The Moonbase (TV story)

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There are some corners of the Universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.The Doctor

The Moonbase was the sixth story of Season 4 of Doctor Who. The return appearance of the Cybermen solidified their place as one of the series' key villains. This story was the first in Doctor Who history with sequences taking place on Earth's Moon.

Synopsis

The TARDIS arrives in 2070 AD on the Moon, where a weather control station under the command of a man named Hobson is in the grip of a plague epidemic - in reality the result of an alien poison planted by the Cybermen. Jamie succumbs to the plague and is contained to the infirmary leaving the Doctor,Ben to fight off a mass Cyberman attack.

Plot

Episode 1

The Tardis makes a bumpy landing on the Moon in the year 2070,and dressed in spacesuits the second doctor and his companions Jamie Polly and Ben venture outside and enjoy the low gravity enviroment.Jamie is injured when they fool around.

The only building on the moons surface is the moonbase a weather tracking station.

Cast

Crew

References

Cybermen

Earth technology

Food and Beverages

Planets

Science

  • The Cybermen shoot a hole in the Moonbase, suddenly making it lose oxygen.
  • The Cybermen's chest unit appears to be made of a kind of plastic.

Timeline

Story Notes

  • Working title; The Return of the Cybermen.
  • This is the first story in which John Levene (who later played Sergeant Benton) appears.
  • In an early edit of the script the Cybermen had names.
  • Talkback from the headphones of the crew on the studio floor is clearly audible at times during episode four (the same problem as had earlier caused the opening episode of the first Dalek story to have to be remounted) - for example, a voice can be clearly heard saying 'cue' at the start of the scene where the controlled scientists are first activated by the Cybermen.

Ratings

  • Episode 1 - 8.1 million viewers
  • Episode 2 - 8.9 million viewers
  • Episode 3 - 8.2 million viewers
  • Episode 4 - 8.1 million viewers

Myths

to be added

Filming Locations

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • The Cybermen's spaceships look like paper plates held up by string.
  • In episode four, when Evans sneaks into the Gravitron control room, he puts the cloth helmet on back to front (in the next scene it's the right way round).
  • Why bother to infiltrate the Moonbase by stealth, using the virus, when they have the means all along to capture it by force?
  • You can always tell a Cyberman by his footwear.
  • Episode two's cliffhanger involves the discovery of a Cyberman who has been hiding under a sheet in the medicentre for the last 25 minutes. When he gets off the sickbay bed, he nearly takes the whole thing with him.
  • The addition of Jamie to the cast leads to a sharing of lines, so Ben becomes a scientist for a story (he knows that the Gravitron uses thermonuclear power, that interferon is a viral antibody, and that acetone is present in nail varnish remover).
  • In episode two, when a Cyberman tries to zap Polly while she tends to Jamie, he misses, but she falls anyway.
  • Why make only one hole in the dome?
  • And just how strong is that tea tray?


Continuity

Timeline

DVD, Video and Other Releases

  • The two surviving episodes (2 and 4) were released on the Cybermen: The Early Years video.
  • The surviving episodes were also released on the Lost in Time DVD, along with full audio of the two missing episodes.

Novelisation

Cybermen novel.jpg
Main article: Doctor Who and the Cybermen

See also

External links

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