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| The Tomb of the Cybermen | |
| Series: | Doctor Who - TV Stories |
| Season Number: | Season 5 |
| Story Number: | 37 |
| Doctor: | Second Doctor |
| Companions: | Jamie McCrimmon Victoria Waterfield |
| Enemy: | |
| Setting: | Telos, the future |
| Writer: | Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis |
| Director: | Morris Barry |
| Broadcast: | 2nd September - 23rd September 1967 |
| Format: | 4 25-minute Episodes |
| Previous Story: | The Evil of the Daleks |
| Following Story: | The Abominable Snowmen |
The Tomb of the Cybermen was the first story of Season 5 of Doctor Who. It is currently the earliest Second Doctor serial to survive in its entirety.
Contents |
The TARDIS arrives on the planet Telos where an Earth archaeological expedition, led by Professor Parry, is attempting to uncover the lost tombs of the Cybermen. With a lot of help from the Doctor the archaeologists enter the tombs. There, one of the party, Klieg, reveals himself and his business partner, Kaftan, to be planning to revive the Cybermen.
He wants to use their strength, allied with the intelligence of his own Brotherhood of Logicians, to create an invincible force for conquest. It transpires however that the tomb is actually a giant trap designed to lure humans suitable for conversion into further Cybermen - a fate that almost befalls Kaftan's assistant Toberman.
After fending off an attack by Cybermats - small but dangerous cybernetic creatures - the Doctor eventually defeats the revived Cybermen, led by their Controller, and reseals the tombs. The Controller is apparently destroyed in the process.
The Doctor and Jamie show their new travelling companion Victoria Waterfield the inside of the TARDIS, though she scarcely believes it can travel through time and space. The ship takes off from Skaro, the group ready for their next adventure.
On the planet Telos, an archaeological expedition uses explosives to uncover the entrance to a city, hidden in the side of a mountain. When a member of the expedition touches the huge metal doors, he is electrocuted. Immediately afterwards, the TARDIS lands nearby, and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on the scene. Captain Hopper, the expedition's pilot, holds them at gunpoint until the Doctor convinces them they had nothing to do with the death. John Viner, the assistant to expedition leader Parry, accuses the Doctor of being part of a rival expedition. Parry explains that they are here to find the remains of the Cybermen, who apparently died out centuries before. The expedition is funded by Kaftan, who is accompanied by her giant manservant Toberman and her colleague Eric Klieg. The Doctor, now that he knows that the Cybermen are involved, decides to accompany the group. He uses a small device to check that the doors are now safe, and Toberman's great strength swings them open. Entering the darkened inner chamber, they find a control panel with a series of levers and switches and a large, hidden doors and a sealed hatch. The Doctor opens the doors using the levers, which operate on symbolic logic. Klieg is resentful that the Doctor is able to deduce this instead of him. The hatch, however, remains sealed, so the members of the expedition split up and explore.
In the control room, the Doctor gives Klieg the clue he needs to reactivate the controls to restore power to the base. Victoria, Viner and Kaftan come across a chamber with a sarcophagus-like box facing a projection device that was apparently used to revitalise the Cybermen (see Revitalising unit). When Victoria curiously climbs into the sarcophagus, Kaftan operates the controls and seals Victoria in the sarcophagus. When Viner confronts her, she denies she did anything. The Doctor shows up and frees Victoria. In another room, Jamie and Peter Haydon find a small silver caterpillar-like object on the floor. When Haydon operates the control panel in the room, a wall lights up with a hypnotic pattern that puts Jamie into a trance. Before the Doctor can intervene, a Cyberman slides into view and a gun fires, killing Haydon.
The Cyberman slides out of sight again. The Doctor deduces that the room is a testing range, and that a gun at the back was shooting a mock-up Cyberman, and Haydon got in the way. Victoria finds the metal caterpillar, which the Doctor identifies as a cybermat, and advises her to leave it alone. Instead, she places it in her handbag. Parry now decides to abandon the expedition and return to Earth. At this point, however, Hopper returns and angrily reveals that someone has sabotaged the rocket ship — no one will be leaving until he can effect repairs and no one will be allowed aboard the ship until his crew has done so.
Klieg believes he has found the logical sequence to open the hatch, but fails again, until the Doctor surreptitiously presses a few additional buttons, helping him along. Leaving Kaftan and Victoria behind, the others descend down the hatch. They find a vast chamber beneath, with a multistorey structure containing cells of frozen Cybermen, entombed in suspended animation. Back in the control room, Kaftan has drugged Victoria's coffee and shuts the hatch. Klieg, in the meantime, has activated more controls in the tomb and the ice begins to melt. Klieg shoots Viner when the latter tries to stop him, and holds the rest at bay while they watch the Cybermen return to life. Klieg reveals his real agenda. He and Kaftan belong to the Brotherhood of Logicians, who possess great intelligence but no physical power. He is certain the Cybermen will be grateful for their revival and ally themselves with him, providing that physical power.
Back in the control room, the cybermat in Victoria's handbag revives and attacks Kaftan, rendering her unconscious. Victoria grabs Kaftan's pistol and shoots it, but she doesn't know how to re-open the hatch, so leaves the city to find Hopper. Down in the tombs, the Cybermen file past the humans, ignoring them, and free their leader, the Cybercontroller from his cell. When Klieg steps forward to take the credit for reviving them, the Cybercontroller grabs and crushes his hand, forcing him to his knees and declaring, "You belong to us. You will be like us."
The Cybermen recognise the Doctor, whose involvement in prior invasion attempts is recorded in their computer records. The Doctor realises that the tombs were an elaborate trap. The Cybermen were waiting for beings intelligent enough to decipher the controls needed to free them. The expedition will be converted into Cybermen in preparation for a new invasion of Earth and Klieg, to his horror, will be the first.
In the control room, Hopper and Jim Callum have figured out the electronics that will open the hatch. Hopper descends into the tombs, and uses smoke grenades to distract the Cybermen while the humans make their escape. They barely manage to scramble back to the control room and shut the hatch before the Cybermen can follow. Toberman, however, is left behind. Klieg and Kaftan are moved into the testing range to keep them out of mischief while the others decide on their next course of action. There, Klieg prises a weapon out of the hands of the Cyberman target, an X-ray laser he calls a cyber-gun. Outside, the expedition is threatened by cybermats released by the Cybermen below. The Doctor manages to rig electrical cables from the control panel to create a magnetic field that disables the cybermats. Even as one threat is eliminated, Klieg and Kaftan step out armed with the cybergun, which Klieg fires.
Klieg hits Callum in the shoulder, and tells the others that he can still negotiate with the Cybermen. Klieg opens the hatch and calls for the Cybercontroller. The Cybercontroller climbs up, accompanied by Toberman, who, unknown to the others, has been partially cyberconverted and under Cyberman control. The Cybercontroller moves slowly, as his energy is running low — in fact, most of the Cybermen have been ordered back to their tombs to conserve power. Holding the cybergun on the Cybercontroller, Klieg says he will allow it to be revitalised in the sarcophagus if the Cybermen help him conquer the Earth. The Cybercontroller agrees. Unfortunately, a revitalised Cybercontroller is too strong and breaks out of the sarcophagus. Telepathically signalling Toberman, the latter reveals his true allegiances and knocks Klieg unconscious. The Cybercontroller, in turn, picks up Klieg's cybergun and kills Kaftan when she tries to block its return to the tombs.
The death of his mistress, however, seems to shake Toberman out of his controlled state. Toberman struggles with the Cybercontroller and hurls it into a control panel, apparently killing it. The Doctor wants to make sure the Cybermen are no longer a threat, and goes back down into the tombs with Toberman and Jamie. Klieg regains consciousness and sneaks down with the cybergun while the others tend to Callum. He forces the Doctor away from the controls that will refreeze the Cybermen, declaring that he will be the new Controller, and revives them again. Klieg intends to turn the three over to the Cybermen for spare parts, but even as he says this, a revived Cyberman throttles Klieg from behind and kills him. Toberman fights and kills this Cyberman and the Doctor freezes the other Cybermen, hopefully for good this time. Hopper's crew have repaired the ship and they can leave at any time. The Doctor ushers the others out as he sets up a circuit to electrify the control panel and the doors, to prevent anyone from entering the city again. The Cybercontroller, however, is still alive, and lurches forward. Outside, Toberman uses his bare hands to shut the doors, struggling with the Cybercontroller one last time. He succeeds, completing the circuit, and both he and the Cybercontroller are electrocuted and killed. Parry and Hopper return to their ship after saying good-bye to the Doctor and his companions. No one notices a lone cybermat, moving along the ground outside the doors to the city…
DVD Releases
Released as Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen, this was the first of the releases for 2002 and marked the first photomontage cover art by Clayton Hickman which replaced the generic photo cover art of earlier releases from this point on.
Released:
Notes:
Contents:
Notes:
Video Releases
Released as Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen, the video was rushed to release after its recovery from Hong Kong at the end of 1991.
Released:
Notes: The video includes a special video interview with director Morris Barry, speaking about its recent recovery.
| Season 5 |
|---|
| The Tomb of the Cybermen • The Abominable Snowmen • The Ice Warriors • The Enemy of the World • The Web of Fear • Fury from the Deep • The Wheel in Space |
| This article has a real-world perspective. |
 |
| Star Trek: Daedalus episode | |
| "The Tomb of the Cybermen" | |
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| Season: | 3 |
| Episode no. | 1 |
| Prod. code: | 3.1 |
| Writer(s): | The Doctor |
| Year: | 2378 |
| episode chronology | |
| ←On the Edge of Forever→ | |
"The Tomb of the Cybermen" is the first episode of Star Trek: Daedalus's third season, and introduces the Cybermen. (Part One of Two)
Contents |
2008; 2378; Andorian; captain's log; cloister bell; Cybermen; USS Daedalus; Nordsk Prime; phaser; psychic paper; sickbay; sonic screwdriver; TARDIS; temporal rift; temporal shield; transphasic nebula; tricorder; Vulcan; Vulcan (planet)
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