The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 4

The one where nobody's quite as dead as they seem...

... Klieg fires his Cyber-gun at the Doctor, we hear a cry... but it's Callum who's been shot, not the Doctor! Phew! Luckily, Callum's only wounded, not dead, so he can sit out the rest of the episode clutching his arm with absolutely no lines to say (which is just as well considering Clive Merrison's awful American accent).

More importantly, what have the Cybermen done to poor Toberman? It looks like they've enacted some form of Cyber-conversion on him, but not a full conversion, not yet. Perhaps they're feeling a little tired because the Cyber-Controller packs them all back off to bed, ordering them to get back into their tomb cells to conserve energy. Which is a bit of a letdown, to be honest. And that's how episode 4 feels at times, a bit of a disappointment, because although it's got some lovely set pieces, it never really fulfills the potential you have for it in your imagination.

This final episode made me realise how little the Cybermen really achieve in this story. Only one of them manages to actually get out of the tomb hatch; the rest of the time they're wandering about in their ice tombs and corridors, seemingly unable to open the tomb hatch from the inside (not very logical if you ask me). What you really want (and expect) is for the Cybermen to spill out of the tomb hatch en masse in the final episode, apparently triumphant, until the Doctor can think of a neat way of defeating them (a big bang, usually).

But no. The Cybermen go back to bed, leaving their Controller to convince the humans to let him recharge upstairs. The Controller takes the part-converted Toberman with him, and I took some pleasure in seeing the giant take down the insufferable Klieg. It's interesting that as soon as Klieg is "dead", Kaftan's resolve crumbles and she becomes something of a frightened child. Her strength was bolstered by her partnership with a man. What sort of partnership, we'll never know.

The truth is, of course, that Klieg isn't really dead, and writers Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis use that age-old device of having the villain come back to life to wreak one last moment of havoc, in this case, a renewed attempt to revive the sleeping Cybermen. The confrontation between the Doctor and the clearly now unhinged Klieg down in the tomb is great stuff, with Patrick Troughton on fine form as ever, pretending to flatter Klieg's ego, then bursting the bubble with: "Now I know you're mad. I just wanted to make sure."

Klieg is brutally battered to death (finally, this time) by a rogue Cyberman who has defied orders and not gone to bed, and Toberman gets his own back on the Cybermen by smashing the silver giant up and ripping its chest unit open. Out burbles a flood of white goo, and the shot of the goo pouring out of the Cyberman's unit as it writhes on the floor like a maggot-riddled corpse is pretty yukky. Throughout any fight scene, the Cybermen quack relentlessly, undermining any sense of threat they might have. I really, really wish Peter Hawkins hadn't invented the Cyber-quack...

The scene where the Cyber-Controller, running on empty, smashes his way out of the conversion chamber is both impressive and unimpressive at the same time. The fact we see the mighty Controller do this is quite thrilling, but that he smashes his way out of a paper-thin tin foil pretend door which didn't look like that a moment ago is a bit rubbish. Still, the effect remains, and it's worth it for the Doctor's crack about giving Jamie a lesson in tying knots!

I do like how Victoria is written in this story. Throughout the serial she's had an issue with Kaftan (or rather, Kaftan has with her), and has taken exception to Captain Hopper's rather relaxed form of address and his old-fashioned views on women (considering she is from the 19th century and he is from the 25th century). Here, she gets to snap back at Kaftan ("I'm talking to him, not you"), and has a dig at Hopper for his past comment about her not being a woman, or presumptuously calling her Vic. It's good that she sticks up for herself and doesn't let go of the things that annoy her. It'd be nice if the character carried on being written that way...

The Doctor decides to set a particularly lethal trap for anybody else who decides to come a-wandering the ice tombs in the future by rigging the doors and the controls to give off a fatal electrical shock. What?! Come on, Doctor, that's pretty ruthless. What was wrong with the way things were when you found them? The tombs were pretty well-protected as it was, until the Doctor decided to actually help the humans get inside! The Doctor setting lethal traps doesn't sit comfortably with me, and this Doctor even less so.

Using the same trick twice in the same episode, Pedler and Davis have the supposedly dead Cyber-Controller come back to life in the final reel, but it sadly leads to poor old Toberman (who is now free from Cyber-control and has the opportunity of starting his life afresh) getting fried. The tussle to close the tomb doors between Toberman and the Controller is tense and well-directed, but was it really necessary to kill off Toberman? It reminded me of the needless death of Kemel in the preceding The Evil of the Daleks, and it's starting to feel like Doctor Who at this time had an unwritten rule of killing off its black characters: Jamaica in The Smugglers, Williams in The Tenth Planet, Ralph in The Moonbase, Kemel in The Evil of the Daleks, and now Toberman. The only one I can think of who survived Season 4 is Jacko in The Underwater Menace.

And those who survive - the Doctor, Victoria, Jamie, Parry, Callum and Hopper - don't even consider giving Toberman a proper burial. They just leave his bastardised corpse lying at the entrance to the tombs - a fine warning to others, yes, but a total lack of respect for the man who saved them. The last shots we see are of the corpse, and a Cybermat idly wandering the wastes of Telos, telling us immediately that we may not have seen the last of the silver giants...

The Tomb of the Cybermen is a frustrating beast. It's undoubtedly a classic in my view, dripping with atmosphere and great characters, but it lets itself down every now and again, most often with the visual effects (the scene where Toberman goes off camera to fetch a Cyber-Controller mannequin is as awful as it sounds). The production is not perfect, but it has far more about it that's magnificent than is poor. Before this story was recovered in Hong Kong in 1991, it was deemed a lost classic. After everybody saw it on VHS in 1992, it's reputation waned as fans let mannequins, Kirby wires and tin foil doors spoil their opinion of an otherwise cracking yarn. Even 25 years later it seems de rigeur to refer to The Tomb of the Cybermen as a disappointment, but that's just not fair.

I can forgive any amount of Cyber-quacking just to have that beautiful scene about family and memories between Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling in episode 3. For me, that's perfection.

First broadcast: September 23rd, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Doctor's confrontation with Klieg is lovely.
The Bad: The Cyber-Controller mannequin. Ouch.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 9.3 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Abominable Snowmen...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3

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.