What's Wrong With... Revenge of the Cybermen

"Revenge? What is that?"

So said a Cyberman in the third episode of The Moonbase. Chief Hobson goes on to describe it as a feeling and the Cyberman cuts him off, stating that they know of these weaknesses, but are fortunate that they don't possess them.

Ever since their first appearance in The Tenth Planet, the Cybermen have been defined by their complete lack of emotion. They threw away their feelings along with their organic limbs and organs a long time ago. So, to associate a word like "Revenge" with the Cybermen in a story title is ridiculous.

The problem with the title may well lie with this story's complicated development.

Season 12 was planned and mostly commissioned by Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks. Jon Pertwee had been in the role of the Doctor for a hugely successful five years - longer than either of his predecessors - and there were concerns that the public might not readily take to a fourth actor in the role. Letts planned to have a much older Doctor to contrast with the dynamic Third - which is how the character of Harry Sullivan came into being. He was designed to do all the physical stuff.

To ease in the new fellow, it was decided to bring back the Daleks - Terry Nation contributing a story per season at this time anyway - and the popular Sontaran was quickly brought back.

John Lucarotti had come back onto the scene after a long absence, and Letts and Dicks had used him on their doomed Moonbase 3 series. He would contribute a space station story, and it was decided to reuse this set in another story, to be shown later in the season, as a budget-saving measure.

Fans had been asking for years about the Cybermen, not seen since The Invasion in 1968, apart from the odd cameo. They had almost featured in Frontier in Space, their role in that story taken over by the Ogrons. With all these Hartnell writers already on board, the production team looked to Gerry Davis - co-creator of the Cybermen - to write their colour comeback.

His first idea was to set it in a space casino. The TARDIS would arrive to find it deserted, and would come across Cybermats. 

Robert Holmes began taking over from Dicks halfway through Season 11. He wasn't keen on Davis' story and sought rewrites. These introduced the planet of gold, and space prospectors.

Holmes still wasn't happy, and the season was now developing an overarching plot, linking each story. The TARDIS would be left behind at the end of Lucarotti's totally rewritten story, and not picked up again until the end of the Cyberman story. UNIT would top and tail, and Harry would be written in then written out in these stories now that Tom Baker had been cast as the Fourth Doctor. At this point, the season was to have ended with Terror of the Zygons.

Having already rewritten The Ark in Space, Holmes then found himself having to do the same with the Cyberman story. He scrapped the space prospectors and inhabited the planet of gold with the Vogans.

The Cybermen are further undermined by being susceptible to gold. They already have a problem with radiation, and - bizarrely - with gravity. Nail varnish remover can kill them, as can quick-setting plastic. The whole point of their organ / limb replacement programme is to make them hardier, and yet their weaknesses mount. In The Wheel in Space they can space-walk, yet other writers seem to think that they can be suffocated. (Ian Marter has them breathing in his novels).

The new Cyber Leader (played by Christopher Robbie, who had previously featured as the Karkus), gives a rather emotive performance, striding around with hands on hips, sounding arrogant / pleased / angry / sarcastic. Maybe these particular Cybermen are more emotional. The script fails to make clear that they are destroying Voga for purely practical reasons - to destroy a major source of a weapon that can be used against them - so it does come across as petty revenge.

The Cyberman plan is to kill off all but three of the crew of the beacon orbiting Voga using the Cybermats to spread a toxin which mimics space plague (and turns most of its victims into mannequins). These three crewmembers will then be used to walk to the heart of Voga with powerful bombs on their backs - as the Cybermen can't go that deep into the planet themselves. Three bombs are deemed necessary to ensure complete "fragmentisation" of the planet (two to do the job plus one spare). As it is, the third crewman is killed, so it's lucky that the Doctor was there to pick up the slack.

What would have happened had a second crewman fell ill or broken his leg five minutes after arriving on Voga. The Cyberman plan goes out the airlock window.

In the end, they decide to crash the beacon into the planet. Why not just do this in the first place, without having to rely on unpredictable human factors?

When Lester detonates his booby-trapped belt buckle, why does it not trigger the main bomb? Did he know there would only be a small explosion when he did it? Why did the Cybermen risk booby-trapping the bombs for real when psychology would have done the trick?

The Cyber Leader claims there are enough parts on his ship to create a whole new army - so why not take the time to partially convert the human bomb-carriers to do what they need to do without question?

The Cyberman briefcase gizmo can track the humans only so far. The deeper they go, the less reliable. But the Doctor and company return to where the Cybermen are stationed - so why did the gizmo not pick them back up again as coming towards them?

Why did the forces which defeated the Cybermen in the war not know what happened to Voga, if its gold was so crucial to the conflict? Even if they thought that the Cybermen were never to return, all that gold would surely have been a cause for trade.

Presumably the Vogan guns use gold bullets - so why don't these have any effect on the Cybermen, considering all their varied weaknesses? Why not throw gold dust at them? The Doctor seems to think that will work.

The Doctor throws gold dust over a Cybermat and it kills it, yet later he fills another's innards with gold and it does it no harm at all. 

Why would a Cybermat have fangs strong enough to break the outer layer of a Cyberman if they are designed to kill humans? When the "space plague" broke out, why did no-one notice the bite marks on the victims' necks?

If the beacon is so essential, why has a medical team not been rushed in, in protective gear, to investigate this disease? Quarantine just stops anyone leaving - it shouldn't stop necessary personnel going in.

The transmat filters out the alien toxin, thus saving Sarah's life. Is there a setting that allows it to recognise clothes as well - or Cyberman artificial bodies? It's a great pity that the Doctor hadn't thought of this transmat trick the last time he was on the beacon - he could have saved Noah from the Wirrn infection.

This story is set around the year 3000AD. Nerva Beacon represents remarkable engineering, considering it is still in one piece 12000 years later to be used as the Ark - unless it is an extreme case of "Trigger's Broom"...

The Cybermats are redesigned - and the result is disappointing. Director Michael E Briant didn't like the classic version seen in the Troughton era, and instead approved a boring serpentine design. He didn't like these either.

The old Cyberman costumes were in a very poor state and so new suits had to be made. Being the mid-1970's, outside contractor Allister Bowtell elected to give them flares.

The story sees the final appearance of actor Kevin Stoney in the series. The man who gave us Mavic Chen and Tobias Vaughn - arguably the greatest human villains the Doctor has ever encountered - is given a horribly static mask and the role of a doddery old Vogan.

Philip Hinchcliffe was most unhappy with the Vogan masks. Despite being designed by the great John Friedlander, they appear crude and lack facial mobility. The Vogan troopers look alarmingly like Private Godfrey from Dad's Army.

We get a nice model of the Skystriker - and then they go and ruin things by cutting to stock footage of a rocket lifting off, one with "United States" clearly written on it.

You can see the ticker-tape message intended for Tom Baker hanging up just inside the TARDIS prop when he opens the doors.