Cold War (TV story)
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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 BBC Wales' production of the show.
Synopsis
On a Soviet submarine in 1983, a frozen alien warrior is waking up, just as the TARDIS materialises.
Plot
The episode starts in the North Pole in 1983. Aboard a Russian submarine, a warning repeats that the "signal is genuine." The Captain and first mate use their keys to prime an ICBM launch. They prepare to fire, but are interrupted by the entrance of the Professor, singing. The Captain reports the drill has been abandoned. The first mate says they must run it again, to which the Captain says, "Tomorrow." The Captain then asks the Professor about the "specimen," wondering if it's a mammoth. In the hold, the crewman in charge of the specimen muses that they are supposed to wait till the crew arrives back in Moscow to thaw the specimen out. However, he uses a blowtorch to thaw the block of ice, until he is grabbed by a claw that emerges from the ice.
Then there are scenes of havoc upon the submarine; the hull has been breached. Crew members are being attacked by a green armoured figure: an Ice Warrior. The Captain orders the sub to be brought to the surface, just as the TARDIS materialises. The Doctor yells "Viva Las Vegas" as he and Clara are thrown across the bridge from the TARDIS. The Captain asks who they are, while being informed by a crew member that the main turbines aren't responding. The Doctor tells them their only chance to survive is to use the lateral thrusters. The Captain decides to listen, and the sub crashes into a ridge, preventing it from dropping further. Crew members search the Doctor and Clara, pulling a Barbie, a ball of yarn and other items from the Doctor's pockets. His Sonic Screwdriver is confiscated, and Clara falls into a puddle after a jolt rocks the sub, temporarily losing consciousness. The TARDIS de-materialises. Clara wakes up as the Doctor and the Captain are arguing. They are interrupted by a raspy noise coming from behind the Doctor. The Doctor initially thinks it's gas, but turns around to find the green armoured figure, which is revealed to be an Ice Warrior called Grand Marshal Skaldak. After some bickering, the professor reveals that Skaldak has likely been sleeping under the ice for five thousand years. The Doctor seems to be close to diffusing the tense situation when Lieutenant Stephashin sneaks up behind Skaldak and electrocutes him with a cattle prod. The Doctor berates the Lieutenant and reveals that it was an extremely bad idea to have done so, and warned the crew to lock up Skaldak.
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 mastodon; 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 story's ending has some similarities to TV: Battlefield. In both stories the protagonist is preparing to launch a nuclear weapon to destroy the world (in Battlefield it is Morgaine), and in both cases The Doctor helps talk them out of it.
- This is the first televised story to feature the Ice Warriors since the Monster of Peladon in 1974, and the first to not be written or co-written by Brian Hayles.
- This is the first time an Ice Warrior has been seen "out of uniform" on television, but it's not the first time fans have been able to peek behind the armour. Skaldak's true face is remarkably similar, allowing for a difference in gender, to Lee Sullivan's depiction of the female Ice Warrior Luass in the Eighth Doctor comic story Ascendance. However, the more tentacled hands of Skaldak are less compatible with Luass' human-like hands.
- Several aspects of Ice Warrior culture mentioned in this episode, the existence of powerful female Ice Warriors, Skaldak's rank as the leader of a caste and the general implication that Ice Warriors have a feudal sense of honour, for example, originate not with Ice Warrior creator Brian Hayles but instead with Gary Russell's reinvention in PROSE: Legacy and COMIC: Ascendance/Descendance.
- Although a few were implied in earlier stories, but never expanded.
- 1983 was indeed a point in which the the Cold War could have very easily run hot, due to the (alluded to) Able Archer '83 exercises that terrified the already paranoid Soviets. There were even several close calls throughout the year, including one famous incident where only the cool head of a Soviet radar operator deciding that the missile that appeared on his screen was not a launch but most likely an equipment malfunction prevented a full-scale nuclear launch.
Ratings
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Filming locations
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Production errors
- When ever Skaldak walks anywhere in armour, he makes loud clunking noises due to the weight of the armour, but when he approaches the Doctor near the beginning, he arrives silently.
Continuity
- The Doctor claims the TARDIS's Hostile Action Displacement System hadn't been used in "donkey's years". And that's true enough in terms of televised stories. The only other televised reference is in The Krotons. But it's made several appearances in other media — as recently as AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was. Perhaps the most notorious use of the HADS was in the the novelisation of Time and the Rani, where Pip and Jane Baker blame the Sixth Doctor's tepid regeneration on the fact that the he didn't set the HADS and therefore failed to prevent the "tumultuous buffeting" of the TARDIS that ended his life.
- Clara questions how she can understand others around her, and they understand her, to which the Doctor explains how the TARDIS translates foreign and alien languages. (TV: The End of the World, The Fires of Pompeii) This episode suggests that the translation "range" of the TARDIS might be able to cover a whole planet, since it has teleported to the South Pole ; on the other hand, because the TARDIS will only translate when the Doctor is conscious (TV : The Christmas Invasion), it might only translate in a small area around the Doctor himself.
- When Clara states that the planet was not destroyed by nuclear war in 1983, the Doctor tells her that time is in flux and can be rewritten. (TV: The Shakespeare Code, The Waters of Mars, The Wedding of River Song et al)
- The Doctor again shows admiration for Ice Warriors by their code of honor. (TV: The Waters of Mars, contrary to his seventh incarnation, who showed a xenophobic distrust towards them. (Legacy (novel))
Home video releases
DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
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External links
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