The Tomb of the Cybermen (TV story)

The Tomb of the Cybermen was the first story of Season 5 of Doctor Who. It is the earliest Second Doctor serial to survive in its entirety. It introduces the Cyber-Controller and the Cybermats.

Synopsis

The TARDIS arrives on the planet Telos where an Earth archaeological expedition, led by Professor Parry, is attempting to uncover the lost tombs of the Cybermen. With a lot of help from the Doctor the archaeologists enter the tombs. There, one of the party, Klieg, reveals himself and his business partner, Kaftan, to be planning to revive the Cybermen.

He wants to use their strength, allied with the intelligence of his own Brotherhood of Logicians, to create an invincible force for conquest. It transpires however that the tomb is actually a giant trap designed to lure humans suitable for conversion into further Cybermen - a fate that almost befalls Kaftan's assistant Toberman.

After fending off an attack by Cybermats - small but dangerous cybernetic creatures - the Doctor eventually defeats the revived Cybermen, led by their Controller, and reseals the tombs. The Controller is apparently destroyed in the process.

Plot

Episode 1

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An Earth expedition makes a shocking discovery

The Doctor and Jamie show their new travelling companion Victoria Waterfield the inside of the TARDIS, though she scarcely believes it can travel through time and space. The ship takes off from Skaro, the group ready for their next adventure.

On the planet Telos, an archaeological expedition uses explosives to uncover the entrance to a city, hidden in the side of a mountain. When a member of the expedition touches the huge metal doors, he is electrocuted. Immediately afterwards, the TARDIS lands nearby, and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on the scene. Captain Hopper, the expedition's pilot, holds them at gunpoint until the Doctor convinces them they had nothing to do with the death. John Viner, the assistant to expedition leader Parry, accuses the Doctor of being part of a rival expedition. Parry explains that they are here to find the remains of the Cybermen, who apparently died out centuries before. The expedition is funded by Kaftan, who is accompanied by her giant manservant Toberman and her colleague Eric Klieg. The Doctor, now that he knows that the Cybermen are involved, decides to accompany the group. He uses a small device to check that the doors are now safe, and Toberman's great strength swings them open. Entering the darkened inner chamber, they find a control panel with a series of levers and switches, large hidden doors and a sealed hatch. The Doctor opens the doors using the levers, which operate on symbolic logic. Klieg is resentful that the Doctor is able to deduce this instead of him. The hatch, however, remains sealed, so the members of the expedition split up and explore.

In the control room, the Doctor gives Klieg the clue he needs to reactivate the controls to restore power to the base. Victoria, Viner and Kaftan come across a chamber with a sarcophagus-like box facing a projection device that was apparently used to revitalise the Cybermen (see Revitalising unit). When Victoria curiously climbs into the sarcophagus, Kaftan operates the controls and seals Victoria in the sarcophagus. When Viner confronts her, she denies she did anything. The Doctor shows up and frees Victoria. In another room, Jamie and Peter Haydon find a small silver caterpillar-like object on the floor. When Haydon operates the control panel in the room, a wall lights up with a hypnotic pattern that puts Jamie into a trance. Before the Doctor can intervene, a Cyberman slides into view and a gun fires, killing Haydon.

Episode 2

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The tomb

The Cyberman slides out of sight again. The Doctor deduces that the room is a testing range, and that a gun at the back was shooting a mock-up Cyberman, and Haydon got in the way. Victoria finds the metal caterpillar, which the Doctor identifies as a cybermat, and advises her to leave it alone. Instead, she places it in her handbag. Parry now decides to abandon the expedition and return to Earth. At this point, however, Hopper returns and angrily reveals that someone has sabotaged the rocket ship — no one will be leaving until he can effect repairs and no one will be allowed aboard the ship until his crew has done so.

Klieg believes he has found the logical sequence to open the hatch, but fails again, until the Doctor surreptitiously presses a few additional buttons, helping him along. Leaving Kaftan and Victoria behind, the others descend down the hatch. They find a vast chamber beneath, with a multistory structure containing cells of frozen Cybermen, entombed in suspended animation. Back in the control room, Kaftan has drugged Victoria's coffee and shuts the hatch. Klieg, in the meantime, has activated more controls in the tomb and the ice begins to melt. Klieg shoots Viner when the latter tries to stop him, and holds the rest at bay while they watch the Cybermen return to life. Klieg reveals his real agenda. He and Kaftan belong to the Brotherhood of Logicians, who possess great intelligence but no physical power. He is certain the Cybermen will be grateful for their revival and ally themselves with him, providing that physical power.

Back in the control room, the cybermat in Victoria's handbag revives and attacks Kaftan, rendering her unconscious. Victoria grabs Kaftan's pistol and shoots it, but she doesn't know how to re-open the hatch, so she leaves the city to find Hopper. Down in the tombs, the Cybermen file past the humans, ignoring them, and free their leader, the Cybercontroller from his cell. When Klieg steps forward to take the credit for reviving them, the Cybercontroller grabs and crushes his hand, forcing him to his knees and declaring, "You belong to us. You will be like us."

Episode 3

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The Doctor faces the Cybercontroller

The Cybermen recognise the Doctor, whose involvement in prior invasion attempts is recorded in their computer records. The Doctor realises that the tombs were an elaborate trap. The Cybermen were waiting for beings intelligent enough to decipher the controls needed to free them. The expedition will be converted into Cybermen in preparation for a new invasion of Earth; and Klieg, to his horror, will be the first.

In the control room, Hopper and Jim Callum have figured out the electronics that will open the hatch. Hopper descends into the tombs, and uses smoke grenades to distract the Cybermen while the humans make their escape. They barely manage to scramble back to the control room and shut the hatch before the Cybermen can follow. Toberman, however, is left behind. Klieg and Kaftan are moved into the testing range to keep them out of mischief while the others decide on their next course of action. There, Klieg pries a weapon out of the hands of the Cyberman target, an X-ray laser he calls a cyber-gun. Outside, the expedition is threatened by cybermats released by the Cybermen below. The Doctor manages to rig electrical cables from the control panel to create a magnetic field that disables the cybermats. Even as one threat is eliminated, Klieg and Kaftan step out, armed with the cybergun, which Klieg fires.

Episode 4

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The Cybermen's secret weapon

Klieg hits Callum in the shoulder, and tells the others that he can still negotiate with the Cybermen. Klieg opens the hatch and calls for the Cybercontroller. The Cybercontroller climbs up, accompanied by Toberman, who, unknown to the others, has been partially cyberconverted and is under Cyberman control. The Cybercontroller moves slowly, as his energy is running low — in fact, most of the Cybermen have been ordered back to their tombs to conserve power. Holding the cybergun on the Cybercontroller, Klieg says he will allow it to be revitalised in the sarcophagus if the Cybermen help him conquer the Earth. The Cybercontroller agrees. Unfortunately, once revitalised, the Cybercontroller is too strong and breaks out of the sarcophagus. Telepathically signalling Toberman, the latter reveals his true allegiances and knocks Klieg unconscious. The Cybercontroller, in turn, picks up Klieg's cybergun and kills Kaftan when she tries to block its return to the tombs.

The death of his mistress, however, seems to shake Toberman out of his controlled state. Toberman struggles with the Cybercontroller and hurls it into a control panel, apparently killing it. The Doctor wants to make sure the Cybermen are no longer a threat, and goes back down into the tombs with Toberman and Jamie. Klieg regains consciousness and sneaks down with the cybergun while the others tend to Callum. He forces the Doctor away from the controls that will refreeze the Cybermen, declaring that he will be the new Controller, and revives them again. Klieg intends to turn the three over to the Cybermen for spare parts, but even as he says this, a revived Cyberman throttles Klieg from behind and kills him. Toberman fights and kills this Cyberman and the Doctor freezes the other Cybermen, hopefully for good this time. Hopper's crew have repaired the ship and they can leave at any time. The Doctor ushers the others out as he sets up a circuit to electrify the control panel and the doors, to prevent anyone from entering the city again. The Cybercontroller, however, is still alive, and lurches forward. Outside, Toberman uses his bare hands to shut the doors, struggling with the Cybercontroller one last time. He succeeds, completing the circuit, and both he and the Cybercontroller are electrocuted and killed. Parry and Hopper return to their ship after saying good-bye to the Doctor and his companions. No one notices a lone cybermat, moving along the ground outside the doors to the city…

Cast

The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Jamie McCrimmon - Frazer Hines
Victoria Waterfield - Deborah Watling
Eric Klieg - George Pastell
Kaftan - Shirley Cooklin
Toberman - Roy Stewart
Professor Parry - Aubrey Richards
John Viner - Cyril Shaps
Jim Callum - Clive Merrison
Captain Hopper - George Roubicek
Ted Rogers - Alan Johns
Peter Haydon - Bernard Holley
Crewman - Ray Grover
Cyber-Controller - Michael Kilgarriff
Cybermen - Hans de Vries, Tony Harwood, John Hogan, Richard Kerley, Ronald Lee, Charles Pemberton, Kenneth Seeger, Reg Whitehead
Cybermen Voices - Peter Hawkins

Crew

References

Cybermen

The insignia adorning the tombs.

The Doctor has a book with a picture of a Cybermat in it, but is unfamiliar with them. There are two sizes of Cybermat.
The Cybermen have been frozen for 500 years, and they are familiar with the Doctor.
Telos has a rarified atmosphere and is the (currently) home planet of the Cybermen, though they did originate on Mondas.

The Doctor

The Doctor says he is about 450 years old ('in Earth terms').
The Doctor tells Victoria he has to try hard to remember his family; this is the first on-screen reference made to the Doctor having family (besides Susan), a theme later to be touched upon in the 2005 revival.
The Doctor says that he 'perfected' the TARDIS, which appears to land like a spaceship: 'Something came down over there.'
The Doctor is unusually manipulative in this story; it is only because of his intervention that the expedition is able to get into the base, and he is also indirectly responsible for opening the hatch.

Story notes

In this story the Cybermats were remote controlled and pull back and go designs.^{[source needed]}
This story had the working titles of; The Ice Tombs of Telos and The Cybermen Planet.
This serial was believed lost in 1978 (when the BBC's film archive was first properly audited, although it is absent on earlier 1976 listings) until film telerecordings of all four episodes were returned to the BBC by the Hong Kong television company ATV (formerly called RTV) in late 1991. The serial was released, to much fan excitement and with a specially recorded introduction by director Morris Barry, on VHS in May 1992.
Toberman was originally intended to be deaf, hence his lack of significant speech; his hearing aid would foreshadow his transformation into a Cyberman. These elements were included in the novelisation.
Actress Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) was married to producer Peter Bryant. Her character was written especially for her by Gerry Davis.
This is the earliest Patrick Troughton era serial, and the only serial featuring Deborah Watling, to exist in its entirety.
Peter Bryant, who had previously been assistant to Gerry Davis and been newly promoted to script editor on the preceding story, was allowed to produce this serial in order to prove that he could take over from Innes Lloyd as producer later on in the season. Bryant's own assistant, Victor Pemberton acted as script editor on this serial, but left the series after production of the serial was finished, deciding that he didn't want to be a script editor. When Bryant's eventual promotion to producer came, Derrick Sherwin would become script editor.
In the remastered DVD release, the wires holding up the Cyberman that Toberman throws are clearly visible.
Matt Smith, who currently portrays the Doctor, has stated several times that this serial is his favourite Doctor Who story.
The serial begins the semi-recurring tradition of Cybermen stories being titled '...of the Cybermen' (similar to many Dalek stories being titled '...of the Daleks', but less frequent), which is also used in DW: Revenge of the Cybermen, DW: Attack of the Cybermen, DW: Rise of the Cybermen, BFA: Legend of the Cybermen, and VG: Blood of the Cybermen.

Ratings

Episode 1 - 6.0 million viewers
Episode 2 - 6.4 million viewers
Episode 3 - 7.2 million viewers
Episode 4 - 7.4 million viewers

Myths

The only surviving copy of this story is slightly edited. (The prints in the BBC's archives are complete and unedited.)
A Cyberman head from this story was stolen around the same time as a BBC producer quit outside the Doctor Who production office.

Filming locations

Most of the story was recorded in Lime Grove Studios (Studio D), Lime Grove, London.
Additional recording at Ealing Television Film Studios, Ealing Green, Ealing.
The scenes on the surface of Telos recorded at Gerrards Cross Sand and Gravel Pit at Waspey's Woods in Buckinghamshire.

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

In episode one, the Doctor and Jamie hold one of the tomb doors closed with their feet.
The Cybercontroller uses a visible harness to lift Toberman over his head. The DVD production notes imply that this was less obvious on the un-remastered version of the story.
Toberman returns the favor in episode four by spinning a dummy Cybercontroller.
The Cybermen retreat into their tombs backwards, the film having been reversed.
When Captain Hopper opens the hatch after disarming Kaftan, he pulls an entirely different switch on a different section of the control panel than the one they had identified seconds earlier.
In episode four, when Jamie shoots the Cyberman climbing out of the hatch, and goes to push it back down, the Cyberman is VISIBLY helping him - you can see him pushing backwards with his hands.

Continuity

The beginning of this serial follows directly from the end of The Evil of the Daleks.
The Doctor returns to Telos in the Sixth Doctor story DW: Attack of the Cybermen, where he also encounters the Cryons, the original inhabitants of the planet.
The events seen in DW: The Moonbase are mentioned.
BFBS: The Crystal of Cantus refers to this story, and states that the Cybermen had placed "tombs" across the galaxy.
Telos is returned to in BFA: Telos.

Timeline

This story occurs after DW: The Evil of the Daleks
This story occurs before ST: The Age of Ambition

Home video and audio releases

DVD releases

Released as Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen, this was the first of the releases for 2002 and marked the first photomontage cover art by Clayton Hickman which replaced the generic photo cover art of earlier releases from this point on.

Released:

Region 2 14th January 2002

PAL - BBC DVD - BBCDVD1032

Region 4 1st April 2002
Region 1 6th August 2002

NTSC - Warner Video E1181

Notes:

The UK DVD release was rated PG, due to a mistaken attribution of "some mild sex, nudity"
The American DVD cover mistakenly credits the writing of this story to Robert Holmes. This happened due to a previous DVD release cover being used as a template. ^{[source needed]}
The DVD contains a VidFIREd clip from the story as an Easter Egg. This was included as a test in order to determine how successfully the VidFIRE process would survive MPEG-2 encoding. This was the first time any footage from the 1960s episodes had been publicly released in this way; all Hartnell and Troughton stories released from here on (with the exception of some lower-quality footage in the "Lost in Time" set) would go through this process. As of 2010 it has yet to be announced whether Tomb of the Cybermen will be reissued in VidFIRE format.

Contents:

Introduction by Morris Barry from the BBC Video release of 1992.
Late Night Line-Up - Jack Kine discusses the BBC Visual Effects department's work on Doctor Who (25th November 1967).
Tombwatch - Highlights of the BAFTA screening of the story in April 1992.
The Final End - 8mm footage of the end of The Evil of the Daleks.
Titles Sequence Test Footage
Restoration - A short feature on the restoration of the DVD.
Photo Gallery
Production Subtitles
Easter Eggs (Short clip done using VidFIRE/Audio of trailer for The Abominable Snowmen)
Commentary: Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling

Notes:

Editing for DVD release completed by Doctor Who Restoration Team.
In an interview with Steve Roberts reveals this could be part of the second Revisitations Boxset.

DVD Region 2 UK cover
DVD Region 4 Australian cover
DVD Region 1 US cover

It has not been confirmed, but it is expected that a special edition of "The Tomb Of Cybermen" will be released in the third and final Revisitations box set. It is also rumoured that they will release it with special editions of "The Robots of Death" and "Vengeance On Varos"