Talk:The Ice Warriors (TV story)

dating

Just when does this story take place? The page itself says 34th century, but most of the character pages (with one exception) claim it takes place in the year 5000. To muddy the waters still further, the BBC page speculates that it either takes place in 3000 or 5000. Shambala108 ☎ 04:08, September 20, 2012 (UTC)

I've been wondering this myself. I haven't seen (or heard) any of it yet, so hopefully someone more familiar with the story can clarify things. Memnarc ☎ 10:03, October 17, 2012 (UTC)

I think we should just remove the date from this story, unless there's any corroborating evidence in other sources.

According to Lance Parkin's AHistory; "the date is never given on screen". That's fairly definitive.

It goes on to say that "Base leader Clent says that if the glaciers advance '5 thousand years of history will be wiped out'." – So that's possibly where the year 5000 date comes from, though Parkin continues "If he's referring to the Base which is in a Georgian house that would make the date about'6800ad, and if he's referring to human or European history the date becomes more vague."

The 3000 date that Shambala108 mentions (I'm still using AHistory for the info) is from the Radio Times which ran an article at the time of broadcast stating that it occurred in 3000 AD. Supposedly both The Dark Path (page 63) and Legacy (page 89) both allude to this date. I haven't got either near me to check these (the page numbers are provided in AHistory). --Tangerineduel / talk 13:05, October 17, 2012 (UTC)

The 5000 date is also supported by The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which mentions an Ice Age in that year. It seems more likely there was just one Ice Age to which both stories refer rather than two Ice Ages both a short time apart (also in other stories set on Earth in the 30th century, there seems to be no sign of an Ice Age). Doug86 ☎ 02:12, April 9, 2013 (UTC)

Dating Revisited

So basically I noticed a rather large inconsistency with the current date in the main setting part of this page: the year is given as 5000, I do not think this is possible due to the fact that this setting portrays humanity as being completely unfamiliar with the Ice Warriors. If you remember the story The Curse of Peladon takes place in the year 3885, where it shows Earth having diplomatic relations with the Ice Warriors. It makes no sense for Earth to go from having diplomatic relations with the Ice Warriors in the year 3885 to not even being able to recognize them in the year 5000. In my opinion, I think the year 3000 from the Radio Times article makes more sense, however I think it would be best if we simply unlisted any year from the Main Setting info field. –Nahald ☎ 21:49, August 4, 2014 (UTC)

It may be helpful in this context to consider a previously neglected source, namely scriptwriter Brian Hayles himself. In his novelisation of this, his own serial, written in 1976, he explicitly has Leader Clent state that if the glaciers are permitted to advance it will mean ‘five thousand years of history crushed beneath a moving mountain of ice...’ (at one point Clent amplifies that remark slightly, by talking about the need to ‘save five thousand years of European civilisation’). And Miss Garrett underlines the point by making essentially the same statement two episodes later (‘You know what’s at stake! Five thousand years of civilisation!’). Hayles included all those remarks, which also appear in the 1967 television recording, notwithstanding that he had, in the interim, written three further Ice Warrior serials, including the much-discussed Curse of Peladon. He must have been aware, in 1976, that Clent and Miss Garrett were dating the 1967 serial to about the year 5,000 AD (the Greek civilisation of classical antiquity arose in the 7th Century BC, so he might arguably have intended to date the 1967 serial to roughly 4,000 AD). It must, therefore, have been his intention that the other three serials took place after that date. He makes the dating assertions in 1967, certainly; but he repeats those same assertions in 1976, in the novelisation, even after production of all the other three serials. In my estimation what some commentators are attempting is: (a) to ignore the original author's intention (explicitly stated - by Clent and Miss Garrett - in the 1967 scripts); and (b) to ignore the 1976 novelisation (even though it's by the original author, and even though it's written after both Peladon serials). It is illogical to seek to re-date the 1967 serial on the basis of fairly flimsy external evidence, especially when that evidence contradicts what is expressly stated in the 1967 script - and in the 1976 novelisation - by Clent. It seems to me that there are far more pressing issues arising from the serial: points at which it genuinely is ambiguous and/or problematical. For instance, the implication from the location of the entombed warriors in the glacier that they have been frozen in the ice for thousands of years (in 1967, Arden states positively that the Warriors have been in the glacier "at least three thousand years" - and although the Doctor is more cautious, even he talks of them as having been "frozen for centuries"); the clear implication is that they are the last survivors of a dead race. Yet subsequently we have three sequels to this serial spring up, as if the Warriors were not the last survivors. But if their race is interested in escaping from the dying planet Mars, why do they allow thousands of years to elapse (or "centuries" at least) before invading Earth again, in The Seeds of Death? Stephen Poppitt ☎ 09:06, January 14, 2018 (UTC)