Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors

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The Ice Warriors is the third serial of Season 5 of the classic Doctor Who television series. Originally broadcast in six weekly episodes from 11 November to 16 December 1967. It was written by Brian Hayles and directed by Derek Martinus. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield, Peter Barkworth as Leader Clent, Peter Sallis as Penley, and Bernard Bresslaw as Varga the Ice Warrior.

The TARDIS arrives at Britannicus Base during a new Ice Age, where a struggling research team uses an ioniser to hold the glaciers back and unearths a frozen, armoured alien that awakens with a plan to call its ship. The Doctor questions the base’s blind faith in computer orders while Jamie and Victoria get caught between disciplined officials and rebellious outsiders who trust human judgment. Episodes 2 and 3 were missing for decades but were later reconstructed with animation for home release.

Episode 1

A new Ice Age grips the Earth. The TARDIS lands near Brittanicus Base, where Base Controller Clent and Miss Garrett run a vast ioniser that holds the glaciers at bay: so long as the computer approves every move. The travellers are ushered inside as alarms report the ice advancing. Clent frets over dwindling power and a dissenting scientist, Penley, who has stormed out to live with a scavenger named Storr rather than obey a machine.

Out on the ice, Dr Arden’s survey team uncovers a man-shaped figure buried in a glacier, horned helmet and armour locked in blue ice. Convinced it’s a prehistoric warrior, Arden insists on hauling the block back to the base for study. The Doctor watches closely, troubled by the shape and by odd radiation traces; Jamie and Victoria feel the temperature drop and the mood tighten as the computer refuses risky settings on the ioniser.

Victoria notices faint movement inside the ice, a shadow that wasn’t there before. Overnight heaters thrum. Condensation beads on the visor of the “frozen man,” and the Doctor voices what no one else dares: this is not human. Cracks spider across the block. Metal fingers flex. With a hiss of thawing vapour, the Ice Warrior opens his eyes.

Episode 2

The warrior, Varga, awakens, immense and hissing, and reacts with sudden violence, killing a guard and forcing Arden and Victoria at gunpoint to guide him back toward the glacier. He speaks of a ship, a crew, and a mission buried when the ice came. At the base, Clent refuses to panic, insisting the computer will model a response once variables are known. The Doctor argues that is exactly the problem: the unknown is walking.

Jamie joins a search party on the ice; Penley, watching from the rocks with Storr, debates whether to help the base that cast him out. Varga locates his crash site and sends a signal. Deep under the frozen crust, shapes stir: more Ice Warriors encased and waiting. Arden dies trying to escape. Victoria, defiant, is dragged to the wreck as leverage.

Back at Brittanicus, the ioniser’s readings show an odd interference pattern the computer cannot resolve. The Doctor recognises it as alien power harmonics and warns Clent that firing the ioniser blindly could trigger an explosion if the Martian engines are nearby. Varga’s reply to any appeal is simple: the ice will be theirs again. As night seals over the valley, a second warrior claws free of the ice, and the balance tips.

Episode 3

The Ice Warriors revive their crew and set up operations around the half-buried ship, scavenging parts from the glacier like miners. Varga orders fuel and power cells to restart engines grown crystalline with cold; Victoria is confined as a hostage and listens, learning their priorities and their contempt for “soft” Earthmen. Jamie and a technician make a risky approach and sabotage a relay, but a burst from a sonic gun throws Jamie hard, injuring his leg.

Penley and Storr find him and haul him to a snow-buried hut; Penley’s humanity wins over his pride as he tends the stranger. In the base, the Doctor studies armour fragments and deduces a crucial truth: the Warriors are vulnerable to heat and pressure changes; their suits regulate a narrow band. He proposes portable heaters and controlled ioniser bursts as a defence, but Clent refuses without computer clearance.

Miss Garrett wavers, caught between protocol and the Doctor’s urgency. Out on the ice, a Warrior scouting party tests the base perimeter. The defenders’ first heater volley staggers them, proving the theory. Varga adapts immediately, ordering heavier weapons and a direct strike at Brittanicus to seize the ioniser itself: the one tool strong enough to clear their ship.

Episode 4

Pressure mounts. Varga positions a sonic cannon to crack the base dome and demands fuel, components, and the Doctor’s surrender. Storr, greedy for reward, tries to bargain with the Warriors and is contemptuously killed. Penley slips back into the base to steal medical supplies for Jamie and crosses paths with Miss Garrett, who pleads for his help.

The Doctor ventures out under a whiteout to parley, and is seized. He is then marched into the wreck to face Varga amid hoarfrosted consoles. He stalls, feigns curiosity, and gleans the status of the engines: brittle, reactive, dangerous if jolted by the wrong kind of energy. Back at the base, Clent’s paralysis worsens; any ioniser pulse near unknown alien power yields a “cannot compute.” The glacier advances metre by metre.

Victoria engineers a small escape with a loosened panel, but a Warrior recaptures her in the corridor, the air steaming with their breath. Jamie, fever breaking, insists on returning to the fight on a makeshift crutch. Penley chooses a side, telling Miss Garrett the truth: they must act without the machine. As the storm lifts, the cannon swings to bear, and Varga issues an ultimatum: surrender the ioniser, or the base and everyone in it will be shattered.

Episode 5

The sonic barrage begins, rattling the dome and showering sparks over the ioniser consoles. The Doctor plays for time inside the wreck, needling Varga about Martian glory and slipping warnings about the engine’s fragility. Miss Garrett rallies technicians to deploy heater packs along the inner corridors; sudden waves of heat force probing Warriors to retreat.

Jamie and Penley, moving in drifts and shadow, sabotage the cannon’s power feed and drag Victoria free in the confusion. Clent’s computer now lists too many unknowns to authorise even defensive firings; he orders a withdrawal into the deepest sections and calls it prudence. The Doctor, reunited with his friends at the perimeter, sketches a desperate plan: use the ioniser in short, escalating bursts to force the glacier back and raise ambient heat.

This will risk a chain reaction in the Martian engines before the Warriors can fully power up. Miss Garrett, seeing no other option, sides with him. Penley takes the ioniser board while the Doctor calculates thresholds by hand. Varga senses the turn and prepares for immediate lift-off, betting that brute force will punch the ship free. The base hums as the ioniser spools. Outside, ice groans like an animal, and the valley fills with a rising, dangerous warmth.

Episode 6

Decision becomes action. Penley drives the ioniser past the computer’s comfort, following the Doctor’s shouted figures. Heat ripples over the glacier. Crevasses split. The sonic cannon buckles and falls silent. In the wreck, coils brighten and the Martian engines begin to sing: out of tune. Varga orders take-off. The ship strains, melts its own cradle, and lurches sideways as the ioniser’s bursts hammer the ice into vapour.

The Doctor holds the line for one heartbeat longer than anyone thinks wise. A flare blooms under the hull. The Warriors’ reactor overloads; the ship erupts in a blizzard of steam and shrapnel that the winds tear away. Silence returns, broken only by the crack and sigh of collapsing ice. The glacier’s advance halts; readings stabilise. Clent, shaken, admits that judgement sometimes must lead and machines must follow. Miss Garrett thanks Penley, who grins and declares he might come in from the cold after all.

Jamie tests his leg and boasts he could outrun a glacier now; Victoria laughs and borrows a fur to stop shivering. The Doctor offers a modest smile and points out that the computer did have a use: its refusal made them think. As the base resets its systems, the travellers slip back to the TARDIS and vanish into the thawing air.

Themes

As a “base-under-siege” thriller, The Ice Warriors earns a solid upper-mid ranking for Season 5: leaner than The Underwater Menace, not as iconic as The Tomb of the Cybermen, but moodier and more resourceful than many of its peers. The creeping glacier, hissed dialogue, and the Doctor’s improvisations give it a cool, patient tension that pairs well with The Abominable Snowmen and foreshadows the urban panic of The Web of Fear.

It doesn’t have the epic sweep of The Invasion, yet its world-building and creature design make it a touchstone. Taken together, it’s a confident showcase for the era’s siege formula and a memorable monster debut.

Linking past and future, it follows directly from The Abominable Snowmen and leads into the tonal shift of The Enemy of the World. More importantly, it introduces the Ice Warriors, whose legacy spreads through The Seeds of Death, The Curse of Peladon, and The Monster of Peladon, and resurfaces in the modern series with Cold War and Empress of Mars.

Its climate peril and brittle diplomacy echo later Earthbound crises from Inferno to The Waters of Mars. In that sense, The Ice Warriors is both foundation and forecast: cementing a new foe while sketching the series’ long fascination with survival under pressure.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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