Rewatching... Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen – Episode 2

"I think perhaps your logic is wearing a little thin."

Saturday 9 September 1967

I knew there was something odd about that Cyberman: it was a dummy! The dummy didn't even do the shooting — it was a target for a hidden weapon.

That was a pretty nasty death if you think about it. Haydon must have either burned or boiled judging by all the smoke/vapour that comes from his body. Perhaps we're not supposed to think about it.

Viner enters the room with Parry and spots the body on the floor.

Is this bad acting or a bad script? Either way, Viner's melodramatic hysteria is very irritating. "It's this damned building!" he shrieks. I didn't take to him last week with his rudeness towards Victoria, but now I'm starting to wonder whether he has 'issues'. Presumably the crew members of this expedition didn't receive any sort of suitability assessment. I'm no psychologist but I'm curious about Viner. What's his home life like? Is he married? He seems unhappy. Was he bullied into coming? A man who's clearly terrified of Cybermen seems an unlikely candidate to join an expedition to search for their tombs.

The Doctor decides to trigger the trap again and warns that it'll be dangerous so anyone who wants to leave may do so...

"Not you Jamie," as the suddenly cowardly Scot heads for the door! I like these little funny moments. In the sixties Doctor Whois still all about the drama, with only occasional moments of light relief. I much prefer this ratio of humour:drama to the comedy-dominated Doctor Whoof the future, where every other line is a glib wisecrack.

Victoria knows what's coming but still screams like she did the first time. Really, was that necessary?!

She spots something on the floor.

Victoria calls it a fossil. Now I'm no expert, but I've never heard of a shiny silver metallic fossil. But clearly Victoria knows more about these things than I do.

The Doctor looks it up in diary. It's called a cybermat.

"What's a cybermat?" asks Victoria.

"It's one of those," the Doctor replies. Giggle. Ignoring the Doctor's advice to leave it alone she puts it in her handbag. You probably would though, wouldn't you? I mean you've just been whisked away into distant space from Victorian Kent, you'd want a souvenir to take home wouldn't you? Not to mention evidence of extra-terrestrial life!

There's a little scene where Kaftan and her servant Toberman hint at some off-screen skulduggery.

Toberman gets another line: "It is done." You can't beat a good "it is done" moment.

Professor Parry announces that they are to abandon the expedition.

Two men have died so that's fair enough I suppose. This is a story that needs a good prequel. I'd love to see the details of this from the humans point of view. How they discovered where the Cybermen were entombed, how they found Telos, all the planning that led to this, the journey to get here...

Captain Hopper reports that their rocket fuel pumps have been sabotaged so they can't get off this crumby planet.

The Doctor hints that it might not be a person who did the damage, responding, "Or something" and "Or what..." to Hopper's "someone" and "who." But this is odd because just afterwards he insinuates that it might have been Toberman. Has this literally just occurred to him or does he view the servant as a "thing"?

Helpfully, the captain has brought back some lovely anoraks from the rocket, so everyone can be frightened and stranded whilst also being warm and stylish. I'm not remotely convinced by Hopper's American accent...sounds a bit suspect to me. As are the acting skills displayed here.

Jamie is proving to be a real scaredy cat, grumbling at the Doctor's insistence on remaining on Telos. Or perhaps he's just bored. Cah! Teenagers. Whatever, the Doctor has no regard for the boy's opinion or welfare. He doesn't even offer to let him wait in the TARDIS. No duty of care in this era of Doctor Who. Victoria is proving more gutsy though and loyally remains with the Doctor.

Klieg is struggling to solve the logic puzzle needed to open a mysterious hatch. Unseen, the presumably impatient Doctor flicks a switch and the hatch opens.

Now why on Earth would the Doctor do that? All this meddling is likely to get everybody killed, so what is he thinking? That's the sort of reckless behaviour that could lead to a big space courtroom trial... Still, he's got form; I remember how devious he was on his first visit to the Dalek's planet Skaro. This is a man who can't control his curiosity.

They head down through the hatch.

Despite Victoria's protest, she is told to remain upstairs like a good girl. The Doctor doesn't trust Kaftan and whispers to Victoria that it's an opportunity to keep an eye on her.

Is that the Doctor's old cloak from when he was William Hartnell? And if so, where was he hiding that?! He didn't appear to be carrying it when they arrived. So we don't get to see him in an anorak.

Kaftan offers Victoria roast chicken in the form of a little stock cube but the ungrateful cow says she's suddenly not hungry. In revenge Kaftan secretly drugs her coffee.

Down below the others have found a network of ice caves. Before long they discover a huge cavern with an array of frost covered cells.

"Behold gentlemen, the tombs of the Cybermen," announces Professor Parry. Clearly a man who loves to make grand statements.

"All their evil locked away with them," says the Doctor. Are they evil though? Dangerous and ruthless yes, but evil? They're just determined to survive. Is a colony of ants evil? Lots of animals kill to survive...are they all evil? Hey, I'm not defending the Cybermen, just being pedantic about semantics...

Upstairs the drugged coffee does its thing and Victoria nods off. Kaftan locks the hatch shut. This is heard by the men below.

Viner is hysterical so easily. He's seriously getting on my nerves now, unhappy home life or not. The man needs counselling.

Klieg who has been acting increasingly shiftily throughout this story, operates a control panel on the pretense of reopening the hatch, but really it's an ice-thawing control. There's movement in each cell of the honeycombed tomb, and the Cybermen begin to break out.

Panicky Viner runs to shut the de-freezing down but Klieg shoots him.

Blimey, I know he was annoying but that was a bit harsh. Who let this man join the expedition? A loony with a gun. Were no personality checks done?! Or are they a bunch of mavericks?

It's all very well the cells instantly freezing up again but are we supposed to believe the Cybermen obligingly stepped back into them to be refrozen?

Victoria wakes up.

I don't know what was in that coffee but Victoria didn't sleep for long. Ah but Kaftan mentioned that Victoria had hardly touched it, so that's why. I like Victoria challenging Kaftan, "Then you'd better open it again hadn't you?" She's really quite ballsy, pushing Kaftan out if the way to open the hatch. But Klieg's not the only one with a gun.

Klieg reveals his fiendish plan to make friends with the Cybermen.

He's a member of the Brotherhood of Logicians, and they need power in order to do something or other. Power that the Cybermen can provide apparently.

I'm not sure what form this power takes...physical strength? Numbers? Or what's to be done with this power. Taking over the world by being very logical? I like Klieg's line to Parry, pointing out how easy it was to get involved in the expedition, "Your complete lack of...administration..." So that's how loonies with guns got to join: no admin.

Klieg, who's first name amusingly is Eric, has restarted the cyber thawing process. The Cybermen break out of their cells again and this time descend ladders to the ground below.

I'm not sure what's covering the cell openings. It seems to be a sort of "film" which "clings" to the outer edges of the openings. It's a great scene anyway, must have given a few youngsters nightmares...

Meanwhile upstairs the cybermat in Victoria's bag has suddenly also woken up.

Everyone's woken up now, Cybermen, Victoria, and the little cybermat. Kaftan's clearly hard of hearing if she hasn't noticed the loud bleeping sound coming from behind her, and she ignores Victoria who's oddly shrieking a warning at her despite being held at gunpoint. Kaftan's screech when it leaps onto her shoulder is a bit over the top and seems out of character.

Victoria might be rubbish at paleontology, but she's a natural with a futuristic hand gun. She actually destroys the tiny cybermat with one shot from Kaftan's pistol. This girl has hidden talents, no wonder the Doctor took her aboard the TARDIS.

In the tomb there's a sort of ceremony as the awoken Cybermen arrange themselves around a bigger cell, from which a different kind of Cybermen emerges.

"I think it's their leader...their controller," states the Doctor, giving the big handle-less Cybermen his official name. The Cybermen all do this salute thing, suggesting an orderly chain of command system.

Klieg starts wittering on about how the Cybermen should be grateful to him, but all he gets is his hands crushed by the big guy's powerful grip. There's gratitude. The Cyber controller looks at them all impassively. There's something very creepy about the blank expressionless face of a Cybermen. And so one of Doctor Who's best cliffhangers so far:

"You belong to us. You shall be like us."

As Eric discovered "first hand": gripping stuff.