COLD WAR

This story was bland, with not that much plot to speak of, which isn't surprising, considering that the whole episode takes place inside a stranded submarine. I get why there has to be submarine plots, because submarines are awesome, but from a plot standpoint, that's confining the plot to a large locked closet.

Do you know what doesn't belong on a russian submarine? David Warner. Even if you may not recognize him by name, everybody knows who David Warner is. David Warner is one of the most active BRITISH sci-fi actors, and can pass of as russian as much as a red double-decker bus can.

This submarine has apparently taken a block of ice back with it. ...and the way they store this block of ice, is upright, in the middle of a non-refridgerated room, and apparently the way it keeps cool is through liquid nitrogen dispensers resting on top of it. That's not the stupid part, because let's say that it didn't fit in their fridge. No, the stupid part is that one of the crewmen can't wait to find out what is inside, and decides to melt the block with a blowtorch.

Let's say that the block of ice did NOT contain a cryogenicly frozen alien that comes alive. Let's say that all that the crewman would thaw up, is a big dead mammoth, stinking and decomposing the whole unventilated trip back to Russia. I think that would be next to treason aboard a nuclear submarine. That would be biological warfare. That guy would be assigned cleanup duty of half a ton worth of baby mammoth, and then the crew would somehow forget that he was still inside the ballast tank when they locked the door to it and emptied it.

...but lucky for him, the iceblock just contains an alien menace.
Then arrives the Tardis, that just decides to wind up inside a nuclear sub. It drops off the Doctor, and then, for convenience's sake, it LEAVES again. The explanation we get is that while it clearly decided to go there on its own, it also thought it would be too dangerous to actually STAY there. What a great way to keep ITSELF out of harm: Lure the drivers outside, and THEN just leave without warning.

I couldn't care less about this martian ice warrior. I know it sounds tragic, because apparently some lobbying efforts went into bringing back this enemy into the series, but there's nothing special about it. It's just a cruel, fearsome warrior, which sets it apart from absolutely no other type of enemy in the Doctor Who universe. It's great that Mars is inhabited and can become a close-range threat to Earth, though, but that's for another episode, if that will ever happen at all in the future.

At first the martian is contained, but nobody but civilians are allowed to speak to it, or even be in the same room as it, because somehow being military would piss it off. They're more aggressive than klingons! ...so they have to send in Clara to appologize and beg for a truce, because somehow civilians can negotiate for the military, if it's not on the actual BEHALF of the military.

So then the martian breaks loose, and goes around killing people, and somehow it has suddenly ended up at the launch console inside the guarded bridge. How? We see guards outside a closed door firing uselessly at it, and then what he must have done off-camera, is pound himself through a thick metal door. I would have liked to see that, especially since The Doctor is actually in pursuit.

Then we have the finale, where the Doctor just tries every single desperate tactic in the book to at least delay the martian from launching the missile a few seconds more. It's a pathetic display, especially since people has demonstrated how effective cattle prods are to these things. Instead of asking him to turn around to face a useless screwdriver, why not simply apply a cattle prod to his lower back again? ...or are cattle prods too scary for the Doctor to use, no matter if the world blows up?

So in the end, the martian's buddies has to come back to save him, for this excuse for an episode to be resolved.

...but no, it's not over yet. The episode hasn't yet achieved a complete fucking meltdown yet. The missile is still armed, and everyone onboard the submarine is so completely helpless. The captain, who has been shown using a key to arm the missile in the beginning of the episode, is just standing around helpless as the camera zooms in on the keyhole that arms the missile. Here's an idea: You have a key. Maybe that keyhole works BOTH ways, so if you at least TRY to insert your key into that keyhole, and TURN it, something might actually happen. ..., captain.

...but noo, what it ACTUALLY takes, is for somebody to sing the chorus to "Hungry Like The Wolf", because the martian somehow, out of the blue, liked the professor. ...or that particular song. Whatever. Fuck off.

Then, the Doctors screwdriver, that apparently now also works as a pager, is being paged by the Tardis, to tell him that it's a fucking dick, and that it will be waiting for him at the south pole.

I've started to hate Doctor Who. This series has gone from a series known for being rational and intelligent, to a series that pees all over reason and logic.