Ice Warriors to return to 'Doctor Who'

For a time during the late 1960s and mid-1970s, Doctor Who villains the Ice Warriors seemed destined to become as popular as the Daleks and the Cybermen. Through four serial appearances (totaling 22 episodes), the Ice Warriors went from aggressive, military style race –seen in their first adventure, 1967’s The Ice Warriors (which was set hundreds of years in the future)- to more passive race (seen in 1969’s The Seeds of Death and 1972’s The Curse of Peladon to 1974’s The Monster of Peladon, all set before the events of their first serial). This may explain, in the end, why they faded into history after that last serial. 

While the Ice Warriors would pop-up here in there in the non-canon original novels published in the 1990s, they vanished from the TV series altogether. But when the tenth Doctor made a cursory mention of them in The Waters of Mars episode that aired in 2009, fans got hope that maybe, just maybe, the Martians might make an appearance in the new show.

When Doctor Who was revived in 2005, there had been some speculation that the green armored monsters would return, but just like Russell T. Davies, current showrunner Steven Moffat understood that to return a classic monster to the current show, you needed an excellent story –and not do it just because you can. 

Now it’s been confirmed that Mark Gatiss has scripted the episode in which the Martians return, which will be broadcast as episode eight (airing on April 13), in the second half of season seven. No episode title has been announced, but we do know it is set on a submarine, possibly during World War II.

It will be interesting to see how the Ice Warriors are portrayed –and how they’ll be updated for the 21^st Century. We know the Neil Gaiman penned Cybermen story airing a month later will return them to their original creepiness (well, that’s the intention), but will Gatiss’ script do the same thing, or will they be portrayed more as they seemed to becoming nearly forty years ago when the last made their TV appearance, a conflicted race with both elements of good and evil? 

Meanwhile, the only other rumor that seems to always be on people’s lips is how much longer Matt Smith will remain playing the Eleventh Doctor. While it’s more or less confirmed season eight will not debut until 2014, Moffat recently made comments, saying that Smith will return as the Doctor in whatever 50th anniversary story the showrunner has planned -which films in May- as well as the Christmas Special, which begins filming in mid to late summer. Smith, meanwhile, has scored his first leading role in an American film, How to Catch A Monster -the debut of actor Ryan Gosling as writer/director- which also stars Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan, Eva Mendes and Ben Mendelsohn. The story is set against the dreamscape of a vanishing city where Hendricks’ character gets swept into a macabre fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Production begins in April in Detroit.

While that may placate a lot of fans, we know that Moffat lies, and -much like director J.J. Abrams- hates the idea that fans should know every element of the story before seeing it. Due to our love of spoilers, it takes great effort for showrunners like Moffat to keep as much as secret as possible. Personally, I like to see Smith stay on for at least one more season, but only he can make that ultimate decision.