Revisiting Old Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen

[Broomstick]

The Tomb of the Cybermen
(echos premonitions of Red Dwarf)

Another one from the Troughton Era featuring Jaime and some girl named Victoria (don't call me Vic!) I had never heard of before, but who screams really well. There was a bit of camp joking about with references to short dresses and Jaimie's kilt, and the Doctor and Jaime holding hands each thinking they had the hand of Victoria and not the other guy. Unfortunately, they were about the only comic relief moments of the storyline (that, and "You're really are mad, I just wanted to be sure of it"). Not that serious is bad, but a bit of levity while running/being shot at/the world is ending does appeal to me.

Seeing Troughton really makes me wish more of his era had survived as Two is becoming one of my favored portrayals of the Doctor.

The writing was good, and managed the interactions of what amounts to several groups of characters both with common and divergent goals quite well. The special effects budget probably had increased slightly from the Hartnell era, though not drastically so, and the show was evolving into modern TV and had less of the "theater stage" feel to it.

I didn't like the cyberman voices, finding them very hard to understand even with the remastered audio. The stereotyping of the redshirt black character Toberman as a low-intelligence, super-strong quasi-slave is typical of the times but may be offensive to modern viewers. I was a bit surprised at just how long he lasted, expecting him to be killed off much earlier.

I was struck by the American accents of the "rocket men". At least, I think they were American accents. Presumably they were English actors, and the accents seemed a strange mix of Texan and Ohio Valley using UK vocabulary to my ear, but they were consistent and were much better than typical for British TV of the time. It reminded me somewhat of Ace Rimmer, actually (not that Ace was American) with the swagger and vocal mannerisms.

Ah, Ace Rimmer... and Red Dwarf. The spouse was the one who brought up certain parallels here, for some unintended humor at the Doctor's expense. There was a scene with people shouting "Don't touch the controls, don't touch anything. Get XXX!" with another character trapped in a machine that was definitely reminiscent of the first transmogrifier scene in Red Dwarf's "DNA". Of course, "Tomb of the Cybermen" came first, by a couple decades, but Red Dwarf did exist to poke fun at both Sci-Fi memes and the BBC cheap-ass special effects budget. The spouse peppered the rest of the episode with occasional quotes from various Red Dwarf episodes that seemed to fit this Doctor Who storyline. One could almost have made a drinking game of it.

Ah, the special effects - they got pretty good mileage out of silver spraypaint here. I think both the Tom Baker and the Matt Smith forms of the cybermats were easier to see as a dangerous threat, the ones here were a bit too cute/crude for my taste, but again not too atypical of the era. I, like everyone else, am spoiled by modern effects. The guys playing the cybermen probably don't get enough credit for putting life into characters with no facial expression, in costumes that looked as uncomfortable as hell and probably made them nearly blind.

Of course, that is part of the continuing appeal of Doctor Who - turning low-budget Sci-Fi with cheesy special effects and costumes into something that still appeals 40 or more years later. It's a combination of (at its best) good writing and good actors striving to pull the most out of cardboard sets. With an occasional pratfall when things don't quite work.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ah, yes, one of my favourites.

The Doctor talking with Klieg (sp?) was particularly good. I hadn't thought of the Red Dwarf parallels before, but now you mention them they seem particularly obvious.

[mr friendly guy]

The Tomb of the Cybermen
(echos premonitions of Red Dwarf)

Another one from the Troughton Era featuring Jaime and some girl named Victoria (don't call me Vic!) I had never heard of before, but who screams really well.

The character literally screamed her way off the show. No I am not kidding. In her final appearance (in a sadly now lost episode) she killed the monster because they magnified her screams.

But the Tomb of the Cybermen remain one of my favourites, ever since I saw it on VHS after it was rediscovered. The Doctor's line about "I have seen it all before somewhere" in reference to dictators etc was just so poignant.

Trivia fact - apparently Pat Troughton liked to play jokes on Debra Watling (the actress who played Victoria).