‘Which side is good, which side is bad, and why should I interfere?’ asks the Doctor early in this episode. It’s a good question, and one that reflects the more ambiguous, adult tone of this story. In general, this feels like it has more in common with Whitaker’s The Crusade – where neither the Crusaders nor the Saracens were entirely sympathetic – than the more recent monster serials. It’s a shame, then, that within a few minutes of meeting him Salamander is established as a bad ‘un, threatening blackmail and assassination, and strutting round in his (presumably self-designed) uniform.

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The point is laboured in the climax: ‘Wait, it says! Wait!’ screams Walters as the computer continues to stall for time. (Poor Walters: conscripted into Britannicus Base, driven to distraction by all the faffing around, and finally shot by both his own side and the Martians). Later, Varga cautions his warriors to wait for the power to increase before attempting take off. But the day is saved by those who, like the Doctor, believe, ‘We’ve got to take some action!’ Which in practice means watching Peter Barkworth and Wendy Gifford moaning piteously as the great and powerful computer spins round and round and Peter Sallis presses some buttons. At which point even Derek Martinus seems to throw in the towel.

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Towards the end of the episode, Jamie, already irate from being shot by the Ice Warriors and dragged through miles of snow, bellows at Clent, ‘You’ve got to do something!’ But the episode – and the story – involves doing nothing; uncertainty leading to prevarication, and ultimately a fatal avoidance of trusting to human instinct and making a choice. It’s definitely thematic – earlier in the episode, when they’re threatened by a bear, Penley tells Jamie they need to stay absolutely still: under pressure he, like Clent, is ‘a scientist, not a gladiator’, gripped by intellectual weakness and only spurred into action by Jamie’s instructions to shoot the animal. The problem with all of this is watching people vacillating just isn’t very interesting.

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There’s a moment in the episode where Clent is frozen in inaction, awaiting fresh information. Which is very much like the experience of watching this episode. Although it survives, it’s as static as watching the previous Tele-snap reconstructions. We’re now in a holding pattern of people wandering back and forth to the glacier, while Britannicus Base worries about the Martian propulsion unit (same discussion as a fortnight ago), and the Ice Warriors think about possibly doing something to the base, at some stage.

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Forget subtext, this story is all about supertext: trusting too much in technology. ‘Science, the victor over nature,’ declares Clent triumphantly. Meanwhile, Penley gripes about ‘robotised humans’ abandoning themselves to the organisational principles of machines. This all sounds like it belongs in a Cyberman story – which would have been all the more obvious had the Ice Warrior costume design matched Hayles’ concept of them as cyborg Vikings. There’s a hint of it in One, when the Doctor spots an electronic connection in Varga’s helmet, but by and large the giant turtle costumes conceal how close they are in principle to the Cybermen.

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The cracks in The Ice Warriors begin to show almost immediately: there’s almost no mystery here; there’s none of drip feed of discoveries and revelations that made The Abominable Snowmen a successful six-parter. Instead, Hayles lays out the central dilemma a handful of minutes into the episode: to save Earth, Britannicus Base must use the Ioniser – but if they do, they may explode the Ice Warrior space ship, destroying themselves and flooding the area with deadly radiation. This is really the only crucial plot point of the episode.

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The serial begins with warbling, Star Trek style vocals over snowy mountains before we’re thrown into the middle of a crisis (marked by dramatic, urgent music!) in a futuristic control centre, oddly situated in an oak-panelled room. People in of-the-moment psychedelic print uniforms rush about barking information at each other. It’s good scene setting – the dialogue hardly sparkles, but it immediately establishes the situation: 5,000 years of history threatened by moving mountains of ice.

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After five weeks of build up, most of this episode is taken up with the final showdown with the Great Intelligence. And, in a very modern way, everyone gets to play a part in the finale. Khrisong is killed trying to rescue the Abbot, who is revealed to be a puppet of the Intelligence, and, de-programmed, reveals the last vital information about the secrets of the inner sanctum (including the revelation that Padmasambhava himself constructed the Yeti over two centuries, under the guidance of the Intelligence).

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‘I think things are coming to a head’. Modern shows often feature a “night before battle” episode that refocuses on the characters before the end – think Game Of Thrones‘ A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, for instance. Episode Five reminds me of one of these. After a brief foray by the Yeti, which topples the huge Buddha in the courtyard, a humbled Khrisong admits defeat. The focus then turns to the evacuation of Detsen Monastery. There’s something very moving about this: in a short time, these monks have been established as men of peace, gentle and kind. Seeing them turfed from their home gives the story personal stakes beyond the “end of the world” (in fact, at this point there’s nothing to say the whole world is in danger).

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