Review: Cybermen - The Early Years

ISBN 0-7939-3494-X

1992, Color, 120 min

I have always been a fan of the early years of Doctor Who. The creative forces behind the program have sometimes described Who as "science fiction that doesn't take itself too seriously." (This distingiushes the show from another well-known science-fiction program that also debuted in the 1960's.) One need only watch a few of these early programs to realize the above description is accurate. The sets were rather cheesy, even by 1960's standards, and the overall production quality was poor. Yet there was enough humor in the program to give it a sort of campy appeal, and turn it into a form of harmless escapism.

I thus could not resist Cybermen - The Early Years, a collection of material hosted by Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor. This video covers the first five Cybermen serials. There are clips from "The Tenth Planet" (1966), "The Tomb of the Cybermen" (1967), and "The Invasion" (1968). It also contains four complete episodes: "The Moonbase" (1967) parts two and four and "The Wheel in Space" (1968) parts three and six. It thus provides a good overview of one aspect of Doctor Who's development during this period (1966-68), and also provides a teaser for "Tomb" and "Invasion", which are both available on BBC Video (although "Invasion" is missing episodes one and four). This is an excellent buy for fans of the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), as well fans of Who who think that the Cybermen are wussies. On the contrary, before these silver giants were emasculated by script writers in the 1980's, they were quite formidable opponents.

The Cybermen, you see, come from the planet Mondas, which was once a twin planet of Earth. Scientific development came more rapidly on Mondas, and the humans there soon developed the ability to replace entire body parts with cyber parts. Eventually there were able to eliminate all emotions, and thus developed into a race of non-humanoid, purely logical beings. But the Cybermen are dying out, and a recurring theme in Cybermen serials is the need to acquire humans that can be converted into Cybermen. In "The Tenth Planet", the Cybermen attempt (and fail) to drain Earth of all its energy. In 2030, they try to kill the humans using radio signals boosted through a space beacon ("The Wheel in Space"). In 2070, they try again to wipe out the human race by taking over the Gravitron, which controls the earth's weather ("The Moonbase"). One hundred years earlier, they tried and failed to take over Earth with the help of the evil genius Tobias Vaughn ("The Invasion"). Finally, in the twenty-fifth century, ensconced in cryogenic chambers on Telos, they were resurrected by the insane logician Kleig but were again outwitted by the Doctor ("Tomb of the Cybermen").

The quality of the stories is quite good. Even the relatively low-budget stories (actually, with the exception of the recent Fox project, all Doctor Who is low-budget) were well-written; I liked "The Moonbase" particularly. The Cybermen are far superior to the other popular Doctor Who monsters the Daleks because they represent a form of Dionysian excess: the are like us, only more: more powerful, more intelligent, and more logical. One cannot help but feel a twinge of primal joy as the Cyberman deliver vicious blows to their enemies (it's always interesting to see whether they kill their adversaries with their Cyber-weapons or their bare hands: which is the most logical way to kill an opponent?). In the four episodes contained in this video, the Cybermen are revealed in their full glory.

[As a digression, I should note that there is at least one blooper on this tape that nobody has mentioned before, at least not to my knowledge: in "The Moonbase" the Cybermen are finally defeated when the Doctor realizes that the moonbase crew can use the Gravitron as a weapon against the Cybermen. The gravitron is brought to bear on the lunar surface, and the Cybermen, along with their space fleet, fly off into space. But the TARDIS is also on the lunar surface. Won't this fly off of the moon as well? And don't give me a clever answer about how the TARDIS is much heavier than it looks. If we can assume that the mathematical model of the outside of the TARDIS is a police box (cf. "Logopolis"), then we can also assume that the weight of the TARDIS is the same as that of a police box.]

On the down side, I should note that the synopses of missing episodes provided by Baker were not entirely adequate. This is somewhat forgivable, as anyone who is really interested can read summaries widely available on the Internet (indeed, some are available in the multimedia archive here at the Zero Room), or read the novelizations. Nonetheless, the video would have been better if more complete information were provided. However, this is really nitpicking; in the end, the episodes speak for themselves. And I'll take the fearsome, emotionless Cybercontroller from "Tomb" over the rather wimpy (and fat!) one (also played by Michael Kilgarriff) from "Attack of the Cybermen" any day.

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