Tin Dog Podcast
- Description:
- tin-dog@hotmail.co.uk The Tin Dog welcomes you to sit back and listen to his rants and ramblings about all that is best in modern SF and Television. Via the gift of the new fangled Podcast over the tinterweb. As you can probably guess Tin Dog mostly talks about Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith but that wont stop him talking about any other subject you suggest. Hailing from a non specific part of the northeast of England, Tin Dog is male and in his mid 30s. A life long fan of almost all TV SF. His semi-autistic tendencies combined with his total lack of social skills have helped him find a place in the heart of British SF Fandom. Even as a child the Tin Dogs mother told him that she can trace his love of SF TV back to his rhythmic kicking, while still in the womb, along to the beat of the Avengers theme music. From Gabriel Chase to Totters Lane, from the Bad Wolf Satellite to the back streets of the Cardiff, Tin Dog will give you his thoughts on the wonderful Whoniverse. Daleks and Cybermen and TARDIS ES Oh My If you enjoy these Tin Dog Podcasts please remember to tell your friends and leave an email tin-dog@hotmail.co.uk
Homepage: http://tin-dog.co.uk
RSS Feed: http://www.tin-dog.co.uk/rss
- Episodes:
- 2905
- Average Episode Duration:
- 0:0:10:09
- Longest Episode Duration:
- 0:2:09:15
- Total Duration of all Episodes:
- 20 days, 11 hours, 17 minutes and 36 seconds
- Earliest Episode:
- 1 May 2007 (6:54pm GMT)
- Latest Episode:
- 20 June 2025 (5:54am GMT)
- Average Time Between Episodes:
- 2 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes and 43 seconds
Tin Dog Podcast Episodes
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TDP 093: Big Finish Roundup Enemy of Daleks and Season 3 of 8th Doctor
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 21 minutes and 12 secondsinfo to follow
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TDP 093: Big Finish Roundup Enemy of Daleks and Season 3 of 8th Doctor
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 21 minutes and 12 secondsinfo to follow
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TDP 093: Big Finish Roundup Enemy of Daleks and Season 3 of 8th Doctor
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 21 minutes and 12 secondsinfo to follow
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TDP 093: Big Finish Roundup Enemy of Daleks and Season 3 of 8th Doctor
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 21 minutes and 12 secondsinfo to follow
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TDP 093: Big Finish Roundup Enemy of Daleks and Season 3 of 8th Doctor
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 21 minutes and 12 secondsinfo to follow
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TDP 092: Delta and the Bannermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 7 secondsSynopsis On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate. The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees. Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp's mechanic - and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron's whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor's early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen. Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house. As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor's party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess - a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen. Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron. As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away. [edit] Continuity The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 2 November 1987 24:47 5.3 "Part Two" 9 November 1987 24:23 5.1 "Part Three" 16 November 1987 24:22 5.4 [2][3][4] Preproduction This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5]. Casting Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who. Production The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set. Commercial releases The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009. In print Doctor Who book Delta and the Bannermen Series Target novelisations Release number 131 Writer Malcolm Kohll Publisher Target Books Cover artist Alister Pearson ISBN 0-426-20333-X Release date 19 January 1989 Preceded by Paradise Towers Followed by The War Machines A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.
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TDP 092: Delta and the Bannermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 7 secondsSynopsis On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate. The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees. Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp's mechanic - and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron's whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor's early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen. Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house. As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor's party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess - a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen. Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron. As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away. [edit] Continuity The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 2 November 1987 24:47 5.3 "Part Two" 9 November 1987 24:23 5.1 "Part Three" 16 November 1987 24:22 5.4 [2][3][4] Preproduction This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5]. Casting Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who. Production The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set. Commercial releases The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009. In print Doctor Who book Delta and the Bannermen Series Target novelisations Release number 131 Writer Malcolm Kohll Publisher Target Books Cover artist Alister Pearson ISBN 0-426-20333-X Release date 19 January 1989 Preceded by Paradise Towers Followed by The War Machines A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.
-
TDP 092: Delta and the Bannermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 7 secondsSynopsis On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate. The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees. Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp's mechanic - and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron's whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor's early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen. Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house. As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor's party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess - a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen. Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron. As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away. [edit] Continuity The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 2 November 1987 24:47 5.3 "Part Two" 9 November 1987 24:23 5.1 "Part Three" 16 November 1987 24:22 5.4 [2][3][4] Preproduction This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5]. Casting Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who. Production The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set. Commercial releases The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009. In print Doctor Who book Delta and the Bannermen Series Target novelisations Release number 131 Writer Malcolm Kohll Publisher Target Books Cover artist Alister Pearson ISBN 0-426-20333-X Release date 19 January 1989 Preceded by Paradise Towers Followed by The War Machines A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.
-
TDP 092: Delta and the Bannermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 7 secondsSynopsis On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate. The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees. Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp's mechanic - and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron's whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor's early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen. Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house. As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor's party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess - a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen. Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron. As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away. [edit] Continuity The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 2 November 1987 24:47 5.3 "Part Two" 9 November 1987 24:23 5.1 "Part Three" 16 November 1987 24:22 5.4 [2][3][4] Preproduction This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5]. Casting Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who. Production The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set. Commercial releases The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009. In print Doctor Who book Delta and the Bannermen Series Target novelisations Release number 131 Writer Malcolm Kohll Publisher Target Books Cover artist Alister Pearson ISBN 0-426-20333-X Release date 19 January 1989 Preceded by Paradise Towers Followed by The War Machines A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.
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TDP 091: Planet of the Dead and Fab Whostrology
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 3 seconds"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005. The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials. "Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props--most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus--to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative. Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88[3]--considered excellent--but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring. //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> Plot The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win PS10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus. As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore. The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor: You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times. --Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"[4] As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises. Production Writing and casting Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories--Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories--and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept--such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"--and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.[7][8] Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word--"joyous"--was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.[5] Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship--rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series--while still being a unique companion:[9] It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control - the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure. --James Strong, Digital Spy interview.[9] Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.[6][10] The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker--characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"--and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer: David TennantReally, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.Julie GardnerAnd as we know, David, he really does knock four times.TennantYeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!GardnerBut when you do figure it out, it's a sad day. --David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"[8] Filming The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008--four days before scheduled--because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.[14] Production began on 19 January in Wales.[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.[8] Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,[location 1] which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown[location 2] was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,[location 3] which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.[8] The 200 bus--so named after the episode's landmark--in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it. Filming in Dubai[location 4] took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff--which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule--the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.[7][8][17][18] James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine: One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph--and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert--yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def. --James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.[14] A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise--rather than minimise--effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.[8] The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite--a 360-degree background image--, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.[7][8] 200th story "Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial--arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him--and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark--specifically, the bus number is 200[20]--and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.[21] EUBroadcast and reception Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[25] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance--comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders--and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.[26] Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story": POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever. It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat. --Charlie Jane Anders, io9[27] She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[27] Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".[28] Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".[29] DVD and Blu-Ray release "Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.[31]
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TDP 091: Planet of the Dead and Fab Whostrology
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 3 seconds"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005. The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials. "Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props--most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus--to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative. Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88[3]--considered excellent--but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring. //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> Plot The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win PS10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus. As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore. The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor: You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times. --Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"[4] As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises. Production Writing and casting Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories--Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories--and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept--such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"--and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.[7][8] Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word--"joyous"--was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.[5] Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship--rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series--while still being a unique companion:[9] It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control - the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure. --James Strong, Digital Spy interview.[9] Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.[6][10] The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker--characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"--and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer: David TennantReally, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.Julie GardnerAnd as we know, David, he really does knock four times.TennantYeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!GardnerBut when you do figure it out, it's a sad day. --David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"[8] Filming The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008--four days before scheduled--because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.[14] Production began on 19 January in Wales.[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.[8] Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,[location 1] which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown[location 2] was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,[location 3] which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.[8] The 200 bus--so named after the episode's landmark--in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it. Filming in Dubai[location 4] took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff--which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule--the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.[7][8][17][18] James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine: One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph--and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert--yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def. --James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.[14] A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise--rather than minimise--effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.[8] The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite--a 360-degree background image--, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.[7][8] 200th story "Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial--arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him--and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark--specifically, the bus number is 200[20]--and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.[21] EUBroadcast and reception Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[25] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance--comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders--and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.[26] Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story": POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever. It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat. --Charlie Jane Anders, io9[27] She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[27] Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".[28] Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".[29] DVD and Blu-Ray release "Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.[31]
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TDP 092: Delta and the Bannermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 7 secondsSynopsis On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate. The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees. Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp's mechanic - and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron's whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor's early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen. Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house. As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor's party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess - a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen. Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron. As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away. [edit] Continuity The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 2 November 1987 24:47 5.3 "Part Two" 9 November 1987 24:23 5.1 "Part Three" 16 November 1987 24:22 5.4 [2][3][4] Preproduction This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5]. Casting Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who. Production The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set. Commercial releases The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009. In print Doctor Who book Delta and the Bannermen Series Target novelisations Release number 131 Writer Malcolm Kohll Publisher Target Books Cover artist Alister Pearson ISBN 0-426-20333-X Release date 19 January 1989 Preceded by Paradise Towers Followed by The War Machines A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.
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TDP 091: Planet of the Dead and Fab Whostrology
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 3 seconds"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005. The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials. "Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props--most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus--to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative. Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88[3]--considered excellent--but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring. //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> Plot The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win PS10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus. As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore. The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor: You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times. --Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"[4] As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises. Production Writing and casting Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories--Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories--and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept--such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"--and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.[7][8] Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word--"joyous"--was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.[5] Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship--rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series--while still being a unique companion:[9] It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control - the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure. --James Strong, Digital Spy interview.[9] Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.[6][10] The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker--characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"--and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer: David TennantReally, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.Julie GardnerAnd as we know, David, he really does knock four times.TennantYeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!GardnerBut when you do figure it out, it's a sad day. --David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"[8] Filming The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008--four days before scheduled--because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.[14] Production began on 19 January in Wales.[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.[8] Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,[location 1] which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown[location 2] was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,[location 3] which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.[8] The 200 bus--so named after the episode's landmark--in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it. Filming in Dubai[location 4] took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff--which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule--the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.[7][8][17][18] James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine: One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph--and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert--yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def. --James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.[14] A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise--rather than minimise--effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.[8] The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite--a 360-degree background image--, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.[7][8] 200th story "Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial--arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him--and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark--specifically, the bus number is 200[20]--and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.[21] EUBroadcast and reception Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[25] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance--comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders--and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.[26] Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story": POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever. It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat. --Charlie Jane Anders, io9[27] She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[27] Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".[28] Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".[29] DVD and Blu-Ray release "Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.[31]
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TDP 091: Planet of the Dead and Fab Whostrology
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 3 seconds"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005. The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials. "Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props--most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus--to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative. Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88[3]--considered excellent--but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring. //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> Plot The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win PS10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus. As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore. The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor: You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times. --Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"[4] As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises. Production Writing and casting Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories--Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories--and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept--such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"--and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.[7][8] Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word--"joyous"--was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.[5] Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship--rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series--while still being a unique companion:[9] It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control - the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure. --James Strong, Digital Spy interview.[9] Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.[6][10] The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker--characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"--and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer: David TennantReally, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.Julie GardnerAnd as we know, David, he really does knock four times.TennantYeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!GardnerBut when you do figure it out, it's a sad day. --David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"[8] Filming The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008--four days before scheduled--because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.[14] Production began on 19 January in Wales.[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.[8] Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,[location 1] which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown[location 2] was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,[location 3] which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.[8] The 200 bus--so named after the episode's landmark--in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it. Filming in Dubai[location 4] took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff--which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule--the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.[7][8][17][18] James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine: One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph--and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert--yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def. --James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.[14] A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise--rather than minimise--effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.[8] The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite--a 360-degree background image--, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.[7][8] 200th story "Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial--arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him--and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark--specifically, the bus number is 200[20]--and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.[21] EUBroadcast and reception Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[25] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance--comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders--and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.[26] Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story": POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever. It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat. --Charlie Jane Anders, io9[27] She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[27] Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".[28] Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".[29] DVD and Blu-Ray release "Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.[31]
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TDP 091: Planet of the Dead and Fab Whostrology
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 19 minutes and 3 seconds"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005. The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials. "Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props--most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus--to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative. Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88[3]--considered excellent--but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring. //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> Plot The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win PS10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus. As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore. The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor: You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times. --Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"[4] As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises. Production Writing and casting Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories--Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories--and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept--such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"--and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.[7][8] Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word--"joyous"--was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.[5] Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship--rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series--while still being a unique companion:[9] It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control - the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure. --James Strong, Digital Spy interview.[9] Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.[6][10] The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker--characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"--and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer: David TennantReally, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.Julie GardnerAnd as we know, David, he really does knock four times.TennantYeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!GardnerBut when you do figure it out, it's a sad day. --David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"[8] Filming The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008--four days before scheduled--because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.[14] Production began on 19 January in Wales.[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.[8] Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,[location 1] which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown[location 2] was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,[location 3] which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.[8] The 200 bus--so named after the episode's landmark--in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it. Filming in Dubai[location 4] took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff--which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule--the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.[7][8][17][18] James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine: One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph--and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert--yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def. --James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.[14] A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise--rather than minimise--effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.[8] The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite--a 360-degree background image--, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.[7][8] 200th story "Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial--arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him--and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark--specifically, the bus number is 200[20]--and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.[21] EUBroadcast and reception Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[25] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance--comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders--and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.[26] Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story": POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever. It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat. --Charlie Jane Anders, io9[27] She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[27] Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".[28] Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".[29] DVD and Blu-Ray release "Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.[31]
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TDP 89: The Deadly Assassin
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes and 54 secondsSynopsis The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings. [edit] Plot The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered. As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up. Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows. Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off. The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly. At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin. The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events. The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back. The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well. The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train. The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality. In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor's adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction. Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen. Fearing that his protege might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form. Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes. In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link. Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor. However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle. The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey. Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred's staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost. The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS - disguised as a grandfather clock - and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again. [edit] Cast notes Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks. [edit] Continuity This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned. [edit] Notable additions This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe). [edit] Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 30 October 1976 21:13 11.8 "Part Two" 6 November 1976 24:44 12.1 "Part Three" 13 November 1976 24:20 13 "Part Four" 20 November 1976 24:30 11.8 [3][4][5] Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3. [edit] Outside references The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.See also: Simulated reality [edit] In print Doctor Who book Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin Series Target novelisations Release number 19 Writer Terrance Dicks Publisher Target Books Cover artist Mike Little ISBN 0-426-11965-7 Release date 20 October 1977 Preceded by Doctor Who and the Mutants Followed by Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin. [edit] Broadcast This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 -- where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him -- came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release. [edit] VHS and DVD release This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.
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TDP 89: The Deadly Assassin
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes and 54 secondsSynopsis The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings. [edit] Plot The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered. As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up. Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows. Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off. The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly. At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin. The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events. The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back. The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well. The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train. The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality. In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor's adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction. Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen. Fearing that his protege might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form. Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes. In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link. Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor. However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle. The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey. Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred's staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost. The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS - disguised as a grandfather clock - and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again. [edit] Cast notes Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks. [edit] Continuity This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned. [edit] Notable additions This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe). [edit] Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 30 October 1976 21:13 11.8 "Part Two" 6 November 1976 24:44 12.1 "Part Three" 13 November 1976 24:20 13 "Part Four" 20 November 1976 24:30 11.8 [3][4][5] Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3. [edit] Outside references The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.See also: Simulated reality [edit] In print Doctor Who book Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin Series Target novelisations Release number 19 Writer Terrance Dicks Publisher Target Books Cover artist Mike Little ISBN 0-426-11965-7 Release date 20 October 1977 Preceded by Doctor Who and the Mutants Followed by Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin. [edit] Broadcast This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 -- where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him -- came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release. [edit] VHS and DVD release This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.
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TDP 89: The Deadly Assassin
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes and 54 secondsSynopsis The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings. [edit] Plot The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered. As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up. Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows. Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off. The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly. At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin. The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events. The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back. The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well. The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train. The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality. In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor's adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction. Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen. Fearing that his protege might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form. Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes. In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link. Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor. However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle. The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey. Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred's staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost. The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS - disguised as a grandfather clock - and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again. [edit] Cast notes Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks. [edit] Continuity This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned. [edit] Notable additions This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe). [edit] Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 30 October 1976 21:13 11.8 "Part Two" 6 November 1976 24:44 12.1 "Part Three" 13 November 1976 24:20 13 "Part Four" 20 November 1976 24:30 11.8 [3][4][5] Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3. [edit] Outside references The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.See also: Simulated reality [edit] In print Doctor Who book Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin Series Target novelisations Release number 19 Writer Terrance Dicks Publisher Target Books Cover artist Mike Little ISBN 0-426-11965-7 Release date 20 October 1977 Preceded by Doctor Who and the Mutants Followed by Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin. [edit] Broadcast This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 -- where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him -- came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release. [edit] VHS and DVD release This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.
-
TDP 89: The Deadly Assassin
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes and 54 secondsSynopsis The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings. [edit] Plot The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered. As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up. Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows. Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off. The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly. At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin. The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events. The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back. The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well. The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train. The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality. In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor's adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction. Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen. Fearing that his protege might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form. Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes. In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link. Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor. However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle. The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey. Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred's staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost. The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS - disguised as a grandfather clock - and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again. [edit] Cast notes Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks. [edit] Continuity This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned. [edit] Notable additions This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe). [edit] Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 30 October 1976 21:13 11.8 "Part Two" 6 November 1976 24:44 12.1 "Part Three" 13 November 1976 24:20 13 "Part Four" 20 November 1976 24:30 11.8 [3][4][5] Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3. [edit] Outside references The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.See also: Simulated reality [edit] In print Doctor Who book Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin Series Target novelisations Release number 19 Writer Terrance Dicks Publisher Target Books Cover artist Mike Little ISBN 0-426-11965-7 Release date 20 October 1977 Preceded by Doctor Who and the Mutants Followed by Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin. [edit] Broadcast This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 -- where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him -- came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release. [edit] VHS and DVD release This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.
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TDP 89: The Deadly Assassin
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes and 54 secondsSynopsis The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings. [edit] Plot The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered. As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up. Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows. Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off. The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly. At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin. The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events. The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back. The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well. The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train. The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality. In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor's adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction. Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen. Fearing that his protege might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form. Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes. In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link. Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor. However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle. The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey. Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred's staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost. The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS - disguised as a grandfather clock - and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again. [edit] Cast notes Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks. [edit] Continuity This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned. [edit] Notable additions This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe). [edit] Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part One" 30 October 1976 21:13 11.8 "Part Two" 6 November 1976 24:44 12.1 "Part Three" 13 November 1976 24:20 13 "Part Four" 20 November 1976 24:30 11.8 [3][4][5] Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3. [edit] Outside references The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.See also: Simulated reality [edit] In print Doctor Who book Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin Series Target novelisations Release number 19 Writer Terrance Dicks Publisher Target Books Cover artist Mike Little ISBN 0-426-11965-7 Release date 20 October 1977 Preceded by Doctor Who and the Mutants Followed by Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin. [edit] Broadcast This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm. The cliffhanger to Episode 3 -- where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him -- came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release. [edit] VHS and DVD release This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.
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TDP 88: Red Dwarf and Season Six B
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes and 48 secondsSeason 6B From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme. Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way. Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982). Contents [hide] 1 Continuity problems2 Season 6B3 Adoption in tie-in fiction 3.1 BBC website 4 Footnotes5 References6 External links //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Continuity problems The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another. Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.[1] Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span). Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era. [edit] Season 6B To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe. The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games. During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B -- the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.[2]) Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. [edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea. In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent. To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents. At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors. [edit] BBC website The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear. [edit] Footnotes ^ The actual explanation is because the scene was a hasty re-write. The phantom companions were originally supposed to be Zoe and Victoria, and the illusion of Victoria would have given the game away by addressing Lethbridge-Stewart as "Brigadier", because in the television series she encountered him on only one occasion, when he was but a Colonel. However, actress Deborah Watling was unable to schedule time for an appearance, and Frazer Hines as Jamie was written in when Hines became available. See The Five Doctors at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel).^ a b Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Season 6 (b)" (reprinted on BBC Doctor Who website). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 105-107. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] References Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] External links Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC websiteThe WHOniverse's timelineDoctor Who - The Complete Adventures timelineOutpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)
-
TDP 88: Red Dwarf and Season Six B
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes and 48 secondsSeason 6B From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme. Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way. Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982). Contents [hide] 1 Continuity problems2 Season 6B3 Adoption in tie-in fiction 3.1 BBC website 4 Footnotes5 References6 External links //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Continuity problems The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another. Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.[1] Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span). Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era. [edit] Season 6B To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe. The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games. During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B -- the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.[2]) Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. [edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea. In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent. To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents. At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors. [edit] BBC website The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear. [edit] Footnotes ^ The actual explanation is because the scene was a hasty re-write. The phantom companions were originally supposed to be Zoe and Victoria, and the illusion of Victoria would have given the game away by addressing Lethbridge-Stewart as "Brigadier", because in the television series she encountered him on only one occasion, when he was but a Colonel. However, actress Deborah Watling was unable to schedule time for an appearance, and Frazer Hines as Jamie was written in when Hines became available. See The Five Doctors at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel).^ a b Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Season 6 (b)" (reprinted on BBC Doctor Who website). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 105-107. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] References Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] External links Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC websiteThe WHOniverse's timelineDoctor Who - The Complete Adventures timelineOutpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)
-
TDP 88: Red Dwarf and Season Six B
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes and 48 secondsSeason 6B From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme. Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way. Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982). Contents [hide] 1 Continuity problems2 Season 6B3 Adoption in tie-in fiction 3.1 BBC website 4 Footnotes5 References6 External links //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Continuity problems The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another. Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.[1] Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span). Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era. [edit] Season 6B To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe. The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games. During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B -- the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.[2]) Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. [edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea. In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent. To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents. At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors. [edit] BBC website The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear. [edit] Footnotes ^ The actual explanation is because the scene was a hasty re-write. The phantom companions were originally supposed to be Zoe and Victoria, and the illusion of Victoria would have given the game away by addressing Lethbridge-Stewart as "Brigadier", because in the television series she encountered him on only one occasion, when he was but a Colonel. However, actress Deborah Watling was unable to schedule time for an appearance, and Frazer Hines as Jamie was written in when Hines became available. See The Five Doctors at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel).^ a b Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Season 6 (b)" (reprinted on BBC Doctor Who website). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 105-107. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] References Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] External links Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC websiteThe WHOniverse's timelineDoctor Who - The Complete Adventures timelineOutpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)
-
TDP 88: Red Dwarf and Season Six B
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes and 48 secondsSeason 6B From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme. Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way. Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982). Contents [hide] 1 Continuity problems2 Season 6B3 Adoption in tie-in fiction 3.1 BBC website 4 Footnotes5 References6 External links //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Continuity problems The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another. Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.[1] Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span). Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era. [edit] Season 6B To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe. The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games. During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B -- the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.[2]) Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. [edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea. In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent. To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents. At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors. [edit] BBC website The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear. [edit] Footnotes ^ The actual explanation is because the scene was a hasty re-write. The phantom companions were originally supposed to be Zoe and Victoria, and the illusion of Victoria would have given the game away by addressing Lethbridge-Stewart as "Brigadier", because in the television series she encountered him on only one occasion, when he was but a Colonel. However, actress Deborah Watling was unable to schedule time for an appearance, and Frazer Hines as Jamie was written in when Hines became available. See The Five Doctors at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel).^ a b Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Season 6 (b)" (reprinted on BBC Doctor Who website). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 105-107. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] References Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] External links Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC websiteThe WHOniverse's timelineDoctor Who - The Complete Adventures timelineOutpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)
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TDP 88: Red Dwarf and Season Six B
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes and 48 secondsSeason 6B From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme. Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way. Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982). Contents [hide] 1 Continuity problems2 Season 6B3 Adoption in tie-in fiction 3.1 BBC website 4 Footnotes5 References6 External links //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Continuity problems The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another. Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.[1] Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span). Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era. [edit] Season 6B To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe. The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games. During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B -- the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.[2]) Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. [edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea. In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent. To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents. At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors. [edit] BBC website The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear. [edit] Footnotes ^ The actual explanation is because the scene was a hasty re-write. The phantom companions were originally supposed to be Zoe and Victoria, and the illusion of Victoria would have given the game away by addressing Lethbridge-Stewart as "Brigadier", because in the television series she encountered him on only one occasion, when he was but a Colonel. However, actress Deborah Watling was unable to schedule time for an appearance, and Frazer Hines as Jamie was written in when Hines became available. See The Five Doctors at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel).^ a b Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Season 6 (b)" (reprinted on BBC Doctor Who website). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 105-107. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] References Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5. [edit] External links Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC websiteThe WHOniverse's timelineDoctor Who - The Complete Adventures timelineOutpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)
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TDP 86: Cyberman Histroy 101
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 17 minutes and 47 secondsP The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest. A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King. Contents [hide] 1 Physical characteristics 1.1 Costume details1.2 Voice 2 Cybermen variants3 Technology4 Cybermats5 History 5.1 Conceptual history5.2 History within the show 5.2.1 Origins5.2.2 The Earth invasions5.2.3 The Cyber-Wars5.2.4 Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf5.2.5 Torchwood Three Incident5.2.6 The CyberKing 6 Other appearances 6.1 Spin-offs 7 Major appearances 7.1 Television7.2 Stage plays7.3 Audio plays7.4 Novels7.5 Games 8 References9 Footnotes //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Physical characteristics An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion"). It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures". The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman"). Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading". This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.[citation needed] Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible -- they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons. [edit] Costume details The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.[3] The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen". A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005). Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles. Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen. A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast. The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems. The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman. [edit] Voice Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968). Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech. [edit] Cybermen variants Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader. The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser. [edit] Technology Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself. The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth. The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. [edit] Cybermats The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves. The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate. The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were. In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats. [edit] History [edit] Conceptual history The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism". In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who. Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs. The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch. [edit] History within the show [edit] Origins Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary. On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians -- now Cybermen -- became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts. The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point. [edit] The Earth invasions The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed. In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis). In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975). By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase. [edit] The Cyber-Wars Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria. This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him. The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos. The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen). A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role. [edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch. These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever. [edit] Torchwood Three Incident Lisa the "Cyberwoman" In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones. Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team. [edit] The CyberKing A small handful of the Cybermen t
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TDP 86: Cyberman Histroy 101
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 17 minutes and 47 secondsP The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest. A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King. Contents [hide] 1 Physical characteristics 1.1 Costume details1.2 Voice 2 Cybermen variants3 Technology4 Cybermats5 History 5.1 Conceptual history5.2 History within the show 5.2.1 Origins5.2.2 The Earth invasions5.2.3 The Cyber-Wars5.2.4 Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf5.2.5 Torchwood Three Incident5.2.6 The CyberKing 6 Other appearances 6.1 Spin-offs 7 Major appearances 7.1 Television7.2 Stage plays7.3 Audio plays7.4 Novels7.5 Games 8 References9 Footnotes //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Physical characteristics An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion"). It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures". The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman"). Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading". This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.[citation needed] Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible -- they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons. [edit] Costume details The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.[3] The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen". A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005). Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles. Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen. A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast. The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems. The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman. [edit] Voice Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968). Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech. [edit] Cybermen variants Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader. The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser. [edit] Technology Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself. The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth. The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. [edit] Cybermats The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves. The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate. The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were. In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats. [edit] History [edit] Conceptual history The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism". In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who. Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs. The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch. [edit] History within the show [edit] Origins Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary. On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians -- now Cybermen -- became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts. The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point. [edit] The Earth invasions The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed. In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis). In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975). By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase. [edit] The Cyber-Wars Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria. This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him. The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos. The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen). A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role. [edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch. These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever. [edit] Torchwood Three Incident Lisa the "Cyberwoman" In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones. Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team. [edit] The CyberKing A small handful of the Cybermen t
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TDP 86: Cyberman Histroy 101
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 17 minutes and 47 secondsP The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest. A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King. Contents [hide] 1 Physical characteristics 1.1 Costume details1.2 Voice 2 Cybermen variants3 Technology4 Cybermats5 History 5.1 Conceptual history5.2 History within the show 5.2.1 Origins5.2.2 The Earth invasions5.2.3 The Cyber-Wars5.2.4 Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf5.2.5 Torchwood Three Incident5.2.6 The CyberKing 6 Other appearances 6.1 Spin-offs 7 Major appearances 7.1 Television7.2 Stage plays7.3 Audio plays7.4 Novels7.5 Games 8 References9 Footnotes //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Physical characteristics An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion"). It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures". The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman"). Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading". This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.[citation needed] Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible -- they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons. [edit] Costume details The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.[3] The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen". A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005). Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles. Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen. A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast. The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems. The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman. [edit] Voice Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968). Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech. [edit] Cybermen variants Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader. The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser. [edit] Technology Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself. The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth. The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. [edit] Cybermats The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves. The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate. The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were. In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats. [edit] History [edit] Conceptual history The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism". In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who. Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs. The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch. [edit] History within the show [edit] Origins Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary. On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians -- now Cybermen -- became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts. The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point. [edit] The Earth invasions The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed. In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis). In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975). By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase. [edit] The Cyber-Wars Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria. This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him. The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos. The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen). A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role. [edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch. These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever. [edit] Torchwood Three Incident Lisa the "Cyberwoman" In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones. Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team. [edit] The CyberKing A small handful of the Cybermen t
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TDP 86: Cyberman Histroy 101
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 17 minutes and 47 secondsP The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest. A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King. Contents [hide] 1 Physical characteristics 1.1 Costume details1.2 Voice 2 Cybermen variants3 Technology4 Cybermats5 History 5.1 Conceptual history5.2 History within the show 5.2.1 Origins5.2.2 The Earth invasions5.2.3 The Cyber-Wars5.2.4 Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf5.2.5 Torchwood Three Incident5.2.6 The CyberKing 6 Other appearances 6.1 Spin-offs 7 Major appearances 7.1 Television7.2 Stage plays7.3 Audio plays7.4 Novels7.5 Games 8 References9 Footnotes //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Physical characteristics An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion"). It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures". The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman"). Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading". This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.[citation needed] Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible -- they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons. [edit] Costume details The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.[3] The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen". A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005). Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles. Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen. A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast. The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems. The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman. [edit] Voice Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968). Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech. [edit] Cybermen variants Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader. The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser. [edit] Technology Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself. The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth. The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. [edit] Cybermats The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves. The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate. The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were. In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats. [edit] History [edit] Conceptual history The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism". In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who. Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs. The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch. [edit] History within the show [edit] Origins Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary. On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians -- now Cybermen -- became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts. The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point. [edit] The Earth invasions The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed. In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis). In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975). By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase. [edit] The Cyber-Wars Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria. This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him. The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos. The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen). A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role. [edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch. These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever. [edit] Torchwood Three Incident Lisa the "Cyberwoman" In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones. Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team. [edit] The CyberKing A small handful of the Cybermen t
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TDP 86: Cyberman Histroy 101
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 17 minutes and 47 secondsP The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest. A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King. Contents [hide] 1 Physical characteristics 1.1 Costume details1.2 Voice 2 Cybermen variants3 Technology4 Cybermats5 History 5.1 Conceptual history5.2 History within the show 5.2.1 Origins5.2.2 The Earth invasions5.2.3 The Cyber-Wars5.2.4 Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf5.2.5 Torchwood Three Incident5.2.6 The CyberKing 6 Other appearances 6.1 Spin-offs 7 Major appearances 7.1 Television7.2 Stage plays7.3 Audio plays7.4 Novels7.5 Games 8 References9 Footnotes //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> [edit] Physical characteristics An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion"). It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures". The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman"). Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading". This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.[citation needed] Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible -- they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons. [edit] Costume details The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.[3] The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen". A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005). Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles. Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen. A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast. The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems. The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman. [edit] Voice Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968). Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech. [edit] Cybermen variants Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader. The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser. [edit] Technology Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself. The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth. The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. [edit] Cybermats The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves. The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate. The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were. In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats. [edit] History [edit] Conceptual history The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism". In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who. Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs. The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch. [edit] History within the show [edit] Origins Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary. On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians -- now Cybermen -- became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts. The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point. [edit] The Earth invasions The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed. In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis). In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975). By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase. [edit] The Cyber-Wars Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria. This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him. The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos. The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen). A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role. [edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch. These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever. [edit] Torchwood Three Incident Lisa the "Cyberwoman" In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones. Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team. [edit] The CyberKing A small handful of the Cybermen t
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TDP 85; Attack of the Cybermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 50 secondsSynopsis The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him. [edit] Plot In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death. The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her. Lytton is organising what he claims is a PS10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne... The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this. The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off. Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone. Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing. The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole. In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith... Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos. On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape. The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer... Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed. Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS. The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri... The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter. The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons... Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman. The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed... Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere. Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her. Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do. Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam... The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body. As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton Continuity This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.[1]
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TDP 85; Attack of the Cybermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 50 secondsSynopsis The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him. [edit] Plot In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death. The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her. Lytton is organising what he claims is a PS10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne... The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this. The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off. Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone. Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing. The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole. In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith... Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos. On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape. The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer... Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed. Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS. The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri... The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter. The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons... Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman. The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed... Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere. Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her. Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do. Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam... The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body. As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton Continuity This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.[1]
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TDP 85; Attack of the Cybermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 50 secondsSynopsis The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him. [edit] Plot In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death. The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her. Lytton is organising what he claims is a PS10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne... The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this. The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off. Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone. Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing. The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole. In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith... Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos. On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape. The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer... Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed. Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS. The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri... The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter. The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons... Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman. The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed... Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere. Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her. Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do. Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam... The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body. As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton Continuity This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.[1]
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TDP 85; Attack of the Cybermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 50 secondsSynopsis The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him. [edit] Plot In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death. The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her. Lytton is organising what he claims is a PS10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne... The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this. The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off. Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone. Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing. The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole. In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith... Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos. On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape. The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer... Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed. Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS. The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri... The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter. The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons... Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman. The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed... Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere. Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her. Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do. Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam... The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body. As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton Continuity This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.[1]
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TDP 85; Attack of the Cybermen
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 50 secondsSynopsis The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him. [edit] Plot In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death. The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her. Lytton is organising what he claims is a PS10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne... The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this. The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off. Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone. Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing. The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole. In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith... Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos. On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape. The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer... Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed. Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS. The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri... The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter. The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons... Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman. The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed... Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere. Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her. Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do. Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam... The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body. As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton Continuity This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.[1]
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TDP 84: Orbis and Chaos Pool Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes and 24 secondsORBISStarring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon (Duration: 60' approx) CAST: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos) SYNOPSIS: The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.Could it be that Lucie's days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction. AUTHOR: Alan Barnes andNicholas BriggsDIRECTOR: Nicholas BriggsSOUND DESIGN: Andy Hardwick MUSIC: Andy Hardwick COVER ART: Simon Holub NUMBER OF DISCS: 1 CD RECORDED DATE: 2nd October 2008RELEASE DATE: 31st March 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 8Y/FISBN:978-1-84435-393-4 Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARDWith CIARA JANSON as AMY(Duration: 120' Approx)CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Lalla Ward (Madam President), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Ben Jones (Captain Pargrave), Toby Longworth (Commander Hectocot), Cate Hamer (The Voice)SYNOPSIS:The ageless leader of a dying race believes that salvation lies within The Chaos Pool, a place that even the Guardians of Time have been unable to locate. Meanwhile Commander Hectocot and his Teuthoidian followers move in for the kill - again and again and again...Two different races from opposite ends of Time - so how can they co-exist?In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Amy become caught in the crossfire. As the end of everything approaches, old friends and enemies reveal themselves and the final battle between the forces of Chaos and Order ignites...AUTHOR: Peter AnghelidesDIRECTOR:Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:Simon RobinsonMUSIC:Jamie RobertsonCOVER ART:Alex MallinsonNUMBER OF DISCS:2RECORDED DATE:22 & 23 April 2008RELEASE DATE:30 March 2009PRODUCTION CODE:6R/C ISBN:978-1-84435-365-1 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights << 118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights | 120. Doctor Who - The Magic Mousetrap >>
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TDP 84: Orbis and Chaos Pool Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes and 24 secondsORBISStarring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon (Duration: 60' approx) CAST: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos) SYNOPSIS: The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.Could it be that Lucie's days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction. AUTHOR: Alan Barnes andNicholas BriggsDIRECTOR: Nicholas BriggsSOUND DESIGN: Andy Hardwick MUSIC: Andy Hardwick COVER ART: Simon Holub NUMBER OF DISCS: 1 CD RECORDED DATE: 2nd October 2008RELEASE DATE: 31st March 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 8Y/FISBN:978-1-84435-393-4 Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARDWith CIARA JANSON as AMY(Duration: 120' Approx)CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Lalla Ward (Madam President), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Ben Jones (Captain Pargrave), Toby Longworth (Commander Hectocot), Cate Hamer (The Voice)SYNOPSIS:The ageless leader of a dying race believes that salvation lies within The Chaos Pool, a place that even the Guardians of Time have been unable to locate. Meanwhile Commander Hectocot and his Teuthoidian followers move in for the kill - again and again and again...Two different races from opposite ends of Time - so how can they co-exist?In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Amy become caught in the crossfire. As the end of everything approaches, old friends and enemies reveal themselves and the final battle between the forces of Chaos and Order ignites...AUTHOR: Peter AnghelidesDIRECTOR:Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:Simon RobinsonMUSIC:Jamie RobertsonCOVER ART:Alex MallinsonNUMBER OF DISCS:2RECORDED DATE:22 & 23 April 2008RELEASE DATE:30 March 2009PRODUCTION CODE:6R/C ISBN:978-1-84435-365-1 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights << 118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights | 120. Doctor Who - The Magic Mousetrap >>
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TDP 84: Orbis and Chaos Pool Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes and 24 secondsORBISStarring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon (Duration: 60' approx) CAST: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos) SYNOPSIS: The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.Could it be that Lucie's days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction. AUTHOR: Alan Barnes andNicholas BriggsDIRECTOR: Nicholas BriggsSOUND DESIGN: Andy Hardwick MUSIC: Andy Hardwick COVER ART: Simon Holub NUMBER OF DISCS: 1 CD RECORDED DATE: 2nd October 2008RELEASE DATE: 31st March 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 8Y/FISBN:978-1-84435-393-4 Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARDWith CIARA JANSON as AMY(Duration: 120' Approx)CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Lalla Ward (Madam President), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Ben Jones (Captain Pargrave), Toby Longworth (Commander Hectocot), Cate Hamer (The Voice)SYNOPSIS:The ageless leader of a dying race believes that salvation lies within The Chaos Pool, a place that even the Guardians of Time have been unable to locate. Meanwhile Commander Hectocot and his Teuthoidian followers move in for the kill - again and again and again...Two different races from opposite ends of Time - so how can they co-exist?In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Amy become caught in the crossfire. As the end of everything approaches, old friends and enemies reveal themselves and the final battle between the forces of Chaos and Order ignites...AUTHOR: Peter AnghelidesDIRECTOR:Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:Simon RobinsonMUSIC:Jamie RobertsonCOVER ART:Alex MallinsonNUMBER OF DISCS:2RECORDED DATE:22 & 23 April 2008RELEASE DATE:30 March 2009PRODUCTION CODE:6R/C ISBN:978-1-84435-365-1 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights << 118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights | 120. Doctor Who - The Magic Mousetrap >>
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TDP 84: Orbis and Chaos Pool Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes and 24 secondsORBISStarring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon (Duration: 60' approx) CAST: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos) SYNOPSIS: The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.Could it be that Lucie's days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction. AUTHOR: Alan Barnes andNicholas BriggsDIRECTOR: Nicholas BriggsSOUND DESIGN: Andy Hardwick MUSIC: Andy Hardwick COVER ART: Simon Holub NUMBER OF DISCS: 1 CD RECORDED DATE: 2nd October 2008RELEASE DATE: 31st March 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 8Y/FISBN:978-1-84435-393-4 Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARDWith CIARA JANSON as AMY(Duration: 120' Approx)CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Lalla Ward (Madam President), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Ben Jones (Captain Pargrave), Toby Longworth (Commander Hectocot), Cate Hamer (The Voice)SYNOPSIS:The ageless leader of a dying race believes that salvation lies within The Chaos Pool, a place that even the Guardians of Time have been unable to locate. Meanwhile Commander Hectocot and his Teuthoidian followers move in for the kill - again and again and again...Two different races from opposite ends of Time - so how can they co-exist?In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Amy become caught in the crossfire. As the end of everything approaches, old friends and enemies reveal themselves and the final battle between the forces of Chaos and Order ignites...AUTHOR: Peter AnghelidesDIRECTOR:Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:Simon RobinsonMUSIC:Jamie RobertsonCOVER ART:Alex MallinsonNUMBER OF DISCS:2RECORDED DATE:22 & 23 April 2008RELEASE DATE:30 March 2009PRODUCTION CODE:6R/C ISBN:978-1-84435-365-1 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights << 118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights | 120. Doctor Who - The Magic Mousetrap >>
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TDP 83: The Destroyer of Delights Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring DAVID TROUGHTON and JASON WATKINSWith CIARA JANSON as AMY (Duration: 120' Approx) CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Jason Watkins (Legate of the Caliph), Jess Robinson (Nisrin), Bryan Pilkington (Prince Omar), Paul Chahidi (Hason), Will Barton (The Djinni), David Peart (The Vizier) SYNOPSIS: "You will be always looking in the wrong place. I have searched through all of Time and I cannot find it."The search for the Key to Time has stalled: the next segment does not appear to exist anywhere in the Universe. Forced into a temporary alliance with one of his greatest enemies, the Doctor suggests a course of action that is a validation of chaos itself.Thrown at random across Space and Time, the Doctor and Amy arrive in 9th Century Sudan, where the greedy Lord Cassim is hoarding gold from the Legate of the Caliph. But why does Cassim look so familiar? What is the mysterious Djinni that lives out in the desert? And why does it need so much treasure? AUTHOR: Jonathan Clements DIRECTOR: Lisa Bowerman SOUND DESIGN: Simon Robinson MUSIC: Simon Robinson COVER ART: Alex Mallinson NUMBER OF DISCS: 2 RECORDED DATE: 21 & 22 April 2008 RELEASE DATE: 28 February 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 6R/B ISBN: 978-1-84435-364-4 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT: Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar << 117. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar | 119. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Chaos Pool >>
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TDP 84: Orbis and Chaos Pool Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes and 24 secondsORBISStarring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon (Duration: 60' approx) CAST: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos) SYNOPSIS: The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.Could it be that Lucie's days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction. AUTHOR: Alan Barnes andNicholas BriggsDIRECTOR: Nicholas BriggsSOUND DESIGN: Andy Hardwick MUSIC: Andy Hardwick COVER ART: Simon Holub NUMBER OF DISCS: 1 CD RECORDED DATE: 2nd October 2008RELEASE DATE: 31st March 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 8Y/FISBN:978-1-84435-393-4 Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARDWith CIARA JANSON as AMY(Duration: 120' Approx)CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Lalla Ward (Madam President), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Ben Jones (Captain Pargrave), Toby Longworth (Commander Hectocot), Cate Hamer (The Voice)SYNOPSIS:The ageless leader of a dying race believes that salvation lies within The Chaos Pool, a place that even the Guardians of Time have been unable to locate. Meanwhile Commander Hectocot and his Teuthoidian followers move in for the kill - again and again and again...Two different races from opposite ends of Time - so how can they co-exist?In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Amy become caught in the crossfire. As the end of everything approaches, old friends and enemies reveal themselves and the final battle between the forces of Chaos and Order ignites...AUTHOR: Peter AnghelidesDIRECTOR:Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:Simon RobinsonMUSIC:Jamie RobertsonCOVER ART:Alex MallinsonNUMBER OF DISCS:2RECORDED DATE:22 & 23 April 2008RELEASE DATE:30 March 2009PRODUCTION CODE:6R/C ISBN:978-1-84435-365-1 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights << 118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights | 120. Doctor Who - The Magic Mousetrap >>
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TDP 83: The Destroyer of Delights Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring DAVID TROUGHTON and JASON WATKINSWith CIARA JANSON as AMY (Duration: 120' Approx) CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Jason Watkins (Legate of the Caliph), Jess Robinson (Nisrin), Bryan Pilkington (Prince Omar), Paul Chahidi (Hason), Will Barton (The Djinni), David Peart (The Vizier) SYNOPSIS: "You will be always looking in the wrong place. I have searched through all of Time and I cannot find it."The search for the Key to Time has stalled: the next segment does not appear to exist anywhere in the Universe. Forced into a temporary alliance with one of his greatest enemies, the Doctor suggests a course of action that is a validation of chaos itself.Thrown at random across Space and Time, the Doctor and Amy arrive in 9th Century Sudan, where the greedy Lord Cassim is hoarding gold from the Legate of the Caliph. But why does Cassim look so familiar? What is the mysterious Djinni that lives out in the desert? And why does it need so much treasure? AUTHOR: Jonathan Clements DIRECTOR: Lisa Bowerman SOUND DESIGN: Simon Robinson MUSIC: Simon Robinson COVER ART: Alex Mallinson NUMBER OF DISCS: 2 RECORDED DATE: 21 & 22 April 2008 RELEASE DATE: 28 February 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 6R/B ISBN: 978-1-84435-364-4 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT: Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar << 117. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar | 119. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Chaos Pool >>
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TDP 83: The Destroyer of Delights Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring DAVID TROUGHTON and JASON WATKINSWith CIARA JANSON as AMY (Duration: 120' Approx) CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Jason Watkins (Legate of the Caliph), Jess Robinson (Nisrin), Bryan Pilkington (Prince Omar), Paul Chahidi (Hason), Will Barton (The Djinni), David Peart (The Vizier) SYNOPSIS: "You will be always looking in the wrong place. I have searched through all of Time and I cannot find it."The search for the Key to Time has stalled: the next segment does not appear to exist anywhere in the Universe. Forced into a temporary alliance with one of his greatest enemies, the Doctor suggests a course of action that is a validation of chaos itself.Thrown at random across Space and Time, the Doctor and Amy arrive in 9th Century Sudan, where the greedy Lord Cassim is hoarding gold from the Legate of the Caliph. But why does Cassim look so familiar? What is the mysterious Djinni that lives out in the desert? And why does it need so much treasure? AUTHOR: Jonathan Clements DIRECTOR: Lisa Bowerman SOUND DESIGN: Simon Robinson MUSIC: Simon Robinson COVER ART: Alex Mallinson NUMBER OF DISCS: 2 RECORDED DATE: 21 & 22 April 2008 RELEASE DATE: 28 February 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 6R/B ISBN: 978-1-84435-364-4 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT: Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar << 117. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar | 119. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Chaos Pool >>
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TDP 83: The Destroyer of Delights Key 2 Time Part 2
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights Starring PETER DAVISON Featuring DAVID TROUGHTON and JASON WATKINSWith CIARA JANSON as AMY (Duration: 120' Approx) CAST: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), David Troughton (The Black Guardian), Jason Watkins (Legate of the Caliph), Jess Robinson (Nisrin), Bryan Pilkington (Prince Omar), Paul Chahidi (Hason), Will Barton (The Djinni), David Peart (The Vizier) SYNOPSIS: "You will be always looking in the wrong place. I have searched through all of Time and I cannot find it."The search for the Key to Time has stalled: the next segment does not appear to exist anywhere in the Universe. Forced into a temporary alliance with one of his greatest enemies, the Doctor suggests a course of action that is a validation of chaos itself.Thrown at random across Space and Time, the Doctor and Amy arrive in 9th Century Sudan, where the greedy Lord Cassim is hoarding gold from the Legate of the Caliph. But why does Cassim look so familiar? What is the mysterious Djinni that lives out in the desert? And why does it need so much treasure? AUTHOR: Jonathan Clements DIRECTOR: Lisa Bowerman SOUND DESIGN: Simon Robinson MUSIC: Simon Robinson COVER ART: Alex Mallinson NUMBER OF DISCS: 2 RECORDED DATE: 21 & 22 April 2008 RELEASE DATE: 28 February 2009 PRODUCTION CODE: 6R/B ISBN: 978-1-84435-364-4 CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT: Between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani and after Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar << 117. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar | 119. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - The Chaos Pool >>
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TDP 82: The Romans - sorry about the sound quality
Episode Duration: 0 days, 0 hours, 11 minutes and 43 secondsSynopsis With the TARDIS stuck at the bottom of a cliff, the four time travellers have ingratiated themselves into an unoccupied Roman villa. The owner, Flavius Giscard is away campaigning in Gaul. As the Doctor and Ian recline, Barbara and Vicki walk to the nearby Roman village. At the market they are spotted by two slave traders, Didius and Sevcheria. When they return to the villa the Doctor announces that he is off to Rome, some miles away, and will travel there with Vicki. Later that evening Barbara and Ian, now alone, are relaxing when the two slavers burst in upon them. They are soon overpowered and taken prisoner. Ian is sold to one slave owner, while Barbara is to be traded with another and sent to Rome. The Doctor and Vicki are en route for Rome when they find the murdered body of a lyre player named Maximus Pettulian. The Doctor is holding the man's lyre when a Centurion arrives and mistakes him for the dead man who is late for an engagement in Rome. The Centurion thus accompanies them to Assysium. Once stationed at an inn there, the Centurion makes contact with the mute assassin Ascaris, who killed the real Pettulian, and instructs him to kill the Doctor. The assassin draws his sword and heads off to the Doctor's chambers. The Doctor overpowers the assassin and, along with Vicki, drives him away through an open window. It seems the Centurion has fled, and the Doctor concludes the soldier was in league with the assassin. He decides to maintain his alias as Pettulian and head onward to the city of Rome. Barbara is meanwhile already in the city and is soon sold in open auction for 10,000 sesterces to a man named Tavius, who is highly placed in the court of the Emperor Nero. She is to be a handmaiden to Nero's wife, Poppaea. Tavius is a kindly man but warns that if she tries to escape her slavery that she will be killed. The Doctor and Vicki arrive at Nero's court too and encounter Tavius, who seems to imply to the Doctor that Pettulian is part of a secret network in which he is also a player. Further discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Nero himself, a laughable excuse for a leader who seems arrogant, vain and selfish. The Doctor cleverly avoids an extended lyre concert and then have the freedom of the court. On one walk around they find the body of the Centurion who imperilled them earlier. Ian has been confined to a galley in the Mediterranean but the craft soon runs into rough seas and is broken up. He is washed to the nearby shore and there is found by another survivor of the galley, Delos, who has saved his life and removes the last of his chains. They agree to head for Rome in search of Barbara. When they reach there, however, they are captured by some centurions. Taken to the arena they are set to be trained as gladiators - and their first opponents will be the lions. It becomes apparent to the Doctor that Tavius had the Centurion murdered and that he too is expected to fulfil some sort of action. Nero decides the Doctor must fulfil an obligation too, and organises a banquet in his honour at which he must play the lyre. He also takes a shine to Barbara and starts to pursue her romantically - and literally - much to the anger of Empress Poppea, who decides to have her poisoned at the Pettulian banquet. Barbara has just left the banquet chamber when the Doctor arrives there, warning the Emperor that he has learnt his wine could be poisoned. It has been, as part of Poppea's plan. The Doctor is soon put to perform centre stage and picks up his lyre with the warning that only those with the most sensitive and perceptive hearing will be able to discern its subtle melody. He then creates absolutely no sound but has created a climate in which no-one wishes to make themselves out to be philistines by not appreciating the music. Nero is not convinced, however, and in private fumes against the deception. He decides to have Pettulian fed to the lions. Meanwhile, at the arena itself Ian and Delos have been trained as gladiators and are set to fight each other. With Nero watching them they are told to battle to the death. Delos and Ian decide to fight their way out of the arena instead, and Ian is able to shout to the watching Barbara that he will be back to rescue her before he and Delos flee. The Emperor calls off his soldiers when it becomes clear they cannot be caught, planning to have him killed when he returns to rescue Barbara. A crowd of soldiers are arranged at the palace. The Doctor has meanwhile found the architectural plans for Nero's new Rome, and deduces that since the year is 64 AD that the Emperor is planning to destroy the city. Tavius arrives and warns the Doctor that the Emperor is planning to kill him too, advising him to fulfil his mission and kill Nero soon. It seems that Pettulian was an assassin all along. The Doctor and Vicki decide to leave quickly but before departing accidentally set fire to Nero's architectural plans. The Emperor notices this and decides to burn down the city, thanking the Doctor and deciding after all to spare his life. A rabble are bribed into starting the blaze and while anarchy rages Ian is helped into the palace by Tavius, who reunites him with Barbara. Under Tavius' eye the two are allowed to escape and make their way from Rome and back to the villa. Delos helps them get clear of the palace, parting from his friend Ian. The Doctor and Vicki also escape the city, watching it burn from a nearby hill. By the time the Doctor and Vicki return to the villa, Ian and Barbara have spruced themselves up, and the Doctor mistakenly assumes that they have not even left the villa. All four leave in the TARDIS but have barely begun to travel when a strange force starts dragging the ship to an unknown location.