Production Code: HH
First Transmitted
1 - 11/02/1967 17:50
2 - 18/02/1967 17:50
3 - 25/02/1967 17:50
4 - 04/03/1967 17:50
Plot
The TARDIS arrives in 2070 AD on the Moon, where a weather control station under the command of a man named Hobson is in the grip of a plague epidemic - in reality the result of an alien poison planted by the Cybermen.
Polly realises that as the Cybermen's chest units are made of plastic they must be vulnerable to attack by solvents. She and her friends manage to destroy all the Cybermen on the base with a 'cocktail' of such chemicals shot at them through fire extinguishers.
A second wave of Cybermen advances across the lunar surface but, prompted by the Doctor, Hobson uses the base's gravity-generating weather control device, the Gravitron, to send them flying off into space.
Episode Endings
Polly is looking after the injured Jamie in the base's medical section. He asks for some water and she leaves to get it. When she has gone, a Cyberman enters the medical unit from the store-room and heads for Jamie - who, in his delirium, thinks that it is 'the Phantom Piper' come to claim him...
The Doctor and Hobson try to work out how the Cybermen got into the base and where they have been hiding. They start to make a search of the medical unit and notice a pair of Cyberman shoes protruding from under a sheet on one of the beds. The Cyberman suddenly throws back the sheet and draws its weapon, advancing on the humans.
The Cybermen advance in force across the lunar surface toward the moonbase.
The travellers return quietly to the TARDIS, where the Doctor decides to consult the time scanner - a device capable of giving them a glimpse of their future. It shows a picture of a huge crustacean's claw.
Roots
Conquest of Space.
Dialogue Triumphs
The Doctor : "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought."
Polly : "Are you a medical doctor?"
The Doctor : "Yes I think I was once, Polly, I think I took a degree in Glasgow... 1888, I think... Lister."
The Doctor : [Thinking and talking to himself.] "Funny... 'Funny'... Go to all that trouble to make the men do the work... why?... 'Do it themselves, easy'... They're using the men as tools... why?... 'Don't know'... Yes, I do, though... 'There must be something in here they don't like'... Pressure?... 'No'... Electricity?... 'No'... Radiation?... 'Maybe'... Grav... Gravity... now, there's a thought... Gravity!... 'Oh yes... Gravity."
The Doctor : "Everything's got a weak point. It's just a question of waiting until it shows up, that's all."
Dialogue Disasters
Cyberman : "Feelings? Yes we know of this weakness of yours. We do not possess feelings."
Cyberman : "Only stupid Earth brains like yours would have been fooled."
Continuity
In this story the Cybermen have three digits and shoot electricity from their wrists. They measure time in minutes. Polly and Ben use a chemical cocktail to destroy two Cybermen. The TARDIS crew are seen in space suits with breathing apparatus.
QV
Location
The Moon, Spring 2070.
Future History
The Moonbase was established around 2050 to control the Earth's weather via the Gravitron. [Earth has become environmentally unstable. This story seems to take place before The Seeds of Death, when a moonbase is being used to control Earth's travel system and weather control has been moved to the Earth.] Hobson makes a reference to 'space plague' [this seems to be different from the one seen in Death to the Daleks].
Links
Lots of references to The Tenth Planet: 'There were Cybermen, every child knows that,' says Hobson, 'but they were destroyed ages ago'.
Trivia
There is an unusual sequence in episode three where the Doctor debates with himself what the Cybermen might be afraid of; this was achieved by pre-recording his whispered 'thoughts' and playing them back in the studio with Patrick Troughton muttering the responses in between.
Talkback from the headphones of the crew on the studio floor is clearly audible at times during episode four (the same problem as had earlier caused the opening episode of the first Dalek story to have to be remounted) - for example, a voice can be clearly heard saying 'cue' at the start of the scene where the controlled scientists are first activated by the Cybermen.
John Levene, later to play the more prominent role of Benton, appears as a Cyberman extra in the third and fourth episodes.
John Wills, who plays one of the Cybermen in this story, earlier appeared as 'Frankenstein' in The Chase under the name John Maxim.
Goofs
You can always tell a Cyberman by his footwear.
Episode two's cliffhanger involves the discovery of a Cyberman who has been hiding under a sheet in the medicentre for the last 25 minutes. When he gets off the sickbay bed, he nearly takes the whole thing with him.
The addition of Jamie to the cast leads to a sharing of lines, so Ben becomes a scientist for a story (he knows that the Gravitron uses thermonuclear power, that interferon is a viral antibody, and that acetone is present in nail varnish remover).
In episode two, when a Cyberman tries to zap Polly while she tends to Jamie, he misses, but she falls anyway.
The Cybermen's spaceships look like paper plates held up by string.
In episode four, when Evans sneaks into the Gravitron control room, he puts the cloth helmet on back to front (in the next scene it's the right way round).
Why make only one hole in the dome?
And just how strong is that tea tray?
Fashion Victim
Ben wears a tasteful Carnaby Street shirt.
Benoit wears an onion seller's neck tie (just in case we forget he's French).
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Ben Jackson - Michael Craze
Jamie - Frazer Hines
Polly - Anneke Wills
Benoit - Andre Maranne
Cyberman - John Wills
Cyberman - Sonnie Willis
Cyberman - Peter Greene
Cyberman - Keith Goodman
Cyberman - Reg Whitehead
Cyberman Voices - Peter Hawkins
Dr. Evans - Alan Rowe
Hobson - Patrick Barr
Nils - Michael Wolf
Ralph / Scientist - Mark Heath
Sam - John Rolfe
Scientist - Barry Ashton
Scientist - Derek Calder
Scientist - Arnold Chazen
Scientist - Leon Maybank
Scientist - Victor Pemberton
Scientist - Edward Phillips
Scientist - Ron Pinnell
Scientist - Robin Scott
Scientist - Alan Wells
Voice from Space Control - Alan Rowe
Voice of Controller Rinberg - Denis McCarthy
Crew
Director - Morris Barry
The Moonbase