The Seeds of Death
review

Holistic Review: The Ice Warriors are a credible threat with a mostly-ingenious plan (minus that ridiculous Achilles heel), but the first two parts are little more than a pointless runaround, and practically every character is wasted.

A mere nine stories following their début last season, the Ice Warriors are already making a welcome return. It's amazing to think that this is not only the Ice Warriors' second and final outing as unmitigated villains, but also likely the story that set them up as one of Doctor Who's classic Top Five monsters. Where The Ice Warriors introduced them as a one-off threat, The Seeds of Death sets them up as a viable recurring menace, eternally seeking to colonize the Earth now that their own planet, Mars, is dead. The Martian hierarchy is established here: leading the Warriors is an Ice Lord, who reports in turn to the Grand Marshal, who heads up an entire armada of Martian ships. This suggests a rather vast spacefaring fleet of Ice Warriors who can return to threaten the Earth again and again (though in the end this never happens, possibly because it would seem a bit odd for a space-travelling species with numerous armadas to focus solely on conquering the Earth). Even though the Ice Warriors have never made it into my own top-ten list of best monsters, they are equipped with one of my all-time-favorite Doctor Who weapons; I love the sound effect of their sonic guns, and the "wobbling sheet of aluminum" visual that accompanies it.

One of the best elements of The Seeds of Death is their plan for world domination, which on the whole is well thought-out and a credible threat to the entire planet. In short, they've created a fast-reproducing fungus that feeds on oxygen, which they plan to transmit all across the Earth using the T-Mat relay station on the Moon. Once the fungus has terraformed the Earth to Mars-like conditions, the Ice Warrior fleet will swoop in and colonize the upper northern hemisphere.

Pleasingly, The Seeds of Death has ambitions beyond simply being a story of alien invasion, which it achieves by considering the element at the heart of the Ice Warriors' plan — Travelmat, or T-Mat for short — and logically extrapolating the sort of world that might have developed around such a revolutionary invention. What we learn is that, in this future Earth, matter transmission has completely altered the way society works, and not always for the better. On the positive side, countries are able to transmit food and medical aid instantaneously. On the negative side, many places appear to have gotten so reliant on these regular shipments that delays can lead to suspicion and accusations of sabotage. More dramatically — and the running moral of the story — T-Mat has made humanity complacent. Now that we can transmit people and things instantaneously, humankind no longer has the patience for, or the interest in, exploring space any further than the moon. Promising advances in space travel have been utterly discarded, with state-of-the-art designs now consigned to being nothing more than relics in a museum that no-one visits. And as we well know from other Doctor Who stories, humanity needs to spread to the stars in order to survive, so this apathy threatens to ultimately end the human race. It's actually a nice cautionary tale for today's society, too, where we get one sparkly new thing — like modern medical science — and promptly ditch any less prestigious alternatives (like indigenous herbal lore and folk-healing techniques), even if they're proven effective and fill a need.

The man who puts the face on this dilemma is Professor Eldred (Philip Ray), a former colleague of T-Mat commander Radnor and the lone man whose fascination with rocketships has endured long past the point at which the government dropped all funded research in the field. Evidently there's not a single other rocket scientist left in the country, and this oversight — this lack of backup plans and multiple lines of research, and of knowledge, full stop — nearly results in the Earth being conquered by aliens. Then again, at the story's end, despite everything that's just happened, Kelly and Radnor remain resistant to the idea of keeping a standby fleet of rockets for emergencies, and have not wavered in their firm belief that T-Mat is inherently flawless. So we'll just have to assume — or hope — that Eldred eventually wins the argument, and this story ultimately leads to the advancement of Earth's space program.

The existence of T-Mat also leads to this rather spectacular exchange, which most Doctor Who stories couldn't pull off:

However: though The Seeds of Death establishes an excellent foundation, the execution of the plot is considerably problematic.

For starters, the pace of the story is way off. The Seeds of Death would've made a pretty good four-parter, but the story as sketched simply can't fill six parts. This becomes apparent right from the beginning, when we're introduced to the plot via... two T-Mat staff members arguing in a control room about efficiency. While this scene does end up laying out necessary background information for subsequent plot points, it feels quite slow and unengaging. Fortunately, the Ice Warriors show up almost immediately thereafter, which — along with the lack of communication with Earth, and Fewsham's treachery — introduces some tension into the storyline, but the longer this state of affairs is stretched out, the less the tension is maintained.

The most damning indictment of the story's pace is this: the rocketship plotline could, and should, have been completely excised. This is a grand shame, because removing it would also pluck out the story's entire moral, but this plot thread simply doesn't work. The only reason why the ion rocket is necessary is because T-Mat isn't functional, and the only reason T-Mat isn't functional is because the moonbase engineers have sabotaged the relay to interfere with the Ice Warriors' plans. Why? Because otherwise, the Ice Warriors would have put their plan into action in part one, rather than at the end of part three. Now, don't get me wrong: watching brave engineers sabotage T-Mat to buy time for the Earth to fight back is an exciting sequence, and gives us heroes to root for, under ordinary circumstances. But not when it brings the entire story to a complete standstill, forcing the plot to spin its wheels without going anywhere, and — worst of all — serving no apparent purpose other than to delay the TARDIS crew from getting involved in the main storyline for a whole two and a half episodes (after which the Doctor spends another episode unconscious).

On top of the unnaturally-forced delay it introduces, the rocket plotline is repeatedly rendered meaningless.

And why — if rockets are so obsolete that they haven't been used in years, to the point that T-Mat doesn't even have a backup service rocket in case of emergencies — does the moonbase have an automatic rocket refuelling station with a prominent flashing "ROCKET HOMING BEAM OPERATIVE" light? Since when have they ever expected a rocket? It makes no sense at all. Any one of three solutions would have worked: either

  1. the rocketship thread needed to be cut, and the episode trimmed to four parts, with the TARDIS simply bringing the travellers to the moonbase in the first place

  2. the emergency T-Mat link should not have been re-established unless it was the TARDIS crew who repaired it after their arrival

  3. or the rocketship thread should've been greatly expanded, with the rocket serving at least some useful plot function.

But even if The Seeds of Death had been trimmed down to four parts, without the rocket plotline, it still would have felt light on incident. Until the fungus begins to overtake the Earth, and arguably even after that point, very little happens to meaningfully advance the core plot. The Ice Warriors release their fungus, the Doctor chances on a cure, and then it's just a matter of wrapping things up on Earth and in space. Those are all worthy plot points, particularly the last one, but they certainly don't require four whole episodes to develop. As a result, the episodes' runtime has to be padded out significantly. This could have been done in any number of interesting ways, by devoting the time to character development, or expanding upon the Ice Warriors' menace, or fleshing out the story's worldbuilding. Unfortunately, the script plumps for an awkward, unnatural route: forcing everything to take way longer than it needs to. (Our monsters-of-the-week are little help in this regard: the Ice Warriors themselves are slow as molasses, taking forever simply to walk up to a door.)

For example, take part four, in which the Ice Warriors get on with their plan while everyone scrambles around several steps behind them. On Earth, Radnor and Eldred watch the fungus spreading. Rather than taking any steps to stop it, they hang around and discuss how bad things are getting. Meanwhile, on the moon, half the episode is devoted to Jamie and Phipps rescuing the unconscious Doctor (whom Slaar insists on T-Matting into space, rather than simply having sonic-boomed him to death), and the other half to Zoe turning up the heat. Don't get me wrong, these are some tense scenes, but only that last action actually advances the plot; all the rest is just marking time.

Or we could look at part five. There's one moment when I wrote in my notes, "Finally, the story looks up", when Jamie and Zoe head out on their own to investigate the weather control center. This plotline held some promise that the two of them might actually get to save the day on their own, or at least strike a blow against the Ice Warriors. Instead, they wind up cowering behind a wall until the Doctor arrives. What rewarding character development! What pulse-pounding excitement!

Perhaps worst of all, the Ice Warriors' otherwise brilliant plan is deeply undermined by some frankly idiotic fundamental mistakes. Most pertinent is the fact that their fungus, the pivotal element of their plot to terraform the Earth, can be destroyed by... water. You know, that substance that makes up 71% of the Earth's surface, and falls as various forms of precipitation year-round? How was that ever going to work as a long-term solution? So in the end, all the Doctor has to do is make it rain using futuristic weather-control technology, and the threat is immediately eliminated. It feels too easy, and far too poorly conceived on the part of the Ice Warriors. Less idiotic from a scripting point-of-view, but probably more idiotic on the part of the Ice Warriors, is that they only planned to have enough fuel for one maneouvre when they prepare to invade the Earth. This lack of foresight and advance planning leads to the entire fleet being misdirected helplessly into the sun. The scourge of the solar system, they are not.

And I wonder, too, whether the fungus even took hold anywhere else. Apparently, the only weather-control station that the Ice Warriors disabled was in London (where the options are, apparently, "DRY" and not-dry; perhaps, for the UK, this is sufficient), and I doubt that single station controlled the weather for the entire northern hemisphere. So how did they prevent any of the other spores from getting rained out?

Finally, I have to take a moment to point out the Doctor's hypocrisy. The man who doesn't approve of guns has absolutely zero problems with a weaponized solar reflector that vaporizes Ice Warriors into nothingness, or with misdirecting the entire Ice Warrior fleet so that it flies into the sun. Exactly how many Martians does he kill this week?! I totally get (and sympathize with) the fact that if he doesn't get rid of the Ice Warriors, they're going to kill all of humanity, so his "no second chances"-style solution is certainly understandable (and it's far, far from the only such moment in the history of the series), but it still seems a bit rich for the Doctor to make such a fuss about guns, specifically, when he's willing to condone killing the enemy in more creative and sometimes indirect ways.

Otherwise, I do really like the characters' attempts to fight back against the Ice Warriors. Their plan to raise the heat in the moonbase is brilliant, though it seems a bit silly that the controls are (a) located in such an out-of-the-way spot, and (b) shaped like the steering wheel of a nautical ship.

And credit where credit is due, the plot twice addressed objections that were forming in my mind: first, when I wondered why the Doctor didn't just take the TARDIS up to the T-Mat station on the moon, and second, when I worried that the Ice Warrior armada might still follow the original homing signal rather than the Doctor's duplicate.

Of the guest characters, the only one who feels fully realized and truly well-used is technician Fewsham (Terry Scully), who's immediately characterized as a bit of a screw-up, and worse, cowardly, prioritizing his own life over the safety of everyone on Earth. Not only does he flat-out refuse to help the Doctor out of fear for his own life, he enables the Ice Warriors, with wilful blindness, to contaminate the entire Earth with an oxygen-devouring fungus. His self-preservation instinct isn't really even dented until Slaar informs Fewsham that his assistance has just abetted the destruction of the human race. From that point onward, Fewsham begins risking his own neck in increasingly greater ways: first distracting an Ice Warrior so that Zoe can turn up the heat, and ultimately transmitting to Earth a way to stop the Ice Warrior fleet from landing on the moon, a heroic action which leads to his demise at their, er, clamps.

In contrast to Fewsham's reformed coward, I very much appreciate that the story's two most competent characters (other than the Doctor) are women. Controller Gia Kelly, the technical coordinator of the T-Mat control station on Earth — and clearly the most important and capable member of the team, plus "the only one who really understands T-Mat", according to Radnor — is a sort of proto-Zoe, highly logical and ultra-efficient. She's matter-of-factly assertive about her expertise, and she gets to show off both her intellect (when she manages to replicate the Ice Warrior homing-beacon frequency) and her mechanical aptitude (when she repairs the the burnt-out circuit in a solar amplifier). The sad thing is, those two moments are really the highlight for her character; otherwise, she's underused. As the coordinator, she gets to do very little herself, which is a shame; she's mostly shown organizing other people (and doing a very good job of it too). Louise Pajo plays Kelly as cool to the point of brusque, and dispassionately appraising... in other words, her people skills are perhaps not the best (though Radnor evidently finds her charming). But while her lack of sociability may not make her well-liked by her subordinates or others, her single-minded dedication to the job and track record of flawless capability certainly make her well-respected, which is a career trade-off that's undoubtedly familiar to women even today. (Likewise, Commander Kelly is ubiquitously introduced as "Miss Kelly", grrr.) So, in many ways, Gia Kelly is a great role model, and I wish the story had spent some of its excess time exploring her character more deeply.

For Zoe Heriot, it's actually not a bad story. She doesn't contribute a great deal to the overarching plot, but she nevertheless gets some excellent character moments. Zoe's facility with space travel is highlighted, which leads to her de facto inclusion as part of the rocket crew. Onboard the rocket, she takes immediate control, communicating with flight control on Earth, calculating their flight path and approach trajectory, and explaining the automated landing procedure to Jamie. She even goes to fix the rocket motors, a skill we didn't realize she possessed. She yet again demonstrates her instinctive facility with computer interfaces of all varieties, as she effortlessly communicates with the T-Mat computer in London. Her eidetic memory comes in handy on more than one occasion, as she commits Eldred's briefing to memory, and figures out what route to take to reach the control room. Even aside from her brains, her bravery is highlighted when she insists on risking her life to adjust the heating. Of all the characters in the story, Zoe seems to be the best-utilized, even moreso than the Doctor, thanks to Troughton's holiday during part four. I'm rather pleased that she continues wearing her Krotons outfit at the start of the story; it's far more interesting, I think, than her lace-up yellow leather tunic and trousers, even though Wendy Padbury apparently liked the leather outfit enough to keep it. I enjoyed Padbury's dismissive delivery of "You don't know about it until you've experienced it.", her efficient but annoyed "Rocket to Earth Control. Wait a minute, can't you? We've only just recovered from takeoff!", and "Look, I'm smaller than you, and I'd probably be a lot quieter too!" Zoe's assertiveness is such a fun character highlight.

Sadly, the picture is less rosy for poor Jamie McCrimmon, who demonstrates his bravery in the story's latter half, but not much else. He has essentially zero role in the plot, and barely any more lines, until near the end of part 4, when he rescues the Doctor from being T-Matted into deep space (with Phipps' help), and later leads away the Ice Warrior in the control room so that Zoe can let the Doctor into the weather control bureau. But even then, he's still passively reacting to events rather than being actively involved, up until he finally asks to be T-Matted to the moon at the very end of part 6, which is a welcome (if excessively late) development, though the only positive outcome is that he helps the Doctor kill one Ice Warrior. He does have a couple of good character moments in the earlier episodes: despite his innate skepticism about rocket travel, he refuses to be left out of the rocket crew, and he comes up with a way to wedge the solar energy store room door shut. Otherwise, though, Jamie always seems reluctant to act, and it's Zoe who insists that they proceed; for example, it's Zoe who figures out how to reach the weather station over Jamie's constant objections. But Hines, as always, is acting his thick Highland socks off, especially during the rocket launch scene, when he acts out the G-forces most dramatically of all of them.

For Patrick Troughton, The Seeds of Death is a lovely showcase of the second Doctor's physicality, so for that reason alone, it's wonderful that it survived the purge. Hilariously, he (almost literally) runs rings around the Ice Warriors on the moonbase, dodging around them as he races up and down the corridors, and hopping on one foot when he abruptly changes direction. The moment when he runs headlong into an Ice Warrior, then flings up his hands in horror before fleeing in the opposite direction, is comedy gold. He goes into overdrive again when the Doctor frantically hurls every liquid he can reach onto an expanding seed, in hopes of halting its growth. The tense scene of the Doctor wading his way through the exponentially multiplying fungus, and struggling to get into the weather control bureau, also features some lighthearted moments as he slips and flails around in the foam. I also appreciate that The Seeds of Death celebrates the second Doctor as a scientist. Not only is it cute that the Doctor's enthusiasm for rocket design wins Eldred over, we also get a scene in which he frantically (and therefore unscientifically, but the Doctor always has been a rule-breaker) tests a variety of compounds for effectiveness against the seed pod. He also succeeds in rigging up a bypass for the damaged weather controls, and he cleverly limits the range of the moonbase homing signal without disabling it completely (so the Ice Warriors on the moonbase assume it's still operational). The only moment when I had to tut at the Doctor was when he rather stupidly put down his solar weapon halfway across the console room from where he was working on T-Mat, rather than keeping it constantly by his side. Love the moment when he slaps Zoe's hand away from the TARDIS controls, when he gets so panicked about the mounting fungus that he goes from carefully sampling the foam to just scooping it up willy-nilly, and "No, I don't think so somehow."

Professor Daniel Eldred is an interesting character type. Despite being a talented scientist with a passion for rocket design — in fact, he's evidently the foremost expert in the world — he's widely mocked, not because he's misguided or deluded, but simply because his field of study has been long since abandoned. Rocket science is regarded as obsolete, to the point of being a joke. So Eldred, whose museum has closed due to a lack of visitors, feels unappreciated and unloved, as if the world has moved on without him. But actually, he's the only person who has kept his eye on where the human race should be heading, so it's a wonderful vindication when the T-Mat emergency suddenly renders his skills extremely valuable again. Ray gives a winning performance of Eldred as a man who, though justifiably bitter and resentful, still hasn't lost his abiding passion for his scientific interests. I enjoyed his delivery of "Oh, that's perfect! Ha ha. So you need me after all." and "Doctor, the weather control bureau is the last place the Warrior was sighted!"

On board the moonbase, Phipps (Christopher Coll) is one of many heroes, and certainly the most successful. Not only does he manage to rig up an anti-Ice-Warrior solar weapon that even impresses the Doctor, he manually repairs the communications equipment to reestablish contact with Earth and warn them about the invasion, and helps Jamie save the Doctor from certain death. This is a clever man that you want on your side in a crisis. He's another great role-model character, determined to do the right thing and not to give up.

I thought Harry Towb was really good as the brave but doomed Osgood, who tricks the Ice Warriors into thinking that he's activating rather than sabotaging T-Mat. His delivery of "I'm, er, I'm afraid there's been a fault. The circuit's overloaded. Very unfortunate.", smiling all the while, is superb.

Along with Fewsham and Phipps, Slaar initially spares technician Locke (Martin Cort), who, like Fewsham, is determined not to lift a finger to help them. He's not given any particular characterization beyond this selfless bravery, and I'm not entirely certain that I buy Cort's performance, which feels just a tiny bit stagey during scenes when Locke panicks, and remarkably unemotional during his plea for help to Radnor. But Cort's perfectly fine in the part otherwise, and anyway, the character doesn't have a large role and doesn't survive past episode 1.

The control center on Earth is headed up by Commander Radnor (Ronald Leigh-Hunt), a fairly genial man who quickly bristles when things go wrong (not that Kelly is intimidated by him in the slightest). His old friendship with Eldred makes for interesting characterization: both rising stars in their youth, Radnor hitched his wagon to T-Mat and watched his career flourish, whereas Eldred — whose determination to pursue traditional space travel left him high and dry when the research revenue stream dried up — felt betrayed and abandoned by Radnor's decision. After tentatively renewing their friendship, these two characters team up for the majority of the story; unfortunately, they are rather surplus to requirements, as their plot function seems mainly to be observing what's happening on Earth and explaining it to each other. Their dialogue does help to contextualize the Ice Warriors' plans, but their scenes aren't exactly rivetting viewing.

Controller Kelly's right-hand man, Brent (Ric Felgate), seems like a jolly enough fellow, but he really never gets much to do, nor any personality of note. He goes out on a good note, though, at the start of part four: hilariously, Brent's body kindly helps the T-Mat employees by lifting its arm for them to grab when they carry him out.

Sir James Gregson (Hugh Morton), the minister overseeing T-Mat, swoops onto the scene in part five, demanding explanations and scoffing at the truth, as is typical of self-important government bureaucrats in Doctor Who. Astonishingly, though, he utterly vanishes from the storyline without explanation once the Doctor is back on Earth, having neither helped nor significantly impeded the situation.

Derrick Slater's ill-fated security guard only gets one line (the roaming Ice Warrior does not appreciate its movements being tracked) but Slater does a nice job in his brief role. I should also give a moment of praise to John Witty, who voices the computer; it's not a flashy role, but it's an important one, and he embodies it perfectly.

Leading the Ice Warriors is Slaar (Alan Bennion, playing his first of three Ice Lords). He's not given much characterization beyond "conquest-driven" and "slightly sadistic", but for a villainous Ice Warrior, that's basically all that's required. He and the other Ice Warrior actors (Steve Peters, Tony Harwood, and Sonny Caldinez) handle their hissed dialogue and labored breathing beautifully; it's a detail that makes the Ice Warriors distinctive. Bennion is particularly good at modifying Slaar's breathing patterns whenever he gets agitated. Comfortably breathing his own atmosphere is the jewel-encrusted Grand Marshal (Graham Leaman), who really twists the guilt knife — for understandable reasons — when he learns that his fleet is now headed for the heart of the sun. His woeful lament is certainly memorable!

Dudley Simpson's incidental music is, for him, surprisingly uninvolving. It's perfectly fine, if a little brash at times, but it's fairly repetitive and not particularly memorable.

The effects are almost all fantastic, in keeping with the rest of the story's visuals. There's an excellent model shot of the rocket landing at the moon control launchpad. I loved the effect of the Ice Warrior being evaporated by the solar amplifiers — simple, and Dalek-y, but effective! In part 6, the radiation door warping under a blast from the Ice Warrior's sonic weapon, while the TARDIS crew huddle worriedly on the other side, looks seamless. I also liked the microscopic view of the fungus reproducing; whatever organism that actually is, it makes a good substitute for the rapid growth of the fungus. The only effect that didn't quite win me over was the diagram of the Ice Warrior fleet's trajectory, according to which the armada seems to be aiming straight for the moon (rather than the sun).

I'm a bit less impressed with the decision to represent Eldred's museum on the TARDIS scanner with a quick slideshow of ancient documents. (And isn't the da Vinci diagram upside-down?) It seems not only silly but far less realistic than the earlier shot of the Doctor panning back and forth from the rocket model to Gagarin's spacesuit.

Likewise, I'm not quite sure how harshly to judge the eponymous seeds of death. On one hand: dude, they're balloons. And they look like it. You can't get any more low-tech than that. But on the other hand, it's probably the simplest way to create a fungal pod that needs to expand and burst rapidly (and they do look surprisingly good as they replicate amid the foam), and the shot of one swelling to bursting point, filled with swirling spores, is actually kind of terrifying. So I guess, thumbs-down for making the solution look too obvious, but thumbs-up for utilizing it as creatively as possible.

I'm enamored with the sets this week. On the moonbase, the main T-Mat control set is just brilliant. I love a good bi-level set, and whomever decided to add a flaring backlit wall to the upper level of this one deserves an award. One of my favorite shots of the entire story is Zoe silhouetted against it, a helpless and obvious target as an Ice Warrior lumbers toward her. Astonishingly, it's the moonbase's hallway sets that are particularly interesting, with their struts and ramps and shadows and reflections and optical-illusion lines.

On Earth, the spacious T-Mat station allows for great depth of field, breaking up the space with freestanding instrument consoles, futuristic objets d'art which might very well be functional machinery, and a variety of dividers, including glowing translucent wall panels covered in protrusions, filigree screens, patterned plastic sheeting, and maps printed on glass panes. Even the hallways have interesting textured walls. Its only downside, really, is the awfully cheap-looking "T MAT EARTH CONTROL" sign, but it's only briefly glimpsed at the start of the story.

The weather control station has a superb futuristic exterior (with an interesting chevron-shaped door) and inside, the control room is another bi-level set with flashing lights that add visual interest. The lighted panels lead to another great shot, as Jamie and Zoe hide behind them as an Ice Warrior comes into the room.

Costume design, though, eeeeehhhhhh. I've already talked about Wendy Padbury's costume (which is fine), and I really like Jamie's black lace-up shirt. Best of all is Kelly's textured jumpsuit, which is visually interesting, both in design and the way that the fabric catches the light, making it a dramatic difference from the other T-Mat uniforms. Thank goodness. Because at least against Kelly's black outfit, the black straps framing every actor's crotch and bottom are far less noticeable. I mean, hoo boy. If that's really where you want to put a giant arrow on your costumes, then don't mind me, but don't come crying when the audience calls in complaining that the T-Mat uniforms look like a cross between a jockstrap and bondage gear.

The makeup on the Ice Warriors is actually fantastic. Their fanged teeth and scaly skin are very convincing, particularly Slaar's lip area, which looks as if it's covered in grotesque boils. But I never fail to be amused by the Grand Marshall's sequinned helmet.

One element of the story that did immediately strike me as a major positive is Michael Ferguson's direction. I only had a few very minor issues, which I'm going to start with so that I can then rave about him uninterrupted: the Doctor's body is obscured behind Slaar when Fewsham asks "Is he dead?", the camera goes unfocused as Jamie says "Well, you'd better be quick about it!", and the Doctor's face is blocked when he T-Mats up to the moon. That's it! Everything else is sublime, right from the very start of the story. For example, the first exchange between Kelly and Brent is filmed with tight shots in a way that makes both characters look dramatic, rather than simply close to the camera. (I suspect I have the lighting crew to thank for part of his directorial success; they clearly made an excellent team with Ferguson.) He liberally employs both low and high angles, notably in the aftermath of Phipps vaporizing an Ice Warrior.

Ferguson also makes good use of wide shots for dramatic effect, as when the Ice Warrior enters the storeroom where Phipps is hiding, the cut from the Weather Control Station sign to the Ice Warrior approaching the building, and Slaar discovering Fewsham's treachery, which leads to a stylish fade to white, and subsequent dissolve to the monitor on Earth, when an Ice Warrior fires at the moonbase camera to stop it transmitting.

When the fungus starts spreading across the countryside, it too makes for dramatic scenes. Fallen bodies vanish beneath the foam, Ice Warriors stride through it as spore-balloons pop all around, and in one clever shot, the foam overwhelms the camera lens as if to indicate how rapidly it's multiplying.

And even though their ultimate reveal is rather undramatic, Ferguson disguises the Ice Warriors' identity for a while by filming shots from their POV, which is a nice technique; and one of the most startling moments of the entire story is when an Ice Warrior literally smashes through the T-Mat cubicle in London, with no warning.

Even on shots that could have been handled as a simple point-and-shoot — with characters who are simply chatting on an open, single-level set — Ferguson finds ways to jazz up the shot, largely by making excellent use of depth of field. Honestly, it's difficult to find a shot where he doesn't do this in some way. In a story that's as filled with static scenes of people talking as this one is, it's difficult to overestimate how helpful Ferguson's artistic direction is. Some of my favorite examples include the terrified moonbase crew gawping as an Ice Warrior enters the room; Eldred holding a gun on the TARDIS crew; an Ice Warrior looming over the maintenance technicians; Brett's corpse in the foreground as Eldred and Radnor chat in the background; Zoe and Jamie backlit against the panels as the Ice Warrior approaches them; and a spore body bursting in the foreground as the Doctor struggles to open the weather control bureau door. Dialogues are frequently filmed with one character in the foreground and another in the background, like Kelly and Osgood discussing Fewsham's incompetence, Brent crossing into the foreground of the frame as Radnor talks to Kelly, and Radnor and Kelly in the foreground confronting Eldred while the TARDIS crew hover in the background.

Similarly, Ferguson takes full advantage of the sets that were built with non-opaque dividers. For example, the shot of Brent talking to Kelly through a translucent screen; the Ice Warriors framed through a hole in one of the struts; the shot through the grille as the Ice Warriors send a pod to Paris; the later shot of Jamie's fingers pressed up against the grille which is matched by the internal angle; and Jamie, Zoe, and Kelly chatting about Fewsham's motivations while they sip drinks.

He demonstrates his artistic flair in other ways throughout the serial, notably with scenes set in the moonbase's mirrored corridors, the tense back-and-forth shots of the Doctor slumped in the T-Mat cubicle as Fewsham prepares to transmat him into outer space, and the equipment-check sequence, during which he intersperses shots of the control panels with views of Kelly and Radnor, all framed within the same round porthole. Later, during the countdown to rocket launch — of which we're forced to watch every second, though nothing is happening — the numerals counting down from 10 are projected onto Pajo's face, creating a really striking image. It's shots like these that gave me the impression that even though the script was at times trying to suck the energy out of the storyline, Ferguson was determined to do everything he could to re-inject it. Without a doubt, he's exactly the director that The Seeds of Death desperately needed.

Minor points:

The Ice Warriors' impressive scheme is undercut by the script's unsubtle insistence on delaying their plans as long as possible — padding out its six episodes with a dreadfully slow pace, and by diverting the regulars into a dead-end plotline for nearly half the story's runtime — but Michael Ferguson's assured direction, and creative use of the detailed sets, helps enormously to ameliorate the story's shortcomings.

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