Series 1 Episode 24: The Snows of Terror

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 4 (The Snows of Terror)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 02/05/1964

YOUR TINY HAND IS FROZEN (and other stories)

Feat. Baby’s First Trigger Warning

Yeah you heard me. Attempted rape trigger warning. Terry Nation, what the actual fuck.

We begin with Babs and Ian doing their best Torvill and Dean impression, swooning away in the polystyrene snow as a singy lady à la Star Trek – or, if the commentary is to believed, a lady flagrantly ripping off Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antarctica - sets the mood.

I sped this up to make it look more like Bolero but tbh
 it just looks like Wallace and Gromit.

Babs comes round, looking unimpressed, and looks up to see a creepy beardy guy wrapped in furs looming above them; she swoons again. Creepy furry guy takes the opportunity to steal the micro-key from her hand.

However, FOR THE MOMENT, it would seem this guy isn’t a total bastard, because he appears to have taken our humans in from the cold to warm up in his log cabin. He wakes Barbara up, and she immediately wants to know where Ian is. Because of course. And GOOD NEWS, everyone, Ian’s made it, too. Creepy Furry Guy starts up a weird Che Gelida Manina routine with Barbara and teaches her how to warm up frost-bitten hands by stroking them in an unsettlingly slow manner. He asks Babs whether she’s afraid of him; when she says she’s not, he tells her he once broke the back of a wolf with his bare hands. Ok then. Also his name is Vasor.

In fairness, I would 100% watch a version of La Bohème where the rest of the song is about how Rodolfo once fucked up a wolf.

Babs goes to wake up Ian and give his hands a perfunctory rub. Vasor gives them some soup, and Babs tries to be gracious about his having saved them from freezing to death; Vasor tells them the wolves would’ve got them first.

Feat. Ian's default facial expression for the episode.

Anyway, it turns out the only reason they’ve both alive is because Altos was on hand to help. Rather shiftily, Vasor claims that Altos ‘went out’ and is probably in the village looking for Susan and Sabetha. Ian leaps into action and has to trade his travel dial for some really inadequate-looking furs so he can go after Altos. Babs isn’t happy about saying goodbye, and with good reason: she’s now alone with creepy, creepy Vasor and he plans to ‘fatten you up’. Eww.

Meanwhile, Ian is out in the snow with nothing but a fur stole and a lantern and some stock footage of wolves. He finds Altos and his Very Naked Legs lying unconscious in the snow with his hands all tied up. Foul play! Frankly I’m astonished he’s not dead yet or at least well on the way to becoming a double amputee.

SEAMLESS

Back in the cabin, Barbara is feeling super uncomfortable at the dinner table but still managing to be polite when Vasor comes out with shit like ‘that door’ll keep anything out…OR IN’. Vasor takes the dishes out, and Babs looks for somewhere to put the leftover cutlery. She opens a drawer and…OH TREACHERY! Inside said drawer are Sabetha’s chain with the micro-keys and everyone else’s travel dials. Vasor demands to know what she’s doing being all snoopy, and brave Babs confronts him over how he got her friends’ pretties. Vasor claims to have found Sabetha and Susan in a cave and given them food and fuel in exchange for their valuables; Altos forced him to go out and look for them, but instead they found our humans; afterwards Altos wanted to go out again. Barbara doesn’t believe him on account of the fact that Sabetha would never have given up the micro-keys; Vasor pretty much admits he’s left the others to the wolves (and the cold). Barbara mutters something about ‘when Ian gets back’, at which point Vasor suggests that would be highly unlikely on account of what’s in the bag he gave him. WHAT’S IN THE BAG, ANGELOS VASOR?

Outside, Ian is now rubbing Altos’s legs. Altos tells Ian it was Vasor wot tied him up, at which point Ian instantly starts panicking about how he’s left Barbara alone with him. As well he fucking might.

Che Gelida Patella

It is at this point that Ian realises Vasor gave him a bag full of raw meat to carry around with him. WOW that’s fucked up. And of course the wolves are circling. Realising the extent of Vasor’s treachery, Ian and Altos march back to the cabin to fuck him up.

*THIS IS THE BIT WITH THE ATTEMPTED RAPE. TO SKIP TO THE BIT WHERE I GET ANGRY ABOUT IT, SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT GIF, FEAT. BARBARA TAKING A CHUNK OUT OF VASOR'S HAND WITH HER TEETH LIKE A LATTER-DAY BRIENNE OF TARTH.*

Back in the cabin, Vasor is advancing on Babs and telling her there’s nowhere for her to run. Barbara picks up a poker and tells him to keep the fuck away from her. He tells her he can wait. JESUS.

Ian and Altos are still a quarter of a mile from the cute miniature of the log cabin and the wolves are catching up. They make a run for it.

Meanwhile, Vasor makes a grab for Barbara, who hits him with the poker. GO BABS. Riled, he tells her ‘I’ll wait no longer’ (!!!) and starts chasing her round the table. Then she falls backwards ONTO A BED and screams and he’s bearing down on her Dracula-style when there’s a knocking at the door and Ian’s yelling for Barbara to open it. Barbara runs for it and is grabbed by Vasor, but she bites his hand and breaks free and manages to unbolt the door. PHEW.

Tellingly, as Ian and Altos come crashing through the door, Barbara answers Ian’s question ‘are you all right?’ by reassuring him that ‘the girls are all right’ and in a cave somewhere. Altos looks ready to bash Vasor’s head in, but a grim-looking Ian tells him they need him unharmed if he’s going to show them where the cave is.

Ok, now that Barbara is safe and before we go any further with the action, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED? Did they seriously just put Barbara in a damsel-in-distress scenario with a guy who was definitely trying to force himself on her and then carry on like nothing happened? Literally the only good things to be said about this scene are that a) there is zero victim-blaming involved and b) it’s not played for laughs like a Carry On film (or The Romans which is basically a Carry On film and also fucking horrifying), but just throwing it in as another bit of casual peril that’s all part and parcel of being a woman who travels with the Doctor and then not even addressing it afterwards is pretty shocking. I don’t care that a kid probably wouldn’t understand the implications of this scene; if you’re not prepared to actually talk about it in a kids’ show, don’t put it in a kids’ show. You don’t get points for adult themes in teatime viewing unless you allow some room for discussion. And this just feels gratuitous.

Rant over. For now.

Elsewhere, Susan is trying to light a paving slab, with understandably little success. She and Sabetha are cold and desperate, and Susan reckons their only option is to take their chances outside. Sabetha, who is still in her floaty Grecian number, points out they’re hardly dressed for it; Susan reckons they’ll freeze anyway sooner or later. They can’t quite remember the way they came, but they’re giving it a shot. And of course because of the Rules of Telly, it is at this point that Team Tassles (any team with Altos in it) is approaching the caves. Ugh. Filler.

Susan and Sabetha have taken the wrong turning and must now go back the way they came; Team Tassles has arrived to find an empty cave. Everyone starts yelling at Vasor to show them the way through the deeper parts of the cave; he’s…reluctant. Because of demons. They shove him into the cave passages anyway. Judging by the ferocity with which Ian is now treating Vasor, I’m going to assume that Barbara has filled him in on how Vasor is a creepy would-be rapist.

Meanwhile Susan and Sabetha seem to be going deeper into the caves and have found a TEENY TINY INDIANA JONES ROPE BRIDGE. It looks…very unsafe. They find themselves in a chamber with some creepy frozen warriors in it and freak out a bit.

Team Tassles is right behind them at the bridge, and Vasor is too much of a scaredy cat to go over it. Susan is reunited with Barbara and is delighted about it; Ian is so keen to join in the hugging that he trips over the bridge in his eagerness to cross it, and leaves Vasor behind LIKE AN IDIOT. Vasor unties his end of the bridge and throws it down, trapping everyone on the other side of what we are to assume is a gaping chasm of impassable magnitude. Ian says it’s too wide to jump (and he should know), and Babs suggests finding some logs or something to put across it. It actually looks a lot smaller than the one they jumped over in The Daleks. Just sayin’.

ENJOY YOUR TRIP

Anyway, the New Improved Team Tassles (plus much-needed furs and/or fleeces for Susan and Sabetha) wends its way through the tunnels, observing a dodgy-looking support that will probably be used to collapse the ceiling on assailants unknown at a later point in the episode. Susan has reverted to being frightened and cuddling Barbara, and Ian is almost maniacally insistent on their searching ALL THE TUNNELS for the key.

Arriving in the room with the warriors in it (who definitely won’t come to life at any time soon), Ian speculates they must be the demons stupid Vasor was worried about. Stupid Vasor who just pulled the oldest trick in the book on you with that rope bridge, Ian. Sabetha has spotted the key frozen in the middle of a block of ice, Thumbelina style. It’s also surrounded by pipes.

While Ian is waxing lyrical about the four ‘dead’ warriors, Barbara has found the hot tap; she calls Ian over. She starts to turn it, is told to ‘steady on’ by Ian, who seems to have a fleeting peevish moment in which he thinks that it surely can’t be that simple because he’s the Science Teacher and he should have noticed…before getting over himself and telling her to ‘go on’. It’s actually pretty funny.

Then this happens:

SABETHA: But how could it be? Where could the heat come from?
BARBARA: It must be a volcanic spring, buried deep in the bowels of the earth. Like the hot springs in Iceland!
SABETHA: Iceland? Where's that?
(BARBARA hesitates and looks over at IAN.)
IAN: In our own country, far away.

I love this for two reasons: firstly, that it’s Barbara who answers the Science question by doing her ‘this alien thing reminds me of an Earth thing’ thing, and secondly that there’s this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of wistfulness between the two humans. Babs does a rather adorable thing which I as a Humanities person from a family full of Science people recognise from long years of trying to convince my nearest and dearest that I know things about Science, which is to put her ‘I know a thing LOOK I KNOW A THING you don’t understand I HAVE TAKEN ON BOARD AND REMEMBERED ONE OF THE MANY THINGS YOU’RE ALWAYS GEEKING OUT ABOUT’ body language all up in Ian’s face. Ian, however, continues to have a face like a slapped arse.

Anyway, the ice is melting, so Team Tassles decides to go and find a way of getting back over that chasm. Ian and Altos tie some giant icicles together (are they icicles?) and put them over the gap, while ‘the girls’ are sent to watch ice melt. If the key were in a meadow, they’d probably be sent to watch grass grow.

Back in the chamber, the warriors have all slumped over and the key is free from its ice block. Babs calls Ian and Altos, while Susan – displaying a morbid fascination we’ve not seen since she stuck a skull on a burning torch for fun in An Unearthly Child – starts fixating on how deadly-looking the warriors’ weapons look. She says she wouldn’t want to come across one of those in a battle…and OH EM EFF GEE one of the warriors appears to be waking up!

Susan screams and runs to Barbara for a cuddle; Sabetha stares transfixed; Ian and Altos arrive and wonder what the matter is, then see quite plainly what the matter is and tell them to get the fuck out of there and run, DUH. Babs and Susan don’t need telling twice. As the warrior nearest Sabetha raises its sword, Ian points out that if she’s got the key (which she has) she should also commence with the running, like, now. Then…TRIPPING! WOMAN FALLS OVER UNNECESSARILY WHILST RUNNING FROM PERIL KLAXON! Ian helps Sabetha up, and she scarpers as the warriors advance veeeeeeeeery slowly on Ian.

Meanwhile, out on the ledge, Sabetha, Barbara, and Altos are waiting silently for Ian’s return (too silently, if you ask me), while – unnoticed by any of them – brave, intrepid Susan ties the rope from the rope bridge around her wrist and starts crawling across the giant icicles. Careful, Susan!

Ian is trying to fight off a guy with an axe using an icicle. Outside, Babs notices what Susan’s doing, and Altos points out that their makeshift bridge is unlikely to have frozen solid yet and may not take her weight. As Susan inches her way across, one of the icicles rolls away, and she flattens herself against the remaining parts of the bridge looking grimly alarmed but determined.

Fun fact: the bridge did actually collapse at one point with Carole Ann Ford on it, so the concern is real.

Meanwhile, Ian has just made that dodgy archway collapse to block the path of the warriors. And now – HURRAH! Susan has made it to the other side and retied the rope bridge. The others hurry across. And oh no, the warriors have made it past Ian’s blockade! But oh yay Team Tassles including Ian is now across! Not a moment too soon, Ian, does a Vasor and unties the bridge again, just as one of the warriors is about to cross it. Said warrior goes plunging into the void with a drawn-out scream. Either because he’s never killed a humanoid during his adventures with the Doctor before, or because he’s having some sort of Nam-style flashback to Skaro and that time Antodus plunged to his death in an underground cavern whilst tied to Ian by a rope, or because that was really fucking close, Ian has an ‘I’m going to stand here looking mildly harrowed’ moment at the edge of the chasm before running off. Because character development. The other warriors dither about confusedly on the other side.

Back at the Cabin, Vasor is looking at all the shiny pretties he stole from Team Tassles. Enter Team Tassles, demanding their shit back. Vasor runs away, and everyone is about to turn their travel dials when Vasor comes running back in, screaming about the devils from the mountain. Those warriors sure are persistent!

Ian is surprisingly brutal about leaving Vasor to be murdered, telling him he’ll ‘have to entertain them alone’. I don’t dispute that the thieving, rapey, treacherous, cowardly shitbag deserves everything he gets, but it’s unusual for Ian to be this vindictive.

Vasor grabs Susan and tells them to stay or he’ll kill her. Susan yelps a bit at being grabbed, but then a seriously dark expression plays across her face as she calmly backs him towards the door while he’s still grabbing her. Vasor suddenly appears to be in agony…AND WITH GOOD REASON BECAUSE HE’S JUST BEEN STABBED THROUGH THE DOOR BY ONE OF THE WARRIORS’ SWORDS! And is dead. As everyone in Team Tassles turns their travel dials, the warriors break through the door into the room…and there’s nobody there to murder.

BUT WHERE ARE WE NOW? It would appear to be some sort of museum full of glass cases, on the floor of which a guard lies…dead? Enter Ian, who checks the guard is out for the count before moving to one of the cases and trying to open it. A black-gloved arm à la Midsomer Murders holding what looks like a potato appears in shot and hits Ian a glancing blow to the back; William Russell, trooper that he is, pretends he’s been bashed properly and swoons, falling next to a mace of some kind, which a black-gloved hand places in the grip of the unconscious Ian.

Now we see what was in the case - A MICRO KEY! The gloved hand breaks open the case and steals the key as alarm bells begin to ring.

TREACHERY AND INTRIGUE! WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED HERE? WHO IS FRAMING IAN AND WHY? WHERE WAS EVERYONE ELSE WHILE ALL THIS WAS HAPPENING? WILL THOSE WARRIORS NOW SET OFF ON FOOT ACROSS THE PLANET TO RESUME CHASING TEAM TASSLES? IS BARBARA OK?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yup.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No. Altos, on the other hand...

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? Yes!

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Not exactly.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Yup.

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Yes

Is a woman threatened with sexual assault and is does anybody talk about it afterwards? Yes and no. Jesus.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? Not as far as I can recall.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Barbara and Sabetha are on 'Susan needs a cuddle' duty this week.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? BARBARA.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Barbara works out ow to melt the key out of the ice, but everyone's plans are pretty short-term this week.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? Nope.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes and no. Barbara and the hot springs.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? The Doctor isn't here this week. Again.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Barbara gets to hit a guy with a poker and bite his hand, and Susan gets to be brave about the bridge and backs her captor into a sword, so that's pretty badass, but it hardly balances it out.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Yup.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Vasor.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? No.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

I...really didn't like this episode. For obvious reasons. Susan flip-flopped between 'everything is overwhelmingly terrifying and a need a cuddle' and 'I am brave and a morbid badass', and as much as I enjoyed the latter, she's poorly served by writers who mostly don't know what to do with her. Barbara's sole function this week was to be a potential rape victim, which is fucking appalling. She's fierce and fighty, and remains strong as hell, but it doesn't negate the fact that the only other thing she does this entire episode is figure out where the hot tap is. Ian's characterisation is interesting this week, though. He spends the whole episode being inexplicably mardy and is utterly pitiless in his dealings with Vasor, even though he's apparently capable of feeling Feelings about having been responsible for the death of a supernatural frozen warrior that's trying to murder him. I think maybe the full fucked-upness of his adventures may finally be catching up with him. Sabetha and Altos continue to be pretty and unflappable. Next week, the Doctor is back, and it looks like we'll be giving the action a rest. Maybe they'll all be able to have a well-earned nap and take stock of their crazy lives.