“Empress of Mars” is episode nine of season ten of the new Doctor Who.
This episode opens at NASA, at Mission Control. They are waiting for communication from Valkyrie, a probe which is examining the Martian icecaps using a new kind of camera in order to broadcast pictures, and are counting down when the Doctor, Bill and Nardole gatecrash the place (the psychic paper works as its usual ‘get out of jail’ card). The first pictures are received back. They are words. Words spelling out ‘God Save The Queen.’ In English. Perhaps the Doctor is playing pranks.
It then goes to the TARDIS which is approaching Mars. In 1881. As that’s apparently when the message was made. Bill wonders if there were Victorian astronauts. The Doctor says that whoever sent the message isn’t human. Multiple lifeforms have been detected below the surface, so that’s where they start. Bill suggests that someone has been messing with time. Like in The Terminator, which the Doctor hasn’t seen but Bill says he’ll like because it’s got killer robots (something he doesn’t need to watch fiction to see).
Bill spots a fire and says that means there must be oxygen. The Doctor is going to go first at removing his helmet but Nardole beats him. Bill suggests another film the Doctor would like – The Thing. Then she falls down a hole. The Doctor sends Nardole back to the TARDIS to get equipment, but it dematerialises as he enters. Of its own accord. The Doctor himself gets to meet an Ice Warrior. Bill gets to meet someone in a very primitive (as in, pre-space flight) space suit. Then he meets a British redcoat. Perhaps Bill wasn’t so wrong with the Victorian astronaut theory. Nardole asks for Missy’s help in fixing the TARDIS, which has gone back to the present.
The redcoat is a colonel who was stationed in South Africa when he came across something unusual in the veldt, a space ship with the Ice Warrior on board. The latter wanted help in fixing his ship and getting home. The colonel brought along quite a few of his men but ship crashed on a Mars that’s dead and they are running out of supplies – they were going to expand the Empire to Mars. They’ve also been mining Mars, looking for resources, but found nothing. Until now. They’ve found a tomb, a tomb of a very important person. A tomb that looks to have a figure encased in gold in it as well as more gold and gems. The Doctor is concerned about this – the Ice Warriors are not exactly the friendliest race around.
the body on the sarcophagus is the titular Empress, and she’s asleep, not dead. She’s also not happy to find her home invaded by primitives and she has a lot more Ice Warriors than the first one seen. An awful lot more. There are some on both sides that won’t to have a war. There are some who don’t as well. The opinion of Bill, being the only other female around, is respected – to a degree – by the Empress.
Bill continues to make an impression with her asides to the Doctor that are often quite funny. You can’t help but think that Missy, despite it being said in the previous episode, “The Lie of the Land”, that’s she’s going cold turkey from evil, is going to cause problems.
Just why was the Doctor at NASA in the first place? That wasn’t made clear. It seemed like he knew the message was going to be there, but that doesn’t match up with the timing.