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Production Code DD
stock : Incidental Music
The Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly arrive in the TARDIS at the South Pole in the year 1986, near the Snowcap base. The bored guards manning the Snowcap entrance are shocked to see three travellers in such an isolated place, and capture them. General Cutler, the base commander, comes down to the base entrance and questions them suspiciously before returning to the tracking room. The TARDIS crew has arrived while the base is supervising the mission of the Zeus IV spaceship, running a routine probe on the Earth's atmosphere. Unusual readings on the spaceship's instruments lead to the discovery of a new planet, close to Earth, with very familiarly shaped landmasses on its surface. The spaceship begins to experience power losses, and Snowcap personnel begin arrangements to abort its mission. Back on the base, the Doctor reveals what he knows about the tenth planet, Earth's sister planet, Mondas, and that its inhabitants will soon be visiting Earth. True to his prediction, three robotic creatures land outside, killing the guards and disguising themselves in the dead men's furs to gain access. While everyone is distracted by their efforts to land Zeus IV safely, the creatures are easily able to take over the base. The base personnel and Polly plead with the invaders to allow them to save the lives of the Zeus IV crew, but the creatures say that their lives are irrelevant to them. They explain that they are Cybermen, who were once like human beings, but gradually replaced their bodies with mechanical parts, including eliminating the "weakness" of emotion from their brains. The Cybermen allow the men to make contact with Zeus IV, but it is too late as the ship is dragged away by Mondas and explodes. The Cybermen explain that Mondas is absorbing energy from Earth and will soon destroy it. They propose to take humans back to Mondas and turn them into Cybermen. Ben, who has been imprisoned in the projection room after attempting to kill a Cyberman, rigs up the projector to blind incoming Cybermen, allowing him to steal his guard's weapon and kill him. Sneaking back into the Tracking Room, he hands the cyberweapon to Cutler, who kills the remaining two Cybermen. Cutler contacts Space Command HQ in Geneva and is informed that they have sent his son on a mission to rescue the doomed Zeus IV. Cutler decides it is time to take the fight to the Cybermen, and contacts Geneva for permission to use the powerful Z-bomb, in an attempt to destroy Mondas. Secretary Wigner at Geneva refuses permission, but Cutler decides to go ahead anyway. Ben and Polly argue against using the bomb, Ben saying that Mondas might destroy itself anyway when it absorbs too much energy. The chief scientist at Snowcap, Dr. Barclay, is also concerned, saying that the radiation caused by the exploding planet would cause great loss of life on Earth. Annoyed by these interruptions, Cutler orders Ben to be imprisoned in a cabin with the Doctor, who is unconscious and seemingly ill. Polly manages to persuade Dr. Barclay to help them prevent the bomb being fired. Barclay tells Ben how to sabotage the rocket to prevent it from reaching Mondas, but Cutler notices Barclay's absence, and going to investigate, catches Ben while he is sabotaging the rocket. Meanwhile, another attack of Cybermen is successfully repelled by Cutler's men using their stolen cyberweapons. Cutler attempts to fire the Z-bomb, but the engines fail on the launchpad. Cutler, enraged, threatens to kill Ben, Barclay, and the Doctor, who has now regained consciousness. Driven mad with grief by the apparent death of his son in the Zeus V, Cutler is killed by a Cyberman as he attempts to shoot the Doctor. The Cybermen insist that the rocket pointed at Mondas be dismantled. The Doctor suggests that it would be a good idea to go along with this, and tells the others to play for time, as Mondas cannot take much more energy now. The Cybermen take Polly back to their spaceship as a hostage. As the Cybermen take over the world, the Doctor realises that their plan is to destroy the Earth with the Z-bombs, thus saving Mondas. He manages to communicate this revelation to Ben and the others over the intercom. In the radiation room, Ben surmises that the reason why they need to use humans to do this work rather than doing it themselves is that they are highly susceptible to radiation. Barclay suggests using the rods from the reactor chamber as a portable weapon against the Cybermen. This proves successful, allowing Ben, Barclay, and the others to regain control of the base. More Cybermen enter the Tracking Room, but just at that moment, Mondas explodes, disabling all the remaining Cybermen. Cutler's son contacts the base from Zeus V, telling them that his ship is now back to full power, and Geneva tells Barclay that the Cyberman threat has ended all over the world. Meanwhile, Ben has made his way back to the Cybermen's ship, to rescue the Doctor and Polly. The Doctor appears to be very ill and confused and makes his way back to the TARDIS. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor falls to the floor, and before the astonished eyes of his companions, he regenerates into a younger man: the Second Doctor.
The first outing for an enemy race second only to the Daleks in their habit of turning up again just when you thought you'd seen the last of them. Of all the recurring enemies, Daleks, Cybermen and The Master are the best known and best regarded by fans. The fact that the Cybermen are due to return in the new series is being greeted with enthusiasm by long term fans. And this is where it all began, with a story set in what was, at the time, twenty years in the future - 1986. Ironically that is now exactly twenty years in the PAST, an example of how Doctor Who has overtaken its own vision of the future. The casting directors made a couple of interesting decisions in their
consideration of what the future might be like. There are, for example,
two black characters among the scientific crew at the arctic base.
But it is clear that the future is still a man's world. Polly makes
coffee while Ben gets in on the action. The idea of the twin planet of Earth, used as a sort of giant space ship by the Cybermen, is imaginitive. The idea of it draining energy from Earth, though, is a bit of scientific hokum. It is difficult to imagine how that would actually happen. Though it is certainly likely that Earth is affected by the gravitational pull of such a body if it was brought into the same orbit. In that it is a forerunner of the big blockbuster stories like Deep Impact and Armageddon that pose the problem of things hitting Earth or othrrwise interfering with it. And of course, this is the FIRST regeneration episode. We take them
almost for granted now. But this was the first time the idea was tried.
The plot was simple. The Doctor was weakened by his fight with the
Cybermen. He returned to the TARDIS and collapsed onto the floor and
as Ben and Polly watch his face changes. The effect is not at all
bad considering the limited special effects of 1966. How the public
would respond to this new idea of a character changing his whole appearance
remained to be seen.
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