Cold War (TV story)
- You may wish to consult
Cold War (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Cold War was the eighth regular episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. It saw the first televised appearance of the Ice Warriors since The Monster of Peladon 39 years previously, and their first appearance in the BBC Wales version of the show.
Synopsis
On a Soviet submarine in 1983, a frozen alien warrior is waking up, just as the TARDIS materialises. According to the scientist on board he has been frozen for 5000 years. When he escapes, he is revealed to be the "heroic" Grand Marshal Skaldak. Initially, peace might have been made, until one of the crew members instinctively attacked Skaldak and convinced him he was at war with the human race under Martian law. He therefore attempted to use the submarine's nuclear missiles to destroy the planet, but was eventually persuaded by the Doctor that destroying the planet wasn't worth anything to him. Skaldak's allies' craft pulled the submarine up and over the ice before summoning their Grand Marshal and leaving the planet, deactivating the warheads.
Plot
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Cast
- The Doctor – Matt Smith
- Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman
- Captain Zhukov – Liam Cunningham
- Professor Grisenko – David Warner
- Lieutenant Stephashin – Tobias Menzies
- Piotr – Josh O'Connor
- Onegin – James Norton
- Belevich – Charlie Anson
- Skaldak – Spencer Wilding
- Voice of Skaldak – Nicholas Briggs
References
Places
- The submarine is in the ocean underneath the North Pole.
- The Doctor and Clara were originally planning on going to Las Vegas.
- The TARDIS rematerialised at the South Pole.
Songs
- Professor Grisenko is listening to "Vienna" by Ultravox and singing "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran.
Items
Story notes
- This story features some similarities to TV: The Ice Warriors. Both involve an Ice Warrior being frozen in ice, being found by a scientist, and then thawed out by someone who was impatient. Both scientists mistake their Ice Warriors for prehistoric Earth creatures — in Warriors it's a mastadon; here it's a mammoth. Both take place in extreme cold. Both have the Doctor initially saving a team of humans from an immediate crisis — in Warriors is an uncontrolled weather event; here it's the submarine sinking.
- This is the first televised story to feature the Ice Warriors since the Monster of Peladon in 1974.
- The Ice Warrior's true face is remarkably similar, allowing for a difference in gender, to the female Ice Warrior Luass depicted in the Eighth Doctor comic story Ascendance. However, the more tentacled hands of Skeldak are less compatible with Luasss' mor human hands. This is the first time an Ice Warrior has been seen "out of uniform" on television.
- The Doctor's sonic screwdriver displays a red diode setting when he threatens to blow up the Soviet submarine. He previously received a modified sonic screwdriver from River Song in his tenth incarnation with a "red setting" of its own. (TV: Silence in the Library, Forest of the Dead)
- Skaldak's rank as the leader of a caste and the general implication that Ice Warriors have a feudal sense of honour originates not with creator Brian Hayles but instead with Gary Russell's spin on Ice Warriors in [[COMIC}]: Ascendance and Descendance.
Ratings
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Filming locations
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Production errors
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Continuity
- Despite the Doctor's claim that the TARDIS's Hostile Action Displacement System hadn't been used in "donkey's years", in fact it's been referenced as recently as AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was.
- The portrayal of the Ice Warriors as "cyborgs" is an innovation of this story.
Home video releases
DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
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External links
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