Ice Time

I'm not going to lay into Cold War too much. It may have been a dull episode but that hardly makes it stand out considering the direction Doctor Who’s been travelling in over the last couple of years. It also felt like this was a cheap episode, designed to take place on a finite number of sets and cost as little money as possible. That may be cause to grant it a little leeway. The cheapness would explain the lower than average number of effects shots and the single Ice Warrior outfit. Gems like The Rings of Akhaten have to be paid for somehow.

Perhaps there only being one Ice Warrior knocking about was for the best, considering it was one of the weakest aspects of the episode. The design was the let-down. Previously when monsters have returned from "the classic series" they've done so with an updated look that's influenced by the past but is designed to work for a modern audience (and sell some toys).

The Sontarans are a good example here. With them the production team took a few bullet points. They're short, they're a clone race, they're warriors, and apparently RTD said their armour should be reminiscent of stone so they stood out from races that had been used in previous seasons. The race was successfully recreated for a 2000s audience, melding the credible with what had gone before. The outfit we saw in Cold War may as well have been an original. It was that similar and uninspiring.

I admit that’s partly a personal taste thing. I'm sure there were some kids watching who are now convinced the Ice Warriors are the greatest Doctor Who monsters ever (they won’t amount to anything but they exist). But for that effect to be achieved only one suit was needed. More would have been a waste.

I'm less convinced anyone watching thought the unmasked Ice Warrior was a triumph. That looked like what it was: some shonky CG work based on a generic design. There were more interesting-looking aliens on offer as background extras in The Rings of Akhaten. For that matter there were more interesting-looking aliens on offer as background extras in The End of the World.

I'd say the production team didn't need to show an unmasked Ice Warrior but of course they did. It had never been done before. That alone is reason (or excuse, take your pick) enough to do something in their eyes. It seems that the question of whether something is necessary or can be successfully achieved never comes up over at BBC Wales.

Also, it was written by Mark Gatiss. In the DWM preview of the episode he waxed lyrical about the lore of the race and wanting to show more of their history. He also said he wants to explore them in further episodes, so he's clearly hoping that suit gets another outing. He was always going to want to be the man to show an unmasked Ice Warrior. This is what the less disciplined fanboys working on the show (Gatiss and Nick Briggs for the most part) do. Someone would've done it eventually, so why not him?

The reason to that is that the production team supporting him didn't have enough time to do a good enough job. Or simply that they couldn't be bothered to. Or that he himself had no clue what he wanted to see so left it to the design team, who didn't understand the added “importance" of what they were working on.

Cold War was the best episode of the second half of the series so far. But considering it opened with an urban thriller that forget to thrill and continued with a large amount of cash smeared smugly onto our screens with no story to back it up that's not saying much. Not even the efforts of Gaiman and whatever Moffat’s cooked up for the Grand Finale™ can save this run now.