In 1967, Doctor Who producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Peter Bryant wanted to bolster the Doctor’s rogues gallery, introducing a new monster to rival the Daleks and Cybermen.
Brian Hayles’s script for The Ice Warriors imagined a second Ice Age, with a future Earth under attack from revived invaders from Mars. Hayles’s concept of the Ice Warriors was very different to what eventually lumbered onto screen, however. Varga, the first Warrior released from the ice, was more cyborg than reptile in the original script. His hood-like, ominous helmet is fitted with electronic earpieces and a strip of photo-electronic cell glass that pulses with light. More lights are found embedded across the Martian’s vast chest and he’s accompanied by a high-pitched electronic whine.
Costume designer Martin Baugh had different ideas. Taking his cue from the helmet mentioned in Hayles’s script, Baugh based his design on a turtle, with fibreglass armour forming part of the Warrior’s body itself. Six-foot seven inch-tall Carry On star Bernard Bresslaw was cast as Varga and was immediately whisked off to the London Metalwork Company where the engineers who usually crafted fibreglass boats built his massive chest piece. His legs and arms were covered in heavy latex with clamp-like pincers for hands, coarse hair sprouting from every join. His mouth and jaw was smothered in a thick rubber half-mask, with a specially moulded fibreglass helmet completing the look. Baugh originally meant to install lights behind the helmet’s perspex eyepieces, but decided against it as the costume was hot enough already. When suited up, Bresslaw was soon sweating enough to fill a pint glass every single hour.
The Ice Warriors would return just over a year later in The Seeds of Death, joined this time by Slaar, a smaller, sleeker commander, all bulbous helmet and bad teeth. Over time, Slaar and his hissing successors Izlyr and Azaxyr who appeared in the Third Doctor stories The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon respectively, would become known as Ice Lords, although the title is never actually used on screen. When addressing Izlyr and Azaxyr, you should hold the Ice, they are just Lords, plain and simple – but they both have very nice cloaks, unlike poor Slaar. All three Ice Lords were played by actor Alan Bennion.
BRED FOR WAR – SONTARAN FACTOIDS
‘It’s all right. I’ve had a good life. I’m nearly 12.’
Strax, A Good Man Goes to War
As 12 is considered a good age for a Sontaran to reach, here are a dozen facts on the classic monster that was once described as a ‘talking baked potato’.
The Sontarans have been engaged in a war with the Rutans for thousands of years.
Sontarans are a clone species. The Sontaran Military Academy is capable of producing over a million cadets at each muster parade, allowing their forces to sustain enormous casualties on all fronts. The Eleventh Doctor claimed that Strax was the middle child of six million.
The Sontaran home world is Sontar, giving rise to the battle cry ‘Sontar-ha!’ Which they shout. A lot.
In the high-gravity environment of Sontar, a Sontaran weighs several tonnes.
Sontaran muscles are built for load bearing rather than leverage.
Sontarans do not fear death. They would rather be court-martialled than show pain.
For a Sontaran, being ordered to take care of the sick and wounded is a punishment.
Sontarans can gene-splice their bodies for a variety of functions, including all nursing duties. Some can even produce enormous quantities of lactic fluid.
As any space-adventuring hero knows, a Sontaran’s most vulnerable spot is its probic vent. To quote Chiswick Super-Temp Donna Noble, ‘Back of the neck!’
Because of the probic vent’s position at the back of the neck, Sontarans must always face their enemies, never turning their back on them.
To enter battle open-skinned, without a helmet, is considered a great honour.
Sontaran culture is not very progressive when it comes to equality of the sexes. They consider words to be the ‘weapons of womenfolk’. No wonder they suffer so many defeats.
SONTARAN ROLL CALL
For an identical race of clones, Sontarans have come in all shapes, sizes and heights over the years – some even sporting the height of fashion in facial hair. Here’s a roster of Sontaran personnel from on-screen skirmishes.
SONTARAN FORCES
Sontaran military forces are split into distinct groups and battalions, all serving towards the honourable pursuit of victory in the war against the Rutans (Sontar-ha! etc.). Forces mentioned or seen on screen in Doctor Who are:
Fifth Sontaran Battle Group – The Time Warrior
G3 Military Assessment Survey – The Sontaran Experiment
Sontaran Special Space Service – The Invasion of Time
Ninth Sontaran Battle Fleet – The Two Doctors
Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet – The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky
WORLDS OF THE CYBERMEN
Once they were like us. Then they changed. They became stronger. They became more efficient. They became monsters. Now, the Cybermen want us to be like them again, but on their terms and in their image. The scourge that spread across the galaxy started very close to home.
Millions of years ago, Earth had a twin planet: Mondas. Following some unknown cosmic event, Mondas broke free of its orbit and drifted away from Earth. The effect on the planet’s atmosphere was catastrophic. With their bodies weakening and lifespans becoming shorter, the Mondasians started replacing their body parts with metal and plastic cybernetic implants. Soon, they didn’t know where man ended and machine began. Finally, the ruling powers of Mondas decreed that one final weakness needed to be eradicated: emotion. The Mondasians became slaves to logic. They became Cybermen.
Using an extraordinary planetary propulsion system, the Cybermen piloted Mondas back to Earth, determined to convert every human on the planet to Cyber-kind.
At some point, the Cybermen apparently encountered the Second Doctor in an unseen adventure on a world they designated Planet 14.
Once home to the Cryons, Telos was chosen by the Cybermen as the ideal location for their Tomb, a huge underground citadel containing expansive cryogenic units. Five hundred years after the last sighting of a Cyberman, a human expedition financed by the devious Kaft an, who was working with the Brotherhood of Logicians, sought to explore the Tomb. The Brotherhood aimed to revive and enslave the Cybermen, but the resurrected metal horrors had other plans. The Tomb wasn’t the sepulchre of the Cyber-race, it was a lure. Anyone who managed to resurrect the Cybermen would join their number and be like them.
On an alternative earth in a parallel universe, John Lumic, inventor and CEO of Cybus Industries, was dying. Desperate to prolong his life, he developed a means to upgrade humans to the next level. In a seemingly deserted factory in Battersea Power Station he was experimenting on London’s homeless, transplanting their still-living brains into new cybernetic bodies.
When the President of Britain refused to sanction Lumic’s experiments, Lumic sent a signal to every human wearing Cybus Industries’ now ubiquitous earpods, forcing them to report to the Power Station for upgrade. Lumic’s new race of Cybermen eventually turned on their creator, converting him into the first Cyber Controller of their reality, and began conquering the planet. Soon, they set their cold sights on other worlds – and other dimensions.