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| Apparently royal Ice Queen regalia involves a degree of Predator cosplay. |
“Well, I daresay the British Army
is more than a match for a bunch of upright crocodiles!”
This review will contain
spoilers
The Doctor, Bill and Nardole drop by NASA to watch a new probe scan the
ice caps of Mars, only to see ‘God Save the Queen’ spelled out on the surface
in rocks. To investigate, they take the TARDIS back to Mars in 1881, only for
the ship to rebel and take Nardole back to the Doctor’s office. Bill and the
Doctor run into an Ice Warrior and a band of British soldiers; they think that ‘Friday’
wants to trade gems for their help getting him home, but their mining instead
cracks open a hibernation hive and wakes Iraxxa, the Queen of Mars. While a
hawkish officer tries to kick off his own, Martian Zulu Dawn, Nardole must turn to the only person on Earth who might
be able to help him repair a TARDIS.
The Good
I’m a be honest here: I loves me some Ice Warriors, and I especially
like it when they get to be a bit more nuanced than ‘Ice Warrior smash!’ This
episode delivers on that, with the humans as invaders and the Doctor discussing
the complex dichotomy of the Martians with Bill.
I’m glad to see the Doctor managing to oppose war without slagging off
all soldiers.
Alpha Centauri! Alpha Centauri
played by original voice actress (and former Grace Archer) Ysanne Churchman!
So much squee!
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| You either get this, or I can't explain. |
The Bad
A lot of the episode, especially Colonel Godsacre’s plot – weary,
war-sick senior officer clashes with hawkish subordinate and ends up forming a connection
with an alien race and leaving with them – feels like it borrows from the audio
story Storm Warning. I wonder if my brain
is just so saturated with Doctor Who
that I can’t not see parallels in any
story.
The episode never really goes into its theme of humans as the alien
invaders, in part because there is no point at which the humans have the power.
No Stuart Manning poster this week. I hope he's all right.
The Ugly
Seriously; the black guy, again?
I get that it’s to show that Catchlove is the kind of dick who’d throw a fellow
soldier under the bus, but damn.
Theorising
So, the episode is mostly a one off, but presents a significant
development in the Missy/Vault storyline. Not only has she now been allowed out
of the Vault, her reaction when the Doctor and Bill return to the TARDIS is
telling. Maybe she’s faking it, but she shows what seems to be genuine concern
for the Doctor’s wellbeing, and frankly managing not to stab Nardole in the
back for as long as it takes to fix up the TARDIS is an achievement. I suspect
that we’ll be seeing the Last Temptation of Missy sooner rather than later.
Top Quotes
Bill: If there *are* people here,
why would they bother writing messages on the surface of the planet?
The Doctor: State visit,
patriotic fervor… rogue graffiti artist…
The Doctor: The Ice Warriors.
They could build a city under the sand, yet drench the snows of Mars with
innocent blood. They could slaughter whole civilisations, yet weep at the
crushing of a flower.
Bill: Like The Vikings.
Doctor: Yes. Yes, very much.
The Verdict
‘Empress of Mars’ is an otherwise strong episode, let down by length. I
would have loved to see this as a classic serial, with Catchlove pushing his
military agenda against the weakened Ice Warriors for an episode or two, before
being completely outmatched by the emergent hive. From the start, I have
wondered if the show would settle into the new format or even if I would get
used to it, but I am more and more certain that Doctor Who has at its core ideas that benefit from a slower pace.
In particular, the fact that each story essentially needs to establish a whole
new setting.
6/10
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