Doctor Who - Cold War (2013)

Out of the three new episodes so far this year, this one was easily the most enjoyable from my point of view. It may also be my favourite episode penned by Mark Gatiss so far, it felt like the first one where he has really brought his love of horror to the script. Knowing he is such a horror fan perhaps helped me to overlook some of the more familiar touches or see them more as a tribute than ripping off other films.

This episode was widely touted as the return of the Ice Warriors, after a gap of nearly 40 years. They're not exactly an enemy I'm familiar with, other than their iconic but slightly cheesy, chunky costume. Their new look is familiar but a little sleeker and perhaps more menacing. But the biggest change comes when it decides to leave its armour, a surprise even to the Doctor. This lead to the episode going a completely different way than I expected, which was a good thing as I wasn't sure how well this unstoppable clunky monster was going to fit in otherwise.

While Clara is her usual plucky self to begin with, I thought that the episode handled her gradual appretiation of the gravity of the situation well as people started dying. Her being momentarily paralysed by fear went some way towards showing a more human side to her, rather than just being a puzzle to solve. In fact the Doctor's description of the aftermath and the Ice Warrior's reasoning created quite a strong image in my mind, without any gore actually being shown.

The characterisation of the Ice Warrior being the last of his kind with nothing to lose also made it a more scary prospect than a mindless killing machine. The 80's era Russian sub offering him the perfect opportunity to lash out at the whole of humanity for attacking and imprisoning him. Despite remaining confined to the submarine, this ended up putting the whole world in danger, with the Doctor quite willing to sacrifice everyone on board to avoid mutually assured destruction. This episode seemed to do everything it could to ramp up the tension, including having the TARDIS dematerialise not long after arrival, meaning there was no way for the Doctor to escape if he'd wanted to. This turned out to be a callback to a much older episode, even if it did come across as a slightly lame reason to put them in danger.

I have seen a lot of criticism about this episode and when you look at the wider picture it doesn't really have much impact. We didn't learn any more about Clara's existence by the end and the link to the Cold War of the title was quite tenuous and perhaps wasted the opportunity to really delve into that period of time. But I couldn't help but feel like sometimes this is all Doctor Who needs and it was nice to see a threat taken seriously when there are so many silly episodes, creating a tense atmosphere that keeps you on edge goes a long way towards getting good will from me. I guess the ending did kind of wind down the tension with things being resolved relatively peacefully but I'd been so taken in by what came before that it didn't matter. I didn't even baulk at the rather rubbery alien hands seen through most of the episode, which probably look incredibly lame in isolation. Probably the only thing that disappointed me was the use of CGI for the final shot of the unhelmeted Ice Warrior, though it did at least look like a reasonable solid design - they probably had no more budget for practical masks after last week's extravaganza.