DOCTOR WHO:  REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN

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	#5: REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN (4 Parts)	ORIGINALLY AIRED: 4/19/75 to 5/10/75
	WRITTEN BY: Gerry Davis	DIRECTED BY: Michael Briant
	PRODUCER: Philip Hinchcliffe	SCRIPT EDITOR: Robert Holmes

The Cybermen are another popular monster from DOCTOR WHO's past. They were introduced in William Hartnell's last story THE TENTH PLANET, written by Dennis Spooner and set in 1986; and also appeared in two Patrick Troughton stories, THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN (which introduced the Cybermats, mobile Cyberman weapons) and THE WHEEL IN SPACE.

Originally flesh and blood, the Cybermen evolved into "utterly ruthless total machine creatures." Their planet of origin, Mondas, was destroyed and they relocated to Telos. After the Cyberwars and the introduction of the glitter gun (which shoots gold, lethal to Cybermen), they were presumed wiped out. The Cybermen also show up in the Peter Davison show EARTHSHOCK and the Colin Baker story ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN, which actually shows the grisly mechanics involved in converting a human being into a Cyberman.   From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?:  "You may recall that Cybermen moved as if their knickers were twisted, and not only twisted, but tightly twisted, too. . . . William Marlowe and Ronald Leigh-Hunt were the visiting stars and they played it really straight and were therefore hilarious."

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN was filmed back-to-back with THE ARK IN SPACE, in order to reuse the elaborate space station set. In the early days of DOCTOR WHO, there were many 6 and 7 part stories--even the occasional 10 or 12 parter. This was done, at least in part, to amortize the cost of the sets. For the sake of example, if a set costs $10,000 to build, the per week cost for a 6-part story would be $1,666.67; while the per week cost of the same set for a 4-part story would rise to $2,500. To the bureaucratic minds at the BBC, the more parts a DOCTOR WHO story had, the more cost effective it was. This resulted in some stories that were rather padded with a lot of chases. Instead, producer Philip Hinchcliffe opted to have two different stories use the same set, and separate the plots by time.

Considering at this point GENESIS OF THE DALEKS had not yet gone before the cameras, there is good continuity with that story, as the Doctor, Sarah and Harry swirl through space on the time ring and wind up on Nerva. But the TARDIS is not there; it is drifting backward through time and all the Doctor and his friends have to do is wait for it to materialize.

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN takes place thousands of years before the time of THE ARK IN SPACE--before Earth was evacuated in anticipation of the solar flares. Nerva is now a beacon out by Jupiter to guide space freighters away from a new satellite discovered only 50 years ago. It has been named Voga by Kellman, the exographer who conducted the planetary survey and established a transmat station there. He claims it is uninhabited.

Forty-seven of Nerva beacon's crew have been killed by what the survivors think is a plague. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry thread their way through the bodies, trying to reach the auxiliary control room. A locked door blocks their progress. The Doctor asks Sarah and Harry to put their weight against this door, as he tries to open it: "I don't want to lose my arm; I'm rather attached to it; it's so handy," the Doctor puns. The door shoots open anyway and the Doctor's arm is only narrowly saved. He thanks Sarah but shoots a dirty look at Harry.

The Doctor meets the surviving Nerva beacon crew: Commander Stevenson, Lester and their civilian passenger Kellman. The Doctor feels it is not a plague killing the crewmembers; from scratches on the floor and the proximity of Voga, the legendary Planet of Gold, the Doctor deduces it is a Cybermat. Cybermats are mobile Cybermen attack devices, which inject deadly venom. Once bitten by them, most victims die in minutes.

Cybermats must be controlled by someone; the Doctor suspects Kellman. He investigates Kellman's room and finds hidden radio equipment and gold pellets. Kellman returns and traps the Doctor in his cabin, electrifying the floor. The Doctor avoids the floor by jumping backwards onto Kellman's bunk, then riding on the door of a closet to the cabin door, opening it with his sonic screwdriver and escaping.

Sarah is attacked by a Cybermat and has minutes to live. The Doctor theorizes she can be saved if she can be transmatted because during the transmat process a person's molecules are dispersed, thus separating the poison from Sarah. He calls out as Harry carries Sarah into the transmat receptor: "Off you go."

However, the pentalion drive is missing, making the transmat inoperable. With Sarah's life ebbing, the Doctor quickly adapts the monosode to a 3-phase output. There is no time to wire it in; the Doctor holds it in position, almost frying himself when the transmat engages.

It works! Sarah and Harry are successfully transmatted to Voga, the nearest land mass, and Sarah recovers. However, they're stuck on Voga until the Doctor can recover the pentalion drive.

Kellman is obviously an agent; but for whom? He seems to be working for both the Vogans and also the Cybermen. The Doctor reprograms a Cybermat to attack Kellman to frighten him into returning the pentalion drive. The Cybermat prop is passable, although if you are looking for it, you can detect the string pulling it along. The optical effect of the Cybermat poison coursing through its victim's veins is very well done, using strobing over front projection tape worn by the performer.

The Vogans are a paranoid people, living underground in fear of the Cybermen. The Cybermen hate Vogans because gold suffocates Cybermen by plating their breathing apparatus. Vogans are divided into two camps--the scientists who have secretly developed the Skystriker rocket and plan to kill the Cybermen; and the Vogan rulers who are unaware of this plot and want to remain hidden.

The Vogans have rigid masklike faces with high domed foreheads and Bozo-the-clown hair. It is rather hard to tell one from another facially, so the costumes give clues. The scientists wear uniforms; the rulers wear long robes and have long hair. In addition, props help identify individuals: Vorus, who has evolved the plan to kill the Cybermen, carries an official looking rod; Magrik, responsible for readying the rocket, coughs into the Vogan version of a handkerchief; and Tyrum, upholder of Vogan law, is bearded and uses a cane.

Sarah and Harry are captured by the Vogans and chained up for later interrogation. The chains are solid gold and Harry suggests they try to escape. Sarah agrees: "We can't just sit here glittering, can we?" For the second story in a row, stalagmites are used. In GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, the Doctor saved Harry from a giant clam by pushing a stalagmite into its soft center. Now Sarah uses a stalagmite to lever Harry out of his golden shackles.

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN's location work (the O.B. part shot on film) occurred at Wookey Hole, a famous British cavern in Somerset. Set designer Robin Murray-Leach has done a good job of matching the rocky walls of the Vogan sets to this cavern.

As Kellman is being interrogated, Cybermen board the beacon and shoot the Doctor, Stevenson and Lester. While the Doctor is unconscious, Kellman goes through his pockets but finds only jelly babies and a dried apple core.

When the Doctor and the crewmembers revive, they sit recovering from the effects of the stun guns. In a little visual pun that surely was not in the original script but must have evolved during rehearsal (and one suspects was suggested by Tom Baker), their hands are positioned to suggest the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys, as they slump on the space station floor. The Cyberleader explains that three humans have been kept alive to carry cyberbombs to the core of Voga. The Doctor smiles: "Isn't it wonderful to feel needed?" To make sure the humans won't unstrap the bombs before they're in position, the buckles attaching them have been boobytrapped. If they are removed before the bombs are in position, they will explode.

While waiting to be transmatted with a Cyberman guard to Voga's surface, the Doctor--a bomb strapped to his back--nonchalantly plays with his yoyo. On Voga Sarah discovers the Skystriker rocket is aimed toward the beacon, and heads back to the transmat to warn the Doctor, whom she thinks is still on Nerva. She uses one of the small Vogan boats to cross an underground stream. During the filming of this sequence, Lis Sladen was in danger of being carried away on the swift currents of the underground River Axe, before she was pulled out of the water by stuntman Terry Walsh.  From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?  "The really big drama on this tale was not the script but the disaster of nearly losing Lis Sladen while on location.  We were filming at the underground lakes, all sinister black water at Wookey Hole.  Elisabeth clambered into her little, paddle-less, craft and pushed out, and we rolled the cameras.  About sixty feet away from her was a low arch, no more than three feet high, beyond which the black water ran and dropped into black nothingness.  As the director called action, as if by magic, a current appeared in the treacly water and started to draw Elisabeth to her doom beyond the arch.  Terry Walsh, our stunt arranger, was marvelously quick to spot the danger; he dived straight in like Superman and pushed the boat to safety and Elisabeth survived the fright.  Even despite this episode, everyone found the long hours underground very oppressive and we were glad when we could finish and get on to our next adventure."

The Doctor, Stevenson and Lester are pretty close to Voga's core. Harry and Kellman--who was working with the Vogans to lure the Cybermen into range of their rocket--set off through an alternate tunnel to find them. Harry accidentally starts a landslide, which kills Kellman and knocks the Doctor out. When Harry discovers the unconscious Doctor, he tries to remove the cyberbombs, but the Doctor revives before the boobytrapped buckle can be unstrapped.

Poor Harry; he has been rather a bumbler from the beginning, when the Doctor tied him upside down in a closet in ROBOT. He lost both his shoes in THE ARK IN SPACE, and the Doctor sneered at him for falling over a cliff in THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT. Now that Harry has almost blown them all up, the Doctor shouts out: "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile."

Following the Doctor's plan, Stevenson continues on toward Voga's core to fool the Cybermen's radar, while Harry, Lester and the Doctor double back to attack the Cybermen with gold dust. The attack fails and Harry and the Doctor narrowly escape; Lester sacrifices himself, blowing up the Cybermen and himself by unbuckling the cyberbomb.

The Doctor reprograms the bomb control unit and gingerly unbuckles his bomb. When Harry doesn't react to this feat, the Doctor remarks: "Well, I'm impressed."

Since their first attempt failed, the Cybermen load Nerva beacon with cyberbombs and aim it at Voga. The Skystriker rocket is finally ready, but the Doctor begs for 15 minutes to rescue Sarah: "I've a young friend on the beacon--Sarah Jane. She risked her life to save mine. The least I can do is accept the same risk for her."

The Doctor transmats back to the beacon. He unties Sarah and bustles off to reprogram a Cybermat. The Doctor hasn't seen Sarah since she lay dying from the Cybermat attack 3 episodes ago. In another interlude that seems as if it may have evolved through improvisation during rehearsal, Sarah says: "Doctor, it's good to see you." The Doctor replies: "Is it?" Sarah nods. The Doctor says, "Oh," and, grinning widely, gives her a light punch on the arm.

The Doctor kills off a few Cybermen with the reprogrammed Cybermat, packed with gold dust. He recites Shakespeare over the body of one, lamenting its "dusty death."

Vorus sees the beacon headed toward Voga and sets off the rocket early; he is shot by Tyrum. Newsreel footage of an actual rocket launch inserted at this point doesn't match the BBC miniature very well.

The Cybermen have forced the Doctor to tie up Sarah and then have tied him to her. As they exit for their ship, the Cybermen gloat over their captives, who are about to crash into Voga. "Bye bye," the Doctor tells them.

As Sarah struggles with her knots, the Doctor says, "I used a tangled turk's head I-splice with the grommets I picked up from Houdini." Sarah gets loose and frees the Doctor.

He contacts Voga by radio, but Vorus is dead and no one knows how to reroute the rocket. The Doctor guesses at the controls to use and talks Stevenson through aiming it at the Cybermen's ship. The rocket narrowly misses the beacon and the Doctor says: "Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore it missed." Luckily it hits the Cybermen's ship and they are destroyed.

However, the Cybermen have locked the beacon's gyro controls and the flight trimmers are jammed. Seconds before they are about to crash into Voga, the Doctor uses a manual override and averts the disaster.

The TARDIS shows up just as Harry transmats back to the beacon. The Doctor enters the TARDIS to set the drift compensators so the TARDIS won't continue backward through time without them. He emerges from the TARDIS with a ticker tape message from the Brigadier, sent by space-time telegraph; there is an emergency on Earth.

Writing in her posthumously-published autobiography (Aurum 2011), Elisabeth Sladen said "Really, Tom was such a blast to work with.  So many of the stresses of toeing the line of the old regime just peeled away.  I may have been the Doctor's 'assistant', as he describes me to the Duke in TERROR OF THE ZYGONS, but in Tom's eyes we were equal.  There was no ... subtext to any of his suggestions; ... just good, honest collaboration - we were in this together."

David Collings, who plays Vorus, plays Poul in THE ROBOTS OF DEATH (a future Tom Baker story); and Mawdryn in the Davison story MAWDRYN UNDEAD.

Ronald Leigh-Hunt, who plays Stevenson, played Radnor in the Troughton story THE SEEDS OF DEATH.

Michael Wisher, in addition to playing Magrik, also provides two uncredited voiceovers: one is of space ship Pluto-Earth Flight 15; the other is an unnamed Vogan who is killed off almost immediately. He played Davros in GENESIS OF THE DALEKS (not yet filmed at this point). He skips a story and then appears in the minor role of Morelli in PLANET OF EVIL. He also appeared in 3 Pertwee stories: as Rex Farrel in TERROR OF THE AUTONS; John Wakefield in THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH; and Kalek in CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS. Offscreen, he provided Dalek voices in three Pertwee stories: DEATH TO THE DALEKS, FRONTIER IN SPACE and PLANET OF THE DALEKS.

Kevin Stoney, who plays Tyrum, also played Mavic Chen in the Hartnell story THE DALEK MASTERPLAN; and appeared as Tobias Vaughn in the Troughton story THE INVASION.

William Marlowe, who plays Lester, played Mailer in the Pertwee story THE MIND OF EVIL.

Brian Grellis, who plays Seprah, plays Safran in THE INVISIBLE ENEMY, a future Tom Baker story and the Megaphone Man in the Davison story SNAKEDANCE.  From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER:  "There was a character called Seprah, played by a very funny actor named Brian Grellis.  He had the idea of playing his robot as an asthmatic.  This meant that when he tapped his chest to clear his throat he had a coughing fit.  The whole cast thought it was very funny but it was cut at the recording, thus depriving children of a great deal of fun and Brian Grellis of the chance to further his career.  Fortunately, he was a very good carpenter and this allowed him to earn a few jam butties when he was resting."

Alec Wallis, who plays Warner, played Bowman in the Pertwee story THE SEA DEVILS.

Christopher Robbie, who plays the Cyberleader, also played Karkus in the Troughton story THE MIND ROBBER.

Melville Jones, who plays a Cyberman, also played a Guard in the Pertwee story THE TIME MONSTER.