The TARDIS Project

The Ice Warriors episode 2 discussion:

R:

P:

Sp: “I bet the first accomplice he releases will be… Stiletto. And he will cover the whole world in custard!” Doctor Mouse!

MS: It’s Doctor Mouse! Doctor Mou…use!

H: He’s terrific. He’s magnific. He’s the greatest Time Lord in the Universe!

P: Where’s the Intelligence of eating a tomato plant without first pulling the seeds out.

R: He’s only ever read about them before.

H: Remember, no plants.

K: It makes sense to me that he would know.

Sp: Rosenpenley and Gildenstorrn make for an interesting story-telling approach here. And I kinda like it. It seems like it’s going off the rails, or like I’d wandered into some completely different story, but it actually fleshes out Penley’s character really well. So that by the time he runs into Victoria and the Doctor he’s…

R: He’s a person.

Sp: Exactly.

H: It also gives us a little more depth to the situation in general. The idea that there are these guys who rejected the society. And Penley’s link between the two worlds.

Sp: Actually, I’m not sure if I agree with you. Let me consult the computer!

H:

P: The computer was easier to hear this week.

R: It was easier to understand than the Ice Warrior.

P: “What are you ssssssaying?” Knowing what we know about TARDIS translations, does it make sense that we hear him in English or in untranslated lizard, but not both.

A: What I think you’re asking is, should we be hearing accents from the TARDIS.

H: What are these TARDIS translation of which you speak.

K: That concept isn’t even introduced until the 70’s with Sarah Jane.

H: And it’s not even fully explained until the new series.

P: Sorry, I forgot where I am in the timeline.

R: Yeah, I really liked Penley. He’s one of the more fleshed out characters than I think I’ve seen in the show in a fair while.

H: Yeah, and Peter Sallis does a good job.

R: If this was modern Who, he’d be in danger of becoming a companion.

P: Or a boyfriend.

R: “I wear Eskimo mukluks now. Mukluks are cool.”

K: Inuit.

Sp: “But enough of that. Back to me!”

R: The guy is huge!

H: Brian Bresslaw is huge. He’s around 7 feet tall. That’s why he was cast. All the Ice Warriors had to be over 6 and half feet tall.

Sp: I liked that the scientists were completely wrong.

H: That’s because they were dependent on the computer.

R: Also, the “science” in this story is completely abysmal.

P: Well, the finally got global warming right.

R: Yes, it’s caused by plants!

P: I was slightly kidding there.

H: Are you going to talk about electricity?

R: Yeeeees.

Sp: Drop some knowledge, Ronelyn.

R: So…

Sp: Pay attention son, this is actually science.

MS: I’ve done science!

R: So, when we try to transmit electricity, resistance…

Sp: Is futile.

R: Shut up! Resistance causes us to lose energy in the form of heat.

H: Right.

R: Which means for efficient transmission you want high voltage and low resistance.

H: This is something that most of us kind of know.

R: So, you can’t heat something up with high voltage and low resistance.

H: Is that what they said?

R: That’s exactly what they said. And that’s why I was baffled.

H: So, basically Brian Hayles got it backwards.

R: Completely! That’s two strikes! Big ones.

K: And this show’s supposed to be “educational”

R: Plants cause CO2, and high resistance means efficient transmission. No wonder they can’t get the fricken ionizer to work.

K: The ionizer probably wouldn’t work either, but at least that technobabble.

R: Yeah, that falls comfortably in the category is “use the thing with the thing.”

P: The only plant I know of that causes global warming is a power plant.

K: Remember, it’s negative global warming. Global cooling.

H: Going back to the “use the thing with the thing on the thing” we got another plot point related to that this week, which is “we can’t use the thing, which will cause the other thing to explode, I think, because of the thing.”

Sp: Follow my chain of ice scientist logic.

H: Ice Scientists! In Color!

Sp: “So, the helmet was actually a… space helmet. Which means… they’re not from earth. Which means there must be a space ship. And if there’s a space ship then it must have had some kind of atomic power. But there’s ice all over the place. So… they must have landed.” “Actually, we crashed.” “No, no. Landed. We’re scientists.”

H: Let me take this one point at a time. The Doctor is actually the one who talked about them being astronauts and having a space ship. The scientist did come up with the idea of atomic power propulsion, but they believed that space science would develop that way at this point…”

Sp: I’ll grant you that happily, because sure, 1960’s, and sure, Doctor Who. But, I would have thought just writing science fictiony stuff, that the Doctor would interject and say “Yes, that’s what you know. But there are other ways of getting around the universe.” Just by the Doctor’s silence he agrees with them.

K: Instead of introducing “plausible” technobabble?

Sp: Instead of introducing the notion that advanced civilizations have other ways of producing power. It just struck me odd. Continue Historian.

H: First of all, I guess you could say that. I didn’t see any issue with the Doctor not saying anything. It’s perfectly reasonable that their might be atomic engines, especially if there is danger if there are. But regardless, the logic of the scientist who believed that they had landed and not crashed, was based on the body not being injured. At least that’s what the scientist believed would have happened, if the ship had crashed. Which is perfectly reasonable. I also found it interesting that Varga said that the ship had actually crashed, given we’d received that argument. But the whole argument about the ship crashing was perfectly logical, given the information that they had.

Sp: Sure.

P: I have a comment about the science of last week that we were discussing. We were commenting on them focusing the heat on the places where the land was. One of the ways upon which the earth is self balancing, is that when there is more snow on land then there is less water in the sea. And, this means there is more land exposed than sea, and land does not reflect heat away like water. So therefore, the world is self balancing.

K: But we’ve had ice ages.

P: Yes. But we don’t have a permanent ice age for that reason. I think at one point the sea level was 70 meters below where it is now. So that tells you just how much we’ve come back from, ice age wise. In geological terms, this is extremely recent.

K: But, if you were living it you’d want it to stop soon, and not when the earth itself naturally ended it.

K: So, maybe I was just distracted this evening, but I feel like we’re back to the slow plot. Stuff happened with Victoria and Varga. Stuff happened with Penley and his dude. But that was about it. For me, at least.

H: There was a lot of development with Clent and the Doctor. We’re starting to get a better idea of Clent’s…

R: Defect?

P: Major malfunction.

H: Issues.

R: “I’ve been betrayed by science once. My heart can’t take it again!”

K: Anyway, I just felt like not much happened.

H: Again this is definitely one of those development episodes. We an episode in the middle so that we can get from here to there kind of thing.

P: It’s not too often that you get someone questioning the aggressor monster in a story. And clearly, yes, he did not come by Shetland pony. But I still think the jury is out on whether they came by space ship.

Several people: He said they did.

P: But the scientists made that assumption without considering any other alternative.

H: But they were following the Doctor. He’s the one who made the assumption.

K: And they’re right.

P: Another nice line was “A nice boss you got there.” “He is no scientist, he’s and organizer. He should have been born a robot.”

K: Or a project manager.

H: We haven’t talked a lot recently about the recons themselves, but I kind of loved that sequence. I loved that fact that they added the blowing snow across the pictures to give our eyes an illusion of movement. To relax us, so we’re not just looking at the same pictures over and over again. I know they’ve done that sort of thing before, but I thought that was a nice touch.

Sp: Did they artificially slow down their existing head shot footage of Vargas speaking. I got a puppet vibe from the way his mouth moved.

H: Yeah, they did something like that. I have no idea what, but it had to have been something like that. I think it basically worked.

Sp: Yeah, it basically worked. I liked the sonic gun sound effect, too.

P: Was it me, or were the hats and goggles just a little too goofy. It was like 1910 driving gear. Just need the long gloves.

Sp: It worked for me. If you could take the plexiglass Ikea furniture helmets from last episode, then driving goggles snow gear is fine by me.

P: So what was the deal with Clent saying “must I remind you of your mission, which you have not accomplished yet.”

H: He’s supposed to be finding the spaceship, not the “girl and the monster.”

P: Okay, that makes sense. He was derelict in his duty.

H: From Clent’s point of view.

K: And he’s a robot project manager.

Sp: “You musst unfreeze the rest of my team… ssso we can have a ssstandup meeting.”

R: “Ssssoon we will reach the end of the burn down chart. Nothing can sssstop the project now.”

K: It’s funny because it’s true.

Sp: Speaking of being on schedule…

H: Yes?

Sp: Final thoughts?

H: Are were there yet.

Sp: Well, I have prepared a gantt chart.

K: Not in Scrum!

Sp: I actually plan things in advance. For example, I knew that the next thing I was going to say was… “Ezio, final thoughts?”

H: I’ll let you get away with that this time.

E: Other than the unintelligible creatures we’re dealing with now…

H: You really couldn’t understand them?

E: I could, but it took some work. Other than that, I did quite enjoy this episode. Although, when the guy was all “I’ll ask the computer” and you hear this round of “seriously.” I think these people have the right idea.

R: Imagine going out to a restaurant with this guy. “How do we divide up the check?” “Well, we could ask the computer!” No! Just divide it up evenly all the way around.

H: Definitely a strong theme of this story is human ability to understand, verses dependence on computers. Definitely a major theme.

E: Yeah.

A: I liked the scenes with Victoria and the Ice Warrior. I have the feeling, knowing Victoria, she’s waiting for some chance to do something awesome.

R: “Where did she go? She said she’d wait right here!”

Sp: Aye. She told me that too.

H: Varga appears to be moderately more intelligent than Thomni, but we’ll find out.

K: I disagree. They’ve made Victoria “stupid” this episode. She fainted. She screamed. She was so terrified…

Sp: She was “damsel in distress.” All that was missing from the recon was a picture of the gorilla suit with the deepsea diver helmet that is carrying Victoria off the screen.

P: Robot Monster.

K: So I don’t think the script is setup for her to “save the day.”

H: We’re definitely a little more towards Victoria of Tomb of the Cybermen than the Abominable Snowman.

P: So, I was not very impressed by Clent being knocked out. But I thought the scene that followed it was one of the more interesting ones, that the Doctor is allowing Penley to escape with the medicine.

H: Not without giving him a little bit of a lecture though.

P: Or what’s known as encouragement.

R: It really felt like two kindred spirits. “What are you doing?” “Something I’m not supposed to. What are you doing?” “Something I’m not supposed to.” “Well, alright. Carry on then.”

P: I’m assuming the Red Planet is Mars?

H: Yes. What are your final thoughts, Mini-Spoo?

MS: It was awesome.

K: Lazy.

MS: I knew he was going to do that. It’s what I do here. I always say awesome.

H: But, do you actually think it’s awesome.

MS: Yes.

H: Are you just humoring me?

Sp:

H: Spoo, your turn.

Sp: Nothing new to say. This was good. As I said at the beginning, I liked the story telling left turn having one of the minor characters introduced the way that he was. It’s a good back story and an interesting counter point to a straight forward “monster on the loose, girl in danger” sort of thing.

R: Sssssssss…. sssssss…. ssssssss… sssssss…

E: You need to go close the valve again.

P:

E: I think that did the trick. Good job.

R: Wouldn’t have had this problem if my SPACE HELMET had a FACE PLATE on it!

Sp: But it’s made up for by that lovely fur collar. And what is that?

R: It’s hard in space for a pimp.

H: I can talk about some of things the costume designer was apparently going for, if you want me to.

Sp: Go ahead. Make something up.

H: I do know something about this yes. I know something about what is claimed about it in production materials. I can’t vouch that this is what was actually going on in the designer’s mind, but it was documented.

Sp: Wha? Somebody asked the costumer about the fur? I don’t believe you. Go ahead.

H: You done?

Sp: I said go ahead.

H: Okay. So, the script directed that the helmet look slightly like a viking helmet. The whole costume idea was meant to evoke armor.

Sp: I agree. That pulled it off, yes.

H: The fur was intended… two things, one – the idea of evoking the cold and trapped in the ice.

Sp: He made sure to put on the warm space suite before he got in the space ship?

H: It was what it intended to evoke, not what he did before he got into the space ship. The other thing is that it was continuing the viking motif. Wearing furs, etc. That was the primary motivation behind that design. You can believe me or not, but there is documentation here.

P: You are the Historian.

Sp: I wish that that chain of logic had been applied to the original moon missions. I would kill to have seen Buzz Aldrin with a space helmet shaped like a cowboy hat.

MS: Yeehaw! Ride ’em space cowboy!

P: Cross between Buzz Lightyear and Woody.

K: Or Steve Miller.

Sp: Go on.

R: Looking forward to seeing more Penley next week. That’s it.

K: I already mentioned that this one felt slow to me. I didn’t like it as much as last week. Maybe it’s because of the recon, I don’t know. But not as much seemed to happen. And they weenied Victoria, which I don’t like.

Sp: They also didn’t know what to do with Jamie, come to think of it.

K: Yup.

Sp: But what about Victoria?

K: That was about it for Jamie. I want more Jamie. So, meh. Penley was interesting, but that was about it for me this week.

H: Something I like about this story a lot, and something that was very much in this episode, is the depth of character development that we actually see. With Penley, with Clent, even with Varga. There’s interesting motivations, there’s definite personalities and not just caricatures. It’s a base under siege story, but there’s a lot more going on.

R: Is there another kind?

H: The Troughton era is known for it’s “base under siege stories”

P: Does that relate to the political situation at the time?

H: No, it was more to do with the writing styles, the budgets, the monsters, etc. We saw the beginnings of “base under siege” in Hartnell, and it’s continued throughout the entire run of the classic series, but the Troughton era is particularly known for it. And this is just a very fine example of that.