Synopsis:
A Cyberman has been hiding in plain sight amongst the patients in the sickbay. It clambers down from one of the beds where it had been concealed and aims its weapon at the Doctor and his friends...
A technician named Bob circles around the intruder to attack it with a metal bar, but a second Cyberman appears and shoots him dead.
The first Cyberman contacts its spacecraft by radio, declaring that this stage of their plan is complete. The next stage can begin.
The Cybermen inform the Doctor that they know of him. They notify Hobson that he will be required as he is in command here. They tell him that his missing men are not dead. They will be returned, but have been "altered". Seeing that Jamie has not been given their Neurotrope X, they are about to administer it when Polly mentions his head wound. This renders him useless for their plans so they leave him alone.
Ben and Polly are ordered to remain in the sickbay, whilst Hobson and the Doctor must accompany the Cybermen to the control room.
In the saucer-like Cybership, Dr Evans, Franz and Ralph have been mentally conditioned to obey the Cybermen. They move like automatons as they are given instructions. Once satisfied of their control, large metal helmets are placed over their heads, for transportation across the lunar surface to the base.
Benoit and Nils are shocked by the arrival of the Cybermen in the control room. They explain that they are going to use the Gravitron to devastate the Earth, as the planet poses a threat to them. They wish to exploit its resources. They have been breaking into the base through a hatch they made in the base's dome - the cause of the brief pressure drops. This brought them into the storeroom, where they could easily contaminate the sugar supply with their artificial virus.
As Jamie begins to recover, Ben and Polly discuss their previous encounter with the Cybermen in search of a weapon to use against them. Unlike Snowcap Base, the Moonbase does not have removeable nuclear fuel rods, as they recall how the Cybermen were susceptible to high radiation levels. As Polly examines her fingernails she has a sudden thought, asking Ben what their chest units are made of. He thinks some form of plastic, and she explains that nail varnish remover is a solvent which acts on plastics. They will make up a quantity of a similar substance using the sickbay chemical stores.
In the command centre, the mentally conditioned men arrive and are ordered to take up positions within the Gravitron control room.
The Doctor sidles up to the Cyberman communications device and alters the frequency, to see what effect it has. He realises that the men are being controlled by sonic impulses.
He wonders why the Cybermen need the humans to operate the Gravitron and runs through a number of possibilities. It becomes clear that the Cybermen must be susceptible to intense gravitational fields.
As their tampering begins to affect Earth's weather, Hobson's superiors attempt to contact him. Hobson explains that if they do not respond then a relief rocket will be despatched.
In the sickbay, Jamie has recovered enough to insist that he accompany Ben on their attack on the Cybermen using "Polly's Cocktail" of solvents. This has been decanted into a couple of fire extinguishers so that it can be used as a weapon.
Polly insists on following them and they head for the control room.
The Doctor disrupts the sonic control as his companions burst into the room, firing the solvent directly at the Cybermen's chest units. "Polly's Cocktail" is effective, and they are destroyed as the units dissolve. The controlled humans collapse.
Benoit goes outside to find out what happened to the two technicians sent out to check the antenna. He discovers their empty spacesuits. He is attacked by a Cyberman who attempts to shoot him, but its weapon fails to work in a vacuum. He flees but the Cyberman relentlessly gives chase. Seeing this via telescope, Ben dons a spacesuit and goes outside to help, taking a glass bottle full of the solvent with him - knowing an aerosol will not work. Before the Cyberman can seize Benoit, Ben launches the bottle which smashes into its chest unit, destroying it.
Their subterfuge exposed, the Cybermen decide that they must invade the Moonbase and take it by force. They begin to file out of their ship.
Nils detects radio interference nearby and Hobson scans the horizon in that direction. He sees a squad of Cybermen marching towards them...
Written by Kit Pedler
Recorded: Saturday 18th February 1967 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 25th February 1967
Ratings: 8.2 million / AI 53
Designer: Colin Shaw
Director: Morris Barry
Additional cast: Edward Phillips (Bob), Keith Goodman, Reg Whitehead (Cybermen), Peter Hawkins (Cybermen Voices).
Critique:
In his script for Episode 3, Pedler described the Cyberweapon as a slim metal rod, with a thicker rod, white in colour, at the end which illuminated when activated. The sound was that of a metallic rattle (which Gerry Davis used in his novelisation of the story). The victim - Bob - collapsed after smoke began to rise from the openings in his uniform. This effect had previously been employed in The Tenth Planet.
For the attack on the Cybermen using "Polly's Cocktail" Pedler, ever the scientist, explained exactly what was going on in technical terms - describing how the bottle flung by Ben would travel as if in slow motion due to low gravity, how low pressure would cause the chest to emit vapour like a cloud of steam, and how the Cyberman should scream soundlessly. These scenes were intended for studio but Morris Barry realised that they were best completed on film since the action had to be slowed down and involved messy effects.
Pedler hoped that the budget would run to several Cybermen as he had a grand vision for the cliffhanger. Oddly, he specified that the Cybermen should march in unison, but not in step - unusual for a robotic race. They should be armed with new weapons resembling oxy-acetylene torches.
For the second story in a row we have a "thinks" track, where one or more actors record dialogue earlier in the day which is then played onto the set later to indicate something which they are thinking about. In this case it's the Doctor, wondering why the Cybermen aren't operating the Gravitron themselves.
The TARDIS crew had all wondered about their next destination at the start of The Underwater Menace.
Cyberman dialogue is odd, to say the least. After challenging the word "revenge", claiming they are unfamiliar with the concept, the lead Cyberman is first rude and then sarcastic.
Describing their scheme, it claims "Only stupid Earth brains like yours would have been fooled", before mocking Hobson with "Clever, clever, clever" when the penny drops about the pressure fluctuations.
Last time we spoke about sexism in the story. Here Polly is the one who devises the weapon to destroy the Cybermen (ironically based on her cosmetics), only for Ben and Jamie to refuse to allow her to take part in their attack.
Ben actually describes what they are about to do as "men's work". As it is, she refuses to stay behind and follows them anyway.
Back in The Tenth Planet Ben had shown a degree of scientific knowledge which went beyond that expected of a young Able Seaman. Then, it was because he had to pick up some dialogue intended for the sick William Hartnell. However, we don't have that issue here, yet he seems to know a lot about nuclear reactors again and he's very quick to realise that the aerosol won't work outside the base.
Filming for this episode took place at Ealing on Wednesday 18th January, when Andre Maranne joined John Wills and Peter Greene, playing Cybermen. This was for the scene in which Benoit is attacked then pursued across the lunar surface. Jack and John Lovell, who had produced the Cyberman helmets and chest units, also provided adapted chest units that would appear to dissolve on cue. Fire extinguisher foam was pumped through the unit as the actor writhed on the ground, whilst pre-damaged units were then affixed to the costume.
We'll discuss the filming of the massed ranks of Cybermen on the Moon next time, as that's the episode in which most of these scenes appear. In this episode we simply see a group of Cybermen emerge from their saucer, and the episode closes on shots of their marching feet - highlighting the fact that they are wearing lace-up boots.
Friday 17th of February saw director John Davies visiting Ealing to film shots of a giant crab-like claw. He was the director of The Macra Terror which was to follow, and the shots were to be shown on the TARDIS scanner at the end of Barry's fourth and final episode.
From this episode for the next few weeks Daphne Dare took over as Costume Designer, as Sandra Reid was still unwell. Dare had previously worked on The Daleks through to The Smugglers.
Joining the production was Peter Hawkins, once again providing Cyberman voices as he had done on The Tenth Planet. That time he had worked alongside Roy Skelton, but for this story he worked alone.
He employed a dental palate such as that used by people who had lost their voice box, which had a small microphone attached. The vibration from this device gave Hawkins headaches and nausea.
One new set was the Cyberman conversion unit on their saucer (image above). A new prop was a large helmet which covered the head and shoulders of the converted humans. Only a close-up of their control panel on the wall had been seen previously.
A camera flare was superimposed over the shooting of Edward Phillips, playing the unfortunate Bob. You'll recognise him in Episode 2 from his distinctive thick black NHS spectacles.
There were three planned recording breaks - the first after the melting chest units, to replace the Cybermen actors with empty costumes. The other two were to allow Maranne and then Michael Craze to change into spacesuits.
Amongst the music cues employed by Barry, one from The Daleks' Master Plan, by Tristram Cary, was used for the shooting of Bob.
One establishing shot of the Cyberman saucer on the Moon's surface was a still photograph from Ealing filming.
As noted in "Trivia" below, this episode ran to more than 26 minutes, and this was after cuts. One of these was a significant piece of dialogue whose deletion would lead to many arguments in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, in relation of the true origins of the Cybermen. One of the very first issues of the old Weekly incarnation had claimed that they came from Telos, ignoring what was stated in The Tenth Planet. In this episode, when Benoit points out that their planet - Mondas - blew up in 1986, the Cyberman replies:
"We were the first space travellers from Mondas. We left before it was destroyed. We have come from the planet Telos."
It then goes on to state: "We have returned to take the power you used to destroy Mondas". In other words, they want the Earth's energy. This also goes to explain the dramatic change in their appearance - these being an explorer class of Cybermen who must be physically hardier than those who remained at home on Mondas.
This was the final episode of the series to be recorded regularly at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. From the following week, the series would be demoted to its original home at Lime Grove...
- The ratings see a dip of around half a million, but the appreciation figure rises to an impressive (for the time) 53. As we've often noted, sometimes fewer people watch, but those who do really enjoy what they've seen.
- This is the longest episode of this serial, clocking in at over 26 minutes (26' 11").
- The Assistant Floor Manager of this story is the future director of The Leisure Hive, Lovett Bickford.
- A couple of obvious questions arise from this episode. Surely space-going Cyberman explorers would know by now that their weapons don't work in a vacuum; and why do they remove the spacesuits of the technicians on the lunar surface if they want to keep them alive?
- Ironically, the order to wipe the original video recordings of The Moonbase was issued the day following the first Moon landing, on 21st July 1969.
- TV Comic had, in 1965, predicted the first manned lunar landing to 20th July in the strip "Moon Landing", but was exactly one year to the day out.
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