The Seeds Of Death: Ranking - 93

           The Seeds Of Death

(Season 6, Dr 2 with Jamie and Zoe, 25/1/1969-1/3/1969, producer: Peter Bryant, script editor: Terrance Dicks, writer: Brian Hayles, director: Michael Ferguson)

Rank: 93

   '...Hissssss. Why did we transssssssssssmat to England? It'ssssssssss too cold and rainy for me. We should have gone sssssssssssomewhere warmer. Like Icccccceland! Now there’ssssss a place an Ice Warrior can feel at home and live in peacccccce!'

 Thissssssssssssss issssssssss another one of thosssssssssssss black and white DWs that doessssssn’t get the love it dessssssservesssssssss, mosssstly because its a bit sssssssssslow for modern viewerssssss. But there’s ssssssso much to love here: The Ice Warriorssssss are ssssssstill my favourite DW ‘monsters’, with their sssssssssibiliant hissing tones and slow menacing walk making them stand out amongst the more outwardly aggressive aliens, as if they’re taking their time to hunt you down because they know they’re going to win in the end anyway so what’s the rush? (And yes, technically I know the walk is because the poor actors are walking round with half a tonne of fibreglass on their back but even so, where the Daleks wheel, the Cybermen loom and the Sontarons pounce the Ice Warriors stride. Or at least they do till someone turns the heating up). They too have a nobility and poise that makes them very different to other DW monsters - definitely something the Daleks and Cybermen don’t have - and they kill more through competition than conquest (Earth is their near neighbour after all – invasion is just their way of saying ‘hello’ as part of a friendly backyard tussle). Alas the really promising intended second script ‘Lords Of the Red Planet’ which expanded on this idea was dropped at the last minute in favour of this one – perhaps because ‘Seeds’ is a lot more DWy and more like the other Troughton under siege stories – and there’s less thought and intelligence in this story than the debut. Even so, if this is just your typical late 1960s DW runaround then it’s a really good DW runaround. The Ice Warriors seem more of a threat now that there are more of them – all of them notably different, from personality to costumes, making them a relative rarity amongst DW races who tend to all think the same (which is daft when you think about it – if humans are our model of life on other planets, because that’s all we know about for sure, then you can’t get two humans to agree on anything. Particularly DW fans. So why should aliens?). While other aliens can be reduced to warriors, by stealth or conquest, with the occasional genial and often forgettable race, the Ice Warriors are the most like ‘us’, whose motives change depending on individuals and whose behaviour can change with the wind. They look amazing too: the fibreglass body armour with tufts of hair make them quite unlike any other scifi creation, while the idea of aliens being reptiles makes them one of the most plausible species based purely on what we know about our own planet. Notably its a second DW story set on the moon within two years and just six months before mankind lands there for real the closest Ice warriors come to invading Earth in old-Who. I love the way the story starts in a museum that mixes fact from the past and the time of recording with fiction from the future, while the regulars take a while to work out what’s going on and what time they’re in. What’s clever about this story though is that, even though it was written to a backdrop of how new and exciting space exploration is (and the children watching this story at home would all have been glued to real rocket launches for the past couple of years in preparation for apollo 11), in this story in the not-all-that-far-future (mid 21^st century) rocket-ships are already old hat and only exist in museums, while space travel has become boring and routine. As a few writers have pointed out, this story does to the new and exciting fad of space travel what was happening in the 1960s to the steam train, making an invention that was once seen as the pinnacle of man’s achievement that once meant escape adventure and opportunity seems archaic and quaint and unsustainable. Writer Brian Hayles, 37 when this story went on air, was old enough to have lived through a time when steam was king and seems to be saying to the still-mostly-children audience watching this story ‘it will happen to you one day’.And he was right, given our reticence to send anything manned into space properly in half a century (maybe the real Martians scared NASA off because they didn’t like their portrayal in stories like this one?) Instead everyone’s using the T-mat device, a transmat beacon that’s not at all like Star Trek’s teleports, gosh no. I’ve often wondered, given that no other DW story takes transmats as the norm for the future, if this wasn’t a dig at DW’s nearest rival, then entering its final year on TV before cancellation and asks a question they never dared ask: what happens if an alien race gain control of the teleports? In the end the story becomes a love letter to 1969, with the rockets of the day consigned to museums the only way that the base on the moon is saved. Though it looks like just another Troughton ‘base under siege’ story, with the humans picked off one by one (and collaborating with the enemy, WW2 style) there’s another element that’s much more interesting than that, about the dangers of putting all your eggs in one basket and ignoring all the developments of the past. The idea of the seeds then takes over for the second half, the Ice Warriors’ attempts to terraform Earth and make it colder (no prizes for guessing that hey hit Britain first – given how cold it is this week for all I know they succeeded and there’s one under my sofa right now – I’ll have a look next time I go to hide behind it). It’s an intriguing idea, a monster starting their assault with most of humanity oblivious (and the Moonbase who know what’s going on cut off from them), even if it feels more like the sort of thing a Cybermen would do: the Ice warriors tend to believe in fairer fights than winning by trickery like this. Really, its just an excuse for more fun with the DW foam machine – there’s a lot of it in this story, even compared to ‘Fury From The Deep’ and Troughton’s never funnier than in part five,trying to slip and slide his way out of trouble before the seeds burst in his face. If there’s still not quite enough story to stretch across six episodes even with the two plots, well, that’s a problem common with most 1960s stories that run this long. More of a problem is how faceless most of the guest cast are, with no stand outs amongst the humans (the closest, Professor Eldred, still isn’t clever or dotty enough to match the ranks of great DW professors of old; as far as I know he’s no relation to the Eldrad who must live in the 4^th Dr era). To be fair to them no actor would feel comfortable in those romper suits which just look ridiculous, a rare lapse by the costume department (though given what people wear in 2023 the idea of people wearing this sort of thing by 2050 doesn’t seem impossible). Alan Bennion is excellent as Slaar, but nobody ever managed to match Bernard Bresslaw in the Ice warriors’ debut story, who all but created the Ice Warriors from their hissy voice to their background. Even more of a problem is that the resolution is almost kinda sorta like ‘The Ice Warriors’ - (spoilers) basically turning up the heating – just in a different location. I wasn’t all that taken with it the first time to be honest. Luckily though there’s enough going to not really care about the plot all that much; most of our time is spent with the regulars and the 2^nd Dr, Jamie and Zoe are one of my favourite Tardis teams; their friendship is clearly very real off set and on and the balance between Zoe’s intelligence but naivety, Jamie’s bravery but dimwittedness and the 2^nd Dr’s habit of staying on the fringes and watching things unfold before suddenly taking charge is one of the best combinations DW ever had. You really feel as if the 2^nd Dr is up against a threat that’s the equal of him in this story and the tension builds nicely up to the end. The result is a highly watchable, under-rated story that’s forgotten only because it followed a run of even better and more memorable ones and is a sequel to an even better story than this. Even so, there’s no such thing as a bad Ice Warrior story and this story does all the sort of things most 2^nd Dr stories do with more verve than most. If nothing else you’ll never hear anyone using the letter sssssssssss in such a distinctive and menacing way ever again. A most under-rated story.

+ There’s a great scene where Earth are desperately trying to get hold of the Moonbase because they’ve heard there’s been some kind of commotion and an ice warrior suddenly looms on screen as if to say ‘hello’. No other series gives you scenes like this one.

- Everyone is depending on Zoe. She’s the only one small enough to crawl through a ventilation shaft to mess with the heating (the first time one was ever central to a DW plot?) and has to crawl behind the Ice Warriors in order to fix the thermostat. She needs to be both fast and small, lurking in the shadows. Only there’s a cliffhanger coming up, so what does she do? She walks in large exaggerated steps slowly, as if filling up the room and is making so much noise that of course The Ice Warriors are going to turn round and see her. For arguably the cleverest character DW ever had Zoe isn’t half thick sometimes. Especially when the cliffhangers need her to be.