The Empress Of Mars: Ranking - 159

 The Empress Of Mars

(Series 10, Dr 12 with Bill, 10/6/2017, showrunner: Steven Moffat, writer: Mark Gatiss, director: Wayne Yip) 

Rank: 159

'Hello, we're the Space Girls, feminism from the future. It's me, Iraxxa (Fighty Spice) along with my friends The Rani (Scheming Spice), Madame Vastra (Scaly Spice), Maaga (Shooty Spice) and the Racnoss (Webby Spice) singing our hit songs 'Two Regenerate Into Three' and 'Doctor Who Do You Think You Are?'

Mars has, it seems, had as bumpy a ride as Earth when it comes to feminism for it took a full half century before we finally got to see what a female Ice Warrior looked like, but at least when we got one she was worth waiting for. The Daleks and Cybermen are both by nature gender-neutral (despite Torchwood adding a sexy ‘Cyberwoman’ in an episode that’s hilariously wrong on so many levels), giving the Sontarons female warriors played havoc with the foundation of their kind as a clone race that didn’t need genders and The Silurians were already seen as being quite feminine: so that leaves the Ice Warriors as the most obvious Dr Who monster to get a gender makeover. In truth there isn’t a lot Iraxxa does that the male Ice Warriors like Ssssarg and Varga didn’t do (she too is a noble warrior whose quite happy to kill until given a good reason to be merciful and she’s not too keen on hot places either, so at least we know there’s no guff on Mars about getting beach body ready every Summer) but the very fact that she gets to do them at all takes the story in a lot of interesting directions about both the Martians and the Earthlings. Especially in a story set in the middle of the British Empire’s 19th century Victorian heyday when on the one hand women had never had less rights than previous centuries and on the other Queen Victoria was the most important person in the world (the title is particularly clever: Iraxxa is considered to be empress by her own kind, but she’s been out of action on Earth for a while, so really its Queen Victoria herself, sending soldiers on her behalf who are claiming Mars as an outpost of the empire). Something tells me that telling Iraxxa to stay at home bringing up the green babies and making the ice creams over a flaming cold stove wouldn’t go down that well. 

The sight of Victorian soldiers on Mars is one of those so-wrong-its-right plots that Dr Who loves so much and is another sort of topical reference. In 2016 NASA returned to Mars by sending the Probe XoMars, partly to find out once and for all if there had ever been life on Mars in any form by digging underneath the surface. There was much speculation about what they might find: water, germs, amoebas. The running joke amongst Dr Who fans was ‘what if they find sleeping Ice Warriors?’ (although a a few fans of ‘waters Of Mars’ begged the probe not to bring any liquid back just in case). That joke was too obvious not to do, but also so obvious that Gatiss switches it round and gives us a different shock at first – the Probe ‘Valkyrie’ (with a plausible name that nicely ties into the original idea of the Ice warriors as Vikings, warriors from a cold climate invading Britain) instead discovers the message ‘God Save The Queen’ and a bunch of tinpot soldiers. While most Victorian works of fiction from ‘The Charge Of The Light Brigade’ down talk about the glories of war (such a contrast to the survivors of WW1 and 2) Gatiss adds a nuance: they are soldiers just like us, fighting for pay and career, who squabble amongst themselves and even run away from trouble. They aren’t a UNIT (in all meanings of the word); they don’t think alike at all. The same goes for The Ice Warriors: we only see two of them but they disagree too over conquering or trading, just as people in 2016 are divided about ‘our’ wars. 

 ‘Empress Of Mars’, then, is a story about how far we’ve come – but it’s also a story about how far we’ve got to go. Basically this story is a clash between two cultures who just feel so alien to each other, even though in Dr Who terms they’re near-neighbours, seen through modern eyes (ours and Bill’s) as more of a clash between timezones, then and now (we’re the green scaly ones sitting on the Victorians in judgement in case you were wondering). Like many a Who story before it this is an allegory of sorts though. To us the Victorians seem very weird, all pomp and circumstance and hoarding wealth in days of poverty and fighting wars over land they can’t control. And yet that’s precisely how the history books will judge the 2010s, a time of austerity when the people in power siphoned off the funds for themselves and when a lot of the money we didn’t have to feed people went on weapons to fight people who didn’t have much either; full of warmongers who seemed to start more battles than at any other time in our history, who plundered other countries in what looks suspiciously like empire building from the past even when it officially went by another name. This story was made in what we can now say is the tail end of the Iraq-Afghanistan War, our era’s Vietnam, which was about to celebrate its 15th birthday with no sign of stopping and Britain very much the junior in command to America. What historians might miss though, just as we miss about the Victorian era now, is how we were a nation (and world) divided: for everyone explaining how 9/11 meant that the gloves were off in the fight against terrorism there was another voice standing up to say that maybe invading an entire people because of what a fringe group said was maybe not the way to go. Mark Gatiss knew better than most that we’d been here before in Afghanistan: in between writing for Who he was co-creator of ‘Sherlock’ with Steven Moffat and they’d got into trouble with their first episode for having Watson be injured in a war in Afghanistan, something that received several complaints that it was being too ‘woke’ for a Victorian book (even though that’s what blooming happened in Conan-Doyle’s original! Watson fought in the 1878 Afghan War). 

 That wasn’t even the first (see ‘The Crusade’ for a very similar war all round, also about resources while masquerading as a battle over ideological differences and religion). It seems as if Gatiss took most of his inspiration from another war though, the British Empire’s first, biggest and – depending which country a historian comes from – only defeat of the 19th century. Islandlwana was the first battle of what would become known as ‘The Zulu’ wars, in 1879. The empire figured Africa would be so easy to conquer given their inferior firepower of sticks and spears that they only sent 1500 men to fight 20,000. Despite their superior technology the 24th regiment were slaughtered. Almost nobody talked about this back home because it was deeply embarrassing and made us look foolish and egotistical, so for a generation the missing troops became something of a mystery It’s very Dr Who to have them end their days not in Africa but on Mars (and they are clearly meant to be the same regiment; they have the number ‘24’ on their arms). Here it’s the Ice Warriors’ turn to make cracks about us being primitive and easy to defeat even though there are only two, while the story is set in 1881 (which means the soldiers have been wandering around for two years – a bit of a stretch but possible). Like a lot of early Dr Who from the 1960s the show has gone back to asking the inter-generational question ‘can war ever be justified?’ And this story answers with a big fat ‘no’. There’s a cut line of the Doctor’s I wish they’d kept that’s one of Gatiss’ very best and really hammers it home, perhaps cut for being too similar to the long speech in ‘Zygon Inversion/Invasion’: War is ‘a terrible recurring pattern on every world, people forgetting the most basic principle of existence: we have to learen together – or we’ll die together’. 

 A lot of 12th Doctor stories have him being mediator between two different factions (‘Under The Lake’ ‘The Girl Who Died’ ‘The Zygon Invasion/Inversion’ to an extent ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ ‘Smile’ ‘The ‘extremis’ trilogy) even though it’s something this grumpy, loud-mouthed, short-tempered and very alien Doctor is particularly unsuited to (he’s like the 3rd Doctor in more ways than the velvet suit). He even mentions being ‘An honorary Guardian of the Tythonian Hive’ (a reference to Erato ‘The Creature From The Pit’) which only goes to serve how few times this happened in the ‘old’ series (that story, ‘The Silurians’ and ‘Warriors On The Cheap’ is pretty much it across 26 years). In many ways ‘Empress Of Mars’ is that recurring plot at its most bare: if we don’t learn to live together both sides lose out. We’re so used to the Doctor coming out on the side of the Humans without ever having to question it that it makes you stop and think – and it does the same for him too. The Ice Warriors are great for stories like this where there is no right or wrong. The fact that one side happen to be green Martian lizards and one set are Victorian soldiers doesn’t change the fact that this is really Gatiss writing about ourselves. Luckily he has a happy ending ready, with the moment the Ice Warriors are approached to join the Intergalactic Federation seen in the ‘Peladon’ stories and the start of the Ice Warriors learning to be merciful and kind (see ‘The Curse Of Peladon’ for what happens next, give or take a few centuries). 

 Peladon was in fact the starting point for Gatiss’ script. (Well, actually no that’s a lie: originally Gatiss had planned to write a sequel to his story ‘Sleep No More’, with a merchant banker who kept his employees from sleep so they could work longer hours but found they made mistakes and caused a ‘credit crunch’. Only that first story didn’t go down too well with fans so the idea was quietly dropped). A third Peladon story was hot on its heels through. By now Moffat had handed in his notice and, after being good friends with both Moffat and Russell T Davies and always being assured of a regular slot, Mark was now having to face up to the fact that there might not be any room for him in the new era and that this might end up being his last story for the show he’d loved since childhood. It had become a running joke between him and Steven that he would pitch an Ice Warriors tale because he loved the and Moffat would refuse because he thought them lumbering and slow, everything that made the show look silly. Gatiss had managed to write ‘Cold War’ and have the Ice Warriors turn up in a story about the Russians and running around without their shellsuits but Moffat still wasn’t keen. Knowing this might be his last chance though Gatiss begged his friend one last time and said he could write a highly topical story about a referendum on a Federation Union that wasn’t about Brexit in no way, no sir, un-huh. Moffat feared how divisive this might be and turned it down (why? 90% of Who viewers are left-wing. I mean what do the rest do? Cheer on The Daleks?) and also had doubts about the younger audience understanding the reference (why? It was OK for Silurians and Sontarons etc. All you need is a flashback and Ssarg’s your uncle, everyone’s happy, sorted!) but agreed to having the Ice Warriors if Gatiss could find a new angle that hadn’t been explored before that made them modern and relevant. 

So Gatiss did. He wasn’t exactly known for his feminist characters before this but he really gets Iraxxa, someone whose every bit as deadly as the male but still recognisably different. Saying that this story is a critique on feminism in DW sounds awful – a dry lecture that makes everybody feel small, which is what a lot of the worst Chibnall stories ended up being. Instead it’s merely a launching pad for a lot of brave conversations that were long overdue in the world of Who. Iraxxa’s a matriarch rather than a soldier, recognisably like Queen Victoria in the way she rules with an iron fist inside reptilian gloves (By a quirk of fate, ITV chose now to put on their drama about Queen Vic, the very under-rated series ‘Queen Victoria’ where she’s played superbly by…Jenna Coleman a year after Clara left Who in her career best role so far; although in this world Queen Vic still looks like Pauline Collins, who played the monarch in ‘Tooth and Claw’. Tommy Knight, Sarah Jane’s son, is in it too. As is Ferdinand Kingsley, Catchlove in this episode, who plays the Royal chef). The costume for Iraxxa is a thing of beauty: clearly very different to the males (look at those hips!) but recognisably part of the same species. Originally they gave her quite an impressive boob job too, till someone pointed out that she was supposed to be reptilian and as such wouldn’t have mammary glands! Along with Friday too the Ice warriors continue to be the best realised of all the 20th century monsters updated to the 21st (and I say that as someone who adored the fibreglass original!) The scene of her talking to Bill, because she feels she has more in common with a woman than a member of her own species, is very clever and gives Bill something to do beyond getting captured, while the one about the Victorians accepting time travel and aliens and trips to Mars, who still can’t get his head around women being allowed into the police force, is bang on despite (being a copy of all those jokes about Madame Vastra being accepted by Victorian London as a Silurian lizard but who can’t handle her being lesbian). I know a lot of fans complained about the gender bias but it does come after a lot of decades of male characters having it their own way and having a female Ice warrior makes a lot more sense than, say, a female Dalek. 

 The other angle Gatiss wrote about is racism. The troops have a young black soldier Vincey with them treated like one of the men – something that worried Moffat as being anachronistic (and he’s not the only viewer to write in pointing this out). But there is a precedent as Gatiss knew from his research: a boy nicknamed Mustapaha was orphaned when his parents were killed after the battle of Ginis in 1885, part of the Madhist wars in Sudan and brought up by the captain of the light infantry, ending up a boy soldier and serving in the British army for real (it was a big story: Queen Victoria even gave him special dispensation to join her troops). Gatiss was fascinated: how could you join the army who’d killed your parents and fight other families so that they were orphaned too? Fearing that this story might simply perpetuate racism if he was to do that story direct, though, he gives that plot twist to the Ice warriors, having them befriend a Martian they nickname ‘Friday’ after ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and turn into a sort of butler come slave. It’s no surprise to any viewer at all when he turns out to be working for his Queen as much as the Victorians are working for theirs and is really on Mars to recover his sleeping Empress. What is more of a shock, though (spoilers), is later when he intercedes on the humans’ behalf, saying that after seeing them up close they’re not so bad (and very in keeping with the ‘Peladon’ tales where they’re not the monsters you think they are). He just wants peace, as do most of the Humans, but it’s the moral of this story that the people with the biggest weapons tend to shout the loudest and fight even when the people at home want them to stop. The result, then, is a story about the past that, unlike a lot of latter-day historicals that suggests its all the same as now but in fancy dress (including next weeks’ episode ‘Eaters Of Light’) or throwing in a celebrity you know from the back of a banknote or stamp by showing how ‘alien’ what seemed normal back then seems to us now. This is an era of re-thinking, of tearing down statues dedicated to aristocratic Victorians who had more money and slaves than sense, regarded as heroes of the time but now seen as monsters. Notably Iraxxa’s tomb is lovingly made and quite the scene stealer, a mirror of all those Victorians who will surely get the same if they ever return home. 

 A quick note too about the class structure, surely a dig at austerity Britain: the Victorians mention ‘RHIP: Rank Has It’s Privileges’ as heard in a more comical sense in ‘Day Of The Daleks’ while another one whistles about how ‘the rich that has the pleasure and the poor what have the blame’, a quote from the Victorian music hall song ‘She Was Poor But She was Honest’ that became popular again in the 1950s when it was used in the greatest Hancock’s Half Hour radio story ‘The Poetry Society’ (itself a damning critique on snobbery). But positions of power aren’t just unfair, they’re dangerous: the people in power on both sides have lost touch with the people beneath them and assume they know best when they plainly don’t. ‘Empress Of Mars’ is a warning, to all species, that no matter how much you think you’re above your subjects you are still part of a species and can’t just act how you feel. This story practically comes with a dedication to David Cameron and Barack Obama that just because the generals and politicians and economists make a case for war doesn’t mean the people agree and that they can have one without consulting us first. 

 A very timely story, then, that does exactly what all good Dr whos should do: they make you reflect on what’s happening at the time of transmission wherever or whenever they’re set. While I do wonder sometimes what the likes of Robert Holmes, Terry Nation and Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis would think about what the modern series has done to their inventions in the modern era, updating them for modern tastes (the Sontarons, Daleks and Cybermen respectively) Brian Hayles would have loved what Gatiss did to the Ice Warriors. Unlike ‘Cold war’ (and indeed Hayles’ own ‘Monster Of Peladon’) they’re back to being kind and considerate, honour and duty bound, with more dignity and moral codes than the Humans, back to where they were in ‘Curse Of Peladon’. They’re exactly the right sort of ‘monster’ for this kind of a story: a genuinely scary threat that can kill everyone as soon as look at them but who learn not to. The trouble with this story is we’ve already had this story lots of times recently. The Silurians turned up after the Ice warriors in old Dr Who but in the modern series they’ve all but stolen the reptiles’ thunder as the ‘honourable’ merciful Who monsters with an equal claim to life. This story has so many characters running around that none of them quite come to life with only 45minutes of running time – Gatiss clearly likes Ice Lady Iraxxa the most and gives her all the best lines but even she isn’t quite as fully formed as the great male Warriors of the past, when Bernard Bresslaw had six episodes to himself. The Humans are all a bunch of stereotypes – the coward turned brave, the brave turned coward and the ruthless killer that every regiment throughout history seems to have at least one of. Friday is the most disappointing: we could have really got inside his head, felt his pain at having to be subservient to a race he considers weak and inferior in his quest to save his Queen and his desperate realisation that maybe he’s started a war by accident. Also, while it’s the ‘right’ sort of plot Who should be doing, it’s with the ‘wrong’ race – the Ice Warriors really aren’t that patient as a species or likely to become servants and it might have been funnier has this plot been given over to another race: ‘Cyberman Friday’ for instance). Once you’ve worked out the parallels this story is after it has nowhere to go: there is tension but if you’ve seen even a handful of Dr Who stories before this you know exactly the way things are going to turn out and there isn’t the sort of plot twist that usually raise Gatiss’ stories up a level. 

 The end is particularly garbled, Gatiss’ scripts over-running so much they had to be cut to smithereens at the end, so we lose a lot of that sense of relief when the peace finally comes (this really needed to be a two parter). The end with Missy, planned for the end of this story to run directly into season finale ‘World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls’ also had to be hastily rewritten, so that half the scene ended up at the end of ‘The Eaters Of Light’ and the two stories switched round in the running order instead. As cleverly as they paper over the cracks, with Nardole and the Tardis being written out and letting Missy out the vault so she can pilot the Tardis and get everyone home, it’s messy: there’s never any real explanation as to why the Tardis disappears at all and it also means Missy has to sit around in the Tardis watching everyone have fun with Picts in 2nd Century Scotland for two whole days (and if the Ice Warriors aren’t naturals at patience then surely that goes a quadzillion fold for The Master, in all regenerations). It just feels rushed and undoes a lot of good work of the rest of the episode, for all it fits into the series arc about ‘even baddies can change their minds and become good’. And once again with modern Who it insists on being shot in the dark so you can’t tell what’s going on, leaving you feeling as if you’re staring at a black screen and listening to an audio adventure for long periods unless you turn the brightness levels up (it’s a strange fact that too much of ‘old’ Who loses atmosphere by being too brightly lit and too much ‘modern’ Who is too dark; surely someone somewhere can meet somewhere in the middle for a season?) 

 The result is sort of middling story. The plot is solid, the Ice Warriors great and this return to the moralistic Malcolm Hulke way of writing for the series is clearly the way to go. It’s just all a bit boring and bland with it, steering a little too close to its Rider Haggard sources (and, after Quatermass and H G Wells, Haggard is the most obvious source material for Who to plunder), as well nicking large bits from the 2013 Disney film ‘Frozen’ (someone as cold as ice who learns to trust again that you half expect to start singing ‘Let It Go’. Gatiss must have a lot of nephews and nieces and friends’ children the right age). When a story about 19th century colonialists on Mars fighting green reptiles is slightly boring you know that something’s gone a bit wrong. The acting too is variable: Peter Capaldi chooses this story to revert back to ineffectual substitute teacher and while Pearl Mackie and Adele Lynch (as Iraxxa – she deserved a much better career than the bit parts she’s had since) really raise their game this week no one else has enough character to get their teeth into, even Anthony Calf (who was one of Who’s big ‘discoveries’, his single line at the start of ‘The Visitation’, as the son who goes investigating Terrileptils and dies a quick death leading to a distinguished career including being Strickland, the boss of ‘New Tricks’) . Which is not to say it’s a failure either: bits of it are exactly what Dr Who was made for and are as well written as any past classic. There just aren’t enough of those scenes to sustain a full story. Is it the greatest ever story Dr Who ever made? No. Is it even the best ice warrior story? Well nobody, not even Lynch, is going to beat Bernard Bresslaw’s iconic performance. ‘Empress’ lacks the extra storytelling dimensions of Who at its best and is another of those stories that ends with people patching up their differences and negotiating, rather than anything that clever or exciting. But it does prove that Gatiss was right and Moffat was wrong: The Ice Warriors are a brilliant creation who can be both scary and deep, perfect for rediscovery in this era of the series and enables the series to at least knock on the door of inclusivity in a clever and profound way. The problem, is once that job’s been done and those boxes have been ticked, there isn’t that much of a story left to tell. 

 POSITIVES + Alpha Centauri! Dr Who’s sweetest monster from the two Peladon Pertwee stories finally makes a long awaited return after forty-three years (a record, till Ian came back in ‘Power Of the Doctor’ and broke it). They even got Ysanne Churchman back to perform his/her voice, at the age of 93! (Another record, till again William Russell beat that in the same story. And, unlike 90% of twists the modern series tries to do they kept it quiet too, with Churchman uncredited in the Radio Times). That’s my two favourite alien races in Dr Who in the same episode for the first time since 1974! And two that, despite both being green, couldn’t be more different: The Ice Warriors are shifty and untrustworthy and ready perhaps more than any other species to kill everyone in the room if they feel aggrieved enough, whilst Alpha Centauri is sweet and kind and good and more than a little bit naive. The Martians are warriors; the Centauris are civil servants and diplomats and they work together really well, even when one’s just a cameo on a screen. Oh to have had a full Peladon story! I love the fact that Churchman comes back for the single most feminist Who story since ‘Survival’ too: famously she played Grace Archer in ‘The Archers’ who died in a fire for a ratings winner on the radio the night ITV had their switch-on in 1955. What you don’t often hear is why she was written out at all: she’d picketed the BBC for equal pay between the genders and was fired to make sure that other actresses didn’t follow her. She’s one of the unsung heroines of the acting industry of the 1950s and its so good the series makes use of her again after so many years.

 NEGATIVES - No one seems to have told Mark Gatiss that Nardole was still travelling in the Tardis so he gets written out early on in a convoluted moment when the Tardis takes him back home and asks Missy, still a mysterious person trapped in a vault at this stage, for help. The whole ‘whose hiding in the vault?’ arc that’s been running all series wasn’t one of Steven Moffat’s better ideas all round – we’d have been more surprised if it was anyone except Missy and bringing the Tardis back at the end just to get the Doctor back home again seems odd all round (Missy loves to stir more than any other character, even when ‘good’ – once she’d found out what was going on surely she’d have nipped back in time a few minutes and told Iraxxa ‘Oi, that male human lump over there says you couldn’t do a three-part turn of your shuttle if your life depended on it’ and told the humans ‘Oi. That female ice warrior over there called you a wimp and said your Queen smells’. That would have been a lot more fun than reducing her to the role of ‘backup driver’. 

 BEST QUOTE: Iraxxa: ‘Mars stands alone. We are strong. Soon all my warriors will wake. We do not acquire assistance’. 

 PREQUELS/SEQUELS: Four weeks after ‘Empress Of Mars’ (and a week after the season finale, confusingly) comic strip ‘The Wolves Of Winter’ featured the 13th Dr and Bill coming across the Ice Warriors again. At long last it features a crossover with their ‘fellow’ Martian menace ‘The Flood’ from ‘Waters Of Mars’. This story makes the ‘Viking’ links with the Ice Warriors even more apparent when a ship containing three of the Martians crash lands into an ice-covered Earth mountain in 9th century AD. They’ve set up home in a cave while they carry out their mission and leg it home, only they’ve unknowingly taken ‘The Flood’ with them, infecting Earth after it all but killed them out back at home. One of the Warriors gets infected and turns on the Humans who are a little spear trigger-happy, with the Doctor and Bill again trying to intermediate between the two before interplanetary war breaks out. As if that wasn’t enough Ingiger, the God in ‘The Curse Of Fenric’ turns up too – and there’s a polar bear that’s got loose and started roaming round the Tardis! Tense and involved, without the usual ‘wackiness’ of the comic strips, this is one of my favourite of all the illustrated Whos. I wish they’d make this one in the series for real – it’s not often you see the Ice Warriors on the back foot, as victims rather than conquering heroes and the Flood is long overdue a return. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say this might be my favourite 12th Doctor story of any medium and writer Richard Dinnick and illustrator Brian Williamson between them captures Capaldi’s voice and likeness really well. 

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