The Moonbase

After leaving Atlantis, the TARDIS is caught in a gravitational field and makes a rough landing on the moon in the Earth year 2070. The crew discover a massive base on the moon equipped with a Gravitron, which is a device used to control Earth's tides and in effect control the weather, but the base is under seige from some kind of disease which is slowly rendering the base staff catatonic and riddled with black veins. The disease is the work of the Cybermen, who have returned 84 years after the destruction of Mondas to attempt to take over the Earth by destroying its weather. Polly, Ben and Jamie manage to fight off the initial occupying forces using chemicals to attack the weaker spots of the Cybermen's bodies, and a full invasion force begins a march across the moon before the Doctor realizes that the Gravitron holds the key to defeating his foes.

Magnificent. I loved The Moonbase despite only being able to watch episodes 2 and 4. The Cybermen return in style after an update and facelift, getting rid of the human hands and the visible parts of the human bodies they once had in favour of their new standard look of a metal body, chest panels, and the helmet with the blank eyes and mouth. The voices have also changed to be more like that which would come out of a synthesizer, giving them an overall effect more like a robot than ever. Rather than being vulnerable to radiation as in The Tenth Planet, their new heart and lung chest plates are made of plastic and are rendered useless when spracyed with a combination of acetone, benzene and alcohol from the base's stores. And when the Cyber army makes its march across the lunar surface, okay sure, we see the laces on their boots, but they manage not to cast shadows on the backdrop walls and there are so many of them... at least 10 that I counted on screen at one point. And they are more lethal with their weapons; both Polly and Jamie are zapped with some kind of energy ray projected from a Cyberman's hand, and they are also armed with blaster weapons and a large energy cannon that is fired very effectively in episode 4.

Still the victim of being a last-minute addition to the crew, Jamie is sidelined for the better part of episode 2 with a head wound, and when he does recover he's not given enough to really work with. Ben and Polly are still very much the prime companions for now. The Doctor has a delicious dark moment when he sums up the Cybermen in episode 2: "There are some corners of the universe that have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought," but he returns to his clowning ways soon enough.

I'll say this about every episode of Doctor Who at some point, but I really wish I could have seen all of this one. The existing 2 episodes were restored brilliantly on the Lost in Time DVD so there is at least that much to enjoy.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MACRA TERROR