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Doctor Who – The Tomb of the Cybermen

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So here we are at the start of season five. It’s hard not to feel a mild sense of achievement now that season four has been put to bed – with only ten surviving episodes from a run of nine serials (the last complete story was The War Machines way back at the end of season three) it’s fair to say that things were a little hard going at times.

But now we’ve hit S5, surviving episodes are the rule rather than the exception. Although it wasn’t always like that ….

Gnarled old Doctor Who fans will no doubt recall the excitement generated when Tomb was recovered in 1992. Personally I didn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. It was good news of course, but at that point in time I was only just beginning to build up my collection of DW VHSs. So the fact that Tomb had been unavailable before 1992 didn’t mean a great deal to me (after all, I’d only seen The War Games for the first time in 1990).

The later recoveries of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear were totally different of course. By 2013 I’d lived with the audios and telesnaps of those stories for decades, so finally getting the chance to see them was (dare I say it) just a little bit emotional.

Older fans than I had built an impressive mythology around Tomb. Jeremy Bentham, writing in DWB back in 1992, declared that Tomb was the pinnacle of missing stories (a viewpoint that seems odd now). But for me, not having to approach the story with any particular baggage meant I could simply enjoy it (or not).

Things begin promisingly enough. We’re introduced to an archeological group comprised of a number of wildly different characters. George Pastell made a career out of playing swarthy untrustworthy foreigners – today he’s cast as Eric Klieg (who’s a swarthy untrustworthy foreigner). He’s accompanied by Kaftan (Shirley Cooklin) who is content to play the Lady Macbeth role whilst her servant Toberman (Roy Stewart) lurks in the background, strong and mostly silent.

Kaftan, like Klieg, has a foreign accent which instantly marks them both down as villains while Professor Parry (Aubrey Richards), with his reassuring Welsh tones, is clearly on the side of the angels. Then there’s Cyril Shaps as John Viner and Bernard Holley as Peter Haydon. Both are destined not to see the story out – Holley cops it at the end of the first episode whilst Shaps meets his end in the following one.

That’s a double pity as both were the sort of actors who enlivened any production they appeared in. Holley had less to work with (Haydon was simply a cheerful type with no particular axe to grind) whilst Shaps played his trademark role – the little man seemingly always at the edge of a nervous breakdown.

The Doctor clashes entertainingly with Klieg in the first few episodes. Klieg’s overweening arrogance and belief in his own abilities contrasts sharply with the Doctor’s modest playfulness. It’s the Doctor, of course, who’s able to unlock the secrets of the Cybermen’s tomb – although given that he’s well aware how dangerous they are, why he should want to do so is anyone’s guess.

Without the Doctor’s help, would Klieg have continued to flounder? Maybe, or maybe not – so perhaps the Doctor felt that it was better to draw Klieg’s sting as quickly as possible.

The production centres around two key sets – the tomb entrance and the tombs themselves. Given that this story was recorded in Lime Grove (a studio not known for its size) this was a wise move, plus, as with The Moonbase, if you restrict the number of sets then you can spend more money on them – which doesn’t hurt.

There’s no doubt that several sequences – remembered by those who watched the story on its original transmission in 1967 – helped to bolster Tomb‘s reputation in the twenty five years that followed. The end of episode two – the defrosted Cybermen emerge from their tombs and the imposing figure of their Controller (Michael Kilgarriff) utters his first words – is an obvious one.

Once the Cybermen have warmed up a little, they reveal their master plan. Having taken a long nap in their tombs they decided to wait for someone to find and unfreeze them (those lucky people would then be the first in a new race of Cybermen). Given that Professor Parry’s party is on the small side, there’s a slight flaw here …

Whilst the Cybermen are still physically imposing (is it just me, or are they taller than before?) in other respects they’re slightly disappointing. Like all modern electronic devices they can’t last long without recharging – which means that most of the Cybermen are forced back into their tombs for forty winks long before the end of the story although the Controller does venture upstairs to use the revitalising machine.

This is an enjoyable scene, although the Controller bursting through the very flimsy door of the revitalising machine is one of those moments that would have worked better in audio (ditto, the damage the Cybermen do to the main hatch – at one point I thought they were going to stick their fist right through it).

And while we’re on the subject of the Cybermen, they do an awful lot of rhubarbing which also helps to slightly deflate their imposing aura.

Having been fairly passive throughout Evil of the Daleks, it’s good to see that Victoria was given more to do in this one. She spends some time in the villainous clutches of Kaftan, which allows Deborah Watling to tease out a little of Victoria’s pluck and bravery.  Sadly, Shirley Cooklin never really impresses, so these scenes don’t carry that much of a punch.

Strong female guest star roles were a rarity in this era (strong female guest star villains even rarer) so it’s a pity that Cooklin didn’t do more with the role of Kaftan. The potential was there – the script tells us on more than one occasion that Kaftan is the power behind the throne and she’s more than able to manipulate Klieg – but it all rather falls flat on screen.

Later, the Doctor and Victoria share a much quoted ‘moment of charm’. It’s mainly Troughton’s scene (“I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I forget”) but it also serves another purpose – reminding the audience where Victoria had come from.

Klieg’s come-uppance in the final episode is long overdue. It’s preceded by a lovely Troughton/Pastell two-hander in which the Doctor tests the limits of Klieg’s insanity.

DOCTOR: Don’t you see what this is going to all mean to all the people who come to serve Klieg the All Powerful? Why, no country, no person would dare to have a single thought that was not your own. Eric Klieg’s own conception of the, of the way of life!
KLIEG: Brilliant! Yes, yes, you’re right. Master of the world.
DOCTOR: Well now I know you’re mad. I just wanted to make sure.

Apparently Vladek Sheybal was the first choice for Klieg, but I’ve no complaints with Pastell’s turn. It’s not a subtle performance, but then neither was the character.

Before I wrap up, there’s just a few more things I need to get off my chest. Why did the Cybermen seemingly have no way to open their tombs once they were down below? Surely it’s not logical for the only opening switch to be above ground (where the Cybermen no longer are?)

And did Parry and Hopper really leave poor Toberman lying dead on the ground outside the tomb? After he sacrifices his life to save them, it looks for all the world like Parry and Hopper blithely toddle off to their ship whilst the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria stroll back to the TARDIS. I hope that someone came back and gave the chap a decent burial.

So Tomb of the Cybermen doesn’t quite live up to the mythic status it enjoyed prior to 1992, but then no story really could. It’s still a very competent production, although some of the flimsier sets are a bit distracting. The performances are good, but not great (none of the guest cast are given multi-layered characters and the likes of Clive Merrison do rather struggle with their American accents).

But on the plus side it zips by very agreeably, so it’s certainly worth 3.5 TARDISes out of 5.

Time to hit pause on this rewatch for a few weeks. All being well I should pick things up in mid July.

Doctor Who – The Moonbase

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Some four months after making their debut, the Cyberman – having undergone a radical makeover – are back …

In some ways, The Moonbase is a retread of The Tenth Planet. The action once again takes place in an isolated base under siege (last time it was in Antarctica, now it’s on the Moon – and you can’t get much more isolated than that) run by a male-only group who hail from a variety of counties (although once again there’s no room for those pesky Russians).

But there are differences too. Hobson (Patrick Barr), the base commander, is an amiable old soul – even when he’s acting all stern you get the feeling that his bark’s far worse than his bite. The fact his men call him “Hobby” to his face is evidence of this.

By this time a very familiar face both in British films and on television, Barr is one of The Moonbase’s major strengths. Sadly most of his team of scientists remain pretty anonymous (the way they regularly keep getting picked off by the Cybermen doesn’t help of course). One exception is André Maranne as Benoit, Hobson’s second in command. He’s not really that well drawn a character, but given Maranne’s extensive career you can’t help but have a residual well of affection for him.

It’s worth remembering that when the Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie set foot on the Moon (in 1967) they were two years ahead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. But although that part of the story would change from science fiction to science fact, Moonbases – despite what Moonbase 3 (1973) and Star Cops (1987) would later tell us – are still just a sci-fi concept. Still, maybe one day that’ll change ….

As I’ve said, Hobson is a surprisingly placid character. Showing little surprise or interest when the Doctor and his friends suddenly appear, he’s content to give them the run of the base (even though Moonbase has suddenly been struck by a mystery illness). There’s some inconsistency with the timing here – in episode one we’re told that the first case only happened a few hours before the Doctor arrived, but by episode two it’s become two weeks.

We know the Cybermen are behind it, but the story – despite only being a four-parter – is content to eke out the suspense. In episode one the Cybermen mostly only appear in silhouette (judging by the telesnaps, quite effectively so) whilst by episode two they’ve grown a little bolder although they’ve still yet to utter a word.

Compared to their terribly verbose brothers in The Tenth Planet this is an obvious difference.

The Moonbase has often been seen as the story where Troughton’s Doctor settles down and loses many of his earlier eccentricities. His short speech in episode two (“There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought”) is often quoted in support of this, although it’s worth remembering that he was equally adamant that the Daleks had to be fought in Power of the Daleks.

But it’s true that he’s proactive and keen to find a reason for the base’s mystery illness (even though he fails to do so). Eventually the reason – the Cybermen have been doing something nasty to the sugar – comes to light. Hmm, this is an odd sort of plot point (the latest victim keels over very, very dramatically seconds after drinking his coffee – if this sort of thing happened to everyone else, why wasn’t it commented upon?)

Mind you, that plot niggle pales into insignificance after you’re invited to accept that the Cybermen come and go with ease from the Moonbase via a large hole they’ve made in the outer wall. I’m no expert, but wouldn’t that cause a little bit of decompression? Apparently not, as all the Cybermen have to do is stack some bags against the wall and voila! it’s as good as new.

Given that Kit Pedler (along with an uncredited Gerry Davis) was on scripting duty, it’s an odd moment. Especially since at other times Pedler’s rigorous scientific voice is heard loud and clear (for example, Hobson and the others check the misfunctioning Gravitron during episode two in a scene which feels accurate, if deadly dull).

The Gravitron, a device for controlling Earth’s weather, seems to be the main reason why the Moonbase exists. The way the Earth-based controller reacts so negatively when it’s suggested that it’s turned off for a while makes me suppose that Earth’s weather has deteriorated so badly by 2070 that there would be numerous catastrophes without it.

When the Cybermen turn up in force at the start of episode three they finally spill the beans about their masterplan. It’s to use the Gravitron to destroy all life on Earth. Not in revenge for the destruction of Mondas (oh no) but simply because they fear that Earth might one day be a rival. Since everyone on Earth seems to have forgotten about them that’s a little odd, but no odder than the rest of the story I suppose.

Episode three is where we hear the new Cyber voices for the first time. Less comic than in The Tenth Planet, the Cybermen now prefer to talk in staccato sentences with few wasted words (although at one point they mention “stupid Earth brains” and patronisingly follow this up with “clever, clever, clever” which sits rather uncomfortably alongside their more direct dialogue elsewhere).

The second half of the story meanders somewhat. Highlights include Ben and Jamie almost coming to blows over Polly (this moment of sexual tension passes quickly though) and the trio going Cyberman hunting with a lethal cocktail that doesn’t do the Cybermen’s chest units any good at all.

The Moonbase climaxes with the Gravitron being used to send the Cybermen flying off into space. This sort of ending, which happened from time to time (see also The Dominators) always rather irritated me. Just because this group of Cybermen have been defeated, why shouldn’t a back-up force be dispatched immediately? The Doctor clearly doesn’t think so, as he’s very keen to get back to the TARDIS and begin his next adventure, so we’ll just have to hope that Hobson has no trouble from now on.

If so inclined, you really can pick the plot of The Moonbase apart but I can’t shake off my love for it. Partly because it looks pretty impressive but mostly it’s due to the fact that Doctor Who and the Cybermen was one of the earliest Doctor Who novelisations I read, which means that the story (even the very silly bits) will always have a place in my heart. 4 TARDISes out of 5 then.

Doctor Who – The Highlanders

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And so we bid farewell to the historical story (at least until 1982 when they made a brief and unexpected comeback). The historicals might account for many of the best stories during the Hartnell era, but by late 1966 their time was up.

Innes Lloyd was not a fan. As producer, one of his chief aims was to push the ratings up again and the historical tales always seemed to be less popular than the science fiction stories. Whether that’s true or not is a debate for another time, but it’s true that some of the later Hartnell ones did pull in very low AI figures.

A Doctor Who story set in 1746 immediately after the Battle of Culloden seems unlikely Saturday tea-time fare. True, when the story begins the violence is over but there’s still a grisly picture painted in the dialogue. The Doctor, Ben and Polly are taken for “camp followers to the Duke of Cumberland, come to steal from the dead” whilst we’re told shortly afterwards that the “English troopers gave no quarter to men, women and bairns”.

The Highlanders episode one continues where The Power of the Daleks left off – by depicting human nature at its worst. The English are either corrupt (Solicitor Grey) or callous and indifferent to the suffering around them (Lt. Algernon Ffinch).

Falling in with a small group of Highland refugees, Ben and the Doctor are set to be hanged, along with young Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and the ailing Laird (Donald Bissett) whilst Polly hides out in the heather with the Laird’s daughter, Kirsty (Hannah Gordon).

Aye, it’s time to say hello to Jamie. Although since he makes very little impression throughout the story it’s hard to see why it was decided to make him a TARDIS regular (presumably Hines’ off-screen personality helped).

Solicitor Grey, serving King George as his Commissioner of Prisons, has established a profitable sideline by selling healthy prisoners to Captain Trask (Dallas Cavell) who will ship them overseas to work and die as plantation slaves. Cavell’s performance is an extraordinary one – if you remember Tony Hancock’s impression of Robert Newton as Long John Silver you’ll get the general idea.

David Garth’s turn as Solicitor Grey is thankfully a lot more restrained and he forms a nice double act with Sydney Arnold as Perkins, his very put-upon clerk. Hannah Gordon snivels a lot to begin with, but at least her Scottish accent is good. And since Kirsty is something of a wet lettuce in the early episodes, it allows Polly to be more forthright than she’s been for a while.

Somewhat sidelined during Power of the Daleks, Polly is more active during The Highlanders. Not content to sit around moping, she quickly attempts to break the Doctor and Ben out of jail – casually manipulating the hapless Ffinch (Michael Elwyn, another actor who’s an asset to the production).

If the first episode is full of implied horror, then the tone begins to lighten in episode two. The Doctor, masquerading as a German, manages not only to bamboozle Grey but then, after bashing Perkins’ head against the table several times, manages to convince him that he’s got a headache! The comedy continues when the Doctor disguises himself as a washerwoman ….

This all helps to reinforce the obvious fact that the new owner of the TARDIS is very different from the old one.

A quick commentary about the Doctor’s German accent. Troughton was never really known for being a man of a thousand voices (the voice he later uses for Salamander in The Enemy of the World is pretty much his one-size fits all swarthy foreign accent). So is the Doctor’s German accent supposed to be deliberately bad or was Troughton doing his very best? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

The Culloden setting only serves as window dressing for The Highlanders. A debate about its rights and wrongs was clearly felt to be outside of the series’ parameters, although the script does make the effort to be negative about both sides. The English (corrupt butchers) come off worse but the Scottish aren’t exempt from the odd brickbat – at one point the Doctor mutters “romantic piffle” after flinging aside a Jacobite bonnet inscribed with some flowery words whilst Jamie implies that Bonnie Prince Charlie’s early departure from the battlefield was a sign of cowardice.

Along with the Doctor’s dressing up (later he also masquerades as an English soldier) and his various accents (none of them convincing), he also continues to use his new catchphrase – “I would like a hat like that”. It pops up twice in The Highlanders having debuted in The Power of the Daleks.  Luckily all these idiosyncrasies, along with his stove pipe hat, were soon to phased out ….

With the story unable or unwilling to tackle the political and social realities of the time, The Highlanders somewhat devolves into a swashbuckling tale of derring-do.  It’s entertaining enough – the Doctor, Ben, Polly and Kirsty incite armed rebellion aboard Trask’s ship which ensures that the Scottish survivors are free to set sail for a new life in France – but (as was common with historical stories) you do tend to feel that the story could have easily played out just as well had the Doctor not been there.

Even Grey’s arrest by Ffinch feels a little contrived – I suspect that, given all we’ve seen so far, the solicitor will be able to buy himself out of trouble.

If we could actually see it, maybe it would rise a little in my affection but at present I can only give it a solid but unspectacular 3 TARDISes out of 5.

Doctor Who – The Tenth Planet

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The Tenth Planet is a landmark story for several obvious reasons (it’s the final regular outing for Hartnell’s Doctor and the Cyberman make their first appearance). It also introduces a story type that will become very familiar over the next year or two (base under siege) as well as anticipating the science heavy format of season seven (the numerous scenes of Snowcap personnel attempting to talk down the doomed capsule could have fitted snugly into The Ambassadors of Death, for example).

There’s a lot going on, not least a bullish performance by Robert Beatty as General Cutler. Like several future base under siege commanders, Cutler takes no nonsense (to put it mildly) and as the stakes grow higher his sanity begins to crumble. So by the end of the story he poses as great a danger as the Cybermen (cf Jarvis Bennett in The Wheel in Space).

Beatty’s not only the serial’s leading guest star, he’s pretty much the lead until the beginning of episode four. That means that William Hartnell, in his final story, has been relegated to guest star status in his own series.

As ill health forced him to miss episode three and the last episode is missing, the first two episodes are where we get our final opportunity to see Hartnell in action. And he doesn’t have a great deal to do – the Doctor, Ben and Polly, once they’re brought into the Snowcap base, are largely passive observers.  The Doctor does attempt to share his knowledge with Cutler, but he’s rudely rebuffed and forced to sit on the sidelines.

Ben gets a little bit of action in episode two when he destroys a Cyberman (and is the recipient of some of Hartnell’s lines in episode three) whilst Polly joins the Doctor in attempting to confront the emotionless Cybermen.

Ah yes, the Cybermen. Visually it’s fair to say that they’re unforgettable, although it’s easy to understand why the costume was swiftly amended for later appearances (that lamp on the top of their head must have been very uncomfortable). But although they look rather comic and hastily flung together, there’s also something deeply disturbing about the Cybermen Mk 1 – the voices especially.

Their conversational tone (“that was really most unfortunate. You should not have done that”) is one reason why. Plus when would you ever again hear the Cybermen using the word please? And the scene where their leader stalks around the command centre asking everybody their name and age, etc is another of those odd moments that really stands out.

Kit Pedler seems to stick pretty close to scientific fact during the early Snowcap tracking room scenes. But when Mondas makes its first appearance we’re firmly in the land of science fantasy. Mondas, the twin of Earth, somehow broke free of its orbit and has been zooming around the galaxy for some considerable time. Now the Cybermen have returned (how?) as their planet is dying and they decide that Earth should supply the energy they need.

And as a nice bonus, they’ll take the entire human race over to Mondas and convert them into Cybermen.

Many Cyber stories feature madcap plotlines that make very little sense when you examine them closely, so it’s good to see that The Tenth Planet begins this tradition very securely. Attack of the Cybermen did make a half-hearted attempt to explain how Mondas could move at will, but it’s best not to worry about it too much (after all, the Moon did very much the same thing in Space 1999).

The Snowcap base is a pleasingly international one. The far off setting of 1986 (twenty years in the future) helps to explain this – no doubt it was hoped by then that the world’s top nations would have pooled their resources in order to explore space. Mind you, it’s impossible not to notice that the top dog is an American (I know Beatty was Canadian, but I think it’s most likely he was playing a US character) whilst the Russians are nowhere to be seen ….

But although an American is in charge, I feel a sense of national (British) pride when observing that the chief scientist, Barclay (David Dodimead), hails from the UK. We may not have the big bucks of our American cousins, but plucky British know-how is clearly still valued in the future (it’s somehow fitting that Barclay wears a comfortable cardigan rather than a futuristic overall).

The accents come thick and fast. The soon to be bumped off Tito, played by Shane Shelton, is clearly an Italian (he’s fond of singing La donna è mobile and saying ‘Mama Mia’ just to hammer this point home). An American sergeant (played by John Brandon) is equally strident, but since Brandon was really an American we’ll have to cut him some slack.

By episode three, Cutler’s sanity is ebbing away at a rate of knots. The tipping point is the realisation that his son, Terry (Callen Angelo), has been sent into space in a doomed attempt to rescue the Zeus 4 probe (which, due to the influence of Mondas, has already been destroyed). I like the way there’s a slight softening of Cutler’s implacable nature when he first speaks to Terry – he begins informally (“hello son”) but instantly seems to stiffen and become more business-like.

It’s the last human touch we see from him, as he then decides that Mondas has to be destroyed with the Z-bomb (“It’s a doomsday weapon, Mister, and rightly primed it could split that planet in half”). Denied authority to use it by Geneva (I wonder if UNIT were just down the corridor from Space Control?) he elects to do so anyway.

The fact it might cause millions of deaths on Earth seems not to worry him (an obvious pointer to his disturbed mental state). By this point he’s got tunnel vision – if Mondas is destroyed then his son has a chance of life and anything else that happens will just be collateral damage.

The small advance party of Cybermen were destroyed in episode two and reinforcements don’t feature greatly in the next episode (apart from a film sequence where they’re easily beaten off).  This, in addition to the way they’re dispatched in the final episode when they do reappear in force, means that – as yet – they’ve yet to establish their reputation as a powerful or implacable foe.  Indeed, it’s probably best to regard The Tenth Planet as a tale somewhat divorced from the Cybermen’s later exploits – the Cybs, as we’ll grow to love them, don’t appear until The Moonbase.

The absence of the Cybermen, not to mention the Doctor, helps to explain why episode three sags a little. But the pace picks up again at the beginning of the final episode as Cutler, on learning that the rocket has been sabotaged, now totally flips and the re-emergence of the Doctor doesn’t do anything to cheer him up ….

Finally, the Doctor begins to take control (typical that his best scenes are mainly confined to the one episode that’s missing) after the Cybermen reappear and kill Cutler. For the first half of the episode the lapel-clutching Doctor of old takes his final bow, assuming temporary command of the Snowcap base with ease and entering into negotiations with the Cybermen.

These scenes are bittersweet, especially since we know that the end is now so near. The second half of the episode finds the Doctor weak and disorientated, suggesting that he’d had to summon up all his remaining energy in order to confront the Cybermen.

His penultimate line (“It’s far from being all over”) is a strangely prophetic one and would have been apt final words for him (“keep warm” lacks a little something, but it’s still quite touchingly delivered).

As for the Cybermen, they’re all destroyed when Mondas disintegrates, which is exactly what the Doctor predicated earlier on. Had Cutler taken his advice, he might have lived to see his son again (the destruction of Mondas meant that Zeus 5 was able to return home safely).

There’s something very touching about the Hartnell/Troughton handover. Unlike all his successors, Doctor Who was really Hartnell’s last hurrah. He’d have a handful of stage and television roles during the next few years, but a mixture of ill heath and disillusionment with the parts he was being offered means that Doctor Who stands as his career epitaph.

It was by no means the whole of his career though – anyone who’s ever enjoyed his time as the Doctor would be well advised to investigate his film work as there’s plenty to enjoy there.

We often hear that it was the Daleks who secured Doctor Who‘s long term future. They certainly played a part (and I’m sure the BBC enjoyed all the merchandising money) but they weren’t in the show week in and week out. But William Hartnell was (apart from the odd occasion when he was enjoying a well-earned holiday) and had the series lacked a strong central character able to engage the interest of the public it’s doubtful whether Doctor Who would have run past its initial 13 episodes.

Thank you and goodbye, Bill. I’m going to miss you.