Although I could point to better Second Doctor stories, even better stories just from series 6, I still love “The Seeds of Death.” I’m weirdly fond of the Ice Warriors, there’s a fairly creative premise at work here, and the character interactions are just terrific. In light of all that, some of the silly plot developments and hilarious BBC-budget issues don’t bother me.
In the future, most long-distance travel is conducted via T-Mat, a network of teleportation stations using a base at the moon as a relay. However, when T-Mat stops functioning and Earth loses contact with the moon base, they’re at a loss. Enter the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, who volunteer to make the trip in a rocket long thought obsolete. The moon base, as it happens, has been taken over by the Ice Warriors, who have big plans for T-Mat—plans involving world destruction!
I like the idea of people being so reliant on teleportation that other forms of transport are all but forgotten, then being up a creek when the wonder technology breaks down. I love everything about the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe flying to the moon in an outdated rocket, from the inevitable onboard crises cropping up on the bucket of bolts to Jamie’s first experience with G-force (bet he never complained about bumpy landings in the TARDIS again!)
The Ice Warriors taking over the moon base gives the serial somewhat of a base-under-siege feel, with team TARDIS and the oneshot characters hiding out in storage rooms and crawling through ventilation ducts as they try to get one over on the Martian invaders. However, I like that the whole story isn’t kept in that contained space. What’s happening on Earth always keeps its share of focus, including the Ice Warriors’ nefarious designs on it and the Earth-based T-Mat technicians’ worries over what’s happening so far out of their reach.
I won’t lie, though. There’s some goofy plot stuff, especially in the second half of the serial, and some even goofier effects. But on the effects side of things, it mostly manages to stay in the “so cheap and fake-looking, it swings back around to endearing” sweet spot of the BBC’s budget in the 1960s. The use of soap suds as a stand-in for “deadly spores” really cracks me up—nothing like seeing Patrick Troughton pounding on a locked door as he frantically tries to escape an encroaching mass of foam.
Everybody gets their moments in here, though I’d probably single out Zoe as the overall MVP. She flies the rocket like a champ, she risks her neck to make the moon-base environment less hospitable to the Ice Warriors, and she works out her way through the ventilation shafts based on a quick glance at the base’s floor plan. But even though Jamie doesn’t get as much of the impressive stuff as Zoe does, I still like him a lot in this serial. Most of all, I like his determination not to be left on Earth when the rocket takes off. He has no idea what this type of space travel entails, and he’s obviously freaked out as they launch, but his desire to help the Doctor and Zoe far outweighs his fear—I love that. And ultimately, it’s good that he’s there. More than once, his refusal to be kept away for his own safety winds up coming in handy. And the Doctor? Apart from nearly drowning in deadly foam (ha!), he does some spiffy device-rigging and holds his own going toe-to-toe with the Ice Warriors, not to mention some handy-dandy laboratory work.
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