The War Games

All good things must come to an end, and so did Patrick Troughton’s time as the Doctor, and of course black and white episodes as well. To complete the story of the second Doctor we had a ten-part adventure, the second longest story in the six-year history of the programme to that point, and it was called ‘The War Games’.

I was worried beforehand. TEN parts and no Daleks? How will they sustain that, but as many others have mentioned, the story doesn’t really let up and certainly doesn’t feel like a full ten parts. Credit to the writing team of Malcolm Hulke and Terence Dicks for that.

We have the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arriving on an alien world that appears to be Earth, divided into time zones where different wars are being played out by soldiers kidnapped by the War Lord and his kind. In the central zone is the controlling base if you like, decked out futuristically. We go from one zone to the next, although most action is limited to the First World War Zone (where the story begins) and a barn in the American Civil War Zone.

The final episode is set on the Doctor’s home world, and mine incidentally, but I won’t mention its name as it hasn't been mentioned yet in the series and I don’t want to spoil it for viewers if they should reveal it later in another story.

The sets, although a little wobbly, hold up well considering there are a lot of them and they were made on sixpence. There is a lot of location shooting which really adds to the atmosphere and makes it all feel rather authentic, especially the First World War stuff. The quarry they use for the opening sequence is perhaps the best quarry they have ever used for Doctor Who!

The way they peel the banana so to speak in this story is great too. We start believing our heroes to be in the First World War. Then clearly something isn’t right, and slowly but surely more is revealed, with the final revelations about the Doctor himself.

It’s been an interesting turn in the kinds of stories throughout this sixth season, which began with ‘The Dominators’. Only two stories have the same feel and approach that so many Fifth Season stories did – principally ‘The Seeds of Death’, but also ‘The Invasion’. There is a lot more variety which produced great stories such as ‘The Mind Robber’ and ‘The War Games’, but there’s always a risk with trying something different, ‘The Space Pirates’ and ‘The Krotons’ were rather poor stories. It’s a fair price to pay though when you are trying to ‘mix it up’ and give the audience something new week after week, and it’s similar to the Hartnell years which were far less predictable and showcased a variety of styles and ideas.

‘The War Games’ is the crowning achievement of that, a wonderful idea that peels away throughout all ten episodes. Wonderful twists and turns, an absolutely stunningly good cast – Philip Madoc as the War Lord is chilling, but two of the best performances come from Noel Coleman as Smythe and David Garfield as Von Weich. Thoroughly evil performances from both. David Saville as Lieutenant Castairs was an excellent almost pseudo companion, and Jane Sherwin was great as Lady Jennifer. A strange quirk of the script that after episode five she just disappears from the story and never reappears, getting a cursory mention in the final episode.

James Bree and Edward Brayshaw - interrogating the Doctor

The only questionable performance is James Bree as the Security Chief. It’s an almost theatrical yet stiff performance as he battles with the War Chief and speaks with a bizarre slow monotone voice. Was this what was envisaged? Sometimes you wonder if the actor made the choice himself or was directed to speak in a certain way. It’s very un-naturalistic and goes against most of the other characters, perhaps with the exception of the War Chief (Edward Brayshaw) who gets a bit panto too at times, although is well over-shadowed by James Bree.

As for the regulars, well they all have a lot to do. Patrick Troughton is outstanding in his last story, but we should not forget it is also Wendy Padbury’s and Frazer Hines’ last story too. They made a wonderful pair of companions for the Doctor. Some of their work in Episodes Eight and Ten is fantastic, and very well written too as Jamie pretends to be the leader of the resistance and Zoe asserts herself. Then in the last scene with the Doctor, you can feel the sadness between the group that their journey making the show together has come to an end.

The sets are very clever, the design excellent considering how many things they needed to produce for the show. The futuristic sets, though minimal made maximum use of the small space they had and were rather psychedelic in design. The lack of money does show through at times – the controls of the time machines are magnets moved around a board. I wasn’t convinced by that at all, and there seemed to be a lot of hanging plastic sheets used. The guards costumes had very silly tight hoods on and wore strange glasses which I guess were designed to obscure their faces so that they could kill and reuse the same actors over and over again.

‘The War Games’ though owes much of what it is simply to the writing team of Terence Dicks and Malcolm Hulke who in short time whipped up an excellent story, and a fitting end to Troughton’s fine tenure as the Doctor. This story is as good as any other Patrick Troughton story. He was lucky to begin and end with two all-time classics.

9/10

The Space Pirates

On the face of it, the title ‘The Space Pirates’ conjures some exciting images in one’s mind. Pirates in space? Brilliant! Oh and treasure, there must treasure right? Pirates without treasure is like Mork without Mindy, Troughton without Hines, or Morecombe without Wise, right? There’s going to be sword fights – maybe laser sword fights, in space, it’s going to be a swashbuckling non-stop adventure.

Swash-buckling pirates? Maybe not....

Well, I’m sorry but after such a title it’s hard not to be disappointed with Robert Holmes’ second story. I’d be very surprised if he writes another script after the two duds he’s served up thus far. What exactly is wrong with ‘The Space Pirates’? Well, it’s more a matter of asking what is right about it, and the answer is simply – not much.

Alpha One, where the Doc and co spend the first two episodes.

The first two episodes in particular are very slow, and it never really speeds up all that much. With no pace it’s immediately a hard story to get into considering the subject matter. It should have been a good story. But the realisation is just so poor. It seems more akin to Somali pirates stealing oil than swashbuckling pirates in the mould of Blackbeard and John Sparrow. Which, in all fairness, is the way it should have gone.

One annoying thing is that the Doctor and his companion are hardly relevant for the story. Especially Jamie and Zoe who don’t appear to do anything for six whole episodes. The Doctor defuses a bomb in episode six, and apart from that they just get captured, escape, recaptured, blown up but not actually contribute to the narrative. Instead the story is driven by a somewhat pantomime character in Milo Clancy, with a cowboy costume, a handlebar moustache and a somewhat dubious and over the top southern accent.  Milo Clancy is played by Gordon Gostelow, as whacky a character they have had in Doctor Who to this point, so a strange choice to be the main character for the six-parts.

Milo Clancy

The accents are a feature in this one, and they seem to have gone mostly for American accents. Donald Gee plays Warne, he’s American like many characters. The pirates are led by Caven, played by Dudley Foster, who is really a gritty character I guess, happy to kill and be brutal at will. It just doesn’t gel with all the other characters with bizarre accents and strange costumes.

General Hermack, played by Jack May, is the perfect example. He and Warne spend the six episodes mostly in their space ship looking for the Argonite pirates, but don’t ever meet the Doctor and his companions and only have a brief encounter with Milo Clancy. They feature heavily in Episode Two, the only episode to still exist, an episode where the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe spend the whole 25 minutes stuck in part of a beacon away from the TARDIS. Hermack doesn’t have an accent I can place, but he does have a ridiculous voice. I doubt whether it was the actor’s natural voice but I suppose anything is possible.

The sets are pretty poor too. Doctor Who, at least at this stage of its evolution, does not do space craft well, especially not the interiors. The use of cathode-ray TV sets everywhere is laughable, and all the switches and buttons look so dated and lacking in imagination that they are completely unbelievable and the audience knows for sure that they are watching something made in a studio.

The Doctor’s journey begins halfway through episode one when he, Jamie and Zoe arrive on the beacon. They are chased very briefly, pirates attack and leave them there and blow up the beacon. Episode Two they are in the beacon, alone, for the whole episode. Episode three they meet Milo Clancy and travel with him, episode four they are locked away by the pirates, episode five they escape, get captured again and are thrown into a room (rather than a cell). Episode Six they talk a bit and the Doctor defuses a bomb. That’s the journey for our three characters who sadly get little to do in the second Doctor’s penultimate story. They basically just want to be reunited with the TARDIS, stuck on a different piece of the beacon that was blown up in episode one. However, being reunited with the TARDIS happens after the story is finished!

It has a strange feel, very different to any other story I can recall. The first Doctor met pirates in his penultimate story too – ‘The Smugglers’. Real proper treasure-hunting pirates in a cracking adventure. 3 years later, pirates in space failed to have nearly as much impact.

3/10

The Seeds of Death

We return to a base-under-siege format for ‘The Seeds of Death’ and see the return of the rather immobile Ice Warriors in a story which takes place on Earth and the moon. It’s a lot of fun really. The regulars are great and the guest cast is fantastic. It’s a six parter that moves well and doesn’t get bogged down, and my friend Andrew tells me it was the first Troughton story he saw which apparently makes it special. His favourite Doctor, I should add, is Patrick Troughton.

I did enjoy this story, and although it’s not brilliant, it’s a very strong story in the style of the previous season. Season Six, which we are now in, has been experimenting up to this point, and this is the first and only return to monsters and base-under siege, the staple diet of the fifth season which ended with ‘The Wheel in Space’.

It’s full of amusing curiosities, such as the death effect for the Ice Warriors’ weapons which twist and distort the victim, and a computer which announces everything that is happening to expedite the plot outside the story show on screen. The computer is constantly telling the audience and indeed the characters what is happening in other countries around the world. The seeds themselves, designed to create foam and change the atmosphere of Earth, are basically just balloons that get bigger and then burst. It’s simple, but effective most of the time but looks dodgy at others.

The direction is rather good. I gather the story stretched its budget to the limit, and Terence Dicks had to re-write most of the final four parts, I believe mostly for budgetary reasons. There is a bit of evidence of the budget not quite stretching all the way – the sets wobble a bit, mostly on the moonbase, but I didn’t notice it until the production notes on the DVD told me! The corridor sets are apparently just one or two used over and over again, shot in different ways from different angles, inter-dispersed with halls of mirrors which don’t make a lot of sense, but look rather stylish!

A look at the dubious costume design of the Seeds of Death.

The one thing that really dates the futuristic stories though is the use of old TV sets for monitors. There are a few here. Then we have the costumes. I’m sorry, they are awful! It is the worst costumed story I have seen. The plastic suits with stripes that make it look like people have their underwear on the outside is seriously embarrassing. Then to put it on older actors looks ridiculous. Only the Doctor, his companions and Gia Kelly escaped this awful costumes.

Alan Bennion as Slarr, the Ice Warrior Leader.

And the Ice Warriors of course! These lumbering great beasts are great villains, but I have to admit at times they look far too slow to do anything. Add to the fact that their hands are very impractical, and maybe they don’t stack up as great monsters. They were able to dig out the costumes from the previous appearance which was good, and I think it’s fair to say, with Wendy Padbury apparently pay half the cost of her costume so she could keep it, costumes were done on the serious cheap in this story.

The foam seems to be exactly the same as what was used in ‘Fury from the Deep’ – well if it worked once, why not? For a futuristic story there aren’t a lot of special effects. The exterior shooting seems to fit in quite well with the studio stuff which is good.

Trohgton at his best.

The cast are stellar. Troughton, Hines and Padbury all have some good moments, Troughton takes a holiday during episode four (I think) when he’s replaced, perhaps not too subtly, by an unconscious double. Well, I’m sure he wasn’t actually unconscious. 

Louise Pajo as Gia Kelly.

Louise Pajo is perfect casting for Gia Kelly, a role which was originally to be male, which would have left Zoe as the only female character in the story! Louise Pajo, people may be interested to know, had a role a few years later in the first season of Prisoner, the Australian TV show, not the British!

Terry Scully, whose personality might have been similar to the character he played, Fewsham, was perfectly cast. He appeared in Terry Nation’s ‘Survivors’, but had to be replaced during the shooting for mental health reasons. Then we have Christopher Coll as Mr Phipps, a great character we build sympathy for as an audience only to have him killed in episode four George R.  Martin style. Ronald Leigh-Hunt  as Commander Radnor and Philip Ray as Professor Eldred complete a great ensemble.

It’s a highly enjoyable tale, and was the first black and white story to be released on video. It’s easy to see why.

7.5/10

The Krotons

‘The Krotons’ was a script held back for when a story fell through. In this slot was some bizarre story called ‘Prison in Space’ where the Doctor and Jamie were held prisoners by a clan of women. Extras on the DVD suggest it was going to be a bad story, and the director, David Maloney said he couldn’t direct the story that was eventually scrapped for ‘The Krotons’.

I don’t have a lot to say about ‘The Krotons’. It’s not very good to be fair. It’s two-dimensional with ludicrous robots as the main villains, with some very poor over-acting on the guest cast’s behalf. The design is a bit ho-hum and the story, frankly, is very limited.

Firstly, I don’t understand the world its set on. People live almost like cavemen and there appears to be one small village targeted by the Krotons, who never leave their machines. Are there other people on the planet? The Krotons have been there for 1000 years, subjugating the ‘Gonds’. Why don’t the Gonds just move somewhere else?

I couldn’t work out how the little village – a model shot – integrated with the learning hall, the main place in the village that things happened. I didn't get a real sense of their lives. The sets were ok, but it seemed that they were very limited in the number of sets they had. They never walked around the village on screen, we only saw inside the huts and the learning hall.

Eelek (Philip Madoc)

The exterior/filming work was better, but still the audience is given little indication where things are located to each other.

Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are all brilliant in this story. They bring it up from being ridiculous to almost watchable! They play around with each other, the Doctor and Zoe compete on the learning machines against each other, Jamie is clueless a lot of the time which proves rather funny, they work brilliantly as a team together.

The guest cast do their best with some seriously two dimensional characters. The script does little for any of the characters. They appear purely functional. Eelek, played by Philip Madoc, seems hell bent in stirring up revolution and destruction, but why I don’t know. Then at the end, when the building looks like it will be destroyed as the Krotons take off, he runs away, and is never heard of again. His storyline isn’t vaguely resolved. The leader of the Gonds, Selris, played by James Copeland, is the most frustrating character who seems very over the top. He over-pronounces words, and I wonder if that’s from stage training – many actors of the time were principally stage actors. Selris’s death at the hands of the Krotons is not handled well by Moloney. He rushes into the Kroton craft, hands the Doctor a bottle of acid and then, after a pregnant pause, the Krotons disintegrate him.

A Kroton

Enough has been written and said by others on the Krotons themselves. They appear to wear a dress over their bottom halves. They are big robot square-shaped creatures with spinning heads and arms that can’t carry anything, let alone their huge weapons. The costumes for the Gonds, the people who live on this unnamed planet, are all the same for some reason with the exception of Selris’s costume. Plain and uniform like. That was very puzzling to me.  On a positive note with the design, there is a hose-like snake creature with an eye on it that comes out of the learning hall wall which looks very sinister. I liked that.

All in all though, this is a pretty poor story in my eyes. I was happy it was only four parts.

3/10

The Invasion

We go from a very strange, otherworldly story in ‘The Mind Robber’ to an Earth-bound, invasion story featuring a lot of soldiers and the Cybermen, called simply ‘The Invasion’. For the first time we have an eight-part adventure, with two missing episodes thankfully animated for the DVD release. It is an interesting story.

It differs from previous monster stories of Season Five in that it is a proper invasion, it’s not a base-under siege story, rather a world under siege! Nicholas Courtney returns as Lethbridge Stewart, recently promoted to Brigadier in charge of the newly formed UNIT. We are told some time has passed since ‘The Web of Fear’, where we met the character. The inference is that the story is slightly in the future of when it was first shown (1968-9) so it is presumably early to mid 1970s.

Troughton and Stoney, Episode 8. 

Derrick Sherwin wrote the script. He found himself script editor one week and producer the next, swapping roles as Peter Bryant was slowly moving on from his producership. It’s a mostly functional script with some great characters. The two most interesting and presumably fun characters to play are the chief villains of the piece (bar the Cybermen) Packer, played by Peter Halliday, and Tobias Vaughn, played by Kevin Stoney.

Stoney appeared in Doctor Who as Mavic Chen, the evil dictator of Earth in ‘The Daleks’ Masterplan’, a role not dissimilar to Vaughn. At least we could see his face properly in this one. Vaughn is truly mad in this story, and Stoney approaches the role with relish. He has fits of anger and madness, and at one point allows Professor Watkins (Edward Burnham) to shoot him revealing he has been part Cyber-ised. Packer is in charge of Vaughn’s security and spends most of his seven and a bit episodes desperately wanting to hurt someone, and yet never gets around to it much to his frustration.

Sally Faulkner as Isobel.

Sally Faulkner and Wendy Padbury.

Sally Faulkner appears as Isobel Watkins, a real sixties ‘it’ girl, and could have made a decent companion. Jamie disappears around episode seven and isn’t seen in episode eight until the farewell scene, which is captured on film so I presume he had a week or two holiday during the making of this story. Again though, Hines and Troughton work magnificently well together in parts of this story. There is a wonderful scene in a lift shaft where they scurry to the top. Jamie asks the Doctor what will happen if they don’t get out in time, the Doctor replies that’s simple – they will get squashed!

Wendy Padbury instantly made a good companion, but in this story she really shines. Zoe is given a lot to do, calculating missile trajectories and confusing computers, and this story shows how well a smart companion can be used. Troughton himself has some great moments, especially when he poses for photos mid the big battle in episode eight!

The story is long yet light weight in fairness. It’s perhaps predictable, and not very fast moving, and not filled with a lot of plot twists. However it is very solid and features chases, battles, scary moments in the sewers and helicopters and planes. The Cybermen don’t appear until episode four, although there are a few giveaways before then that they are coming. The Cyber-suits are disappointing. It is clear they are painted wet suits. I don’t mind the wider heads featured but the zip in the middle of the suit only partly obscured by the chest unit is very poor in my opinion. I think the costumes of the previous couple of stories were better.

The Brigadier leads the way.

Despite these minor quibbles, ‘The Invasion’ is a lot of fun. A highly enjoyable 8 parts of fun, with some quality acting.

7/10

The Mind Robber

‘The Mind Robber’ is an example of ideas coming together and working well. Far away from the ‘base-under-siege’ formula common throughout the previous year, ‘The Mind Robber’ is a fresh, interesting and well played out story, and one of the very best of Patrick Troughton’s era.

Jamie and Zoe face the White Robots in Episode One.

We start with the intriguing Episode One, written by Derrick Sherwin to make up for the shortfall of an episode in the previous serial, and with no sets to call on bar the TARDIS and no actors to emply but the regulars and a couple of extras playing white robots, we get an episode reminiscent some ways of the first episode of ‘The Space Museum’. It’s eerie and atmospheric and the regulars are great.

Wendy Padbury has stepped into the role of Zoe and from the get-go it’s like she was always there. She’s a different companion to Victoria, although she also has a decent scream on her. She works very different with Jamie compared to Victoria – she is very smart and from the future and so patronises Jamie at times, but the dynamic is great.

There are some great images conjured in Episode one, including Jamie and Zoe holding onto the TARDIS console as it spins through space. The director has come up with clever ways to achieve a lot of shots through the serial and mostly they pay off. It’s the sort of creativity sadly missing from ‘The Dominators’.

Zoe about to fight the Carcus (Christopher Robbie)

With Frazer Hines sick during the shooting of the second episode, Sherwin came up with a great idea to use a different actor in Jamie’s place – when the Doctor miss-assembles Jamie’s face as a test. Hamish Wilson steps into the role of Jamie effortlessly. We have a story set in a world of fiction. It’s a step into fantasy, and a step away from Science Fiction. It’s the opposite of a story like ‘The Wheel in Space’ and it works very well. There are some wonderful comic moments, it’s well paced across five episodes, and the cast seem to enjoy this story a lot.

It’s still rough at the edges. Wendy Padbury to this day bemoans the fact that they didn’t have time to shoot her fight with the Carcus properly. It’s great to see her throwing a big superhero around, but unfortunately at times it’s clear he is just jumping over Zoe.

The sets are well done, and there are some nice touches of humour, especially in the final episode. Bernard Horsfall is a great Emial Gulliver, and Emrys Jones as the ‘Master’ was a wonderful piece of casting. In the final scene when he says ‘oh you mean I’m going home?’, he’s a joy. That set is rather good too. Jamie and Zoe have doubles at some stage, and they are truly creepy. This story has a lot of creepy elements to it.

Bernard Horsfall as Gulliver.

Peter Ling, the writer (bar episode one) came up with a truly imaginative story. Sometimes it might feel like it’s really aimed at a very young audience, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The only downside is the ending, which is a bit flat, a bit simple. When everything appears lost for the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe just press every button on the computer console, the world goes crazy, the TARDIS reappears and everything is ok again. Still, it’s a minor quibble on an excellent story.

8.5/10

Hamish Wilson as Jamie - Episode Two.

The Dominators

So nice to know I have only one story that is (mostly) a recon to go. The season six opener was a curious beast to watch, if very cringe-worthy at times. A script originally by Mervyn Haismen and Henry Lincoln, responsible for the two Yeti stories, Derrick Sherwin, now producer, rewrote it extensively and cut out an episode as he felt the material didn’t warrant six parts. The original writers weren't happy and went with the pseudonym ‘Norman Ashby’ as the writer.

Quark alert!

Educator Balan (Johnson Bayley), a typical Dulcian/

Although astonishingly embarrassing at times, ‘The Dominators’ shouldn't be merely written off as rubbish. It deals with some really interesting ideas which is fails to convey in an engaging manner. The idea of a planet of pacifists is no doubt a reaction to the hippy movement of the sixties. What if everyone on the Earth became a peace-loving hippy? What if everyone in one country did? The writers theorise that they would then be open to being conquered with no form of retaliation. It is only the Doctor and his friends who think fighting is an option on Dulkis.

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe explore the 'Island of Death'.

I would have loved to see these ideas fleshed out better. In some ways the story is already a bit silly, but perhaps the comedy angle could have been pushed more. The problem is that none of the Dulkins are particularly interesting in ‘The Dominators’, because of this non-violent approach. Perhaps another angle that could have fleshed ‘The Dominators’, which had an episode cut from it as the producer, Derrick Sherwin, felt it didn’t have enough material to go the six episodes, was that behind everyone being nice to each other was a different, malevolent force. Anyways, ‘The Dominators’ is what it is.

Zoe ends up in Dulkis' gear with Cully (Arthur Cox)

Aside from scripting and character issues, the design of this story helps in no way at all. The costumes are, I hate to say, ridiculous and embarrassing. The poor actors who had to wear them must have so embarrassed they probably didn’t watch it when it was broadcast. The men running around in high dresses are particularly poor. The two Dominators themselves have these bizarre shoulder humps and the rest of the costume appears to be made out of ticker-tape. I don’t know what the costume designer, Martin Baugh, was thinking.

There’s a lot of quarry filming, which is appropriate for the story, and it’s interesting to see that Patrick Troughton must have been excused from the location shoot as the brief shots featuring the Doctor obviously have a double. The sets work well for the most part, probably the best aspect of the design, and then there are the Quarks. I like the heads. They don’t look very menacing though let’s be honest even with their firepower. Their voices are hard to understand and strange.

Inside the Dominator Space craft.

There are quite a few model shots in this story, and they are pretty poor. They couldn’t convey the idea of the fast moving travel capsule at all, and I still don’t know where it travelled – presumably in the outer atmosphere of Dulkis. The capital was under-utilised and completely forgotten in the final episode. The ending lacks visuals and is very very rushed. A real quick ‘goodbye’, oh, volcano? Quick into the TARDIS. It’s a real surprise when suddenly the credits start rolling, it felt like there was more to play out.

Ultimately the problems of a story start with the script and should end with the director. Morris Barry was probably hard pressed just to get the thing finished, but it really lacks energy at places and the actors look very uninspired for most of it. I think the ideas behind the story are very interesting, and it’s a real pity it couldn’t result in a much better final product.

3.5/10

The Wheel in Space

After the excellent ‘Fury from the Deep’, and the sad departure of Victoria, it’s hard to view ‘The Wheel in Space’ as anything but a major come-down.

Whereas ‘Fury from the Deep’ was high energy and well paced, ‘The Wheel in Space’ is easily the dullest Cybermen story thus far, extremely formulaic and one dimensional. For starters, the Cybermen take until mid-episode four to get onto the ‘Wheel in Space’, the entire first episode is almost solely the Doctor and Jamie rummaging around an abandoned space ship, and then the Doctor hits his head and Jamie destroys a servo-robot and well, it’s just not very engaging at all. We get a glimpse of life inside the wheel but nothing more during the first episodes.

Then Troughton takes a holiday for episode two, although the set and model work for the wheel must be complimented. However, the Doctor and Jamie are rescued from the space ship by men from the wheel, who get to the ship by walking across space in space suits. Completely in plausible in my eyes. Then how did they get the unconscious Doctor back? They would have had to put a suit on him and carried him! Not that we see that.

The Cybermen appear at the end of episode two, which is mostly dialogue-heavy between the crew of the wheel. Jamie sabotages the wheel’s laser so they don’t destroy the ship with quick seal plastic conveniently labelled in the laser control room. It just sort of trundles along, Cybermats appear to destroy the bernalium store so that they have to go back to the ship to see if there’s any there. The Cybermen hide in a crate of bernalium and that’s how they get to the wheel. In episode four.

Zoe look out! Behind you!

The characters are pretty light on for character development. Zoe, played by Wendy Padbury, joins the TARDIS crew at the end of this one, and her character is rather good. She displays the angst of being so smart and yet not understanding others, and the sadness that goes along with that and being thought of as a computer very well. The Commander, Jarvis, is suitably and predictably mad, but why? There’s not a lot of explanation behind his actions and his pointless death scene where he attacks a Cyberman armed with nothing is just odd.

The Cybermen want the wheel so they can use it to get to Earth. Very little else is used to explain their motivation. They say ‘You know our ways’ a lot to the Doctor. The Cybermen voice in Episode Three is weak and very hard to understand, however from Episode Four onwards it is louder and better, even on the reprise from episode three.

I think the story looks very good for its time, but it is full of mystifying scenes of people walking a long way through space – how they propelled themselves I have no idea. Space walks are usually done on surfaces, not just through nothing. David Whitaker was handed a story idea from Kit Pedler and produced his most disappointing story, with typical Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis two-dimensional characters that merely serve a purpose. Plus one mad guy thrown in for good measure. It’s slow and very ungripping!

Look out for the use of a photo to represent a dead body in episode six, so they could save on money and not have to employ the actor for another episode!

3.5/10