The Seeds of Death - Episode 6

This final episode of ‘The Seeds of Death’ is the 100^th episode that Patrick Troughton has appeared in. The Doctor at the beginning of the episode has two battle two menaces (one he can’t see), there is the foam/pods and the Ice Warrior. Like the first episode which took several minutes before the regulars, it’s the same amount of time before extras turn up and a few minutes more before the supporting cast turn up (eight minutes). When the Ice Warrior is dealt with the story action moves to trying to make it rain and the stop the invasion fleet from arriving. Considering it only has 25 minutes to do it, its done quite well. The making it rain thing was done quite quickly considering the machine that does it seem quite broken.

I like how the Ice Warriors are defeated. They are tricked into following the wrong signal and the invasion fleet are sent to the sun instead of the earth. It’s a plan that takes the whole episode to get it to work and when it does it’s revealed in a fantastic way. It’s not done quickly at the end of an episode but they take the time to finish it off and still manage to do it with time to spare.

The performances are the best they have been from the regulars in this story. That’s because they seem to be letting some of the comedy come out. There’s a great shot when Troughton arrives in the weather bureau and Wendy Padbury has a massive grin on her face. The best of the regulars is Troughton who’s best scene comes when he is against Slaar and he says confidently that his plans are finished. It’s a rare thing for Troughton’s Doctor to get a scene like that but Troughton seizes the moment and its great to watch. The supporting cast don’t really feature that much as the action is taken with the regulars and the ice warriors.

As a story it works quite well and despite my reservations about it being six episodes, I thought that it worked in a perfectly fine manner. The Ice Warriors though lacking in ice weren’t lacking in menace. Their plan was quite clever (compared to the Daleks’ regular plans) and the setting of the moon was a nice nod to the base under siege type story that we had become use to. Brian Hayles has written a sound script and introduced a raft of supporting characters that weren’t annoying and were fun to watch. Michael Ferguson has been praised during the previous episodes because he has kept the action going and the location stuff was great.

The problem now is that we are about to approach the space pirates.