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.

Polly realises that as the Cybermen's chest units are made of plastic they must be vulnerable to attack by solvents. She and her friends manage to destroy all the Cybermen on the base with a 'cocktail' of such chemicals shot at them through fire extinguishers.

A second wave of Cybermen advances across the lunar surface but, prompted by the Doctor, Hobson uses the base's gravity-generating weather control device, the Gravitron, to send them flying off into space.

Plot

to be added

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. They probably were.
  • 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).

Continuity

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.

Target Novelisations

See also

External links

v • e
Cyberman stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Cyberman story" is one in which one living, authentic Cyberman plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. For this reason, stories such as Dalek are absent due to only featuring deceased Cybermen on display. Stories like Carnival of Monsters, A Good Man Goes to War and The Vanquishers are also not included due to the Cybermen's appearance being of little consequence to the plot of the story.
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