Series 10, Episode 9 | 1 part | First broadcast: 10 June 2017 | Writer: Mark Gatiss | Director: Wayne Yip
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts
- Matt Lucas as Nardole
- Anthony Calf as Colonel Godsacre
- Ferdinand Kingsley as Catchlove
- Richard Ashton as Friday
- Adele Lynch as Iraxxa
Summary
After NASA discovers the words “God Save the Queen” spelled out in rocks beneath the Martian ice cap, the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole travel back to 1881 to find a company of Victorian soldiers who have struck a bargain with a captured Ice Warrior they call Friday, using his technology to mine the planet in exchange for his freedom. When the soldiers accidentally awaken the slumbering Ice Empress Iraxxa and her army, tensions boil over into open conflict after a rogue soldier fires on her despite a fragile truce brokered partly through Iraxxa’s regard for Bill; the ambitious Captain Catchlove seizes command and tries to force Iraxxa to pilot the Warriors’ ship back to Earth, only to be killed by the more honourable Colonel Godsacre, who then pledges himself into the Ice Warriors’ service to earn peace. The Doctor secretly arranges for the Ice Warriors’ eventual induction into the Galactic Federation by contacting the alien diplomat Alpha Centauri, tying the episode into decades-old Doctor Who lore, while Nardole is left stranded on modern Earth and must appeal to a surprisingly cooperative Missy to retrieve the TARDIS.
Interesting Facts
- This marks the return of the Ice Warriors, a classic-series monster previously revived by writer Mark Gatiss in the Eleventh Doctor story “Cold War,” making this Gatiss’s second outing writing for the species.
- The episode retroactively sets up the Third Doctor serial “The Curse of Peladon” (1972), depicting the very first contact between the Ice Warriors and Alpha Centauri’s Galactic Federation, voiced again by original actress Ysanne Churchman reprising the role decades later.
- Gatiss had originally considered writing a sequel to his earlier Series 9 episode “Sleep No More,” but changed plans upon learning both Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi were departing the show, opting instead to finally write the story he had long wanted to tell.
- Michelle Gomez’s Missy appears in a lighter, almost cooperative register here, continuing her ambiguous redemption arc as she agrees to help retrieve the marooned Nardole.
- The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver again has “no setting for wood,” a running joke about the device’s limitations first established in the two-part story “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead.”
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