Doctor Who Series 10 Episode 9 - Empress Of Mars - Review

Starring: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Anthony Calf & Ferdinand Kingsley

Written By: Mark Gatiss

Directed By: Wayne Yip

The arrival of 'Empress Of Mars' is a welcome refresher after the three-part Monk trilogy. While not exactly bad, the trilogy was a middling affair longer than it needed to be, and applied the brakes quite a bit to the series' momentum. 'Empress Of Mars' signifies a return to the fun, standalone stories that Series 10 started out with, and that I'd hoped would be back. We also have Mark Gatiss back in the writer's chair, penning the Ice Warriors for a second time. So can 'Empress Of Mars' live up to Gatiss' last Ice Warrior story? 

When a trip to NASA reveals the words "God save the Queen" written underneath the Martian ice cap, the Doctor, Bill and Nardole travel to Mars in the year 1881 to investigate. There in the underground caves they discover a squadron of human soldiers from Victorian Britain. The situation escalates once the soldiers mine their way into an Ice Warrior hive, and inadvertently revive the Ice Empress, Iraxxa from her tomb. Can the Doctor prevent a deadly conflict between the humans and Ice Warriors?

There's no escaping the fact that Gatiss clearly loves 70s 'Who' and the Pertwee era. It's practically plastered all over 'Empress Of Mars'. So it's a good thing that I love this era too! With caves, mining, Ice Warriors, fricking Alpha Centauri showing up (more on that later), this could almost be a modern day re-imagining of the Peladon stories. In fact given his open dislike of the Ice Warriors and just how old-school this is, I'm surprised Steven Moffat actually gave this the thumbs up. The reaction from plenty of people towards this episode has been generally quite muted, almost a collective "enjoyable I suppose, but nothing special". This has been particularly so with fans who've only watched New 'Who'. Although the divide between Classic and New 'Who' is constantly thinning, how much you enjoy this story will depend quite a bit on your familiarity with the Pertwee era and the Peladon stories. 

'Empress Of Mars' has very little in the way of subtlety, whether it's the premise, the characters, the dialogue, the performances - it's all on-the-nose and very simple, and for once I enjoyed that. This is after all an episode with Victorian soldiers pitching tents and sitting around drinking tea on Mars, before writing "God save the Queen" on the surface. Not only is that a gorgeous premise, it doesn't get much more on-the-nose than that. Most of the human soldiers given any dialogue can be summarized in a single word. The greedy Jackdaw. Catchlove the baddie. Godscare the coward. Neither the characters of their dialogue have much more than a single layer to them, but the actors commit to that and seem to really enjoy it. Ferdinand Kingsley in particular relishes such an entitled, arrogant role. While we're on the topic of performances, I've also got to commend Adele Lynch as Iraxxa. She's snarly, shouty and seems to channel Sarah Parish's Empress of the Racnoss - it's a great performance. One of the reasons I'm so fond of the Ice Warriors is because they're never static. There's always something new to learn about them or that we haven't seen before. With 'Empress Of Mars', we get to see a female Ice Warrior for the first time, and the Ice Empress is great addition to their mythos.

The not-so-subtle approach doesn't work all the time however, and it does lead to a few clunky moments. The opening with the Doctor, Bill and Nardole at NASA is very awkward, and the very first shot of a poorly CGI'd NASA isn't the best way of opening an episode. The trio act with such a smugness and overconfidence around the NASA scientists that's in desperate need of turning down. The ending with Godscare and Iraxxa making a truce is also much too rushed and difficult to buy. How quickly Iraxxa changes her mind is totally unconvincing. There's also a rather clumsy way of getting rid of Nardole for the episode. Since he didn't feature in Gatiss' original script, Nardole is (thankfully) absent for most of the runtime after the TARDIS returns him to Earth. Why the TARDIS takes him back to the university of its own accord is never answered, and while it may be in future episodes, it doesn't feel like we're going to get an explanation. And god knows what's supposed to be going on between Missy and the Doctor in that final scene. 

On a more positive note, even though we don't get to see much of the Martian surface, the red underground caves look gorgeous. It's surprising to think we've never seen the Ice Warriors on their native planet before, but it's a wonderful contrast seeing their armoured green selves against the red caves. The Victorian steampunk spacesuit looks great too, and I still thoroughly love the Ice Warriors' modern look. Not to mention it's a striking image as they awaken from hibernation, clearly taking inspiration from 'The Tomb Of The Cybermen'. Iraxxa's look is fantastic too, completed by the 'Predator'-style dreadlocks. Incidentally, I said in my review of 'Cold War' that while it worked as a one-off idea to see an Ice Warrior out of its armour, I didn't want it to become a recurring thing, and thankfully they did remain in their armour this time. With this and 'The Lie Of The Land', Wayne Yip has now directed two of the most visually distinctive episodes of Series 10, and so far I think he may be my favourite director of this series. Although he does have Rachel Talalay to contend with soon in the series finale, so we'll see if he can keep hold of that title. 

Save for that unconvincing ending, the rest of the 3rd act closes the episode on an exciting note. The Ice Warriors digging their way up through the cave floor and going to battle against the Victorian soldiers is brilliant, and these moments of action, though brief, have a great sense of energy about them. And just when you think there aren't any more surprises left in store, Alpha Centauri shows up! Still with the same androgynous high voice provided by Ysanne Churchman. 'Doctor Who' often resorts to casual, lazy fan-service these days, hoping that just a passing throwaway remark to an element of the past will get the few people who actually understand it feeling all clever. But this is how you do fan-service! Put some actual effort into it, and getting Churchman back to voice Centauri. I loved it! 

'Empress Of Mars' is something I enjoy probably much more than I should. At a time where 'Doctor Who' desperately needs to be pushing forward and aiming at more general audiences, rather than weird die-hards like me, I probably shouldn't be praising up old-fashioned entries like this. Although to be fair, Series 10 has up until now been trying mostly new things. This is a self-indulgent guilty pleasure, which bottles the essence of 70s 'Who' and brings it back for forty-five minutes. It's been speculated that this may be Gatiss' last script, and while I hope it isn't, if it turns out to be the case, 'Empress Of Mars' is a fitting end as it's one of his best.

Empress Of Mars

8/10