Review of The Seeds of Death (#48)

DVD Release Date: 12 Jun 12
Original Air Date: 25 Jan – 01 Mar 1969
Doctors/Companions: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Zoë Heriot
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury
Preceding Story: The Krotons (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: The Space Pirates (Two, Jamie, Zoë)

When I first decided to finish off the blog with the Everything Else category of reviews, I had The Seeds of Death scheduled for October 2022. However, since we had the delight of Whittaker’s final episode last month, my October review slot ended up being filled by that instead. As I had no desire to shift my entire posting schedule, and didn’t want either to skip Seeds of Death or to move it to the very end, this month you get a bonus review instead of a confession.

It turns out that the timing couldn’t have been better. This past week has been a bit rough for me on a personal level, and so the gentler pacing of a black-and-white era story ended up being exactly what I needed. Even with a high body count, this adventure was well paced enough to feel relatively calm to me.

The Doctor, Jaime, and Zoë arrive on Earth at a time where space exploration has been effectively halted, and transport of both people and goods is accomplished almost exclusively by T-MAT, a high-tech matter transmission system. But there are weaknesses in the system that an enemy can take advantage of, which is how the Ice Warriors end up making a play to take Earth for themselves.