Original Series Monsters Returning To Doctor Who

Another monster from the original series is returning to Doctor Who, it has been confirmed.

Rumours over returning monsters, from the original series, have surrounded Doctor Who’s seventh season for months. The Yeti, the Zygons and The Ice Warriors have all been linked to possible returns but now executive producer Caroline Skinner has confirmed to SFX the identity of the returning aliens; The Ice Warriors.

The race from Mars will return in an episode penned by Mark Gatiss; the third of the next batch of episodes that make up Doctor Who’s seventh series.

“We wanted to bring them back because they’re wonderful! In the mix of stories that we were planning for this year it felt as if doing something very bold with a monster that hadn’t been seen for a while would be really cool. Mark is an enormous fan of the Ice Warrior stories and came up with the idea. The sense of a monster of that scale and that size trapped in a really small, contained environment such as a submarine was a really brilliant story to be able to tell. And obviously we’ve had a huge amount of fun going back to the traditional designs and recreating them, bringing the Ice Warriors back to life again.” – Caroline Skinner in SFX

The Ice Warriors made their debut the self-title 1967 story penned by Brian Hayles and starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor with Frazer Hines as companion Jamie and Deborah Watling as fellow companion Victoria. They returned in 1969 in The Seeds of Death which once again featured Troughton and Hines along with Zoe Padbury as Zoe.

The Ice Warriors next appearance was in the 1972 story The Curse of Peladon opposite Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning. In a surprise twist they were not the villains of the piece but were in-fact allies of the Doctor on that occasion. In their final appearance in the original series, The Monster of Peladon, (with Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen) they reverted back to their original status as the villains.

The Ice Warriors did not appear again in the original series but were slated to re-appear on at least two further occasions. They were due to return in 1986 in a story which would have featured Colin Baker as the 6th Doctor. Mission to Magnus was one of several stories planned for the 1986 season which were scrapped when Doctor Who was temporarily axed by Michael Grade.

In 1989 plans were drawn up to bring them back once more in Ice Time, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor,  which would have written out companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) as part of the 27th season. However, once again cancellation of Doctor Who put an end to those plans as well. Although they have not returned to Doctor Who since its revival in 2005 there have been several references to them most notably in The Waters of Mars.