Mission to Magnus by Philip Martin
9 December 2009
It occurs to me that it has been rather a long time since we saw the Ice Warriors. The last time was The Monster of Peladon way back in 1974, and they're not due for another appearance until the 50th anniversary's Cold War
in 2013. They land firmly among the ranks of Doctor Who's B-listers,
recurring over a long period of time but with much fewer appearances
than the likes of the Daleks and the Cybermen.
As I listened to this audio, I gradually realized that this might just
be because the Ice Warriors are hard to make something really
interesting out of. It's rather easy for them to be flattened out into
very generic enemies by an author who doesn't have a clear idea of
something different to do with them.
They might as well be cardboard in this story, and they're not even the
worst part of it. Pride of place there would go to this audio's
absolutely appalling gender politics. The planet Magnus was apparently
afflicted with a virus many years ago which reacted to sunlight with
lethal effects, but only seemed to affect the male population. A
matriarchy has taken charge of the planet as a result. They find
themselves in conflict with the Salvacians from a nearby planet, who
while not an exact counterpart to the Magnusians do appear to have
mostly men in positions of power.
The commentary surrounding this conflict is unbearable, and only gets
worse at the end of the story after the conflict between the two groups
is resolved by uniting against their common enemy, the Ice Warriors.
Ishka, the leader of the Salvacian war party, offers to marry Rana
Zandusia, the leader of Magnus, in order to rebuild the planet, and
suggests they should marry more Salvacian men and Magnian women together
because, well, things would just be better that way. Ugh.
The virus plot is resolved as a mere afterthought, with an antidote
turning up late in the story, but the Doctor also offhandedly mentions
that the virus might have been killed off by the planet's climatic
fluctuations anyway. Awfully convenient, isn't it? By that point I'd
already long since checked out of the story. Sil is fun to have around
but only has a side role, the Ice Warriors bring nothing worthwhile, and
the central plot line about the gender conflict just made groan. As a
minor gripe, I was flummoxed by the Doctor still being afraid of his old
bully from the academy, Anzor. How completely out of character is that?
To be brief: an irredeemable mess. I'm eager to get away from it and listen to Leviathan next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 May 2024.)
No comments:
Post a Comment