Doctor Who favourite baddie). The hunt was on for more Saturday 6.00pm BBC1 nasties and led to what was to become fondly remembered as "the monster season". ACK IN 1967, the Doctor Who producers Patrick Troughton's Doctor took on Cybermen faced a problem. The Daleks, the show's (twice), weed creatures on a North Sea gas rig, a most enduringly popular monster, were double of himself (in that year's only monster- set to vanish in a bold, but ultimately free story) and the glorious Yeti - both in their doomed, attempt to conquer America. Himalayan backyard and in the London Given their patchy track record in Underground. But the monster that would Bconquering Earth and other planets, you'd make the greatest impact hailed from Mars... imagine they'd have thought twice about it. The red planet has long held a fascination for But this left the series with a big, monster- science-fiction writers so it was only a matter of shaped hole in its storylines, despite the popu time before Doctor Who turned its attention to larity of the Cybermen (already everyone's next our neighbour in space. Writer Brian Hayles i>
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"I've been badgering
Steven Moffat for years
to let me bring back
WRITER MARK GATISS j
I devised a race of armoured reptilian cyborgs, The "something new" got us both excited and! ubbed "Ice Warriors" by the scientist who finds so this Saturday's episode, Cold War, was born. he first one entombed in a glacier. This first En route to Las Vegas, the Doctor and Clara find tory took place not amid the red dust of the dead themselves on a Russian submarine under the lanet itself but on a future Earth in the grip of a North Pole. It's 1983, global nuclear tension is at iew Ice Age. A world where, in the beautiful pop its height and into this mix comes... well, wait ioetry of the script, "suddenly, one year there and see. The episode is a love-letter to those <>as no spring". A bit like this year, in fact. Troughton stories that so often saw a group of Enormous, green and scaly, the first Ice desperate, frightened people under attack from Warrior, Varga, was played by 6ft 7in Bernard an alien menace. A "base under-sea" if you like. Sresslaw, who brought this new baddie to impos- I've always loved submarine movies, too, and bg life just after shooting, ironically enough, I'm thrilled at what the team have achieved on "\arry On Doctorl The idea of the creatures' hiss- screen. It's our very own Das Boot (or Dasssss ng voice seems to have originated with Bresslaw, Boot, as I took to calling it) with Liam Cunn iinting both at their reptilian origins and their ingham twinkling and grizzled as Captain lifficulty coping with Earth's atmosphere. Zhukov and the great David Warner as bobble- hatted Professor Grisenko. We had to UPDATING A CLASSIC BIG HIT WITH the audience, the Ice Warriors Monster maker Neill Gorton "Hollywood-ise" the amount of room on board, returned for a rematch in The Seeds of says, "The old ones [right] had though. It would be hard to hide a seven-foot Death (1969), which introduced a puny arms, Lego hands, fur monster on a conventional submarine. different tier of Martian society, a slim and almost feminine hips. We've given them a beefier Aier "Ice Lord" (as they became known), WAS DETERMINED THAT we should bodybuilder physique [left]" eeter and more articulate than their honour the original, brilliant Ice umbering predecessors. Warrior design. It's so imposing and In 1972, third Doctor Jon scary. They've now got an iridescent 'ertwee faced the creatures in qualitI y to their scaliness, like dragonfly le fondly remembered Curse wings. I was knocked out when I saw fPeladon, a tale of intergalac- the result. Lots of the crew didn't ic politics on a medieval know they were a famous lanet. We discovered, in a returning baddie; they just rilliant twist, that they've reacted to them as a really ecome the good guys! cool, scary monster. Perfect! wo years later, a sequel, Perhaps because the Ice he Monster ofPeladon, Warriors have appeared in aw them revert to type. Doctor Who so infrequently And that was that. and have so little backstory, )espite appearing in fan there's tremendous room to invent. sts of top monsters, the The Martians seem to have strict ce Warriors stayed firmly codes of honour, but we have 1 the show's past for nearly 40 seen them, at various points in ears. Until now... their history, behaving as milita I must admit I'd been badgering ristic aggressors and pragmatic teven Moffat for years to let me bring diplomats. Is their Mars dead or ack the Ice Warriors. He'd been alive? Are they as noble as Spartans ervous about their possible return or as ruthless as Romans? s they seemed almost the embodi- Cold War will be, I hope, only the lent of the slow-moving Who beginning of a new chapter for these lonster of legend. But I kept trying fabulous Doctor Who monsters... nd, as I'd always wanted to set a foctor Who on a submarine, one day Mark Gatiss, formerly of the League said, "How about an Ice Warrior on of Gentlemen, is an executive sub? And there's something else producer of Sherlock and a regular bout them. Something new..." writer on Doctor Who
-19 April 2013 NOW 2013 THEN 1967 31