N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

I faced this return of the interminable lumber of the Ice Warriors with a dread similar to that I’d felt with its predecessor. Unfortunately, this time there’s no Poet McTeagle Angus Lennie, no Peter Barkworth, no Peter Sallis to lift my enjoyment of the tale.

Given the æons afforded to allowing events to unfold in The Seeds of Death, I found my attention moving away from the plot on a regular basis.

I wondered whether the Earth would really entrust its only chance of reaching the moon to a couple of teenagers and an eccentric stranger. I then wondered where I’d be if I raised that question with every Doctor Who story – there’d be no show! It’s a measure of my low level of engagement with The Seeds of Death that I found myself questioning one of the show’s central tenets of willing suspension of disbelief: people just trust the Doctor and his companions (unless of course, for alternative dramatic purposes, they don’t!).

I also noted that Jamie and the Doctor explained to Zoe that the foe are Ice Warriors – not Martian reptiles or something more accurate. Is it the Doctor’s naming of them here, many years after his first encounter with them, that perpetuates their everafter description as Ice Warriors? (It’s what I now refer to as the Chumbley effect.)

Later still, I wondered in passing why two of the sixteen T-Mat reception centres are in Ontario, the same number as in the whole of the vastly more populous USA.

Sadly, the cumulative effect of all this “drifting off” was that I had little interest in what was going on onscreen.

“Your leader will be angry if you kill me. I’m a genius.”

The Doctor, The Seeds of Death: Episode Three

The Seeds of Death does have its moments. Gia Kelly is the standout of the guest characters (the rest, literally to a man, I find almost beyond irritating), there’s a great recursive reflection shot as the Doctor is scampering around the moonbase in Episode Three and, of course, shortly afterwards Patrick Troughton gets to deliver one of the Doctor’s great lines. “Genius?” responds the Ice Warrior. Quite possibly.

We also have an early sighting of the trusty blinkered bureaucrat – in this case Sir James Gregson – it’s both reassuring and deeply concerning to think his ilk will still be around to bluster and blather incompetently in the Earth’s future.

But overall, I think my attitude towards is best summed up by my feeling that when the Doctor has a nap in Episode Four, frankly you don’t blame him.