I’m posting without finishing the story because honestly I don’t think the ending matters all that much. Was this Peri’s first story back? Not exactly a tremendous return, and as someone mentioned above, both Davison and Bryant are very much doing this by rote. It’s not helped by your classic “space crew full of bad accents” (copyright Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, I think) who have almost no character qualities that manage to stick to them. Oh, apart from the evil capitalist who wants to use alien technology to his own end. Novel.
The best bits of this for me are the Ice Warriors - I’ve always been very interested in them (and for some reason I have a very soft spot for any honorable race/times that the honor of old soldiers lines up with a noble alien race [thinking of Empress of Mars and Storm Warning, quite vividly. I still tear up when EDITED OUT SPOILER FOR STORM WARNING BAD BOY]) and this does a good job of fleshing them out. I’m always also fascinated at how bedded into the Ice Warrior culture that The Doctor is - presumably this comes from his time on Peladon in his third incarnation. Also fitting that one of the most militaristic and honorable Doctors aligns closely with, frankly, one of the more sympathetic “Evil Alien Races.” I like them every time they show up, because every time they do show up we get an interesting alien culture. Now, are they Doctor Who’s answer to Klingons? Absolutely, but they’re necessary. It’s a shame that they’re really not used very well here, because honestly, not a lot of it is.
In the end, this story’s crime is only being boring. I drifted off very easily through a lot of the dialog - the voice performances don’t have a lot of modulation or intonation, so the whole thing comes off as a very flat listen, and the ideas that sit at the heart of the story are just not particularly exciting or interesting. This one’s getting a pretty firm 1.5 stars from me.
PS - thank god someone mentioned upthread that one of the generic space crew is played by Frobisher’s voice actor and saving me the trouble of looking it up. He really does have one American accent, doesn’t he?
PPS - I went back and just finished Episode Four and I actually might bump it up half a star. Maybe? The ending is still very muddled, and the Ice Warrior/Human hybrid idea, though nicely seeded, is still under-baked. But there’s something, something rather charming and special about the way The Doctor congratulates Commander Sarl(??) on his commitment to co-operation, even going so far as to say that he would be given the highest Ice Warrior honor for his efforts. It folds back into why I like this, and why I like the Ice Warriors - whenever they show up, it gives The Doctor the chance to be a diplomat, and given Five has a lot of diplomat energy, those last few heartfelt interactions where two parties are determined to avoid bloodshed manage to highlight parts of his character that go unnoticed in an otherwise unremarkable episode. 2/5, and that’s really only on the back of my scaly, heavy-breathing boys.
PPPS - what a horrible bloody cover though.
or a 4/10 in the new system 