The Ice Warriors

by Brian Hayles

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by BBC Books

  Title Page

  Introduction by Mark Gatiss

  The Changing Face of Doctor Who

  1. Battle against the Glaciers

  2. Two Minutes to Doomsday

  3. Creature from the Red Planet

  4. Back from the Dead

  5. The Omega Factor

  6. Under the Moving Mountain

  7. Diplomat in Danger

  8. The Martian Ultimatum

  9. Counter-Attack

  10. On the Brink of Destruction!

  Between the Lines

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The world is in the grip of a second Ice Age. Despite a coordinated global effort, the glaciers still advance. But they are not the only threat to the planet.

  Buried deep in the ice, scientists at Brittanicus Base have discovered an ancient warrior. But this is no simple archaeological find. What they have found is the commander of a spaceship that crashed into the glacier thousands of years ago. Thawed from the ice, and knowing their home planet Mars is now a dead world, the Ice Warriors decide to make Earth their own...

  Can the Doctor and his friends overcome the warlike Martians and halt the advance of the glaciers?

  This novel is based on a Doctor Who story which was originally broadcast from 11 November to 16 December 1967. This was the first Doctor Who story to feature the Ice Warriors.

  Featuring the Second Doctor as played by Patrick Troughton, and his companions Jamie and Victoria.

  About the Author

  Born in England in 1930, Brian Hayles spent time in Canada as a sculptor and an art teacher before returning to Britain. He continued his career as a teacher for a while, writing in his spare time until he gave up the teaching to write full-time.

  He wrote for radio, including many episodes of The Archers, as well as for television and film. As well as writing for various series such as United! and Z Cars, Hayles’s work on Doctor Who included adventures for the first three Doctors. His first story was the well-remembered The Celestial Toymaker, though Hayles’s scripts were extensively rewritten several times. After his historical adventure The Smugglers, Hayles wrote The Ice Warriors – introducing the creatures for which he is best remembered. He wrote three further Ice Warriors stories, the last two featuring the Third Doctor and set on the feudal planet Peladon.

  Hayles’s last work for television was the acclaimed children’s serial The Moon Stallion – which starred Sarah Sutton, who later played Doctor Who companion Nyssa.

  Brian Hayles died in 1978. His novel Goldhawk was published posthumously in 1979.

  Also by BBC Books

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS

  David Whitaker

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE CRUSADERS

  David Whitaker

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE CYBERMEN

  Gerry Davis

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN

  Terrance Dicks

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE AUTON INVASION

  Terrance Dicks

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS

  Malcolm Hulke

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE TENTH PLANET

  Gerry Davis

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE DAY OF THE DALEKS

  Terrance Dicks

  DOCTOR WHO – THE THREE DOCTORS

  Terrance Dicks

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE ARK IN SPACE

  Ian Marter

  DOCTOR WHO AND THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

  Terrance Dicks

  INTRODUCTION

  BY

  Mark Gatiss

  Time travel is real.

  There, I’ve said it. I make no claims, however, for cooking up something with mirrors and static electricity, achieving faster-than-light speed or even for having ironed out those annoying teething problems with the Zigma experiments. Nevertheless, what you hold in your hands is a time machine. A Target Doctor Who book!

  Show a copy of any one of these glorious novelisations to people of a certain age and they are transported back to a simpler, cosier age. Some of my memories of them are imprinted with Proustian clarity, like my very own, Time Lord-flavoured Madeleine cakes. The Three Doctors (white spine) read as I lay tucked up in Dad’s Hillman Minx in the car park of Strike’s Garden Centre. Watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the Saturday night Mam came back from a shopping trip to Leeds, bearing The Auton Invasion (brown spine) in her mittened hand. The genuinely unsettling, hard-edged face of the First Doctor gazing out from the cover of Doctor Who and the Daleks (purple spine) in Binns, Darlington. It became a wonderful ritual, saving pocket money, then deciding which Target book to go for. I devoured them. Not literally. Though I did live in the north and was always hungry.

  Faithful to the show they certainly were, but there were things the books – being books – could do better. After all, a typewriter can take you anywhere in the universe, not just to a Home Counties quarry. Doomed minor characters were brought out and developed. Alien races developed intriguing back-stories (‘They became aware of the lack of love and feeling in their lives and substituted another goal – power!’). Then there was the joy of the house style. The multitude of chapters headed ‘Escape to Danger’. The classic description of the TARDIS materialising with a ‘wheezing, groaning sound’. The wonderful stock descriptions of the Doctor himselves. Hartnell was usually in the ‘crotchety old man in a frock coat with long flowing white hair’ area, whilst Troughton had ‘baggy check trousers and a mop of untidy black hair’ with ‘a faraway look in his eyes’, which were either green/blue or blue/green and which were ‘funny and sad at the same time’. My Doctor, Jon Pertwee, had an ‘old/young face’, a ‘beak’ of a nose and ‘a mane of prematurely white hair’, while the new (!) Doctor, the great Tom Baker, routinely had a ‘mop of curly hair’, a ‘broad-brimmed hat’ and a ‘long, multi-coloured’ scarf which always contributed to a ‘casual bohemian elegance’.

  Perhaps my fondest memory, though, is my encounter with the book you’re now holding. I had already revelled in the majesty of The Abominable Snowmen (blue spine) and completely fallen for the Second Doctor’s impish charms. The snowy wastes of Tibet had taken an immediate, Yeti-like grip on my imagination and now here was another icy adventure. As icy, indeed, as it was possible to get. The Ice Warriors! Featuring Viking-like Martian reptiles described elsewhere as ‘a once-proud race’, they instantly became one of my favourite monsters. I’d seen them, of course, on TV in glorious colour in the two Peladon stories, but here was their first, long-ago adventure. What absolutely fired my imagination as a child was the wonderful, wild world of possibilities Brian Hayles’s story suggested. A distant (but not impossibly distant) future in which Mankind’s meddling had plunged the Earth into another ice age. The south east of England choked by glaciers and roamed by scavenging wolves and bears. And, within it all, a base housed in a Georgian mansion where a team of hard-pressed scientists attempt to stop the remorseless advance of the glaciers. It’s also an extremely prescient story, anticipating something of our current anxiety about global warming and with each side of the debate neatly characterised. The coldly logical scientists with their misplaced faith in technology and the less conventional voices who mistrust change and prefer to remain on the outside of society. It’s no wonder that Troughton’s scruffy, gorgeous, self-deprecating Doctor is immediately mistaken for a scavenger and threatened with transportation to Africa!

  All the elements are here for a classic Doctor Who story, even though the idea of such a thing was really just being formed. An isolated base, a ticking clock, an unknown menace threatening life on Earth. But it’s the idea of the Ice Warriors themselves that really s
tands the test of time. With their hissing, asthmatic speech and vaguely Nordic names, they’re fierce and warlike but with strong codes of honour. The sort of alien Mars deserves. Although it is, quite rightly, the immortal Terrance Dicks who wears the Target laurels, Brian Hayles’s writing here is terrific. Simple, clear and never patronising, he’s also capable of as perfect, spooky and moving a moment of exposition as this: ‘Suddenly, one year…’ Clent paused, still remembering the terrible event, ‘… there was no Spring.’

  We never got to see Hayles’s mooted sequel, the marvellously named ‘Lords of the Red Planet’, but the Martians did return to menace the Doctor and, in so doing, deservedly cemented their place at the top table of Doctor Who monsters. A still–proud race, you might say. And, surely, somewhere out there in the freezing, snowy wastes, the Ice Warriors are still waiting…

  The Changing Face of Doctor Who

  The Second Doctor

  This Doctor Who novel features the second incarnation of the Doctor. After his first encounter with the Cybermen, the Doctor changed form. His old body was apparently worn out, and so he replaced it with a new, younger one. The scratchy, arrogant old man that had been the First Doctor was replaced with a younger and apparently far softer character. The First Doctor’s cold, analytical abilities give way to apparent bluster and a tendency to panic under pressure.

  But with the Second Doctor more than any other, first impressions are misleading. The Doctor’s apparent bluster and ineptitude masks a deeper, darker nature. But there are moments too when the Second Doctor’s humanity also shines through. There is ultimately no doubt that his raison d’être is to fight the evil in the universe.

  Jamie

  James Robert McCrimmon is the son of Donald McCrimmon, and a piper like his father and his father’s father. Coming from 1746, Jamie is simple and straightforward, but he is also intelligent and blessed with a good deal of common sense. Almost everything is new to him, and while he struggles to understand he also enjoys the experience. Jamie is also extremely brave, never one to shirk a fight or run away.

  Ultimately, Jamie sees the Doctor as a friend as well as a mentor. While he relishes the chance to travel and learn and have adventures, he also believes that the Doctor really does need his help.

  Victoria

  Victoria Waterfield is a reluctant adventurer. She travels with the Doctor through necessity rather than choice after her father was exterminated by the Daleks, leaving her stranded on Skaro. Until she was kidnapped by the Daleks, Victoria had led a sheltered and unsophisticated life. But she is clever and intelligent.

  Despite the fact that both tease her at every opportunity, Victoria cares deeply for the Doctor and Jamie. But while she enjoys her time in their company, she still misses her father. She remains forever an unwilling adventurer.

  1

  Battle against the Glaciers

  ‘STAND BY ALL personnel! Base evacuation procedure, phase one. Section leaders report immediately!’

  The urgent, metallic voice of the computer cut across the quiet bustle of the Brittanicus Base Ioniser Operations Unit. Although the monitoring technicians continued to work at their places on the central control desk, the stand-by crews moved briskly to their assembly stations, ready for routine evacuation drill.

  ‘Base evacuation procedure, phase one, general alert.’ Senior Control Technician Jan Garrett hurried to the sleek control deck of ECCO, the computer’s communications unit, and stabbed the ‘personal response’ button. The streamlined, artificial head containing ECCO’s video-eye swung into line with Jan’s tense face.

  ‘Reference stand-by alert,’ she said tersely, cold, grey eyes frowning behind her prim spectacles. ‘Explain.’

  ‘Threat of possible Ioniser breakdown,’ it replied crisply, without a trace of emotion. ‘Relay checks report malfunction build-up. Full data not yet available. All untraced Ioniser faults require evacuation stand-by…’ it continued.

  As the voice clattered on, Jan Garrett hurried in the direction of the Ioniser Control room. She didn’t need a lecture from ECCO – she was all too well aware of the dangers. If the Ioniser ever got completely out of control, it would mean total disaster. Not only would the entire unit be wiped out, but this area of southern Brittanicus would be plunged into a state of radiation half-life for the next five hundred years. And without the defensive barrier of the Ioniser’s heat shield, the whole island would eventually become uninhabitable, locked in the grip of a new Ice Age. But the computer, as ever, had given timely warning of trouble ahead. With ECCO to guide them, they could not fail to hold their own.

  The flat voice suddenly changed in tone, rising a pitch to a higher degree of quiet alarm. ‘Phase Two, amber alert. Phase Two, amber alert. All unauthorised personnel to be located and documented for departure.’

  Jan fought her way through the orderly turmoil of the Grand Hall, and entered what had once been the library of the Georgian mansion that now housed the Brittanicus Base Unit. It was in this elegant room, its paintings and its leather-bound books still preserved in their original twentieth-century state, that the compact but delicate Ioniser was housed in regal isolation, its power lines linked to the small but immensely powerful reactor unit contained in the cellars below. One glance at the machine was enough: all the tell-tale needles were sinking rapidly through amber into the red danger zones. Jan’s hands began to operate the relevant controls, damping, adjusting, increasing; desperately trying to achieve stability.

  Suddenly, the tension that gripped her was sharply increased by the sound of a man’s voice at her shoulder. She turned. Leader Clent’s face was dark with anger.

  ‘Why has this been allowed to happen?’ he snapped. ‘The whole power series is barely above danger level!’

  As if in response to his angry words, the needles flickered upward and held, trembling on the verge of breaking out of the amber zone. But Jan knew that the improvement could only be temporary. The flaw was basic and, as yet, its cause unknown.

  ‘Hold on Amber Two,’ rang out the distant warning system. ‘Prepare to return to Phase One standby.’

  ‘That’s better, Miss Garrett.’ Clent’s anger was now in check, and his eyes, although stern, held and calmed her. It was his strength of personality that gave backbone to this unit, many of whom had despaired of the success of a mission that had seemed doomed from the start. She was young, intelligent, well-trained; with Clent to guide her, she would eventually come to terms with the promotion he had forced upon her when the treacherous Penley…

  ‘There was a pulse stoppage,’ she blurted out, breaking his train of thoughts.

  The nearly inaudible tone of the Ioniser was beginning to falter – as though the machine was sick. Clent looked grim. A pulse stoppage meant there was a danger of feed-back to the reactor: the resulting explosion would wipe the Unit from the face of the Earth. But what could be causing it?

  Jan’s face tightened. She was close to panic.

  ‘I’m doing all I can to boost the power impulse—’

  ‘It can’t be allowed to fall any lower!’ grated Clent, studying the oscillator dials fiercely.

  ‘We still have time to evacuate,’ she muttered desperately.

  ‘We will not evacuate!’ he insisted. ‘We’ve beaten its ridiculous tantrums before.’

  As they watched, the needles began to sag ominously close to the red sector again. Miss Garrett’s face grew pale with alarm. ‘It’s falling back again!’

  ‘Hold it steady!’ ordered Clent. ‘You must!’

  ‘I can’t! It won’t respond!’

  Brushing Miss Garrett aside, Clent’s hands moved to the controls to make the necessary adjustments.

  ‘Then we’ll switch the stabilising circuits to computer control.’

  Jan watched helplessly as Clent fought to retain control of the machine.

  ‘It’s still not holding…’ she whispered.

  Clent was not giving up that easily. ‘All circuits, woman – all circuits! Don�
��t you understand?’

  He snapped home a sequence of switches. Miss Garrett flashed a look of despair towards the dials showing the energy flow from the reactor. The readings were jumping wildly. She clutched Clent’s arm.

  ‘The feed-back…’

  ‘Not enough power for that…’ clipped the Leader. The scale readings were slowing at last. Clent smiled triumphantly. ‘Still just outside the danger zone. We should be able to hold it there…’

  He turned to Miss Garrett for agreement. She shook her head without speaking. They both knew the bitter truth. In a matter of days – hours even – the Ioniser would be in a state of crisis again. But Leader Clent refused to admit defeat.

  ‘Well at least it gives us time!’ he insisted irritably, then moved to return to his personal office. He stopped, as if remembering something, and turned back. ‘And while you’ve got the chance, call in Arden – I want him back at Base immediately!’

  A geological map of the island which had once been called Britain covered one wall of the Grand Hall of Brittanicus Base. The line of electronic pin-point markers which divided the island horizontally in two seemed, at first glance, to be motionless; but they were in fact moving very slowly from north to south. Each pin-point of light represented a seismic probe set into the face of the river of ice that was threatening to engulf the island.

  Brittanicus Base, the last, hastily-organised outpost of defence against the New Ice Age, was plotting the movement of the glaciers which, minute by minute, threatened to engulf it…

  But the sophisticated wall chart could not reveal the bitter Polar conditions that existed outside the Base on the Cotswold hills.

  Those hills and valleys which had remained free of the ice were now unrecognisable beneath their thick mantle of windswept snow. At its best the Ioniser defence could only hold back the ice; any attempt to reduce the snowy wastes would have meant disastrous flooding of the southern lowlands.

  The weird landscape – a nightmare of snow and ice which had been driven, part-melted, and had then re-frozen into bizarre grottoes and sculpted caverns – looked as bleak and unwelcoming as the wildest reaches of the Antarctic. It was impossible to imagine that this ice desert had once been green fields and gently rolling hills. Even the Scavengers – those grimly determined natives who had refused to emigrate to the more temperate climate of the equator – had fled from the hills and set up their shanty-town communes in the lowlands bordering the south coast. Only occasional fanatics determined to die amidst the snow rather than retreat, and scientists dedicated to the last-ditch Ioniser programme, could still be found on these snowswept ridges and escarpments. And no one travelled alone. Who would willingly run the risk of falling victim to wolves or polar bears?