Doctor Who Series 7: Cold War Review

Full spoilers for the episode follow...

Hello everybody and welcome to my review of Cold War. This episode features the return of the Ice Warriors, an enemy not seen since the 70's. I'd been looking forward to seeing this classic monster return to the series and writer Mark Gatiss handles this episode very well, even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of the series premiere.

This episode takes place entirely on board a Russian submarine during the Cold War, they have retrieved an Ice Warrior from the North pole, thinking it's a frozen mammoth. After being freed from it's prison, the Ice Warrior attacks. At the same time, the Doctor & Clara (thinking they're heading to Las Vegas) arrive on the submarine and are stranded there when the Tardis mysteriously de-materialises. Normally this would have seemed too coincidental, but since thanks to dialogue in the Series 6 episode "The Doctor's Wife", it's easy to assume the TARDIS brought the Doctor here because he was needed.

The dialogue between the Doctor and the Ice Warrior, General Skaldak, is great and Nicholas Briggs does a great job voicing the character, but then again, Briggs is always great whenever he does these roles. Skaldak's armour looks fantastic, its very faithful to the original look of the Ice Warriors and the fact that it's used minimally makes it all the more awesome when we see it in action. The episode is also given an Alien vibe by having Skaldak leave his armour for half the episode and scuttle around the submarine picking off the crew. I would have liked if the Doctor had referenced how he's the last of his species to Skaldak when he attempts to launch the submarines nuclear missiles, but that's only a minor gripe. It's nice that this episode ends somewhat happily for Skaldak when he is rescued by his people at the end of the episode, proving he isn't the last of his species like he thought, which helps prevent this episode from having too many parallels with Series 1 episode "Dalek".

Jenna Louise Coleman & Matt Smith give good performances as usual. There's an interesting dynamic between Clara & the scientist Professor Grisenko (played brilliantly by David Warner), who is the one character they meet in this episode with any real personality. The rest of the submarine crew, while the actors give decent performances, aren't very memorable. This is a mostly serious episode, though the few jokes there are prove quite funny. The music by Murray Gold (who I haven't really mentioned much in my reviews for some strange reason) is brilliant as ever. I've enjoyed his work on the show from Series 1.

This was a good episode. The Ice Warriors are back with a vengeance as is Doctor Who in general, and this makes me all the more pumped for the impending 50th anniversary special. I'm really enjoying this series right now, let's hope that the next episode continues this trend of quality...

Score: 4.0/5.0