Synopsis:
Crewmen Vallance and Laleham have spacewalked from the Wheel to the Silver Carrier, where they have discovered a large crate of Bernalium. They are suddenly confronted by two Cybermen who place them under their hypnotic control - instructing them to take them to the Wheel...
In the space station's medical bay, the Doctor is trying to convince Bennett of the threat, showing him the X-ray which revealed a Cybermat buried in the mound of quick-setting plastic found beside crewman Rudkin's body.
Bennett dismisses the warnings out of hand, even accusing them of having faked the X-ray. The Doctor tells the Controller about the Cybermen, how they were once men but have had their bodies replaced with cybernetic parts and their brains conditioned, leaving them as inhuman killers.
On the rocket, the two crewmen have hidden the Cybermen inside the crate, which has a false bottom. Bernalium rods are then packed on top.
Gemma Corwyn also tries to get Bennett to accept the Doctor's warnings, but he insists he will only take orders from Earth control. She does agree with him, however, that the Cybermen can't simply walk onto the Wheel - unaware that Vallance and Laleham are at that moment spacewalking back to the station towing the crate behind them. They are cleared to enter through the loading bay.
Gemma orders that Duggan be sent for to see the X-ray, to confirm that this is the "space bug" that he encountered in the Power House. He is able to do this, relieved that he will now be believed.
Zoe goes off to make calculations about the approaching meteorite shower, which poses a threat to local space traffic.
In the Power House, Leo Ryan is working on the laser with Flannigan when Bennett arrives to tell them him that he will have Duggan to lend a hand, reasoning he might as well make himself useful until sent back to Earth. Duggan will work on the device with crewman Chang, giving the other two men a much needed break.
Gemma is giving the Doctor the medical all clear, and they are able to chat for a time. She tells him of how her husband had been killed three years ago in the asteroid belt, and the Doctor questions her about Bennett. Both agree that his rigid mindset is a cause for concern. How will he react when he finally realises the truth about what is happening here, after dismissing everything else as the fantasies of others?
At that moment, Bennett is touring the Wheel, satisfied that everything is running smoothly. Returning to the medical bay, he is pleased that the Doctor is well again and dismisses the guards who had been placed on him and Jamie. It is as if he has blanked everything out of his mind, and Gemma is alarmed by this behaviour.
Duggan sends Chang to the loading bay to fetch some of the Bernalium which has just been brought on board. There, he discovers the false bottom in the crate - but the compartment beneath is empty. The Cybermen appear and kill him. Vallance and Laleham are sent away with some of the rods, whilst the Cybermen dispose of Chang's body in the incinerator - the energy use of which registers in the communications centre.
Vallance and Laleham bring the Bernalium to the Power House, where they inform Duggan that it is imperative the laser be functional. He fails to note the lack of emotion in their voices.
The Cybermen enter, and Duggan is also placed under hypnotic control. He is sent to the communications centre with a task to perform.
Zoe reports to Gemma that Bennett has ordered her to forget her calculations about the impact of the approaching meteorites. The medic speaks to her about her apparent lack of emotion, a by-product of her mental conditioning as a child.
The Doctor is getting a tour of the station and is in the communications centre. Zoe arrives with Gemma to tell them about her calculations. The Doctor learns that the two crewmen brought a crate of Bernalium over from the rocket and lets everyone know that he now believes that the Cybermen are on the Wheel - carried here in the crate.
Gemma questions how the men could have co-operated with this and the Doctor claims they must have been hypnotised. Gemma points out that they have equipment which registers if any of the crew have had their minds tampered with - the Silenski circuit.
She agrees to activate it and they begin scanning - starting with this room. Duggan has quietly arrived and ignores Zoe, going straight to the communications panel. The circuit detects that someone present has been hypnotised, but they are too late to stop Duggan smashing the panel. He is electrocuted.
The Doctor instructs that a small metal plate with a transistor be fitted to the back of everyone's neck, which will prevent them from also being hypnotised.
He and Jamie then go to investigate the loading bay.
They find the false bottom in the crate, confirming the Doctor's suspicions. They hear a sound, and see a Cyberman descending the stairs into the bay...
Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)
Recorded: Friday 26th April 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3
First broadcast: 6pm, Saturday 18th May 1968
Ratings: 8.6 million / AI 56
VFX: Bill King & Trading Post
Designer: Derek Dodd
Director: Tristan De Vere Cole
Bennett's rather odd behaviour, after he suddenly becomes quite detached from proceedings, was to have been picked up by other members of the crew in a communications centre scene. All but Tanya were to have shrugged this off.
Later, seeing how the crew were busy taping transistors onto metal plates, Zoe was to have felt somewhat excluded - realising that she lacked the skills to adapt to situations which were beyond her rigid training.
The Doctor was to have mentioned his previous encounter with the Cybermen on Telos as well as their origins on Mondas. On screen he will only mention them coming from Mondas.
The Cybermen were to have been armed with hand weapons - metal rods which had a light at one end (as appear in Gerry Davis' novelisation of The Moonbase).
The only filming required for this episode was the spacewalk of Laleham and Vallance as they returned to the Wheel with the crate, with the actors once again hanging on kirby wires against a black backdrop at Ealing. This took place on Friday 22nd March.
So far, no two consecutive episodes have been recorded in the same studio. For this episode the series remained at Television Centre, but returned to TC3.
The day before recording, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury had been taken out of rehearsals to film some location work on the next story - The Dominators. As agreed earlier in the year, Troughton would be excused some of the location work and his usual double - Chris Jeffries - would attend in his place.
Recording began with an re-enactment of the closing scene of the previous episode, with the Cybermen ordering the crewmen to take them to the Wheel.
Padbury and Hines had earlier pre-recorded the taped voice material (see Trivia).
Once again an oscilloscope wave was superimposed over the picture to indicate Duggan's hypnotism.
When Chang is killed, a light halo effect was superimposed over the Cyberman's chest unit and the screen went into negative - the same technique employed since 28th December 1963 for the Dalek extermination effect. The same camera overexposure technique was used for Duggan's electrocution.
His spanner striking the radio panel was a cutaway shot, accompanied by a flash charge detonation,
and a recording break allowed for a damaged version of the panel to replace the unbroken one.
As mentioned last time, it had been decided to remount a Cyberman sequence from the previous episode this week, after the failure of the voice distortion device. However, recording on this episode was already threatening to run beyond the studio cut-off time of 10pm and so this was deferred for another week.
Looking at Zoe's introductory episode, I speculated about the background to the character. Here it is confirmed that she in indeed a "hot house" child, educated at the "parapsychology unit" in The City. It is often the case that its pupils do not fully develop their human emotions - something which Zoe is now beginning to accept as a problem for others, such as Leo. The seeds of her electing to stow away in the TARDIS later are being sown.
It is interesting that the Wheel has a specific apparatus for detecting mind tampering amongst the crew - the Silenski circuit. This would imply that this is hardly a rare occurrence. It's certainly clear from Gemma's role that staff based on these remote stations do suffer a number of mental health conditions, but the circuit is designed to deal with external interference of the mind.
It may be that the human race has encountered alien beings who affect the mind, or it may simply be that, as such techniques exist on Earth, enemy factions employ them. Perhaps it's a weapon employed by the "Pull Back to Earth" group previously mentioned, as a way of undermining space exploration.
There's a suggestion of an unseen Cyberman story here, with the Doctor seeming to know all about their hypnosis trick and how to deal with it - the metal plate at the back of the neck (referred to in a later story as a neuristor). To date we had only seen the Cyberman Controller use this technique on Toberman, but he had undergone partial conversion.
The Doctor, meanwhile, has a quiet moment with Gemma, when she tells him a little of her background - the death of her husband a few years ago in the asteroid belt. We've spoken before about the way in which the Second Doctor seems to relate well with more mature female characters - such as Astrid Ferrier and Anne Travers. It may well be the case that he enjoys having someone older to talk to, after being surrounded by youngsters all the time.
Though he had a paternal relationship with Victoria - accepting responsibility for her as her father had sacrificed himself to save his life - Troughton's Doctor doesn't really ever play the father figure with his companions. He's more the somewhat irresponsible favourite uncle sort of character.
When the BBC first published the telesnaps from this story on the old BBC Cult / Doctor Who website, they stated that Leo shot Duggan to prevent him causing any more damage, and this also appeared to be the case in Terrance Dicks' novelisation. This is due to this action being included in the original stage directions.
However, thanks to the scene being one of the Australian censor clips, we now know that the unfortunate man is electrocuted in the act of sabotage. This certainly makes far more sense. The idea that Leo would shoot someone, a colleague whom he may have been friends with for some time, in the back - just because of an act of apparent vandalism - doesn't sit right.
The clip was returned to the BBC in 1996, and is the only existing material from this episode.
Chang's death, and the gruesome disposal of his corpse in an incinerator, made it past the censor - mainly because the latter act is only mentioned and not seen.
- The ratings see a big improvement this week of over a million viewers. The ITV channel serving Wales had closed down due to bankruptcy and its replacement - Harlech TV - wouldn't begin operating until Monday 20th May. The main competition for Doctor Who on other ITV channels was a music programme hosted by DJ Tony Blackburn.
- This episode was broadcast at the later time of 6pm due to BBC coverage of the FA Cup Final, taking the slot normally reserved for The Dick Van Dyke Show.
- Trying to explain the nature of the Cybermen to Bennett, Zoe quotes mathematician Norbert Wiener - "The study of a system of control and communication in animals, and devices such as cybernetic machines". He first coined the term "cybernetics" in 1948.
- Troughton calls the Cybermen "inhuman killers" - which is exactly how he will also describe them in The Invasion.
- The year in which this story is set has always been problematic, but Bennett claiming never to have even heard the name "Cybermen" before is odd. They invaded the Earth in 1986, and Hobson claimed that as of 2070 every schoolchild had heard of Cybermen. This may simply be a symptom of Bennett's mental deterioration.
- There's an odd little scene between Jamie and Zoe revolving around her making a tape recording, which appears to be included purely as padding. Jamie seems not to have ever come across someone recording their voice before - despite Victoria's screams having only recently been recorded to vanquish the Seaweed Creature.
- The Daily Mirror published an article about Doctor Who on the day of broadcast - a piece entitled "The Men Behind The Monsters". Costume designer Martin Baugh and VFX designer Bernard Wilkie were interviewed, and the yet-to-be-seen Quarks were amongst the monsters discussed.
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