Poll: 7x08 Cold War review and discussion

[Nagisa Furukawa]

8/10

Unlike the more recent way of re-introducing old monsters, IE introduce a lot of them in a bloated two-parter filled with weird design choices, companions weeping and scripts that just baffle logic such as Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, this returns to the Dalek way of doing it; faithfully reintroduce one of them, a frightening, ruthless representation of its entire race, and have them trapped in a closed, confined area.

Would've been a 9 if not for the complete tonal misjudge at the end where we get happy, triumphant music and characters acting like it was the end of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances just because he spared their lives, even though he, uh, murdered half the crew and they only barely survived through nuclear annihilation. But no, he decided not to be a Harriet Jones, so let's get Murray Gold doing his "Hooray!" music and have the characters grin and laugh like buffoons.

Other than that, this was a tense, tight, Troughton-era base-under-siege homage that felt claustrophobic, had great character moments for Clara's second time out (compare this to how Gatiss wrote for Amy's second time out!) as well as for the supporting characters ( David Warner). Not the most original Who story ever, not a classic, but compared to other New Who trying to do similar things, it was very well-executed and damn enjoyable.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Entertaining enough but it didn't really amount to a hill of beans and I didn't spot any clues to the "mystery of Clara"(TM).

The wide-screen monitors in the control room looked a bit advanced for an 80s Soviet sub. I'm wondering if the set was redressed from some other production - there was that BBC sub-based miniseries from a few years ago. I think I saw an old DEC VT100 terminal lying about as well.

 

[Cutter John]

A good Gatiss story? Amazing!

A nice update to a great race of aliens, and I was so happy that they weren't evil in this. I do hope it'll lead to future Ice Warrior stories. Perhaps we could see an Ice Lord next time.

All in all a bit of a filler episode, but still quite enjoyable. Though I agree with Nagisa. It did seem odd to be celebrating when there are at least a half dozen dead crewmen down below.

 

[ROBE]

The dead crewmen sort of remind me of the Terry Pratchett Discworld book Guards! Guards!
After a group of muggers get incinerated by a dragon, one of the Watchmen explains how things could have been worse, "It couldn't have been us".

 

[Count Zero]

Meh, pretty underwhelming, all in all. It had some good moments, especially the introduction of the Ice Warrior but everything else (e.g. the conflict between the political commissar/first officer (I'm not sure what he was actually supposed to be) and the captain, the crazy professor) just felt a bit contrived and by-the-numbers without really paying off. The dialogue felt off, too, not like people would talk in that situation.

I did have to chuckle at all those Soviet soldiers running around with what would have been Makarov pistols drawn. Those things were notoriously imprecise - even if they were fastened they wouldn't always hit the same spot. It's only fitting that no one actually fired any of them.

 

[DalekJim]

A good Gatiss story? Amazing!

Victory of the Daleks is the only outright shit one he's done, I reckon. Nightshade was a terrific VNA too and one of the scariest.

This was far and away his best script though, I agree.

 

[Pindar]

Good stuff, they kept the Ice Warrior to the shadows and saved the reveal till suitably late on. I was getting a bit of a cgi Gorn feel from him, but he looked pretty good.

David Warner as always is highly watchable and Clara looked fabulous in that outfit.

 

[DalekJim]

Clara looked fabulous in that outfit.

I was ready to give the episode a 10/10 score when she was soaking wet.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I skimmed the thread a little but it doesn't seem like any of you have locked onto the consequences of the TARDIS Waiting half a world a way from the Doctor and Clara which the "next Week on Doctor Who" seemed to explain in clear detail unless it's just an amusing coincidence that they strike the 1980s again twice in a row.

They have to take the slow path.

Sure the Russians could use a military transport, and they could probably get these two back to the TARDIS inside 40 hours once some one explains to the polit bureau why the plane has to be commandeered... But where's the fun in that?

How many of the next few episodes, the rest of the season are going to be rooted fast to 1983 as they wander between a series of weekly 1983 problems?

I try to stay spoiler free, and you've probably known about this for months if I'm not imagining it.

The episode was much better than last week, although Clara's chat with Skaldak seemed terribly manufactured to make Clara seem useful... Who was the British popstar that wore a Russian naval uniform? Adam Ant?

Hasn't seen them out of their armour? What the hell did he think was with the little Ice Warrior Lords? Was that different armour or skin and scales? Had there been some sort of Forced Evolutionary (Eugenics, not natural sellection.)push to create defined thinkers and defined fighters, because we've never seen a big "Ice" Warrior do much but follow orders up to this point.

The Seeds of Death "happened" in the early 21st century. It could take Sardak 20 years to get his shit together and then he comes back to Earth... Or he spends 20 years speaking up for humanity delaying the invasion or creating a merciful way of eradicating humanity quickly. It's not like he has total credibility, historic war hero yesterday sure, but if George Washington walked into the White House today and insisted the Obama nuke England because he's still pissed, they'd drag him out as a crazy person even if they did believe him.

The Doctor must have seen the connection between that invasion and the introduction of this character into Martian politics.

Did Clara really save the day by singing hungry like the wolf, because Sardak was listening and it reminded him of his long dead daughter? And frankly who ever the Martians who were rescued him had a policy with which they used to deal with Earthicans and they probably thought Sardak was a raving a loon and sedated him if he was demanding instant global devastation.

 

[Psion]

Aaaand so much for all our speculation last week that the TARDIS didn't like Clara and wasn't translating for her.

 

[Pindar]

Clara looked fabulous in that outfit.

I was ready to give the episode a 10/10 score when she was soaking wet.

I had to mark the episode down as she put a jacket on.

I don't care how shallow that makes me look.

 

[Guy Gardener]

OH!

You don't like any bastard thing getting between you and her twins?

How does The Cold War, Military build up confict with the supposed supremacy of UNIT?

In the fictional past, back when the real UN didn't care, is the Production staff today allowed to call UNIT U.N.I.T. and not UN.I.T.?

 

[Pindar]

OH!

You don't like any bastard thing getting between you and her twins?

 

[Cutter John]

A good Gatiss story? Amazing!

Victory of the Daleks is the only outright shit one he's done, I reckon. Nightshade was a terrific VNA too and one of the scariest.

This was far and away his best script though, I agree.

Personally The Unquiet Dead was the only tv story that I really liked. But good point re his SW novels. I'd forgotten those. I stand corrected.

 

[timelord1010]

Voted "Nice Warrior". I think it would have been better to use David Warner in a bigger role, maybe as a villain or another Time Lord. He was in Time Bandits and Time after Time after all so he has experience with time travel

 

[Chaos Descending]

Excellent. One of my favorite episode of the revived series!

 

[Gov Kodos]

I wonder if singing or songs will be an ongoing theme with the mystery of Clara. Carmen from Asylum, 'We shall meet again' could be taken as a reference to Vera Lynn's WWII song 'We'll Meet Again', 'The Bells of St. John' can be viewed as much as Ringing the Changes of a bell chorus, and the Song of Akhaten has its name in the show, and this episode she sing a bit of 'Hungry Like the Wolf'? I am still curious about the missing two years from her book as well.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It was ok. Unobjectionable. The atmosphere was there and the sets were completely convincing (the question of "isn't this a bit big for a sub" didn't occur to me, but I am thick). A shame the story itself was a bit perfunctory. Good performances too.

That's what I was thinking. Terrific production values masking a mechanical, just passable, story and nearly getting away with it.

I thought a little bit about the sub just because I toured a decommissioned one last summer but even then I didn't find it over-the-top.

Aaaand so much for all our speculation last week that the TARDIS didn't like Clara and wasn't translating for her.

I thought it was a bit odd that they included that after the TARDIS vanished away. I mean, apparently it has quite a range as we've seen but as a story beat it seemed odd to not mention that.

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I did like Clara being affected by the deaths. After dropping her off last episode I was surprised to just see her onboard the TARDIS. I'm not quite sure how their relationship works at this point, is she full-time onboard now or picked up occasionally?

 

[Skellington]

Clara looked fabulous in that outfit.

I was ready to give the episode a 10/10 score when she was soaking wet.

Jenna-Louise Coeman for Lara Croft in the new Tmb Raider movie. Just throwing that out three,

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I found it to be a solid episode. Good tension, good use of the themes of the period. The fact that they had to rely on mercy worked thematically to a degree, but it did feel like a bit of a copout in that the Doctor didn't save the day. But maybe that should be true for an allegory about the Cold War.

Ice Warriors were cool. Not positive what I think of them outside the suit, but it seemed to work fine.