Kathryn L. Ramage

William Hartnell’s final episode of Doctor Who is regrettably among the lost. Even into the 1970s, the BBC was more concerned with conserving storage space and reusing videotape than preserving its archive, and the survival of those episodes that still exist is a matter of chance. When the BBC began to care about the historical importance of its old programs, restoration work often depended on still photographs or audio recordings made by early, devoted fans (See, for example, Marco Polo). In some cases, such as this, they were recreated by animation.

Part 4 picks up where Part 3 left off, with the countdown for the Z-bomb missile launch–but this time it’s in striking black-and-white toon form. The audio is a fan recording from the original episode, and the artwork is based on photos and a few video fragments. It looks very good, like a graphic novel in motion.

The big question is: was Ben successful at sabotaging the missile’s launch before General Cutler caught him, or will both the Earth and Mondas suffer from planet-destroying level of radiation when the Z-bomb goes off?

Continue reading “Dr. Who: The 10th Planet, Part 4”

You’ve probably noticed in my descriptions of Part 1 and Part 2 that the Doctor doesn’t do much in this story. He recognized Mondas before he even saw it and knew to expect the Cybermen, and once they’ve arrived, he doesn’t seem too concerned about them; he tells the bewildered General Cutler to wait it out. But it’s his companions Ben and Polly and the Antarctic base personnel who take the bulk of the exposition and action.

In this episode, more so than the previous two. William Hartnell was taken ill with bronchitis and went away for a week’s rest and recuperation. He isn’t even in this one.

Early on in Part 3, while the base is preparing its defense against the hundreds of Cyberships headed from Mondas toward Earth intent on siphoning off the planet’s energy and cyberizing the population, the Doctor (a stand-in with his back carefully toward the camera) collapses and is taken out of the control room. We’ll see him lying on a bunk under a blanket a little later in the episode.

While this was unfortunate for poor Mr. Hartnell, it provides some foreshadowing in character, suggesting that the Doctor’s health is deteriorating as well.

Everything that was scripted for the Doctor to have done in this episode, including most of his lines, is given to Dr. Barclay.

Continue reading “Dr. Who: The 10th Planet, Part 3”

At the end of Part 1, the Cybermen have landed on Antarctica in the not-too-distant future year of 1986, right on top of the underground UN research and space-control base, and killed the handful of luckless soldiers who happened to be up on the snowy and windswept surface at the time.

Down inside the base, General Cutler is scoffing at the Doctor’s statement that there will be visitors from that other planet that’s approaching Earth and looks just like it, except upside-down to our traditional north/south perspective. Both the Doctor and General are unaware that the visitors have already arrived.

Up on surface, the Cybermen throw the winter cloaks they’ve taken from the dead men over their shoulders and distinctive headgear as a sort of makeshift disguise, and head down through the hatch into the base. It’s not a very good disguise, but it does the trick; no one notices them coming down the stairs into the control room until they throw off the coverings. Polly screams.

I’ve never cared much for the Cybermen later on, either in the Doctor Whos I watched growing up, or in the New Whos. They seemed like clunkier Borg without the Cenobite S&M panache.

But I like these very first Cybermen as they introduce themselves after zapping another soldier or two. They are believably what they say they are–people who were once very like the Earth’s humans, but they’ve had to modify themselves and replace some body parts to survive as the environment on their own world, Mondas, grew more hostile to life. Their hands are bare and still obviously human. The extra features on the DVD tell me this was a mistake and the costume department forgot to order silver gloves, but I think it’s a very good touch, intentional or not.

The voices of the Cybermen are done by other actors offscreen, which creates another nice touch: the Cyberman “speaking” only drops his stocking-covered mouth open and doesn’t move or close his jaw until his speech is completed. What we hear is a creepy, high-pitched, sing-song voice that sounds electronically modulated, emphasizing syllables at random and breaking words or sentences up in weird places. It’s my favorite thing about these first Cybermen, and I think it’s a pity that this style of speech was dropped when they returned in later episodes. It’s as distinctive in its way as the hysterical Dalek shrieks.

Continue reading “Dr. Who: The 10th Planet, Part 2”