Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors by: Brian Hayles

 

Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors was written by Brian Hayles, based on his story The Ice Warriors.  It was the 21^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Brian Hayles despite having written for the first three Doctors, only novelized two of his stories before his passing.  Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon was a novelization that did an excellent job on expanding upon the television story since it was translating a four part story into a longer novelization.  It did such a good job of bringing the Ice Warriors to page it placed into the mind of the fans that the Ice Warriors weren’t villains, so it is interesting that the other story Hayles novelized was The Ice Warriors, their first appearance where they were firmly in villain territory.  Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors is a book that has an interesting pace.  As an adaptation of a six parter, it’s one of those stories that focuses more on the first half of the story than the second half.  This is actually to the story’s benefit in quite a few ways since the first half of the story is a stronger buildup, with the base already under siege from the forces of nature before the aliens show up.  The sequences with the computer and the Doctor attempting to fix things in his own Doctorish way.  Hayles is a master at writing the Second Doctor who is a very difficult Doctor to capture in prose, with many original novels failing to adequately translate the character to screen.

 

It helps that through portions of Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors the Doctor is in the background allowing Hayles’ supporting characters and even Victoria to shine at points.  This is something which means that every character gets their own plot and character arc while Hayles explores ideas like conspiracy theorists around science arising when the world is in crisis, to a race of aliens who are simply attempting to survive though that survival is inevitably through the colonization of another planet.  This is also an interesting idea that was there on television that is allowed to shine in the prose.  The last three episodes only take up about 40 pages of this book’s page count and because of that it means several lengthy shot sequences are translated well as Derek Martinus’ directorial style (and really any director’s style especially in a show like Doctor Who) can be translated with the shortening of several longer sequences.  The final few scenes do suffer from the compression, with the ending of the book kind of just creeping up on you as the resolution happens and almost immediately the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are off on another adventure.  Client is also a character toned down in the novelization which helps with the weird trend of Season 5’s base under siege stories to fit the mold of leader on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors is perhaps the superior way to experience the story as it’s a very quick read with a lot of atmosphere and buildup in tension of the story that comes to a head and quickly resolves without dragging out the back half of a six-episode television serial.  The characterization is some of the best for the Second Doctor and company.  9/10.