Frozen Time

"The human race will be frozen out of existence."

Writer: Nicholas Briggs
Format: Audio
Released: August 2007
Series: Main Range 98

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis

In 1929, Lord Barset's expedition to the Antarctic is lost without trace. Or so it seems...

Nearly a century later, his grandson funds a much-publicised return to the icy wastes. His mission: to discover what happened to the original expedition. But what he finds instead is an enigma - a battered London police box frozen in ice millennia old.

But something else lies in wait in this awful place, something from an era before humankind set foot on the continent's cold soil. A menace frozen in time.

Until now.

Verdict

Frozen Time was an excellent audio adventure and certainly one of the best Main Range stories in a considerable number of releases. That's probably because it was an actual four-part adventure but less about my critics surrounding the recent formats of stories. I thought this story really was fantastic from start to finish and the Doctor getting deiced following millions of years in frozen captivity was quite a way to start a story. Well, that followed the discovery of the TARDIS which must have been quite a sight in 2012. I thought Lord Barset was a very good character and his determination to discover just what it was that his grandfather's exhibition had found was terrific. The references to 'lizard men', which I'm going to assume referred to Silurians, were intriguing but the slow reveal of the Ice Warriors really was majestic. Arakssor was a superb villain and I loved how horrified he was by the prospect of his race being cowards under the guidance of Geldar. The flashback scenes to the distant past with the Doctor on Mars when the war criminals broke out of their cell were great and I liked how we heard the Doctor begin to drown. It was quite a shocking moment but obviously we knew he was okay. But how? He had put himself into a coma to prevent drowning which was quite a sacrifice but it did at least save him a regeneration. This audio really delighted me because it had the Ice Warriors back to their classic best. The reference to The Ice Warriors from the Doctor was great and I liked here how these Martians featured were war criminals and that meant they were evil. They wanted the Ice Warriors to rule the galaxy and would do whatever they could to make it happen. The 2012 setting worked very well and I thought it was very clever to tie in global warming to an Ice Warrior story. Their obvious weakness is heat and with the planet warming all the time and gases causing it trouble, the Ice Warriors set their plan into motion and that involved eradicating the planet of its heat. That would obviously prove disastrous for humanity and with, based on the Doctor's calculations, temperatures set to decrease to -32 C, mankind would be frozen out of existence. I thought that was a tremendous threat. Genevieve was a wonderful character and her relationship with the Doctor was a highlight of the whole story. She was great. The cliffhangers were very good and I also thought Sylvester McCoy was good with the Seventh Doctor once again travelling alone. The conclusion was well paced and the expected use of heat to see off the Ice Warriors was nicely done. Overall, a fantastic audio!

Rating: 9/10