Raiders of the Lost Tomb

DOCTOR WHO - THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN (1967)

Cybermen awaken from their slumber in one of the most iconic sequences in DOCTOR WHO's history. Presumed lost due to the BBC's infamous wiping process, telerecordings of all four parts of THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN were miraculously returned in 1992 by the Hong Kong-based Rediffusion company.

"OUR brains are just like yours, except that certain weaknesses have been removed ... you call them emotions, do you not?" This is how the Cybermen are introduced in their premier outing THE TENTH PLANET. Even though the 1960's saw the development of the pacemaker and spare part surgery, the notion of cybernetics was not new to the realm of science fiction. In her celebrated 1944 story No Woman Born, C. L. Moore tells of a famous dancer whose mind is transferred to a robot after being horribly burned in a theatre fire. This highly influential piece is considered one of the first fully realised portrayals of cybernetic consciousness, a level of "body-horror" the Cybermen have rarely achieved. However, unlike THE TENTH PLANET and THE MOONBASE, where the Doctor's second favourite foes are basically pitched against isolated humans, THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN is the first Cyber-story that exploits the real fear of cyborg conversion.

Five hundred years after the Cybermen were believed dead, a group of Earth archaeologists explore the cyborg's adopted ice planet of Telos. The Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) join in the exploration led by Professor Parry (Aubrey Richards), and after the Doctor helps to solve a logic puzzle, the gateway to an underground tomb is unveiled. Awakening the Cyber race from their honeycomb cells, the Time Lord realises that the tomb was a trap, designed to lure superior intellects for the Cybermen to convert. Yet it is also revealed that two members of the archaeological party - Kaftan (Shirley Cooklin) and Klieg (George Pastell) - have an ultimatum of their own, planning to merge the Cybermen and Brotherhood of Logicians to form an invincible army.

Gerry Davis' Target novelisation of THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN was released in May 1978, which sported a cover Cybermen design actually from THE INVASION.

The opening serial of DOCTOR WHO's strong fifth season, THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN depicts several advances in Cyber lore: it has the first appearance of the Cyber Controller (Michael Kilgarriff), and also introduces the Cybermats, silverfish-like devices that feed on human brainwaves. There are also technological improvements as they can now hypnotise, yet this drains the Cyber Controller who needs to retreat to his sarcophagus-like revitaliser. Strikingly visualised and effectively directed by Morris Barry, the story is also memorable for its creepy discordant music and a beautiful moment between the Doctor and Victoria - where she laments the loss of her father during THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS - and the tale also features for the first important role for a black actor in the form of Roy Stewart’s Toberman, loyal manservant of the treacherous Kaftan.

The Fordyke Saga

THE BLACK TORMENT (1964)

A panting Edina Ronay makes for a memorable opening to THE BLACK TORMENT. The Anglo-Hungarian daughter of food critic Egon and mother of actress/writer Shebah, Edina was noteworthy for her fleeting turns in A STUDY IN TERROR and PREHISTORIC WOMEN. In the mid-70's she retired from the screen to take up fashion design, specialising in knitwear.

TAKING its cue from Hammer's costumed gothics, Compton's THE BLACK TORMENT is an underappreciated gem that also draws upon the aura of Mario Bava and the eloquent staging of Roger Corman's Poe pictures. Set in the spring of 1780, the film opens with a young woman fleeing across a nocturnal wood, as a murderous assailant gives chase. After being attacked and left to die, she utters the name ... Sir Richard! Days later, Sir Richard Fordyke (John Turner) returns to his Devon estate with second wife Elizabeth (Heather Sears). Although he has been away in London for three months, villagers claim to have seen the aristocrat riding through the woods, chased by the spirit of his first wife Anne, who supposedly committed suicide four years previously. With Sir Richard increasingly being manipulated into an alleged ancestral madness - including finding his crippled father hanging - he turns to magistrate Colonel Wentworth (Raymond Huntley) to help him solve the mystery. The final revelation is less a surprise more a sign-posted but illogical confirmation: this particular backward "evil twin" brother can not only rape and pillage, but place detailed orders to a Tiverton saddle maker.

The posters for THE BLACK TORMENT went into hyperbolic overdrive: "terror creeps from the fringe of fear to the pit of panic"; "the screen shudders with raw and violent savage suspense!"; "...by the screaming terror of a woman's fear" et al. Underneath this barrage you actually get a richly rendered production filled with solid performances (though Turner often subscribes to Elizabeth's line "Oh Richard, you're overwrought") and meticulous supporting players such as Peter Arne (whose trademark swarthy villain is a role identical to his appearance in THE HELLFIRE CLUB) and Patrick Troughton (who appears as a stable groom). A colour long associated with sensations of infinity and imagination, cinematographer Peter Newbrook smothers the film in languorous blue, and as Jonathan Rigby argues in English Gothic, perhaps a more apt title would have been THE BLUE TORMENT. Known for his moving camera and zooms, director Robert Hartford-Davis was indulging in his lush sets and costumes - including the obligatory low-cut frocks - until an on-set visit from the studio's wheeler-dealer partners Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser. Compton had already committed to a number of projects so budgets were tighter than ever, and after running three days behind schedule, allegedly Tenser ripped out ten pages from the shooting script in front of the director and proclaimed "there you are, you're back on schedule."

"Blood of My Ancestors!"

Doctor Who Weekly - Black Legacy (1980)

When Black Legacy appeared in June 1980, Alan Moore's story predated his 2000 A.D. debut by a month, representing his first published comics work - amateur or professional -  solely as a writer. To illustrate the tale's "legacy," Russell T. Davies name checks the Deathsmiths of Goth in a Time War piece published in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual.

LIKE most TV characters that find themselves on the printed page, the Cybermen enjoy poetic license in comics. John Canning's surreal Patrick Troughton strips for TV Comic had DOCTOR WHO's second greatest foe use skis (Eskimo Joe, #903-906, 1969) and earlier they were even destroyed by flower scent (Flower Power, #832-836, 1967). Steve Moore introduced the philosophical Kroton in Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman (Doctor Who Weekly #5-7, 1979), a man from Mondas who is sent to quell a human revolt, but wonders if an understanding of "abstract concepts of freedom and individuality" is the better path to take. Even Grant Morrison wrote a debatable account of Cyber origins in The World Shapers (Doctor Who Magazine #127-129, 1987). Using a muddled reference dating to the 1968 serial THE INVASION, Morrison explains that the rubbery inhabitants of "Planet 14" the Voord - seen in the 1964 THE KEYS OF MARINUS - have used an alien Worldshaper machine to evolve into Proto-Cybermen.

One of four back-up strip collaborations between writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd for Doctor Who Weekly, Black Legacy is introduced and tailed by the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) as if recounting the story. Published in issues #35-38, Cyberleader Maxel leads a mission to Goth ("a haunted planet shunned by all"), the former home world of legendary armourers the Deathsmiths. In search of a weapon that wiped out an entire civilisation overnight, the cyborgs explore the war museum, but are watched by the Apocalypse Device, a synthetic creature carrying every conceivable disease and virus. Having annihilated his creators, the being wipes out the Cybermen by telepathic nightmares and a lethal rust-like virus. Finally, Maxel confronts the Apocalypse Device who wants to use the Cyberleader's craft to escape the planet and destroy the galaxy; when Maxel auto-destructs the ship, the creature's dastardly plan is seemingly thwarted ... until a Sontaran vehicle lands. The last line – "It will not wait forever, that is the problem with ultimate weapons" – is almost certainly Moore's attempt at implicating the nuclear arms race.

Altered Vista's created a VCD version of the story in 2006, which was applauded by Moore. As the writer states on the Altered Vista website, "This is clearly a work that is born out of nothing save for a simple love of the material. It has not opted to change elements of the story, give it a less bleak ending or introduce a love interest and cute pet dog for the chief Cyberman protagonist. You have simply adapted the story as faithfully as you were able, without feeling the need to 'improve' it".

Taking a cue from the exploits of Kroton, Black Legacy portrays the Cybermen as un-characteristically human in their thinking, speech and posture, and illustrates Moore learning his craft with little interest in the source material (the strangely declamatory Cybermen spout "blood of my ancestors!" twice). These strips acted as ideal learning curves for the Northampton magus, creating characters and worlds in concise timeframes (usually a tale of two pages crossing four issues); consequently, as well as building the story, each two instalment had to work if read in isolation, but also recap and end on a cliff-hanger. The flaws of the strip, however, are not limited to aspects of Who lore. It’s actually a near re-run of Steve Moore’s The Final Quest from Doctor Who Weekly #8, where a Sontaran is tricked into self-destruction by exposure to a lethal plague. The Apocalypse Device broadcasting telepathic nightmares, paralysing enemies with fear, are two factors Cybermen ought to be immune to.

Moore followed Black Legacy with the Autons story Business as Usual, and three linked tales set in the distant past of Gallifrey: Star Death (with artist John Stokes), 4-D War and Black Sun Rising. While DOCTOR WHO had been on television for seventeen years, the history of the Time Lords had barely been touched on. With a relatively blank canvas, Moore created a space opera hung around a time paradox – the Time Lords are under attack from the Order of the Black Sun, a mysterious organisation from the future who are retaliating for some offence the Time Lords are yet to commit. The series hadn't explored the nuances of time travel since the 1972 Jon Pertwee adventure DAY OF THE DALEKS, so it was refreshing to see an illustrative work play with similar non-linear ideas. In conclusion, Moore’s strips for Doctor Who Weekly come to a sum of 28 pages over little more than a single year, and even though he was working to a restrictive brief and writing for a very young audience, the reader can already see a distinct progression from simple templates to the type of cosmic-bending work Moore would later make his own.

Dawn of the Doctor

AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME (2013)

William Hartnell's Doctor Who - played by David Bradley - among a Dalek, Cyberman and Menoptera, in this promotional image.

WRITTEN by Mark Gatiss, this nostalgic drama made to celebrate DOCTOR WHO's 50th anniversary reveals how the show was nearly exterminated after just four episodes. On the 22nd November 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, plunging the world into deep mourning; the following day the Time Lord debuted at its Saturday tea time slot between GRANDSTAND and JUKE BOX JURY, and even viewers in the mood for such escapist entertainment couldn't necessarily tune in because a power cut blacked out parts of Britain. But there were also tensions behind the scenes; the BBC Head of Drama, Canadian Sydney Newman, ordered the first episode to be totally re-shot to make it more child-friendly, and his decision to assign the BBC's first female producer to the venture - partygoer Verity Lambert - caused frictions between the stuffy crew (though Lambert forged an alliance with young Indian director Waris Hussein). Syphoned off to the depths of Lime Grove Studio D, the team struggled to make the crudest of facilities - and the oldest of cameras - work in their favour. Even Doctor Who himself, William Hartnell, was an aging, grumpy, heavy drinker and smoker, yet he formed a close bond with Lambert, turning around the show's fortunes which was ignited by the introduction of the Daleks (which, in itself, went against Newman's instructions for "no bug-eyed monsters.")

In this docudrama, Verity (Jessica Raine) initially struggles to impress Newman (Brian Cox) with her handling of the project, but eventually wins him over with a new-found brutality and verve, standing by Hartnell (David Bradley) as he struggles with the scientific scripts and the realisation that his film star credentials are now being played out on a children's show. When Hartnell's health declines and his memory is affected, the actor becomes even more frustratingly angry and disorientated, forcing Newman to re-cast the lead role fortuitously creating the notion of regeneration (Patrick Troughton is played by Reece Shearsmith in a Three Stooges wig). One wonders that if Hartnell's health had not deteriorated with arteriosclerosis, the legacy of DOCTOR WHO would have been cancelled after five years or so without the notion of regenerated ever having to be considered.

Daleks over Westminster Bridge; an iconic recreation

from THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH.

The professional Hartnell/Lambert relationship is at the heart of AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME, but this ninety-minute love letter to the past is too fractured and obvious, dialogue-dropping worn facts into a strained sentimentality. Feelings and situations are portrayed like snapshots from a photo comic strip, breezing through the First Doctor's tenure like a fanboys' wish list. And as AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME seemingly grinds to its digest-friendly halt, a real gut punch is delivered. There is a moment when Hartnell activates the TARDIS and then, looking across, he sees The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) lovingly caressing the console. This silent, poignant interchange says much about Hartnell’s place in the ever-evolving DOCTOR WHO canon.

The Last Gothic

SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

New Zealander Anouska Hempel bares her fangs. The actress also played "Australian Girl" in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and the title role in Pete Walker's TIFFANY JONES. Now a hotelier and designer, she married Allied Dunbar chairman Mark Weinberg in 1980, becoming one of the richest woman in Britain. During 1998 Hempel bought the right's to Walker's film and Russ Meyer's slave picture BLACK SNAKE - where she stars as Lady Susan - in order to keep them out of circulation.

HAMMER’s bloodiest film, SCARS OF DRACULA - scripted by Anthony Hinds - is also one of its most beautifully shot, defying its typically meagre budget. Braking the sequence began with their original DRACULA, no attempt is made to link it to the conclusion of the previous entry, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA. The Prince of Darkness (Christopher Lee) is afforded more screen time and dialogue, uttering his lines in a dreamy tone (under pasty make-up) that could be the result of Lee’s oft-quoted desire to express “the loneliness of evil” and the curse of immortality. Alternatively, it could be the disenchantment of an actor tiring of a limiting role (John Forbes-Robertson was considered before Lee was persuaded to return, but would later be cast as The Count in THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES). What is grating is that the film dispenses with Hammer's sensual lord vampire to create an atmosphere of brutal violence. The young cast are tepid at best (a miscast Dennis Waterman as Simon, the dubbed Jenny Hanley as Sarah, and Christopher Matthews as womaniser Paul), but the real meat comes from the supporting cast, with Patrick Troughton transforming Dracula’s urbane butler Klove into a masochistic errant boy, and Anouska Hempel as concubine Tania.

The last of the studio’s Gothic Draculas - and developed as a double bill with Jimmy Sangster's equally misguided THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN - the film revels in 70s-style exploitation. Dracula is consequently transformed into a sadist, mystifyingly stabbing vampiric Tania to death, and branding Klove with a white-hot sword. He also impales Paul on a metal hook, and sends legions of bats to massacre an entire church of women and children; even the story is set in motion by a bat vomiting blood on the Count’s remains. Away from the general gore, Hind's screenplay is a plethora of nonsense: for example, the opening of "The Angry Mob" burning down the castle doesn't seem to have disrupted the interior. Director Roy Ward Baker’s preparatory work apparently drew him to actually read Dracula, inspiring the filmmaker to add an "unprecedented" shot from the novel of The Count scaling his castle’s wall which he claimed was his “only contribution … to the Dracula cycle” (obviously he had never seen DRAKULA ISTANBUL’DA, filmed seventeen years previously). In fact, the film’s “only contribution” is to have the most laughable bouncing rubber bats in British horror film history.

During the climax, Jenny Hanley's cleavage is ravaged by a vampire bat, eager to tear away her crucifix necklace. This "blood on breasts" sequence would have been unheard of for less liberal times.

During the audio commentary on Optimum's R2 DVD of 2006 - woodenly moderated by Marcus Hearn - Lee and Baker wax lyrical about the classic cinema dictum "less is more," views that particularly contradict the nature of the film they are viewing. Comments on The Count's shift towards frenzied violence are almost an afterthought, with the duo more lost in their silver screen legacies and after-dinner like recollections. Its a particularly meandering and name-dropping vocal from Lee, who quite rightly highlights the standard of actors Hammer cast in bit parts (here, Michael Ripper as the innkeeper, Michael Gwynn as a priest and Bob Todd as the Burgomaster), but he also makes the amazing statement that not only is Dracula's stabbing of Tania nonsensical, that such a scene is troublesome in the annals of influencing true crime.

Heavy Metal

DOCTOR WHO – THE INVASION (1968)

As iconic as scenes from THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH,
Cybermen descend the steps of St Paul’s in THE INVASION.

DEVISED by DOCTOR WHO’s unofficial scientific adviser Kit Pedler, and story editor Gerry Davis, the Cybermen personified one of Pedler’s own phobias – dehumanising medicine. The scientist foresaw a time when spare part surgery would reach such a level that people would become uncertain whether they were man or machine, including the notion that cybernetically enhanced brains would lose the capacity for emotion. The Cyberman, DOCTOR WHO’s second most dreaded enemy after the Daleks, are the embodiment of this detached, heartless, logic. Tending to invade by stealth, and often employing human agents, these silver giants would become the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)’s most recurrent foe, take a long rest during the tenure of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), and show up for token engagements with most subsequent Time Lords. Dubbed by the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) as "a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship" in their comeback REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN, their subsequent serials did little to make them more formidable, consigning the once persistent to also-ran. Plagued by inconsistent characterisation, by the time of THE FIVE DOCTORS the denizens of Mondas are reduced to cannon fodder, and in DALEK, a Cyberhead is mounted on display in a storehouse of alien technology, "the stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit."

THE INVASION, however, is a strong outing for the Cybermen. Arriving on Earth in 1975, the Second Doctor discovers that the component manufacturer International Electromatics have a grip on the world’s technology. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) is aware of unusual activity within IE, which is run by Tobias Vaughan (Kevin Stoney). Vaughan is, in fact, in alliance with the Cybermen, who are massing in the sewers below London, with IE technology set to paralyse the population. But Vaughan is developing the Cerebration Mentor, a machine designed to generate emotional impulses as a weapon against the invaders. While THE INVASION may not be your standard Cybermen story – they don’t even appear until episode four, and have only a couple of brief lines of dialogue – the idea of the Earth being attacked through its electronic equipment is perfectly in tune with the concepts underlying the creatures. Despite existing in the scriptwriting quagmire that so typified late 1960s DOCTOR WHO, at eight episodes it is easily at least two segments too long, but it is a serial that builds a future for the show. In many ways, it is a sequel to THE WEB OF FEAR, in which the TARDIS crew first encounter Lethbridge-Stewart and an embryonic form of the UNIT forces deployed here. In UNIT, the production team had found the key to continuing the Doctor’s adventures into the 1970s – by repeating invasion of Earth stories and consequently controlling the budget - making it a dummy run for the early part of the Third Doctor’s era.

For the 2006 release of THE INVASION on DVD, Cosgrove Hall Films created two animated episodes (with original soundtracks) to replace those missing from the BBC archives. This reconstruction of the famous St Paul’s Cybermen walk is from a trailer that was part of initial tests. The resulting animated episodes 1 and 4 – using differing shades to re-create the textures of black and white television – take the story in a striking noir direction, and play as achievements that can be enjoyed in their own right.

THE INVASION benefits from strong direction, outstanding performances, and distinctive incidental music. It has a true sense of scale, although we only really see London, Vaughan’s compound and the airfield housing UNIT’s temporary base. Vaughan is a superb Bond-like villain - his air of avuncular charm never quite masking the underlying threat he represents – and Troughton seems to relish having a single figure for the Doctor to pit his wits against. The contrast between Troughton’s slightly anarchic Doctor and his military friends is also rather charming, as he generally bumbles happily around whilst the Brigadier seems to regard him with a mixture of amusement and a respect established by THE WEB OF FEAR. Because of this, the Doctor need waste no time proving himself, which from a dramatic point of view allows him to play with helicopters and canoes with the aid of military backup, resulting in something of a romp.