Doctor Who Week: "The Tomb of the Cybermen" (1967)

The TARDIS lands on barren Telos, and the Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) encounter an archaeological team led by Professor Parry (Aubrey Richards).  The obsessed scientist is in search of the fabled lost tombs of the deadly Cybermen.

Also on this excursion are its financiers: logician Eric Klieg (George Pastell), Kaftan (Shirley Cooklin), and her bodyguard, the hulking Toberman (Roy Stewart).  They also seem determined to find the Cybermen... but for different reasons.

Soon, an ancient tomb is located in a craggy mountainside, and explosives are detonated at the entrance.  

Inside the ancient hive -- in a subterranean chamber -- rest the dormant Cybermen.  Klieg determines to awaken them at all costs.

Like juggernauts, the Cybermen eventually activate, emerge from their sleep cells, and promptly take captives, planning to transform Klieg into a new Cyberleader, and re-molding Toberman into an obedient cyborg.

Trapped in the lower level of the hive by a sealed hatch, the Cybermen send Cybermats to attack the Doctor and the survivors of the archaeological team…

First things first: “The Tomb of the Cybermen” is my all-time favorite Doctor Who serial. I've watched it probably a dozen times since the late nineties, and it was also my son Joel's introduction to Doctor Who about a year ago. It's a ripping good yarn, and unlike many early Doctor Who serials -- which tend to get mired down in the tiring specifics of capture, chase, and rescue -- it moves with crisp efficiency and thematic clarity. 

I’m a big fan of Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor because his iteration of the character possesses such fascinating levels or nuances.  There’s something mischievous and almost Loki-like about the Second Incarnation's approach to trouble, and nowhere in the canon is that idea plainer than in this 1967 serial.  

Throughout the tale, the Doctor seems to want to both avoid danger, and simultaneously bring danger on. He shuts down danger, and yet, at times, also nudges it forward, even helping Klieg solve an exceedingly-difficult puzzle in logic.  It’s as if The Doctor wants the Cybermen to wake up; like he wants to play that scenario out, even though he knows what terror may come from their presence 

I've always wondered if these contradictory impulses arise, simply, from the character's awareness of history. Perhaps The Doctor already knows the outcome of the Telos Expedition and that -- at this (fixed?) point in time -- the Cybermen must be awakened, and then, once more, brought to a stand-still.  He must, therefore, nudge history in the right direction.

Or conversely, is the Doctor just some kind of adrenalin junkie...someone who wishes to approach the flame as closely as possible, even at the risk of getting burned?  His behavior in this serial certainly points to someone who knowingly and intentionally flirts with danger.

Troughton’s Doctor is also exceedingly gentle in a way that Hartnell’s first incarnation was quite patently not, and this is a good thing.  It would be boring if all the Doctors were exactly the same, wouldn't it?  This sense of kindness and gentleness plays out in "The Tomb of the Cybermen" during a short scene with Victoria, in which the Doctor discusses with her his long-gone family. The Doctor states that his family memories "sleep" in his memory, and it's a touching character moment; one of the few references to the Doctor's life and background in the days before he fled Gallifrey.

My enduring appreciation for “The Tomb of the Cybermen” is due not only to the presence and charisma of Patrick Troughton but based on the fact that the serial by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis lives up to a noble series convention.  

Specifically, it re-purposes and updates a genre or tradition outside of science fiction.  In particular, "The Tomb of the Cybermen" adapts a "Mummy Movie" template to the universe of Doctor Who. To wit:  a tomb is opened and a “curse” is awakened through the act of violation and transgression.  

The elastic Doctor Who format permits for and encourages frequent “pastiche” stories of this nature, and “Tomb of the Cyberman” adroitly transplants the conceits and tropes of the Universal Mummy movies of the 1940s to the alien world of Telos. 

In short order, we get the excavation of a buried tomb, meet the over-reaching scientist who can’t see the danger in opening Pandora’s Box, and of course, encounter the lumbering villains who awaken from the high-tech equivalent of sarcophagi.   

The most intriguing aspect of the serial’s narrative is that the “curse” of these Mummies -- these Cybermen -- is technological in nature rather than overtly supernatural. The Doctor and his cohorts are threatened by Cybermats, laser guns, hatches, training weaponry and the like rather than by collapsing tomb ceilings or other commonly seen booby traps of tomb adventures.  But the tale's point of attack is very similar.  "Modern" tomb raiders venture into sacred ground, into the world of civilization that has been dead for a very long time.  And, naturally, there is no real understanding of that dead culture, which makes the opening of the tomb infinitely more dangerous.

It must be established, as well, that “The Tomb of the Cybermen” is a really fun, really frightening serial.  The slow-moving, lumbering Cybermen make for a sinister, relentless presence, and it is an awesome sight to watch them push their way out of the giant honeycomb's cells.  They straighten-up to full size -- nearly seven feet tall -- and begin their merciless conquest.   

Honestly, I much prefer the Cybermen to the Daleks, and feel that they have always made for a more terrifying, more visceral threat.  In part this is because the Daleks will merely kill you.  The Cybermen want to use you.  There's still a part of you that is alive and aware inside that Cyber-suit, but your body is co-opted to a nefarious agenda.

The sense of terror generated by "Tomb of the Cybermen" also arises from the episode’s carefully-wrought sense of claustrophobia.  The serial was filmed economically on just five sets: the main control room, the doorway and mountain ridge, the target room, the energizer room, and the underground hive.   Accordingly, there's the sense throughout the tale that there is absolutely nowhere to run.

For me, any celebration of fifty years of Doctor Who must absolutely recognize this 1967 serial, a high-point of the original run.