The Tenth Planet

“Have you no emotions, sir?” 

Tout le premier acte est un triomphe. 

Les Cybermen ne seront jamais aussi bizarres et magiques qu’ici, et ont carrément de l’air fantômes sans visage qui errent sur la banquise. 

Mais surtout comme ils sont devenus la mort par seule peur du vide, ils pourraient presque être nous. 

Et non seulement ils sont un cauchemar absolu. Mais en plus ils vident de toute sa vie ce vieux Docteur qui se bat une toute dernière fois. 

The Tenth Planet n’est peut-être alors jamais aussi bon que chaque image terrifiante qu’il laisse en tête, il est bizarrement touchant.

Love, pride, hate, fear, this episode is peak sir.

This is a cool episode, not just because it is the first regeneration (although that sequence is quite interesting).  What really stands out here is how well and realized the Cybermen are.  Sure, they come across as a bit goofy, but they are also brought along with a certain sense of dread, and they nicely do the sci-fi thing of exemplifying fears and concerns about humans elective-surgery-ing themselves into monsters.  I found it pretty fascinating overall, even in things did get a little shouty near the end.  It's a bittersweet kind of story in that it is sad so see Hartnell go, but you can tell his health problems were getting to him and you can't help but mourn him a bit while watching these episodes.  An easy story to identify as much-watch in the world of Doctor Who, even if the last episode is tragically missing.

I suppose there should be a weight of expectation on a Doctor's final story, but I've never read a rave review of The Tenth Planet, or heard it referred to as an all-time classic. As a result of this I went into this with measured expectations and was blown away by episode one. We're in 1986, the south pole and there is a cosmopolitan mix of different arctic submarine officials who Ben, Polly and The Doctor get mixed up with. Then, there's the death of submarine officials and the big reveal - Cybermen! They receive the best introduction of any monster in Doctor Who so far, silently slinking on the far end of the screen, ignoring the screams of the helpless man trying to break into the TARDIS for safety; before coldly killing him off. I left episode one with my expectations quadrupled and surprised to see something of a "series finale" element in Hartnell's last story.

These Cybermen are creepy, half-human and all the worse for it, they are people who have adapted themselves to increase their lifespan, they have super-strength, but their adaption has gone out of control, they no longer have feelings. This enables them to control a room full of powerful people and sabotage their attempts to protect the base with only a couple of weapons and a cold outlook on the value of human life.

My main reservation is that the Doctor is not given enough to do, and with this being his last episode you want to saver every moment. Ben and Polly's involvement in the plot is variable. At points Polly is reduced to making tea for the boys. She does get to come up for a plan to stop General Cutler going too far in his efforts to destroy Mondas with a Z bomb, but its Ben that actually gets to carry this out. It is worth noting that we see perhaps the first credible and impressive role written for a black actor in the show though, going a small way to make up for the character of Jamaica in previous story The Smugglers.

As the end of episode three draws near the nerve-wracking countdown to the release of the z-bomb starts. This is a great cliff-hanger. Thankfully for episode four I have the BBC animation. In the final part there is of course one "unexpected" twist, something which has never happened before. The First Doctor's last few moments are astonishing, understated "it is far from being all over; I must get back to the TARDIS - immediately, yes I must go now; I must go at once; ah yes thank you; keep warm."

Ben and Polly bang on the TARDIS door, frightened about being left behind, meanwhile The Doctor is about to endure his first regeneration. He looks at the TARDIS console with his last few breaths, the machine whirring, something is happening! Ben and Polly run in to care for The Doctor who is now on the ground. This scene is some of the best Doctor Who has ever served up. William Hartnell disappears and Patrick Troughton takes his place. The First Doctor has left the building.

The Tenth Planet: 9.4/10 - This story is so good. The Cybermen are already a massive threat and their presence is huge. I love the characters here and the way they interact with Cutler. I think these Mondasian Cybermen are one of my favorite designs of the Cybermen and in this episode I love them. Their speaking patterns and the fact you can see the human eyes in the suits makes them way more creepy which I love. The buildup to the regeneration is also really cool and I think that the story being mostly contained to one building gives it a nice cramped feeling that helps add to the atmosphere of the story.

I love the intro to the cybermen in this story I think this is probs the best looking 60s story so far just by camera direction but it’s far from being all over

The Tenth Planet is a story that logically shouldn’t work.

Think about it for a second. It is a story entirely set within a very, very small base. Its main character doesn’t show up for half of the episodes. None of the main characters have an influence on the events that take place. And all the while this is supposed to be a sort of soft reboot for the program! That’s madness!

Yet it has become one of the most mythologized pieces of Doctor Who history. A milestone for its further success. How did that happen?

Our party lands on the North Pole, where they soon come across a small underground base made to trace the trajectory of rockets and space stations. Problems arise, however, when the base loses contact with one of their rockets. On top of that, they discover a new planet in our own solar system. And its inhabitants are on their way…

Those “inhabitants” are the now iconic cybermen. Showing up for the first time. Their original look has gotten a lot of praise in recent years and it is easy to see why. Their depiction of a human race that has destroyed themselves shows in every little detail. When they talk, they sometimes stretch out vowels, which makes you feel like they have a lobotomized brain. When you see their human hands or spot an eye, it doesn’t feel like not a budget constraint, but a glimpse at what they once were. It all adds up to an eerily familiar creature that feels uncanny in an oddly familiar way.

They are an obvious highlight, which is kind of surprising because it is mostly on principle. Their mythology carries them through the story. On screen, they mostly do the standard monster behavior. Be threatening, shoot stuff. But their background gives you an image of a society that completely imploded on a planetary scale. And now that awful planet is bringing its ideals to earth. In person no less.

The sense of dread the planet brings is further strengthened by the resolution. In the end, neither side has truly won. The cybermen may run on logic, but their lack of urgency destroys them. On the other side, General Cutler almost destroys the entire planet because he wants to save his son as quickly as possible. This eventually costs him his life. It promotes the idea of balance. Humans are both logical and emotional, and can’t succeed unless they accept both parts of themselves.

Maybe that’s me reading to deep into things. But I think that’s exactly why this story has its reputation. Its ambiguity allows for watchers to speculate. To think deeper about the subject matter presented. It makes you ask questions and think about things in a new light.

Hell, that even extends to the Doctor, who suddenly changes face as the credits roll. Maybe the already established sense of inquiry allowed viewers to accept the change a bit more readily? To be less judgmental as the status quo changes?

The Tenth Planet is a story that logically shouldn’t work. But luckily, it is a story that works on an emotional level. It uses a sense of dread, mystery and ambiguity to lodge itself into your brain. And once it has wormed its way in there, it might just make you a little bit more introspective. A message of growth hidden between the brain-butchering cybermen. What’s more human than that?

The good: The first appearance of the Cybermen is chilling, and the first regeneration of the Doctor is thrilling. Good sense of tension throughout, and Cutler is the kind of foe I love to hate.

The bad: If it weren't the first Cyberman story or first regeneration story, it would fall flat. Thrilling as it is in execution, it must be admitted that the Doctor doesn't exactly do much about the Cybermen, just lets them gorge on Earth's energy until their planet goes kerblooey. They did stop the launching of the Z-Bomb, admittedly, so it's not as though they didn't make an impact, but the Doctor was completely asleep for that.

That said, I still love it a lot; you just have to be willing to look at it through the lens of a viewer of the time. 8/10

Obviously it's a landmark story, being the intro of the Cybermen and Hartnell's last episode. These things lend it some points at a base level, but what about the story itself? and I think it's probably one of the best use of Cybermen in the show purely by virtue of focusing some on their origin story. Ultimately they still kinda amount to generic baddies but there's something about the way they used to be human that comes through in their design and the way they talk in this episode, that never quite feels the same in later appearances... well, until 2017, but that's another story.

What else to say? The American guy is funny, Hartnell's great as always especially near the end, and this is probably Ben's best episode as he gets a chance to take down the Cybermen. We even see a bit of his softer side when he shows a moment of upset after killing that one Cyberman. (meanwhile Polly's reduced to the one who makes the coffee, but that's the 60s for you.)

I did find the actual solution to the invasion kind of disappointing, where they just have to wait til Mondas takes too much energy and everything gets destroyed – the Cybermen's plan was always doomed to fail. You could make a case that it's trying to say something about the Cybermen's brute resolution and lack of humanity, but in the episode itself it just feels lazy. Still, we do get a more proper climax with Ben using radioactivity against the Cybermen, which helps.

This is perhaps a more notable serial for its place in the show's history than its actual plot, but I do think there's things to enjoy in it as a story, even if it never quite rises above the ranks of other "fairly good" stories. Also, props to Planet 55 for what I think is probably some of the best animation of any missing episode in part 4!