The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 3

The one where the Doctor talks about his family...

I hate how I love those awful cliffhangers and reprises where the actors have to stand still doing nothing while the titles roll over their dormant faces. They're particularly bad in The Tomb of the Cybermen - episode 1 ends with a full 22-second hold on the Cyber-dummy, while episode 3 opens on the Cyber-Controller waiting for the titles to finish for a full nine seconds before he can speak!

What I find scary about the Cybermen is not the hotch-potch way they look, but the things they say. Their implacable determination to survive and conquer is admirably unnerving, and they are unwavering in their belief that they will succeed. They state several times in this episode that their intention is to convert the humans into Cybermen, intoning "You belong to us. You will be like us". But the most chilling line is when Jamie says: "We're human - we're not like you!", and the Cyberman turns round and says: "You will be."

It's the way they see humans as commodities (or pests), rather than living people too. The Cyber-Controller says that they have decided how to "use" the humans, as if they are bits of machinery they can employ to achieve their final end. Spare parts, perhaps...

The machinery they do employ, the Cybermats, are a fascinating idea, but fall down in their execution somewhat. The idea of little insectoid cybernetic monsters crawling over you and homing in on human brain waves is nightmarish, but the BBC Visual Effects chaps somehow managed to make them look quite sweet, so their threat is diminished a little (except for one extreme close-up when they're attacking Callum and the Cybermat's gnashing teeth put one in mind of Jaws). They also take an age to actually do anything. After the swift take-out of Kaftan in episode 2, the Cybermat army has to be coaxed into life, and the test run on poor Toberman isn't witnessed on screen. It just seems to take ages for them to do anything, and then when they do attack, it all seems a little silly. Cybermats are scariest when they leap at your neck. If they're just bobbling about in circles on the floor, they're just a bit silly.

There's plenty of action in this episode too, with one of the scariest scenes in 60s Who when the Cyberman is chasing the Doctor up the hatch ladder. The relentlessness of the Cyberman is chilling, as it first grabs the Doctor's leg, then rises up behind him like some horror movie serial killer. And when Victoria ambitiously attacks it with a Thermos flask, it grabs her too and only lets go because the hatch door closes down on it. Even then it doesn't give up without a fight, pushing against the hatch, and then when it's closed, hammering from beneath like an angry child. The Tomb of the Cybermen suddenly becomes a John Carpenter movie - imagine this scene with the theme from Halloween played over it (blocking out the Cyberman's rather silly quacking noise).

There's also plenty of action down in the tombs when the humans escape thanks to Captain Hopper's smoke bombs. I'm not sure why Hopper's men are carrying smoke bombs and not actual real explosive bombs, but they seem to do the trick of confusing the Cybermen so that the humans can escape. Neither am I convinced that smoke would necessarily blind Cybermen - surely they're cybernetically enhanced eyesight would be fitted with infrared or thermal vision? Tracking body heat in icy conditions would be most useful if you're sitting waiting for a bunch of humans to break you free. Logical, even. And we get treated to even more Cyber-quacking, a vocal tic I really wish Peter Hawkins had thought against.

Of course, episode 3 of this story is famous/ notorious (delete as applicable) for two principal scenes - the attack on Toberman, and the chat between the Doctor and Victoria (not "Vic"). It's hard to reappraise the blatant use of wires to allow the Cyberman to physically lift Roy Stewart off the floor and hurl him to the ground. It's just bad, pure and simple. It's also unfortunate that it was captured on film quite so clearly, so it's best we just ignore that and marvel at Stewart's starfish pose when in the air!

But as for that scene between Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling... My oh my... It could well qualify as one of the very best scenes in the history of Doctor Who, and we're very lucky to be able to watch it as well as hear it. The two actors pitch everything perfectly, and the choice by director Morris Barry to shoot it from behind makes it feel like the viewer is listening in or snooping on a private conversation. It makes it feel even more special. Watling is at her wide-eyed, innocent, beautiful best, and Troughton delivers every single line with heartbreaking professionalism. When he says "Nobody in the universe can do what we're doing", he says it with a twinkle of indefinable magic unique to that man, and that moment. It feels like a privilege to watch this scene - it's beautifully played and directed, with some spine-tingling library music playing underneath.

So, episode 3 is a mix of extreme highs and disappointing dips. For every "Our lives are different to anybody else's", there's an appalling American accent (Clive Merrison). For every shot of a Cyberman stalking Jamie in the ice tombs, or grabbing the Doctor by the ankle, there's a shot of Toberman's Kirby wire or a Cybermat power cord. And the characters make some odd choices too, such as locking the bad guys in a room which has at least two weapons in it, or Kaftan believing that ownership of one Cyber-gun will mean the entire Cyber-army will kneel at her feet.

Still, when the good is this great, who cares about the not-so-good?

First broadcast: September 16th, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The scene about mourning and memories between Troughton and Watling is one of the finest in Doctor Who's long history.
The Bad: Toberman's wire.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★

NEXT TIME: Episode 4...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 4

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-tomb-of-cybermen.html

The Tomb of the Cybermen is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Tomb-Cybermen-DVD/dp/B00005R5DJ.