The Ice Warriors is the partly missing third serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 11 November to 16 December 1967.
In this serial, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) arrive on Earth during a new ice age. After making its way into a base led by a man called Clent (Peter Barkworth), the crew discovers a humanoid being in the ice that plots to revive its race and take over the planet. This serial marked the debut of the Ice Warriors.
It was the third incomplete Doctor Who serial to be released with full-length animated reconstructions of its two missing episodes.
The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive at a scientific base in the distant future, where Earth is plagued by a new Ice age. The Doctor helps the base's research team with an ioniser device, which is used to slow the progress of glaciers rolling over Great Britain. The Doctor soon after examines a recent discovery found in a glacier by scientist Arden: An alien Ice Warrior frozen in a block of ice. The Ice Warrior, Varga, revives from the block and takes Victoria hostage.
Varga reveals he is from the planet Mars, and that he has been frozen for millennia. Varga revives a number of Ice Warriors from the ice and assigns them to excavate their spaceship. Jamie and Arden discover the excavation, but are ambushed by the Warriors on their way back to base, killing Arden. Penley and Storr, two scientists who abandoned the base due to disliking its reliance on computers, take Jamie back to their home while Storr goes to reason with the Warriors, leading to Storr's death. The Doctor sets out to rescue Victoria from the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor is able to rescue Victoria as Varga prepares an assault on the base via a sonic cannon. Penley brings Jamie back to the base, and though the Doctor kills one of the Warriors, Zondal, who is preparing to fire a sonic cannon, Zondal is able to activate it as he dies. The blast only causes minor damage, but Varga threatens another blast unless the humans surrender. The two sides arrange a peace meeting, but due to the interference of Walters, a technician who tries to shoot the Warriors, the talks fail. Varga dismantles the ioniser reactor to get power for the Warriors' ship.
The Doctor and Victoria adjust the sonic cannon so it will only harm the Ice Warriors while Penley alters the temperature and atmosphere controls in the base so it becomes uncomfortable for the Warriors. Varga and the other Warriors retreat, but disable the cannon. The Doctor and Penley recalibrate the ioniser to destroy the spaceship, and the ship explodes, destroying both the Warriors and the approaching glacier. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria depart as plant-life emerges through melting snow.
Deborah Watling was unable to attend the complete recording of the final episode. Consequently, Victoria is asked (off-screen) to return to the TARDIS halfway through the episode.
Unusually, the word "episode" was dropped from each episode number in this serial. All save episodes 2 and 3 of The Ice Warriors exist in the BBC Archives. Episodes 1 and 4-6 were recovered in 1988 from a cupboard in Villiers House in Ealing, while BBC Enterprises was in the process of moving out of the building.
Michael Attwell later played Bates in Attack of the Cybermen (1985). Angus Lennie subsequently appeared in Terror of the Zygons (1975). This serial was Sonny Caldinez's second appearance on the series after Evil of the Daleks, and he would return to play Ice Warriors in their subsequent three appearances. Peter Sallis who played Penley was going to appear again in Doctor Who in the serial Enlightenment and play Striker but industrial action caused filming times to change and his schedule could no longer fit the role in.
Peter Sallis later recalled: <blockquote>When Patrick Troughton was playing Doctor Who I was cast in an episode called Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors. I played an Ice Warrior which, to put it simply, was casting me rather dangerously, especially as Peter Barkworth was appearing with me. So you had two professional gigglers who would lay down their lives to get a giggle if they could manage it. We tried to take it as seriously as we possibly could, but it was very difficult. At one point we were confronted by a grizzly bear, which emerged from behind a huge rock of polystyrene and bore down on us. There were no stunt doubles, so instead of having the huge grizzly called for in the script, the BBC chose a small baby grizzly. It was a charmer. It was about three or four feet long, with a sweet nose and temperament, but the director thought that if they shot it in close-up it would fill the screen and therefore produce a moment of high tension. I'm sure the BBC meant well, and I hesitate to draw their attention to it, but if you can imagine this baby bear, that everybody in the studio wanted to give a squeeze to, even filling the screen with it wasn't going to turn it into a monster. It stayed just a cuddly baby bear.</blockquote>
The Ice Warriors has received mostly positive reviews, with some criticism aimed at its length. Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping gave the serial a favourable review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), writing, "A great minimalist tundra landscape, fine performances from Peter Barkworth and Peter Sallis, and the eerie hissing voices of the Ice Warriors themselves, help turn a standard 'don't trust the machines' storyline into something special." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the Ice Warriors' technical achievements and the "excellent" guest cast, writing that there was "very little to fault". They noted that the story "fails to give the viewer any real sense of where all the various settings are in relation to one other", but said that it was "a minor irritation". In 2009, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times praised Bernard Bresslaw as Varga as well as the regular cast. While he was positive towards the scientific dialogue, he felt that the message about the computer was less effective today, and called the climax "disappointingly shambolic". Reviewing the DVD release in 2013, SFX reviewer Ian Berriman gave the story three out of five stars. He called it a "success" despite "boring/bewildering story elements", concerning how Clent spends six episodes deliberating and "flawed" motives and reasoning behind the Ice Warriors' plan. John Sinnott of DVD Talk said the story was "a fun, if a little overly long, adventure" with a "slow and plodding" story. Sinnott praised Troughton's performance and found the sets impressive. The animated episodes were not considered to be particularly accomplished: "There wasn't a huge budget allocated for the project, and it shows unfortunately. The animated characters don't move smoothly, they have a tendency to bob around when walking and are pretty stiff in general. They reminded me of puppets, and move rather like the characters in Thunderbirds."
The programming committee of the public German TV broadcaster ZDF refused unanimously to buy the series after watching The Ice Warriors for a test. Reasons given included starry-eyed decoration and costumes as well as obscure scripts. Subsequently Doctor Who remained relatively unknown in German-speaking countries.
In March 1976, Target Books published a novelisation by Brian Hayles of this serial with a cover illustration by Chris Achilleos. In the book, Hayles named the computer system ECCO.
A VHS was released in 1998, which also included Doctor Who: The Missing Years (see Lost in Time) documentary. It included an audio CD featuring the full-length soundtracks of missing episodes Two and Three which were covered on the VHS by an abridged Tele-snaps/soundtrack reconstruction. A two-disc CD set from BBC Audiobooks features the soundtrack from the television serial, with the addition of narration by Frazer Hines. The recordings include an interview with Frazer Hines, as well as the soundtrack from the BBC's televised trailer for the next serial, The Enemy of the World. An unabridged reading of the Target novelisation was released in 2010 by BBC Audiobooks, again read by Hines. On 13 June 2021, the soundtrack with the Hines narration was released on vinyl by Demon Records.
The serial was released on DVD on 26 August 2013, with parts 2 and 3 being presented in animated form, with Qurios Entertainment providing the animation. The abridged reconstruction from the 1998 VHS release was also included as part of the Special Features.