The Tenth Planet

I've decided not to go through all those episodes listed on the site I mentioned before. I'll do that later. Right now I've decided to go back and watch every Cyberman story in order. That'll hit every Doctor I'm pretty sure, and I'll get to watch a lot of episodes I skipped because I wanted to understand the Cybermen fully before I watched them at all. So I'm starting with the Tenth Planet, the second story of season 4. It was broadcast in 1966 and was the last story with William Hartnell. Here we go!

This episode was never colourized. And that last part actually wasn't lost by being lent to Blue Peter, if you want to believe tardis.wikia.com (which you should!). No one knows how it was lost, and it was some other episode that was lent out. So, theme song sounds good, jokes seem awful, and EW I think there are Americans. Well, ok. I think they're meant to be... multicultural? I don't know, but I think that's a black guy.

Oh, yeah. That's an American right there. No question. D'aw, the Doctor is like a cantankerous but loving old grandfather. GROSS! GET RID OF THE AMERICANS!!! Ew, they're so disgusting. Alright, alright, the Doctor is funny. The Americans are shouting unnecessarily and the Doctor goes "Why don't you speak louder, I'm deaf" in this brilliant monotone.

OOH, DUDE! So, this was broadcast in 1966, and the episode is set in 1986, and they go "So have you got to the moon yet?" and the future people say "Of course!" And also it seems to the companions (I honestly don't know who they are yet) like there are very few people around, but then they realize that computers must do all the work. Doesn't look too outlandish, so fas as I can tell.

They just found a new planet between Mars and Venus, and one guy says it looked familiar... dun dun DUN!!! Something about a tenth planet. Nothing notable yet. In fact, this is what the space program could have been like if it had maintained the kind of funding it had in 1969. Yeesh, Ben is astoundingly Northern.

Here they come! The Cybermen have upsetting fleshy hands. Eugh. And the Doctor's smugness I think only works in '60s black and white. So this tenth planet looks exactly like Earth only upside down (very clearly, but they seem to have a hard time seeing it). Mondas is the name of the Cybermen planet, Earth's old twin planet. And hee hee, there was a bit where the Doctor was "rushing" and he would have been running like the new Doctors if he hadn't been too old.

Jeeze, you really need to hear these guys. They sound like they're trying to overcome speech impediments. Oh, I see, the Cybermen want to take all our energy because Mondas is running out, and they'll take everyone on Earth back to Mondas. Lame.

I really just can't describe what this is like, it's so old... it's so foreign to me. Well, I guess not really, it's just an old scifi serial, but it's beyond explanation. I just don't know what to say about it. The music... the dialogue... so odd.

So apparently, William Hartnell was ill (which is why he isn't in the third part of this episode), and so the Doctor just passed out for absolutely no reason. Well, I guess he is 450 years old, that's enough of a reason.

So the crazy American wants to set off the Z bomb to destroy Mondas (and basically all life on Earth in the process with radiation), but Polly goes "This is clearly a terrible idea" and convinces the not-crazy American to pretend to follow his orders but in fact make sure the bomb doesn't launch. And the Doctor is simply out of commission, supposedly napping, but they just kind of avoid actually showing him. William Hartnell was lying around at home, presumably. Wow, that is a fantastically realistic drawing... um... no...

This episode is all diplomacy and policy. Just a bunch of men in a room talking forcefully, arguing and negotiating. Ah, he reminds Polly to take her coat as she is taken as a hostage... that must be significant, since that's a stupid thing to say otherwise.

That last bit was a bit confusing, seeing as it was mostly pictures and audio, with occasional explanations of what was going on that we couldn't see. Anyway, the Cybermen aren't that scary yet. But they do seem to have all died and their home planet was destroyed.


Quotes:
"That'll fix you, Europe will know there's an emergency here now!"
"Look, you just keep your mind on making coffee, will you?! ...I'm sorry, that was rude."