April 9: The Web of Fear Episodes 5 & 6

The Great Intelligence, using Travers as a mouthpiece, tells the Doctor he has twenty minutes to give himself up to the Intelligence -- and Victoria is seized as a hostage to ensure his cooperation.  And then episode 5 shows us all twenty of those minutes, as the Doctor and Anne try desperately to construct a machine that will let them defeat the Intelligence before those twenty minutes are up.  Yes, this episode is just marking time.

Still, at least it's reasonably entertaining time-marking.  While Anne and the Doctor are tinkering, Lethbridge-Stewart and Jamie decide to try and go after Victoria -- Lethbridge-Stewart believing it's "pointless" after his run-in with the Yeti in episode 4, "but at least we'll be doing something active."  And just in case we've forgotten about the inside man, Private Evans is sure to remind us: "Been working it out, I have, see.  Come to the conclusion one of you two must be working for this Intelligence...  It told us it had another pair of hands working for it.  Well, I know it's not me, see, so it must be one of you two.  Stands to reason, don't it?"  And the script is sure to continue casting doubt on Lethbridge-Stewart -- he seems to know where he's going in the tunnels to find Victoria without being told, and the Doctor doesn't seem to trust him either (in episode 6, for instance, he refuses to mention that they've gained control of a Yeti in Lethbridge-Stewart's presence).

But yes, episode 5 is largely filler.  The most important things that happen are that the Doctor and Anne find a way to block the Intelligence's signal to the Yeti (though only at close range) and reprogram a sphere to obey their commands over the Intelligence, and Staff Sergeant Arnold returns from his apparent death in episode 4, when he went into the web and didn't come back out.  And soon the twenty minutes are up, and it's time for the Doctor to turn himself over to the Intelligence -- just as the web bursts through the wall of the lab in the Goodge Street base.

The survivors are taken to the Intelligence by the Yeti. (The
Web of Fear Episode 6) ©BBC

Episode 6 is also quite slow, as it spends the first half ensuring that all the pieces are brought together for the final confrontation at Piccadilly Circus.  To this end anyone who's run off, like Evans, or at least not explicitly killed off, like Chorley, are forcibly taken to Piccadilly.  Meanwhile, the Doctor is being herded off alone, which gives him the opportunity to momentarily halt the Yeti accompanying him and switch some wires on the helmet they have for him that's designed to let the Intelligence absorb the Doctor's mind.  But finally everyone is brought to Piccadilly, and the Intelligence's agent is revealed to be not Lethbridge-Stewart but Staff Sergeant Arnold.  Er, what?  All right, I guess he had the opportunity to do all the things the agent needed to do, but it still seems odd to take the most sympathetic and human supporting character and make him the traitor all along.  There's certainly no hint of being controlled or acting unnaturally from Arnold before he arrives at Piccadilly.  It just feels wrong somehow.  But oh well.

The Doctor tells them not to interfere with what's going to happen as he's placed inside a plastic transparent pyramid, but Jamie (who has the Yeti control mic) tells "their" Yeti to attack the others, thus creating enough confusion to allow our heroes to pull the Doctor to safety and cut off the Intelligence's link with Earth -- though the Doctor is none too grateful.  "I told you to leave it to me!" he yells angrily at Jamie (though, to be fair, Jamie wasn't there when the Doctor told everyone else that).  "Now you've gone and ruined everything!"  Apparently the Doctor had switched some wires so that he was going to drain the Intelligence's mind, rather than the other way around.  But because of the actions of the others, the Intelligence has only been defeated rather than destroyed.  "You mean it might come back?" asks Evans (though as it turns out, not until 2012; the production team had plans for a third Yeti story, but those plans were scuppered after the fallout from The Dominators -- more on that particular tale when we get to that story).  Still, the threat to London and the rest of the world is over for now, and so the Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie head out on their way.

While it's certainly wonderful to be able to see two more thirds of The Web of Fear, with hindsight it's not quite as thrilling to watch as The Enemy of the World; however, that might be because it's a lot more familiar -- most of the locations had already been seen in the surviving first episode, and the "base-under-siege" plot is also a lot more typical of this period in the show than anything in Enemy.  But it is very well directed, and those first four episodes are quite good indeed, giving us a better siege tale than anything we've seen yet.  It admittedly ends rather badly, as the last two episodes tend to squander the atmosphere that the first four worked so hard to create (certainly the paranoia established in episode 4 doesn't carry over to the next two episodes, no matter how hard they try to bring it up) and it ends with a bit of a bang and a partial white-out rather than anything particularly epic.  But that's honestly not a fatal flaw, and it doesn't detract too much from everything else we get.  It's not quite as brilliant as we were led to believe before we could see most of it, but The Web of Fear is certainly effective at what it does.

April 8: The Web of Fear Episodes 3 & 4

Alas, episode 3 is still missing, so we're left with a telesnap reconstruction on the DVD.  It's certainly not a bad reconstruction, but you do wish it was the real thing.  Still, at least we can enjoy what's still there, and try to imagine what it was like watching Evans shoot desperately at the glowing pyramid carried by a Yeti, only for nothing to happen when he finally does smash it (so, er, why was the Yeti carrying it around then?).  And the Doctor is back!  Victoria runs into him as he's accompanied by the new base commander, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, who takes them all to the Goodge Street base.  The Doctor is able to reunite with Professor Travers and try to finally get somewhere with solving this Yeti crisis.  But it turns out there's a traitor in the base, who's planting Yeti figurines, opening the base's door, and sabotaging the explosives store.  And then, as the others head out in search of Chorley (who's determined to get to the TARDIS after Victoria has told him about it), the Yeti come in and take Travers away...

Hooray!  The last three episodes of this story exist (once again, a heartfelt thanks to Philip Morris!), and episode 4 is quite a doozy.  There's a real sense of ratcheting up the paranoia in this episode, as we're given a reason to suspect just about every single person in the base -- even the Doctor (after all, we don't know what happened to him during episode 2).  And so there are hints dropped about everyone: Lethbridge-Stewart seems to have no knowledge of Private Evans, even though Evans was the driver who was taking him to Holborn -- and there's the matter of how quickly he accepts the Doctor's story of arriving in a time machine; Evans gives the Doctor a Yeti figurine that's acting as a homing device, and the tin with the sample of web fungus that the Doctor collects at the beginning of this episode is empty when Evans gives it to the Doctor; and Chorley's disappeared while on his way to the TARDIS, seemingly swallowed up by the fungus in the tunnels.  It's all very effective, and the suspicion is a nice way of making everything seem more urgent.

The Doctor finds a Yeti homing device in Colonel Lethbridge-
Stewart's pocket. (The Web of Fear Episode 4) ©BBC

And we also get an impressive action sequence, as the Colonel takes a squad of soldiers up to the deserted streets of London to recover the Doctor's TARDIS so that they can all escape, only to be ambushed by a group of Yeti armed with web guns.  We get lots of shooting and running around as the soldiers try desperately to fend off the Yeti, only to be brutally killed via cobwebs (skillfully directed on film by Camfield).  And even the scene with the Doctor and Captain Knight in the electronics shop, where Knight is killed by two attacking Yeti, is well done even though it's clearly in the studio (and thus a little more stagey). The action comes as a welcome release after the last three episodes of waiting tensely in the tunnels, even as it serves to brutally reduce the number of people left fighting the Yeti -- Lethbridge-Stewart is the only one to make it back, leaving only him, Anne Travers, the Doctor, Victoria, Jamie, and Private Evans left in the Goodge Street base.  Until the end of the episode, that is, when Professor Travers returns, flanked by two Yeti...

April 7: The Web of Fear Episodes 1 & 2

Episode 1 of The Web of Fear (which picks up almost exactly where The Enemy of the World episode 6 left off, with Jamie struggling to close the TARDIS doors while the other two hold on to the console for dear life) has more or less always existed, at least as far as fandom goes, so we've become familiar with the set-up and the look of things.  (The recently recovered Nigeria print is of a higher quality, however, and was used on the DVD release.  And yes, my copies of both this and The Enemy of the World are region 2; neither has been released in the United States yet.)  And so some of the lingering questions regarding the story in this episode are perhaps more noticeable because we're so familiar with it.  Why, for instance, is the TARDIS stopped in deep space by a strange web?  Is this the closest the TARDIS is going to get to roughly contemporary Earth, and so the Intelligence has to snag it while it can?  Why do the Yeti change shape right before our eyes, given they're just robots with nothing supernatural about their construction, just their controller?  And who thought it was a good idea to give them big glowing eyes anyway?  (Sorry, I guess I'm just partial to the original design.)

But what's also clear from episode 1 is both the striking direction by Douglas Camfield (returning for his first story since The Daleks' Master Plan) and the moody sense of tension generated by the proceedings.  London is an eerie place, even though we're only given hints based on the silence and the apparently abandoned Underground, but the desperation evoked by the army people situated in an old World War II bunker also helps sell the situation.  Even if the implication seems to be that Professor Travers reactivated a sphere, giving the Great Intelligence a foothold onto Earth again, and then left his daughter to deal with the resulting crisis (admittedly, the dialogue is a bit confused here, as Travers demands to know why he's been brought to the Goodge Street base, learns it was on Anne Travers' orders, and then seems to imply that he sent for Anne to help him in the first place).  And man but they do a good job of making us dislike journalist Harold Chorley, don't they?  He's slimy and dripping with the wrong sort of charm as he oozes his way around the base, looking for quotes for his own career's sake rather than because he's interested in the events happening.  (It's been suggested that he's a deliberate parody of David Frost, but as I haven't seen much of Frost I can't really comment on that -- but I thought I'd mention it for those who have.)  It's a taut episode, and it leaves us wanting more.

Now episode 2 is a Nigerian recovery, so this is brand new for a lot of people, myself included.  Yet I had to remind myself while watching it the first time that I hadn't actually seen it before, so familiar did it feel in places.  That's partly because we're still in the same sets as episode 1 -- the Goodge Street base and the London Underground tunnels, and partly because we're getting a sort of "best of base-under-siege" episode, as we watch these characters run through the same sorts of arguments we've already seen in stories like The Moonbase or the story this is a direct sequel to, The Abominable Snowmen (with only two stories intervening -- the smallest gap between recurring monster appearances yet).  But at least in this case we're getting a version which seems to have taken the best character bits from those earlier stories and condensed them down into what we see here.

But there are still some nice moments that weren't apparent from the audio: Chorley gleefully recording the dying moments of men over the phone as they're attacked by Yeti, and Anne Travers' heated attack on Chorley, as she makes it plain how much she detests him; the Yeti's attack on the troops in the tunnels, with their web-shooting guns making quick work of the explosives the soldiers had placed; and the cliffhanger, as Jamie and Private Evans, the Cowardly Welsh Army Driver™, are trapped in the Monument underground platform, with the Intelligence's fungus (looking suspiciously like the BBC foam machine at work) filling up both of the other tunnels.  Victoria has also left the base -- thanks to both Anne Travers voicing her suspicions about Victoria's story of time travel and Chorley being determined to pin blame on the newcomers, despite Professor Travers vouching for them -- in search of either Jamie (looking for the Doctor with the army troops) or the Doctor (last seen at the end of episode 1 -- it's Troughton's week off, having spent the last six playing both the Doctor and the main villain).  So the episode ends with all three of them separated from each other, wandering the tunnels.  And meanwhile, the Intelligence is on the move again, taking over more and more tunnels with its web...

April 6: The Enemy of the World Episodes 5 & 6

So that unexpected visitor was Donald Bruce.  But Bruce, it turns out, is less dedicated to Salamander than he is to justice, so the Doctor is able to convince Bruce to let him impersonate Salamander so that they can gain proof of Salamander's wrongdoing.  Meanwhile, Salamander himself is still down in the bunker, when the leader of the people down there, Swann, finds a scrap of newspaper from last year, proving to Swann that the world above isn't as devastated as Salamander led them to believe.  Salamander tells him that it's only half a life being lived by the survivors of the nuclear war, but Swann insists on going to the surface with Salamander, so Salamander grudgingly agrees to take him.

We also get the return of Jamie and Victoria (both on vacation during the last episode), getting ready to be interrogated by Benik -- who's particularly slimy during this episode.  "I'm looking forward to questioning them," he says at one point.  "I have a feeling they're going to be stubborn.  So much more interesting when our prisoners are stubborn."  And then, when he's actually interrogating Jamie and Victoria, Jamie says, "You must have been a nasty little boy." -- to which Benik replies with a nasty smile, "Oh, I was.  But I had a very enjoyable childhood."

Finally, we get some fun interplay with Troughton playing the Doctor playing Salamander, as he "interrogates" Jamie and Victoria to demonstrate to Bruce that Salamander isn't the white knight he pretends to be, while Kent fakes his own death, allowing him to escape from Bruce's guards while Astrid also runs away -- only to find Swann, dying from a blow administered by Salamander...

Salamander confronts the Doctor. (The Enemy of the World
Episode 6) ©BBC

Episode 6 wraps it all up.  The dying Swann tells Astrid to free the people living in the bunker, to expose Salamander's lies.  Meanwhile, Benik is suspicious of "Salamander", but he inadvertently gives up the evidence that demonstrates to Bruce that Salamander does indeed have something to hide, and so he's ready to trust the Doctor and bring in his own people to conduct a more thorough investigation.  (Although the Benik subplot is odd here -- he seems to be clearly suspicious of "Salamander" when he's in the office with Bruce, Jamie, and Victoria, but then he seems to believe that no, that was Salamander.  But then he becomes even more suspicious of Bruce, as he's seen authorizing Jamie and Victoria's release, yet in the next scene is seen working alongside Bruce trying to break into the Records Room.  That's followed up by Benik suddenly losing his nerve and trying to run away -- maybe he realizes Salamander is finished, but it's not at all clear.  Were scenes explaining all this flip-flopping cut for time?  The episode certainly ends abruptly...)  And Kent makes his way in to expose his true colors: he doesn't want to stop Salamander, he wants to replace him.  But when it all goes wrong, he's willing to blow everything up to kill Salamander and destroy the evidence.  Meanwhile Astrid is trying to evacuate the people from the bunker (once she gets them to trust her and believe that there was in fact no nuclear war), so when Kent blows up the bunker it causes some problems.  But Kent is shot down by Salamander, who then makes his way, dazed, to the TARDIS, where Jamie mistakes him for the Doctor.  But then the real Doctor shows up, they have a quick tussle, and then Salamander starts the TARDIS with the doors open and is sucked out into space...

Before it was recovered, The Enemy of the World had a pretty low reputation -- there are no monsters, it seems badly edited, and the script is designed to keep the Doctor out of the action for as long as possible.  But when you can actually watch it, the editing issues generally disappear (in fact, you see that in many cases, Letts is deliberately switching from one scene to another to underline a point made in the previous scene), you see just how good Troughton is, and you can appreciate the care that's gone into Whitaker's script.  It's also nice to get a Bond-style thriller to make a change from the monster stories, such that it really does set this story apart.  It's a story that stands up quite well, and I would be quite surprised if it didn't go up in people's estimations now that they can actually see it.

April 5: The Enemy of the World Episodes 3 & 4

Episode 3 of The Enemy of the World was for the longest time the only episode surviving from this story.  This is rather unfortunate, as this episode is almost pure filler, featuring comedy characters such as Griffin the chef and bizarre moments such as the decision to guard Alexander Denes (under arrest, remember, for failing to warn the population about the impending volcanic eruptions) in a corridor rather than a room.  "It's easier to guard him here," a guard states, rather illogically.  The reputation of this story used to hinge on this episode, and the result was deemed to have been lacking.  Director Barry Letts insisted it was the worst episode of the serial, but people figured the rest was just like this.

In context, however, this episode makes more sense.  It's a pause between bouts of action, and writer David Whitaker has chosen to fill up the time with character moments.  Griffin the chef barely has a line that isn't some deadpan joke, and he's massively entertaining as a result.  And Deborah Watling seems to also play up Victoria's ineffectiveness in the kitchen, as she describes a recipe for a pudding involving "lots of almonds, eggs, lemon peel, candied peel, oranges, cream and, oh it was lovely!"  When asked how to make it, Victoria replies, "You sort of, whoosh it all up together."  Griffin's expression upon being told this is a recipe for Kaiser pudding suggests this isn't the sort of thing one simply "whoosh[es] up".

A couple other moments worth mentioning: Fedorin tries and fails to poison Denes's food, which leads to his apologizing to Salamander.  "Don't worry!  You try, you fail, so what, huh?  The moon doesn't fall out of the sky," Salamander replies, in a line I've now found myself repeating from time to time, before poisoning Fedorin with the same stuff intended for Denes.  "One chance, my friend.  I said one chance," Salamander says, standing over Fedorin's body.  And the Doctor, who only has a limited scene this episode (since Troughton's busy playing Salamander), hides in a chest while Salamander's deputy Benik comes to Kent's trailer and smashes things up.  "Sad really, isn't it?  People spend all their time making nice things, and other people come along and break them," the Doctor says sadly once Benik's left, looking at a piece of broken crockery.  But he's still not ready to help Kent take down Salamander.

And then at the end of the episode, Denes is killed in a botched escape attempt and Jamie and Victoria are taken prisoner for trying to aid Denes.  And then Donald Bruce (Salamander's security chief, remember) spills the beans about there possibly being more than one person who looks like Salamander...

Episode 4 gets back to the action, as Astrid returns to Kent's office, only to be followed by Fariah, Salamander's food taster ("What on Earth made you take a job as a food taster?" Fedorin asked her in episode 2.  "She was hungry," Salamander replies simply on her behalf, which leaves a heap of possibilities open to the imagination).  But Benik has followed them, which leads to a shootout in Kent's office and the surrounding grounds, leading to Fariah being shot by a guard.  "What do you think you're doing?" demands the guard captain to the one who shot her.  "We had orders to kill," the guard replies.  "Do you always obey orders?" the captain replies bitterly.  So it seems not everyone here is as "evil" as Benik -- a nice touch.  But Fariah is dead (though not before she gets a final slap across Benik's face -- but she dies before Benik can respond.  "She's dead," the captain says.  "Good," Benik replies impotently), and the Doctor, Astrid, and Kent are on the run.

Salamander in his underground bunker. (The Enemy of the
World Episode 4) ©BBC

Then the story takes a bizarre left turn.  Up to this point we've had a spy thriller story, with lots of political machinations and things, but then Salamander locks himself inside the records room in his base and takes an elevator deep into the earth, where it turns out there's a small group of people living underground who are causing all the natural disasters (not sure how a group in Australia can create a volcano in Central Europe, but never mind) -- Salamander's convinced them that there was a nuclear war almost five years ago, and that they are fighting "the enemies of truth and freedom" with their natural disasters.  (And it's so tempting to think that the people hid underground because of the Mayan apocalypse thing, but alas, the dates are a year off, as they would have had to have gone down in 2013, not 2012.)  Patrick Troughton here delivers a tour de force performance, as he has to convince the people in the bunker not only that his intentions are good, but also that he's suffering from radiation sickness from the surface.  Troughton has done his "charmingly devious" turn as Salamander in the last two episodes, but now he turns it up a notch as he smoothly manipulates these people.  It's quite wonderful to behold.

But the Doctor is finally ready to impersonate Salamander -- not so much because he believes Giles Kent, but rather because Jamie and Victoria are being held prisoner by Salamander's men.  Although as they're putting the finishing touches on the Doctor's transformation into Salamander, someone unexpected walks into Kent's trailer; we don't see who it is, but the expressions on the Doctor's, Kent's, and Astrid's faces suggest this isn't exactly a welcome visitor.

April 4: The Enemy of the World Episodes 1 & 2

Just to reiterate: this story exists in full!  That's such an incredible, wonderful thought, being able to view another Troughton story, and it seemed almost unthinkable just a year ago, when it looked like we were only going to get odd episodes recovered -- the last recovery of a complete serial had been The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1991: 22 years earlier.  So the fact that this story is complete is still thrilling.  And so we can see that these are in fact the first episodes shot at the higher 625-line resolution -- all previous episodes having been filmed in 405-line.  And the difference is noticeable.

And fortunately for those watching this newly-recovered story, these two episodes are quite action-packed and exciting.  Episode 1 opens with a hovercraft chase on the beach and a helicopter ride, as three assailants shoot at the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria -- but not before the Doctor gets a chance to go for a swim in the water.  But they're being hunted down for some reason, although Jamie knocks one of them out after yelling "Craeg an tuire!", the rallying cry of Clan MacLaren³⁹ -- the first time, I think, we've heard this since The Highlanders.  The odd thing about this situation, as is often pointed out, is that the assailants and their rescuer, Astrid Ferrier, both work for the same organization -- so Rod, Curly, and Anton are all shooting at a fellow employee.  Hmm.

But Astrid spirits them away in a helicopter registered to the end of 2018 -- so get ready for a man named Salamander to rise to power in the next four years -- and takes them to her bungalow, where the Doctor treats her bullet wound in a wonderfully flirtatious scene. 

ASTRID: Oh, you're a doctor?
DOCTOR: Well, not of any medical significance.
ASTRID: Doctor of law? Philosophy?
DOCTOR: Which law? Whose philosophies, eh? ...
ASTRID: Doctor of science?... A doctor of divinity, then?
DOCTOR: You'll run out of doctors in a minute!

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Enemy of the World)

Then, another failed attack later, they all arrive at Astrid's employer, Giles Kent, where Giles fills them in on the world situation ("We've been out of touch of civilization for a while... On ice, shall we say," the Doctor states).   And then, in what looks like a bizarre move no matter what, it turns out that Kent has arranged for Salamander's chief of security, Donald Bruce, to arrive -- forcing the Doctor to impersonate Salamander.

Jamie "saves" Salamander from assassination. (The Enemy of
the World Episode 2) ©BBC

Episode two isn't quite as action-packed, although there are still some good moments.  But it opens with the Doctor pulling off the impersonation, followed by a wonderful moment of Bruce feeling impotent, which he takes out on Jamie: "McCrimmon, you said?... Well, you just watch your step, that's all."  And we also get the interesting development of the Doctor not being certain which side he should trust: Kent says Salamander is trying to take over the world, but Kent himself clearly isn't very trustworthy -- so Jamie and Victoria are sent to the Central European Zone to gather more information.  This means that we get to see Troughton in full force as Salamander, playing a character so different from the Doctor that when he shares a scene with Jamie, you almost forget that these two actors have ever met before.  It also means that Jamie gets a chance to carry a larger-than-usual part of the story, which he does with great aplomb, jumping onto Salamander's terrace, overpowering a guard, throwing a (fake) bomb into the lake, and then holding his hands out with a smile as if to say, "See what I just did there?"  It's a great performance.

And we discover that Salamander is in fact as devious as Kent claims, as he blackmails Fedorin (who is presumably the second-in-command of the Central European Zone, though this is never outright stated) into helping him replace the popular and not pro-Salamander controller of the Zone, Alexander Denes, using a volcanic eruption (which Salamander somehow predicted) as a pretext for replacing Denes, with the eventual intent of assassinating him at Fedorin's hand...







³⁹ Actually, the rallying cry of Clan MacLaren (which Jamie was apparently the piper for, according to The Highlanders) was "Creag an tuirc!"  One wonders if it was a simple misspelling which led to the version most Who fans are familiar with.

April 3: The Ice Warriors Five & Six

So, not the most dramatic cliffhanger resolution ever, as the Doctor just says, "All right!  All right!" and agrees to back down and answer Varga's questions.  But we do get a nice moment right after, as the Doctor enters, sees all the Ice Warriors, and tries to go right back out.

But this is the episode where things start to come together.  Penley returns to the base with an injured Jamie, which means that he can start to have it out with Leader Clent.  "Don't you spit your stupid liberty in my face, Penley," Clent says.  "We know your kind of freedom.  Freedom to run away from responsibilities, from service, from moral judgment.  I may be a physical coward, Penley, but you're a coward in the mind."  "Well at least I have a mind and not a transistorised junction box," Penley replies hotly.  "I would act, but you daren't.  And so you're going to be destroyed along with your mechanical master."  And before that is the scene where Clent decides to wait and puts a brave face on it, making himself busy and talking with the personnel: "Well, what do you feel about all this, Walters?  Bet you didn't think you'd have ice monsters and things like that to deal with when you volunteered for the job, did you?"  "I didn't volunteer," Walters replies, which wrongfoots Clent (rather wonderfully, the way it's played): "Ah, yes.  Well, good man, anyway."

And the Doctor is inside the Ice Warriors' spaceship, and so he can learn about their propulsion system -- as well as learn that the Ice Warriors need fuel for their engines.  Varga seems to believe that they'll find what they need at the base, and the Doctor only agrees because they're holding a gun to Victoria's head.  This means that the Ice Warriors are heading to the base -- but first they're going to fire their sonic cannon at it as a show of force.  The Doctor tries to stop the remaining Ice Warrior with the ammonium sulphide he picked up in episode four.  "Ammonium sulphide?  It's only a stink bomb," Victoria protests.  "Yes, you've had the benefits of a classical education," the Doctor responds drily.  "...Harmless to humans, but to aliens very possibly deadly!"  The stuff does overpower Zondal, but not before he can manage to fire the cannon, despite the Doctor's efforts to stop him.  Well, that's the idea anyway, but it really looks like Patrick Troughton is trying to help Roger Jones find the control while making it look like maybe they're struggling.  He's not terribly successful.

Varga threatens Clent with death while Miss Garrett protests.
(The Ice Warriors Six) ©BBC

But episode six opens with a massive explosion, as the sonic cannon demolishes the records wing of Britannicus Base.  With this show of force, Varga and his fellow Warriors arrive, ready to take the fuel they need from the humans. Clent insists that the base doesn't use the mercury isotopes the Ice Warriors need, but Varga doesn't believe him and forces him to shut down the Ioniser and dismantle the base's reactor so that the Ice Warriors can take its isotopes for fuel.  But the Doctor has rigged up the sonic cannon to fire at a frequency that affects fluids, which therefore has a greater adverse effect on the Ice Warriors, who retreat to their spaceship to plan their next move.  Meanwhile, the Doctor returns to the base and sends Victoria back to the TARDIS (who's off camera at the moment -- apparently she had somewhere to be the evening of recording, so all her crucial scenes were filmed in the afternoon), and then he and Penley both try to convince Clent to use the Ioniser, even though the computer can't come to a decision either way.  Clent and Miss Garrett both refuse to make a decision, so it's up to Penley.  The Ioniser is used, the Ice Warriors' spaceship explodes (though only a minor explosion), and the base is saved from the oncoming glacier.  And then, rather touchingly, Penley allows Clent to keep his dignity: "Clent, will you check these readings with me?" he asks.  "And you've a report to prepare."  And in the aftermath the Doctor and Jamie slip away.

It's not quite as slow as The Abominable Snowmen, but there's still a general feeling of a story being stretched out beyond what might be considered its natural length -- but Brian Hayles chooses to fill these spaces with character moments rather than an excess of circling action: those bits of incident that come right back to where they started when they're over.  It's a real boon for this story, which at its heart is about the conflict between man and machine; the Ice Warriors are there as an additional threat, but they're not really at the heart of this story.  This story is ultimately about the viewpoints of Clent, Penley, and Storr, with the way forward shown as being able to use machines but not to become completely dependent on them.  Granted, this argument isn't always played out in the most subtle of ways, but it's still entertaining to watch.  And then add on that the Ice Warriors themselves, who through Varga (and actor Bernard Bresslaw) are given more specific characteristics than we might otherwise expect.  Thanks to Bresslaw and the other actors inside those fiberglass shells, the Ice Warriors come out as a distinct race, rather than a generic monster.  No wonder they made a return appearance.

(Well, that and the costumes were probably expensive, so they'd likely want to get as much use out of them as possible.³⁸)







³⁸ See Genesis of the Daleks Part Two for the ultimate fate of one of the shells.