What's Wrong With... The Tenth Planet

There were two major issues which affected this story - or rather the same issue, twice. Both (co)writer and star fell ill at a key stage in the production. These illnesses led to a few problems with the story as broadcast.

The Tenth Planet sees the final outing for William Hartnell as the Doctor, the first of what will be known as a regeneration, and the first appearance of the Cybermen, who will go on to dominate the tenure of the man who appears very briefly, and uncredited, at the conclusion of this story.

Although broadcast second in Season 4, the story was the first to be produced - The Smugglers having been made at the end of Season 3 and held over to launch the next season.

As such, Hartnell was no longer under a long term contract. He was contracted for these final four episodes in the same way the guest cast was, so you could argue he is a guest star in his own show on this occasion. During the break between seasons, he went to Cornwall for a few weeks and indulged in one of his passions - angling. The director, Derek Martinus, knew how fragile he as, so wrote some nice letters to him, including one letting him know that Robert Beatty was going to be guesting - knowing Hartnell had worked with him before and got on well with him.

Sadly he was to fall I'll and miss the third episode, and his final episode is famously lost, so our final sight of him, before his guest appearance in The Three Doctors, is in Part 2.

Kit Pedler had been offering story suggestions for a while, and one of his ideas concerned "space monks", from Earth's long lost sister world. His concerns about the ethics of spare part surgery lead to the creation of the Cybermen.

Keen to write himself, and not just be an ideas man, he entered into a collaboration with Story Editor Gerry Davis, at the insistence of Davis and the producer, Innes Lloyd. Pedler simply didn't have the writing experience to furnish the four scripts on his own.

Pedler became seriously ill towards the end of the writing process, ending up in hospital for an operation on his abdomen. Davis had to finish the story himself, with Pedler contributing some ideas only for the final instalment. This is why the Cybermen seem to suddenly change their scheme, out of the blue, in Part 4.

For the Doctor at least, this is a historical story. How else would he know what the new planet is - leaving a written description before anyone has been able to observe what it looks like. He also tells everyone at Snowcap base that they will be getting visitors from the planet shortly (though he doesn't seem to know they are emotionless Cybermen). He also knows that the humans should simply do nothing about this, only bide their time. He would have seen the calendar, and heard Ben speaking to the Sergeant, so knows exactly what is supposed to happen in December 1986. If this is not the case, then it is a serious plot problem. And if he does know so much about the return to the Solar System of Mondas, why does he know so little about the Cybermen ("Have you no emotions...")?

In Part 1 Ben sarcastically questions how anyone could just turn up at the South Pole, despite he, Polly and the Doctor having just done so themselves.

He also asks if it is Santa Claus who is bringing them, when he really ought to know that Santa resides at the North Pole...

Whilst we can just about imagine a 1965 comic book being in relatively pristine condition in 1966, it has fared remarkably well to have survived through to 1986, considering the number of people who must have read it over the decades. Not a lot you can do through the long Antarctic winter.

But this is December - so it's supposed to be the middle of the Antarctic summer. Why is there a blizzard in full swing?

The Cybermen state that Mondas travelled to "the edge of space" before returning to its sister. What does that mean? The edge of the Solar System? Of the Galaxy? Can't be the former if they have spaceships more advanced than ours - else they would have visited sooner. If the latter then we're around 25 million light years from Galactic Centre, and the diameter of the Milky Way is around 100 million light years, so Mondas has travelled 50 million light years if it has been to the edge of the galaxy.

How has it arrived back? Was it an elliptical course, so due to return anyway, or has it been deliberately piloted? The Cybermen seem to suggest they have piloted it, then state that they have no control over it.

They certainly can't control the power draining, but since when was that a natural planetary phenomenon? And what kind of power is it that they're draining, if it can affect the health of some astronauts. If the Cybermen are draining the Earth, why no OFF switch?

Why do they need Earth's energy in the first place if they can pilot planets and suck the energy from others?

When they first invade the base, one of the Cybermen starts asking for the personal details of the crew. 

Why do this, if they plan to convert everyone anyway? It will take a very long time indeed if they're going to personally interview everyone on Earth before transporting them to Mondas.

As mentioned, Davis had to step in and finish this story, so in Part 4 the Cybermen suddenly plan to destroy the Earth, and mass conversion is off the menu. They also seem to know all about the base's doomsday missiles, out of nowhere.

Hartnell's illness, and absence from Part 3, meant that lines had to redistributed. It's fine for scientist Barclay to know some of the material the Doctor was meant to say, as David Dodimead is one of the beneficiaries of the script rejig, but Ben also suddenly becomes very knowledgeable about nuclear reactors. Ben is forced to keep saying that the Doctor told him something earlier, to explain his sudden scientific knowledge, despite there never having been an occasion earlier when this could have happened.

The Doctor is left lying, face away from the camera (as it's Hartnell's double) for the episode. He's in the bunk room, which has a ventilation shaft leading straight to the Z-Bomb launch bay - which means anyone sleeping in a bunk at lift-off is burnt to a crisp.

Security at Snowcap is bad enough for the Doctor and his companions to be left pretty much free to wander about if this is just a space monitoring station, but the fact that this base also houses the Z-Bomb makes the lack of security many times worse.

This is the first of the base-under-siege stories in Doctor Who, the first of many more to come. Therefore we have a commanding officer who is entirely unsuited to command. Clearly there's no sort of psychological evaluation. If there was, why did they send General Cutler's son into space in the middle of a crisis which would be monitored from his mentally unstable dad's base?

No real fluffs this time, but we do have a couple of typos in the credits. Pedler's first name is given as Kitt instead of Kit, and we get Davies instead of Davis.