I have some questions about Cold War.
- Do we need a Doctor Who version of The Hunt for Red October?
If the Doctor Who production team has a cinephile amongst it, I’m willing to bet it’s Mark Gatiss. He seems the most willing to mine (so much nicer a term than “rip off”) old movies for his Doctor Who plots, whether it’s When Eagles Dare or Zulu or The Blair Witch Project. Here, it’s 1990 submarine thriller The Hunt for Red October, a moody tale of a defecting Russian submarine crew, filled with well known Russian actors like Sean Connery, Sam Neill and Tim Curry. Cold War must be copying it. How else to explain filling a Russian sub with the various regional UK accents of Liam Cunningham, David Warner and Tobias Menzies? While I’m on this subject…
- Why not just make it an American sub?
When Doctor Who does US based stories, American actors and accents get used without hesitation. Here the absence of Russian accents is conspicuous. Make it an American sub and you get around this problem and make it look a lot less like a remake of Red October. Plus you can then cut all that guff about the TARDIS’ translation circuits. And while I’m on that subject…
- Why do the TARDIS translation circuits still function when the TARDIS has buggered off to Antarctica?
It wouldn’t irritate me so much, except everyone keeps mentioning it! First Zhukov (Cunningham), then Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman), then Grishenko (Warner)…
- Why would a Russian military sub be collecting samples of frozen wildlife?
Is this how the Russian Navy spends its time? Moonlighting for National Geographic?
- Why would anyone think the ice-encased Skaldak is a mammoth?
He’s nowhere near the size of a mammoth and he’s green. You can see him, through the ice, fake Russians! He’s right there!
- Would an aging Russian scientist really be obsessed with Ultravox?
OK, so you’ve got an eccentric scientist on board. OK, so he collects ice samples with things in them. OK, David Warner’s allowed to do anything he likes. As a kind of Russian version of UNIT, I can sort of see it, if I squint. But would he really listen to British pop? Would he really sing along to Vienna while on board? Would he really be obsessed enough to ask Clara if they break up in the future? Does any of that really (sorry) hold water?
- Do we need a 21st century version of Warriors of the Deep?
So this episode is The Ice Warriors via Dalek. But the story it reminds me of most is Warriors of the Deep (and it’s not often you’ll hear someone say that about a new series story).
That 1984 story, told from the middle of the cold war, imagined that conflict stretching on for 1,000 years. From that perspective, the future’s a dystopia of humans with computer interfaces grafted into their bodies and a constant, pervading atmosphere of paranoia. Cold War, made in 2012 positions it as history. The Doctor (a frantic Matt Smith) has to explain to millennial Clara about how twitchy the whole world was at this time, like it’s something she’ll never experience. Gatiss can hardly be blamed for not predicting world events since writing, but watching in 2018, mid Trump, Putin and Kim Jong un, Cold War feels slightly off target, and Warriors of the Deep closer to the mark.
- Are the Ice Warriors fit for purpose in the 21st century?
In Dalek, it becomes rapidly clear that it only takes one of monocular brutes to destroy the world. The Ice Warriors, best known for their lumbering gait and getting woozy in the heat, are not as formidable. They’re the first classic series monster which has had to be completely reimagined for the new series; a hulking great turtle was never going to be able to sneak up on anyone in the cramped conditions of a submarine. So this new breed of Ice Warrior can unexpectedly jump out of his armour and scuttle about the place naked. Which leads to the question…
- Just how naked is Skaldak?
The camera modestly keeps its gaze above the chest, so thankfully we are never subjected to the sight of his mighty Martian wang. Presumably, it would have been too Carry On to see a reverse shot of his green arse running down an underwater corridor.
- Have we had enough of the Doctor vs old soldier trope?
Skaldak (Spencer Wilding, voiced by Nicholas Briggs) is not any old Ice Warrior, but the biggest, baddest of the lot. He’s a battle-hardened solider and not someone you mess around with. It’s a familiar situation for Matt Smith’s bandy legged Doctor, who often came across solitary remnants of old conflicts, pressing on with hostilities although the main show has moved on, as in A Town Called Mercy and The God Complex. On each occasion, it was important to compare the Doctor to the grizzled, damaged war veteran he was combatting, so, naturally enough that happens here too. To ram home the point, the Doctor even salutes him at the end, to acknowledge his magnanimous decision not to blow everyone up. While I’m on the subject…
- Are cold war brinkmanship stories doomed to be anti-climactic?
Interestingly, the Doctor is no match for Skaldak. In fact, he’s always one step behind him. When he eventually lays a claw on the big red button, the Doctor has no bright ideas left and resorts to threats to blow up the boat – buying into the threat of mutually assured destruction all around them (well, it makes a change from simply wheeling out his CV).
This doesn’t work and instead, he has to turn to the moral argument, appealing to the better lizard within that big fibreglass casing. And this is nothing new, and it is the Doctor’s modus operandi. But is it a bit undramatic that he basically wins with the argument, “just leave ‘em, mate, they’re not worth it”? As Doctor Who’s format can’t stretch to Threads, and blow up the world at tea time on BBC 1, aren’t such stories always going to have to end with a whimper?
- If the whole thing is struggling to get to a satisfactory conclusion, can you just have a spaceship sweep in and whisk the bad guy away at the last minute?
Sure, you can. Would have improved The Hunt for Red October no end. Though of course it had no Hostile Action Displacement System to add a moment of forced levity in the final minutes. Silly old Doctor, leaving the motor running and accidentally causing a continuity reference. Although when you start mining The Krotons for plot points, perhaps ripping off old Hollywood films doesn’t seem so bad.
13. Is there any excuse for the Cold War play set?
1964 had Dalekmania. If 2013 had Cold War mania, I must have slept through it. But that didn’t stop the BBC from releasing the Cold War play set! A flimsy cardboard construction which when complete, vividly recreated the claustrophobic atmosphere above the good ship Nykortny or whatever it was called. For at least as long as it stood up, which was quite a few minutes.
The ultimate swizz was that although the box sported photos of lovely looking Matt Smith and Ice Warrior figures, neither was included in this sad little set. Instead, you got a lone naked Skaldak, not actually seen in full in the episode itself! At least it cleared up any lingering curiosity about Martian genitalia. Like Ken dolls everywhere, poor mighty General Skaldak’s manhood was nowhere to be seen. Well, to be fair, that war was very, very cold.
LINK TO The Two Doctors: Both set in the 1980s.
NEXT TIME: It’s another underwater menace in The Underwater Menace.
Randomwhoness: a Doctor Who blog by Johnny Spandrell. 
Huh… I liked Cold War a lot. Maybe I am more willing to excuse it’s flaws because it’s basically a Troughton “Base Under Siege” story with a 21st Century budget & effects, and those old serials had more than their share of dodgy plotting. I mean, I love Tomb of the Cybermen, but when you actually stop to think about it for more than five minutes, it really doesn’t make much sense.
It’s funny that you mentioned Warriors of the Deep. Johnny Bryne reportedly envisioned that story taking place in a dark, broken-down, claustrophobic undersea base, and he was understandably disappointed to find that it was instead recorded on large, over-lit, cheap-looking sets. I expect that what he had in mind was what we finally got with Cold War.
Anyway, here’s a link to my review, from when it first aired…
Wait, that was six years ago?!? Doesn’t feel like it. Time really flies when you get older!