237 The Seeds of Death: Episode Six

EPISODE: The Seeds of Death: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 237
STORY NUMBER: 048
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 01 March 1969
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 7.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who Revisitations Box Set - Volume 2 (Seeds of Death, Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks)

"I ordered you to be destroyed!" "Well, you weren't very successful, were you?"

Jamie distracts the Ice Warrior and at the last moment Zoe opens the door to admit the Doctor. They find Weather Control's solar energy room securing themselves inside. The Warrior hunts down the human guards. The Doctor rigs up a solar energy weapon and uses it to kill the Warrior. Miss Kelly duplicates the Ice Warriors homing beam for the satellite. The Doctor works to bypass the weather controls to make it rain. The rocket containing the satellite lifts off. The Doctor T-Mats to the room with his solar energy device to knock out the Martian homing device. He kills the Warrior in the control room and is working on the Martian homing device when Slaar returns destroying his weapon. The Ice Warrior fleet is drawn away by the satellite towards the sun: The Doctor's sabotage was successful. Jamie gets Zoe to T-Mat him to the moon where he and the Doctor distract a Warrior causing Slaar's death before dealing with the final Warrior. As normality is restored The Doctor and friends sneak away to the Tardis

In the Second Doctor's fourth story we ended up on a moonbase dealing with weather control. For his ante-penultimate we've ended up on a Moonbase throughout and, at the end, the solution to the problem of the seeds is provided by weather control. In The Moonbase the weather control was provided by the Graviton on the moon whilst here the precise mechanics aren't discussed and seem to be happening at a much more local level.

One minor oops in this episode:

KELLY: We finished and installed the homing device. It's working perfectly.
DOCTOR: Well done.
KELLY: Doctor?
DOCTOR: Yes, Miss Kelly?
KELLY: I know we're sending up a false signal, but aren't some of the Martian ships bound to follow the right one?
DOCTOR: There isn't going to be a right one. There's only going to be ours, the wrong one, and that's going to lead the entire Martian fleet into an orbit around the sun.
ZOE: What about Slaar's signal?

How does Zoe know the Ice Lord is called Slaar? He's not been named previously in the story!

The Doctor seems to acknowledge it's use too

DOCTOR: Oh, obviously that has to be stopped.
ELDRED: But how?
DOCTOR: Well, as soon as the satellite is up, I shall T-Mat myself to the moon and destroy their homing device.
KELLY: They'll kill you on sight.
DOCTOR: Oh, I don't think so. I've rigged up a rather interesting little device here.
KELLY: What's it for?
DOCTOR: Well, it's a development of the solar energy device that you so successfully used on the moon, only I've succeeded in rendering it portable. I've got a solar battery.

Which brings me on to the major problem I have with this episode: how much killing the Doctor does. It's rare to see him kill a creature, and when he does it's not usually as up close and personal, yet here he personally "shoots" three Ice Warriors with the solar energy weapon. It's positively bloodthirsty compared to how he normally is!

This story has been a reminder, almost at it's last breath, that 60s Doctor Who is mainly an episodic beast rather than a series of serials. The first two episodes were very slow, with the main cast separated from the action and were rather poor. The last four are pacey action episodes that have engaged me more. Here we can credit it to Terrance Dicks taking over writing duties, but for most of the sixties it was down to Doctor Who being recorded an episode a week. This schedule was having an exhausting effect on the actors: we've been turning over at least one companion a year since the start and already this season both Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines have announced they would be leaving with Troughton very much blaming the production schedule. As we enter the Seventies the production pattern for the show would change and the show would loose the individual feel of each episode. As a complete story, however, Seeds of Death is holed bellow the waterline by those first two episodes which by knowing I have to get through them first deter me from wanting to watch the story more often.

We do have to note a few minor milestone here: Seeds of Death is the last Troughton story to feature a monster protagonist. It's also the end of a 14 episode existing run from Invasion 5, through to 8, all four episodes of the Krotons and all 6 episodes of this story.

Seeds of Death was the last Ice Warriors story to be novelised, being adapted by Terrance Dicks, and was released as Target book number 112.

Seeds of Death was released on video in 1985, becoming the fourth Doctor Who story issued on that format after Revenge of the Cybermen, an edited down Brain of Morbius and Pyramids of Mars. It was the first six parter, the first black & white story and thus the first Troughton story to be sold on Video. Like all the Doctor Who stories sold in the eighties it was edited into a compilation version , the only black & white story to suffer this fate, and was one of only three compilation videos not to get an episodic re-release. The other two were the Time Warrior & Talons of Weng Chiang.

It was the second Troughton story to be released on DVD and has had a special edition version released as part of Doctor Who Revisitations Volume 2 with Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks.