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.

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."

The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 2

The one where the Cybermen wake up from their tombs...

The reprise of last week's cliffhanger compounds just how rubbish the sequence was, making it even more obvious that it's just a Cyber-dummy and not the real thing. And then when the Doctor tries to reenact the cliffhanger (perhaps to show director Morris Barry how it should have been done?), I have to wonder how in the world they could have missed that whacking great cannon that slides out of a very wobbly wall at the back. This time the laser cannon does not retract, which is convenient on this occasion, and it's good of Victoria to reproduce her piercing scream from the first time around too.

Viner (played by the ever brilliant Cyril Shaps) begins to develop an acute fear of the building, which he says is alive and "watching us", which is reinforced by my own observation in episode 1 that the Cyberman iconography all around them acts as a sinister presence throughout, as if the Cybermen really are watching them somehow. As the episode goes on, Viner's fear of the building around him grows in intensity (he calls it deadly and sinister), and reminds me of the early symptoms of robophobia that we see much later in The Robots of Death.

The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 1

The one where the Doctor joins an archaeological expedition...

I used to think that the opening sequence of this episode would've made a great jumping-on point for the series, almost like a reintroduction of the series to a stranger in a way they'd understand. But on viewing it again, I've changed my mind. It still looks great: for some reason director Morris Barry shot the entire TARDIS scene on film, giving the ship a gloss not seen for a few years. But the sound is tinny and echoes like they're in a cavern, and the way Barry directs it doesn't quite work as well as it should. We're shown the TARDIS police box first, but we're not shown anybody entering it. We then have the fab establishing shot where we follow Victoria and the Doctor through the doors into the TARDIS, but Barry stays tight on Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling's head and shoulders, and at no point attempts a camera shot which demonstrates how big the TARDIS actually is inside.

We're told it's big, but we don't see that it is. One of the best rules of storytelling is to show, not tell, but Barry fails here. And although a couple of months have passed for the viewer since The Evil of the Daleks, from Victoria's perspective, it's been only moments since she learnt her father was dead, but she seems remarkably together here, as if unaffected by his loss. Still, while it has its sticking points, it makes a grand opening for a new season, and almost acts as a pre-credits sequence as the story title doesn't come up until well over two minutes into the episode.