more experienced Captain Zhukov, unwilling to push his men into war, and while Stepashin may seem overeager for a nuclear war, Tobias Menzies does a good job of playing this role -- to the point that you wish he'd stuck around a little longer (another reason to be annoyed by his unceremonious demise).  And they've finally gotten David Warner in front of the camera as Professor Grisenko (after his turn as the main villain in the animated "Dreamland" and a number of Big Finish stories (including an alternate universe Doctor)), and it's everything you'd want from him, a performance filled with dry wit and warmth.  (The best moment is when he questions Clara about the future: "Tell me what happens," he implores Clara.  "I can't," Clara replies.  "Well, I need to know," Grisenko replies mock-desperately.  "...Ultravox, do they split up?"²⁴⁷)  And Jenna-Louise Coleman continues to excel as Clara, being brave and scared at the same time and coming across as incredibly likeable.

If only there had been a more substantial plot to hang this all on, it could have been fabulous.  But here Mark Gatiss's urge to write pastiche falls flat here.  "Cold War" needed more than just reintroducing an old alien and giving us a new twist; it really needed to be about something.  The fact that it's not leaves you with an ultimately hollow feeling, craving something more substantial.







²⁴⁷ They do, but not for another four years.