The Tomb of the Cybermen

Her father is dead, and Victoria is now being hosted by two men she barely knows: the Doctor was apparantly working with the Daleks to buy time, and then managed to destroy them, and Jamie risked his life to sneak through a Dalek-infested Victorian estate home to rescue her. And now she is alone, save for these two men who travel inside a police box. Victoria accepts the nature of the TARDIS eventually and seems to adjust fairly well to the events around her, if not to the notion of wearing a skirt that ends above her knee. She also will have to get used to the Doctor's habit of landing in danger, for the TARDIS lands on Telos, a planet taken over by the Cybermen after the destruction of Mondas. It is some time in the future, and there hasn't been a Cyberman sighting in 500 years, and a group of archaeologists financed by some shady logicians and their big burly muscle man servant are looking for their remains. The Doctor immediately joins the group, as he knows well enough the dangers of Cybermen. A traitor in the midst of the group has ambitions of reviving the Cybermen and gaining influence with them, but once the Cybermen are active again it becomes obvious that the Cyber City on Telos is not exactly a tomb but a trap to lure people in and convert them to Cybermen to prop up the numbers of their dying race. As with the previous Dalek story, the commander in chief of the menace is revealed, in this case it is the Cybercontroller, who is more imposing than his underlings and is styled slightly differently. Here we first hear the new mantra of the Cybermen : "We will survive," (cue Gloria Gaynor).

Jay joined me for this viewing once more, and he was quick to spot the updating of the Cybermen from the last time he saw the in The Tenth Planet. The design has not changed since The Moonbase, nor have the voices, but a few of the costumes end up a bit worse for wear by the time episode 4's cedits roll; witness one Cyberman's face almost fall off while trying to fight its way out of the tomb area, and then on its descent back down the ladder its suit it torn right out under the arm. The direction of Tomb is quite sharp by comparison to other episodes, with its freaky Outer Limits music and some fades between scenes to show the passage of time, even some crafty pans and sharp zooms that Jay found impressive. As for the development of the regular cast, Jamie keeps getting better and the Doctor makes some interesting comments about his family, implying that they are dead but he can remember them any time he wants. He also makes a rather moving speech to Victoria, telling her that their lives are different than anyone else's in the universe, and nobody else can do what they are doing. This perfectly sums up my own love of the show; no-one else does what the Doctor does, no-one else is the Doctor. I showed that clip to Parker, my wise cracking 7 year old nephew, and he nodded and said that's how he feels when we go places together, giving me my own little bit of Doctor euphoria.

Tomb of the Cybermen has some cool nostalgia attached to it. Okay I was not even born when it was broadcast, but until 1992 the whole serial, all four episodes, did not exist at the BBC archive, and there were always these fans going on about how good Tomb was, and Doctor Who Magazine did a whole special on it, and there was a script book published. And then one day I was at my friend Mike's place working on the fanzine our then-fanclub put out, and the call came from another friend, Luca, who had just gotten his Doctor Who Magazine with a stop-press insert announcing that Tomb of the Cybermen had been FOUND, all of it, in Hong Kong. There were many cries of delight, seeing as the classic series had been off the air for a few years at that point, and hey, old episodes that many of us had never seen were just as good as brand new ones. It's the sort of moment every Doctor Who fan dreams about, when their favourite missing episode finally comes home. My own is Marco Polo. There are some pessimists in the fandom community who consider themselves the authority on the odds of a missing episode turning up again, and they love to make statements about the slim odds of any more turning up. One in particular waved his well-fed jowls about it in a documentary attached to a "missing years" tape released a few years back, and shortly after that came the return of Dalek Master Plan episode 2, proving that when it comes to Doctor Who one never can tell for sure.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN