The Seeds of Death Review

The Seeds of Death

The Doctor trying to avoid a foam bath

Story 48, Episodes 233-238, Season 6 Episodes 23-28

Doctor: The Second Doctor

Companions: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot

The Ice Warriors return, and hiss a lot at us in a story that never really follows through on some of the promise it had.

The Review

The T-Mat crew. There is one female crew member!

I might be starting to suffer through Classic Who burnout. Let’s start with the beginning, sometime in the late 21st century (this story doesn’t really fit well continuity-wise, but it is what it is), rocketry is abandoned for the easy teleportation system T-Mat. It’s so ubiquitous that the age and aura of rockets are long gone. Unfortunately, we don’t really dig too much into the implications of that, a stagnant society. We hear a lot about the social unrest caused by imminent famines (does nobody store food now?), but not a lot of commentary on what an entire planet relying on this technology would be like. The T-Mat crew is forced to recruit an old rocket scientist that had long been rendered obsolete. Zoe doesn’t get show off too much of her knowledge in this one. But in the 60s Who way, like most stories, we get an interesting premise and that is it.

There’s a pretty great rocket launch scene to get to the Moon when T-Mat goes out.

Now, the Ice Warriors…are still hissing. They’re coming directly from Mars, I guess, which isn’t really explained at all. They do have a pretty cool effect for their gun stretching people in and out. Their plan is to render the atmosphere toxic with spreading fungus across the planet via T-Mat. Unfortunately, it’s weakness is water, so turn some weather control dials and it’s rained on. The Doctor straight up kills several Ice Warriors and lets their fleet get killed, it’s all very defensible but shows the character development into the new series. We do meet Fewsham, a worker who fearfully allows the Ice Warriors to carry out their plans until he’s killed for finally defying them. There’s a lot of heroism, but not a lot of time to care.

When the Doctor hurriedly leaves, he admits that he always leaves before having to answer too many questions. Sometimes, I think Doctor Who could’ve benefited to pause and reflect on a society that was deeply flawed.

7.8/10. Reflection is something this show very much needs to do. High hopes for the season finale though…

Ice Warriors do not like heat, and they all get heated to death