Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen

What's this album title? Wrong answers only

The memory cheats...

Season Five, Story 1 (production code MM)

Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor

with Frazer Hines (Jamie) and Deborah Watling (Victoria)

Written by Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis
Directed by Morris Barry
Produced by Peter Bryant
Script Editor - Victor Pemberton

Production Dates, Viewership, Appreciation Figures

• Episode 1 - 2 Sept 1967 (6.0m, 53%)
• Episode 2 - 9 Sept 1967 (6.4m, 52%)
• Episode 3 - 16 Sept 1967 (7.2m, 49%)
• Episode 4 - 23 Sept 1967 (7.4m, 50%)

How To Watch

• As of March 2025, frequently in rotation on the Classic Doctor Who channel on Pluto.tv
• As of March 2025, not among the selections available on the Doctor Who Classic Youtube channel, but this may change quickly.
• Available on demand on Britbox. (subscription required)
• Released on DVD in 2002 (re-released with improved image quality in 2012)
• Rush-released on VHS in 1992 shortly after its rediscovery

Synopsis

The TARDIS lands on the planet Telos, where our heroes encounter a scientific expedition from Earth looking for traces of the Cybermen's lost civilization. Eventually a Cyberbase is excavated, and after a few fatal booby traps and mishaps, they decipher the complex mathematical logic of the controls, reactivate the base, and discover dozens of Cybermen frozen in hibernation in a vast hive-like cavern below ground. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, the expedition's financier, Klieg, and his partner Kaftan are members of a secret elite group of scientists hoping to utilize the Cybermen in order to gain control of the Earth. Kaftan's servant Toberman secretly sabotages their spaceship so they can't leave. They succeed in reviving the Cybermen, who then re-activate their Cyber-Controller, who plans to convert the expedition to become part of a new race of Cybermen. Eventually Klieg and Kaftan are killed by the Cybermen, but the partially-converted Toberman helps the Doctor and the surviving expedition to overpower the Cybermen and force them back to their tombs. Toberman sacrifices himself to re-seal the base and destroy the Cyber-Controller.

Analysis

I still have it; the 100th issue of Doctor Who Magazine, very well-loved and thoroughly pored over since I first acquired it back in May 1985. One thing that proved very crucial was it contained a list of the episodes that were missing at the time. I noted with a degree of sadness how some stories were completely lost, and as such I had no expectation that I would ever get to experience stories like "Marco Polo," "Power of the Daleks," or "Tomb of the Cybermen," among others.

"Tomb" had taken on a sort of mystic quality among the lost stories. People who saw it back in 1967 spoke of it in reverent, hushed tones. I'd seen the impressive images of the Cyber tomb set. I had the novelization but more or less skimmed it, so I had the bare bones of the plot.

At the time there were only five complete Troughton stories, all from his last season; I'd seen them but must admit that at the time I didn't really warm to them apart from "Mind Robber" and "War Games." The crappy quality of the film copies they used for broadcast at the time didn't help.

Then in 1992, a few years after coping with the BBC having cancelled Doctor Who, the news broke that all four episodes of "Tomb of the Cybermen" had been found in Hong Kong, and it was going to be shown on my local PBS station while I was home from college. I waited with bated breath. Finally, I'd see this much-beloved lost episode from the pinnacle of the Troughton era.

Sigh.

Apparently I wasn't alone in my mild disappointment, enough so that John Nathan Turner defensively coined the term "The memory cheats," suggesting that the story was much better in our memories, and to an extent he had a point. Most fans who saw this story on original broadcast were children then, and those scary memories stayed with them even as the story details and ropey effects faded. Confronting the story 25 years later as adults we watched it with different eyes, we noticed the strings and problems.

I feel guilty when I see posts across the various Doctor Who related social media groups how "Tomb" is absolutely the pinnacle, still delivers today, just top-notch sci-fi, etc etc... because I can't generate the same love for this story.

There are things I do like about "Tomb." So let's start there.

Before his hair plugs and jawline reconstruction...

This is one of the few Cyberstories of the era that at least remembers what the Cybermen are supposed to be about. They are waiting for people to find the lost tomb who are smart enough to avoid the traps, and figure out how to re-activate the base and thaw them out, thus proving themselves to be worthy candidates for cyber-conversion. They even go so far as to partially convert Toberman, which is the first time we've seen this done explicitly.

And even if it's a bit overrated, I do appreciate the scene between the Doctor and Victoria. It delivers insight into the Doctor's past, of which he'd said next to nothing over the past four seasons, and it shows that he's suffered some significant personal tragedies – which might explain why he was traveling with his granddaughter when we first meet him.

The scene of the Cybermen waking and bursting out of their tombs at the end of episode two is justifiably iconic, even if it is undercut a bit when they reverse the footage later on when they return.

Yeah yeah yeah, the unscripted bit where the Doctor and Jamie hold hands briefly, cute, etc.

Interesting opening scene (on film) where the Doctor and Jamie introduce Victoria to the TARDIS. The TARDIS console room is always a bit malleable given the confines of the studio space, but this is probably as large scale as we would ever see, complete with an uncharacteristic echo as if they were in a cathedral. And the obligatory snicker for Victoria's line, "It's so big! What are all these knobs?"

Oh, and another story about a wealthy financier/tech guru trying to create a new scientific world order on his own terms!

I have to question a number of choices that the production team made in crafting this story.

Shut the door! Oh, and hand me a bog roll.

Why did they make the rocket crew American? Especially when none of the actors could handle the accent particularly well, and the writers peppered their dialogue with British idioms mixed amongst the, um, uh, stereotypical, uh, American, uh, expressions, yeah. And I know fashion can change a lot over centuries, and the show's budget was what it was, but slacks and plaid short-sleeve button-down shirts for the rocket crew? I almost prefer the suits worn by the human astronauts in "The Sensorites" with the cute little rockets stitched on the breast pockets. Toberman ends up being the most fashionable of the group.

Every time there's action involving the Cybermen, who's choice was it for the Cyberman voice actor to do an impersonation of Beavis transforming into Cornholio 30 years early? ("Weewawawawawwwoowowowowowowowwywuwuwuwuwuwuwu")

Sometimes, particularly during this era, they attempt to boost excitement by referring to unseen action, and even allowing for budget and the storytelling standards of the day, it's cringeworthy ... Zaroff in "Underwater Menace," "Kill those two men!" (two shots ring out, the offscreen men presumably die) ... Jamie reporting to the Doctor in "Evil of the Daleks," "A Dalek nearly caught us, but I tossed it over the edge!" ... and here Jamie firing his zapgun down the ladder at a Cybermen we never see, "There's another one! (zap) Got him!"

I think it's worthy to note the Doctor's ethics in this story. Not entirely unlike "Power of the Daleks," the Doctor is basically nudging the events along toward the revitalization of the Cybermen, resulting in the deaths of about half the supporting cast. Once the Cybermen are re-tombed, the survivors know full well to never, ever, ever do that again.

Had he not intervened, though, would Klieg and the others even figure out how to reactivate them in the first place? Would they have turned around after the first unfortunate sod electrocuted himself trying to open the doors?

We Need To Talk About Toberman

Non-white actors were employed very sparingly on the BBC in this era – Doctor Who was far from the only culprit – but it is telling when we look at how they are used.

In general, it is very clear that contemporary mass media was created by white people for a white audience. The population of the UK in 1967 was about 98% people of British or Irish descent (it's now about 76%), so any non-white viewers were effectively considered afterthoughts, as if to say, "Oh, you want to watch too? um, ok, I guess so..." and if you did see a black person on the telly, it was more likely to be a singer than an actor. Even into the 70's and 80's, it was not uncommon for white actors to "dark up" to play ethnic characters (one of the more notorious examples in Doctor Who was John Bennett in "Talons of Weng-Chiang", even though this was far from the only case).

And while across the ocean Lt. Uhura was smashing representation barriers (a young Whoopi Goldberg shouted to her parents, "Look, there's a black lady on tv and she ain't no maid!"), British sci-fi wasn't as fast to evolve. All due credit to Earl Cameron as astronaut Williams who survived two episodes in "Tenth Planet," but otherwise, non-white actors usually ended up as servants, or extras watching white actors playing their race (see "Marco Polo"), or ill-conceived strong-men (reinforcing, intentionally or not, the idea of non-white males as only good for brute strength).

I will defend how Toberman is conceived... up to a point. At some point in the creation of the story there allegedly was discussion about making Toberman deaf, and as part of his Cyberconversion he regains his hearing. That was a sound idea, conceptually, but it was tossed. He was also later intended to be mute (as was Kemel in the previous story) but ended up with a few short lines, and even then it wasn't clear if he was mentally deficient (grunting and monosyllabic in the style of, say, Tor Johnson in the Ed Wood movies) or just not much of a conversationalist.

Me... not... live... to... end of story!

I'm guessing that there were a lot of re-writes about Toberman, as if they were somewhat aware that the way they were writing him was a bit... racist... but with the fast pace of production, they didn't get the opportunity to sit down and devote sufficient brainspace toward it. Toberman ended up a mass of ill-conceived ideas. Even his death scene, which is mostly heroic, also reinforces the show's tendency for BIPOC characters to get killed off. The first credited black actor with a significant role whose character survived to the end wouldn't appear until 1972, and even in the entire classic series the number can be counted on one hand.

As for Roy Stewart, he appeared again in 1971's "Terror of the Autons" as yet another non-speaking strongman. He's no longer with us (passed in 2008), but I'd've loved to know more about his feelings and thoughts about his appearances on Doctor Who.

Trivia and Tidbits

Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) was the wife of producer Peter Bryant – which would've been useful information for Frazer Hines to know before he started flirting with her during rehearsals...

Peter Bryant was being groomed to take over the production reins from Innes Lloyd, who was keen to move on. This was Bryant's test story, and he would become full producer from "Web of Fear" through the penultimate Troughton story "The Space Pirates."

This was recorded during the same production block as most of Season Four, so it wasn't made with the same looming deadline as most of the production block, taping one week before broadcast.

Haven't I Seen You Somewhere In The Future?

• Roy Stewart (Toberman) was an uncredited extra in "The Crusade" and circus strongman Tony in "Terror of the Autons"
• Cyril Shaps (Viner) also appeared as Lennox in "Ambassadors of Death," Clegg in "Planet of the Spiders," and the Archimandrite in "Androids of Tara"
• Clive Merrison (Callum) also appeared as the Deputy Chief Caretaker in "Paradise Towers"
• Bernard Holley (Haydon) also appeared as the Axon Male and voice of Axos in "Claws of Axos"
• Michael Kilgarriff (Cyber-Controller) also appeared as an Ogron in "Frontier in Space," the title character in "Robot," and returned as the Controller in "Attack of the Cybermen"

Does the BIPOC Character Survive? No. (Toberman dies in episode four)

Sausage Factor: 95% (20 credited actors, including the Cybermen performers and voice actor, 1 female)

Rating: Two and a half out of Four Windup Cybermats
---
John Geoffrion is a semi-retired semi-professional thespian, a professional data guy, and a Dad. He usually falls asleep to the Classic Doctor Who channel on Pluto.tv

• More Second Doctor reviews
• Doctor Who home