The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on Telos, where an archaeological group are exploring the Tomb of the Cybermen. But are the Cybermen as dormant as they believe?The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on Telos, where an archaeological group are exploring the Tomb of the Cybermen. But are the Cybermen as dormant as they believe?The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on Telos, where an archaeological group are exploring the Tomb of the Cybermen. But are the Cybermen as dormant as they believe?
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaPatrick Troughton and Frazer Hines worked out the brief sequence where both the Doctor and Jamie go to take Victoria by the hand and end up taking each other's, in secret, without the knowledge of director Morris Barry. They knew that, with the recording schedule and the likelihood that re-takes would not be possible, it would have to be left in.
- GoofsWhen the Doctor and Jamie try to pull open the entrance to the tomb, they both hold the door shut with their feet to give the impression that the door is stuck.
- Quotes
[first lines]
The Doctor: There we are. Well, what do you think?
Victoria: I don't know. I can't believe it. It's so big. Where are we?
The Doctor: Oh, it's the TARDIS. It's my home. At least it has been for a considerable number of years.
Victoria: What are all these knobs?
The Doctor: What, these?
Jamie: Instruments. These are for controlling our flight.
Victoria: Flight?
Jamie: Well, yes. You see, we travel around in here through time and space.
[Victoria laughs]
The Doctor: Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't laugh. It's true. Your father and Maxtible were working on the same problem, but I have perfected a rather special model, which enables me to travel through the universe of time.
Victoria: How can you? I mean, if what you say is true, you must be... er well... how old?
- Alternate versionsLike most Doctor Who serials from the 1960s, only filmed copies survive, the original videotape broadcast versions long ago having been erased. For the 2002 DVD release, as an experiment, a 3-minute segment of this episode went through the vidFIRE process, which restored the original videotape look to the film. It is included as an Easter Egg on the DVD; all subsequent 1960s episode releases (when possible) were released vidFIRE-restored.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Doctor Who Confidential: Confidential Christmas 2008 (2008)
- SoundtracksPalpitations
Written and Performed by John Scott as Johnny Scott and his Orchestra
Courtesy of Associated Production Music
Moreover, it also emerges that the financiers of the expedition, Eric Klieg and a woman known as Kaftan, were well aware that the Cybermen could be revived. Indeed, their sole purpose (unknown to the scientific members of the expedition) was to revive them. They are members of the Brotherhood of Logicians, a sort of super-Mensa of brilliant intellectuals, who believe that with their intellect and the Cybermen's physical strength they will be able to dominate the world. Klieg sees himself as the future Dictator of Planet Earth; his logic is that the Cybermen will willingly serve him out of gratitude for their resurrection. The flaw in his logic, of course, is that gratitude is an emotion wholly alien to the Cybermen. (Indeed, they seem incapable of any emotion other than a will to power even more ruthless than Klieg's own). Which only goes to show that it takes a brilliant intellectual to do something really stupid. It falls to the Doctor and his companions to save the day.
"The Tomb of the Cybermen" is not, in my view, the greatest "Doctor Who" serial. It takes its time to get going, and the plot at times seems over-elaborate. (My synopsis above is greatly simplified). Those "Cybermats", robotic creatures looking like a cross between a giant silverfish and a child's toy, look too strange and whimsical to be really frightening. The character of Toberman, the only black member of the expedition- stolid, silent, employed only for his physical strength- can look like a racist stereotype fifty-odd years on.
I was, however, glad to catch the serial on television because it is a reminder of how good Patrick Troughton could be as the Doctor. I was only a young child during his tenure in the late sixties, so I do not have the vivid memories of him that I do of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Watching serials like this, however, remind me that his Second Doctor, however, was a wonderful character- humorous, kindly, rather disorganised and somewhat dishevelled. This serial also featured one of my favourite companions, Frazer Hines's feisty Jamie, whom I, strangely enough, remember better than I do the Second Doctor. (Possibly because he shared by own Christian name).
Unfortunately, most of the serials in which Troughton starred are missing or incomplete due to the short-sighted, penny-pinching policy of the BBC during the seventies, which allowed tapes of old programmes to be erased so they could be reused. At one time it was thought that "The Tomb of the Cybermen" was one of these lost serials; thank goodness it was later rediscovered and restored to the BBC archives.
- JamesHitchcock
- May 18, 2022
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime24 minutes
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- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1