The Seeds of Death

"You saw what happened to your superior. You would do well to cooperate."

Writer: Brian Hayles

Format: TV 

Broadcast: 25th January - 1st March 1969

Season: 6.05

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis 

It is the late 21st century and mankind is totally dependent on T-Mat, a revolutionary form of instant travel. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive to find that the sinister Ice Warriors plan to invade Earth, using T-Mat to transport deadly seed pods full of a fungus that will absorb the planet's oxygen. The Doctor must race against time to defeat the Martian invaders - or condemn the human race to suffocation... 

Verdict 

The Seeds of Death is an absolutely brilliant serial as we get to the business end of this superb sixth season of Doctor Who. After an impressive debut, there's no disputing that the Ice Warriors deserved a return battle against the Doctor and in my opinion, it just about bettered their first showing in The Ice Warriors. Despite the green and reptilian Martians appearing in both those stories, what we got here was very different. I liked how much more advanced these Ice Warriors were and I thought the addition of Slaar as Ice Lord was very good. It seems right that a race called Ice Warriors has a system of ranking amongst its species. It was easy to differentiate and I liked how the Grand Marshall also made an appearance. The arrival of the Ice Warriors was pretty much revealed after about six minutes but I liked how we were doubting ourselves if it was really them during episode one. Despite the voice and the sonic gun, we weren't actually shown that it was the Ice Warriors who had returned until the terrific cliffhanger of episode one. Overall, I thought the cliffhangers were pretty strong with episode there's my favourite of the five. During the Doctor's absence in episode four, I thought it was wonderful how he called out for Victoria upon awaking at the beginning of episode five. Good job Zoe didn't hear that! Speaking of which, I thought Zoe's performance was a second consecutively strong one. She was brilliant in The Krotons and taking command of flying the rocket here, she was just as good. The TARDIS trio's arrival into Professor Eldred's private museum was wonderful. Just as in my reading of Robot yesterday, the Doctor quickly went from being unwelcome to gaining the respect of whose place he entered. I liked how the Doctor immediately spotted from the TARDIS scanner that they'd arrived in a sort of space travel museum and of course he'd go and have a look. After a shaky start, he soon came to be on good terms with the professor. Miss Kelly was a tremendous character and I liked how it seemed that she was the only person who really knew how to use T-Mat. Commander Radnor seemed quite attracted to her but it just seemed throughout that the feeling wasn't mutual in the slightest, even if the matter ceased to be discussed. Jamie seemed rather like a fool for the second story running now at the expense of Zoe's brilliant intellect. In the rocket, he didn't have a clue what the Doctor and Zoe were talking about and was just a passenger and absolutely nothing more. He did have the benefit though of meeting the Ice Warriors previously whereas Zoe did not. Fewsham was excellently portrayed as being a weak and incompetent character. Immediately he surrendered himself to the Ice Warriors without putting up any sort of fight. He'd seen his friends killed and the Ice Warriors had taken over. He just wanted to live. But in doing so, he was preparing the Earth for a massive dose of oxygen starvation. The plan of the Ice Warriors was horrifying! Mars was dying so they'd hoped to convert the Earth into an atmosphere similar to their home world, ridding our planet of the majority of its oxygen. Life as we know it would perish. One flaw in that plan, the method of which they would reacclimatise the planet was defeated by simple water. In case they didn't know, it rains quite a lot. Even with weather control out of action, there'd be drops falling all over I'm sure. The way the Doctor discover that water was the remedy was great. I thought this was one of Patrick Troughton's best performances yet as the Second Doctor and the comedy he brought to the role was second to none. I really did love him in this! The climax was good and I liked how Fewsham finally saw that what he was doing was wrong. He set the video link back to Earth so the Doctor would see that the homing beam was recreated whilst Slaar's broadcast would be powerless. Ingenuity. The Doctor had sent the Ice Warrior fleet into an orbit around the sun and in a final battle of the moonbase, Slaar and the rest of the Ice a Warriors were destroyed. Overall, a great return for the Ice Warriors! I did though think that water as a remedy was a little too easy. 

Rating: 9/10