Love this version of the theme and titles.
The story begins on Skaro, where the TARDIS console room is oddly on film.
"It's so big!... What are all these knobs?" Oh give over, Victoria. One track mind.
Jamie's going to enjoy having Victoria on board the TARDIS...
She laughs at the idea of time travel despite having travelled from 1866 England to Skaro in the distant future.
The Doctor estimates his age (the first time on screen?) at 450.
He sends Jamie to take her clothes shopping; Jamie slags off his driving.
Strange to only be getting the titles now...
Makes that last scene all the more like a modern pre-credits sequence - picture it ending with Trout throwing a lever, the console room lurching and the and exterior shot as the TARDIS hurtles towards Telos, and the music starts...
On planet gravel pit, we meet a team of archaeologists.
It's the train conductor out of From Russia With Love!
That's one vote for the "Tell-os" pronunciation.
They seem to have studied archaeology under Professor Ace. BOOOOOOM! You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
James Smith @thejimsmith Gerrard's Cross? He's absolutely livid!"Never seen anyone so excited by a pair of doors before.
£50 for the first man to open the doors!"
What could £50 get you in 1967?
Paul Cooke @paulvcooke it's about £800 today. They should have said £500.
Nick Mellish @nickmellish Get ready for the death of the anonymous crewmember, later forgotten when Parry lists off the dead in Episode 2... 
Shocking!
Gav R¥ @themindrobber All bar one death in Tomb of the Cybermen is the Doctor's fault. Without him the humans would never have got further than the first room.To be fair, Klieg'd've re-checked his working, they'd've looked under the controls like later, or they'd just use explosives.
Paul Cooke @paulvcooke and Klieg would still have his pencil! The Doctor nicks it! Lovely touch from Troughton!"Something came down over there..." Viner's quite wrong of course, but there's a few 2nd Doctor stories where the TARDIS seems to descend onto the planet - The Krotons even has a camera movement suggest it.
James Smith @thejimsmith Working assumption does seem to be that TARDIS drops out of the sky at this point. Also in Fury from the Deep.Now one vote for "Tee-loss"
VidFire, I bloody love you.
Really unusual that within the opening minutes the characters know it's Cybermen they're up against.
With Ben and Polly now out of the picture, Jamie's place as central companion, cemented well in The Evil of the Daleks, really allows Frazer to go from strength to strength with Jamie's character.
With the electricity drained, Toberman is able to prise the doors open. He'll regret that...
The business with Jamie's "skirt" and holding hands is great fooling.
Telos is very much supposed to be Egypt, isn't it. The "Tomb" is their pyramid. So where's the Cyberman who thinks Victoria is the reincarnation of his lost love from his former life?
Klieg and Kaftan, who have bankrolled the expedition, seem to have done so for some nefarious agenda...
At this point the TARDIS is completely uncontrollable, but if I didn't know better I'd say the Doctor had come here deliberately; he seems to have a whole plan...
"Keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut!" Oooh, you got burned, Eric.
Kaftan sends her hired muscle away and goes with Viner & Victoria to the revitalisation room, Jamie goes with Mr. Axon to the hypno-room, and the Doctor stays to continue winding Eric up.
"Do-Do, Do-Do, Do-Do-D-Do, Bowwww!"
Quite a few fluffs in this scene, but then I always think... people don't speak in perfect sentences and people do interrupt one another in real life, and repeat words etc.
Lines scripted as half sentences are always terrible. There's an awful one in The Two Doctors.
Kaftan's trapped Victoria in the revitaliser, but the Doctor arrives in the nick of time.
This room seems designed to train Cybermen to shoot straight even when they're on LSD!
Kleig can't help himself hinting he's up to no good. Bet he's rubbish at surprise parties.
Argh, a clearly mocked up unreal Cyberman! The Axon's bought it, though.
Love this story. That episode absolutely rattled along. Great characters, great setting, great atmosphere.
"This building's alive, it's trying to kill us!" Terry Nation used a similar idea for Death to the Daleks.
"If anyone wishes to leave they must do so at once - Not you, Jamie!" Priceless.
"This is a purely robotic Cyberman, like one of those stomping RTD-era clunkers."
The Doctor consults his 500 year diary and identifies the "caterpillar" Victoria's found as a "Cybermat." He already knew of the Cybermen even when they first turned up in The 10th Planet, didn't he?
Toberman's looking a bit nippy.
50dw50 @50dw50 · poor old Toberman he is going to have a bad dayParry's decided the expedition is over, but some character has balled up the ship, apparently. Blimey.
"...especially with you insisting all over the place." Some great and overlooked fizzing dialogue in this.
The Doctor says Victoria and Jamie can go back to the TARDIS if they like. They don't like.
The Doctor tips Kaftan the wink that he knows it was her hired muscle that did for the ship.
Kleig's logic wears a bit thin, so the Doctor gives him a helping hand to open the tomb...
It's almost as if the Doctor *wants* the tomb opened...
"The women as well?"
"They of course will stay up here."
Guess someone with brains has to stay up top...
It's a particularly 60s future, isn't it? No doubt Parry expects them to cook, clean and sew on buttons.
The opened hatch advances Kleig and Kaftan's scheming, so the Doctor asks Victoria to keep 'em peeled.
Anoraks? Yeah, cheers.
Victoria's ravenous. But you knew that already.
Kaftan's up to no good. Just for a change.
There were some nice echoes of this set in Nightmare in Silver but I want some proper full on tombs again.
King Chris @OpiriaOfficial · There's a coffee maker in my uni canteen that makes the exact noise of the cyber tombs. I never use the sugar... #CyberPlot
Andrea Long @DWF2006 · lol A printer at work made the exact same sound as when the Silence appear! I didn't look behind me! :OWith the hatch closed and Victoria at Kaftan's mercy...
...the whining Viner - and the rest of them - are trapped in the catacombs when The Cybermen start to thaw...
Whiner tries to make the Cybermen chill out, so Kleig shows his hand and guns him down.
Kleig's belief that the Cybermen will fall in behind the brotherhood of logicians is supremely deluded.
Definitely one of my favourite Cyberman designs.
Viner described the tombs earlier as a "honeycomb", and we're about to meet the queen bee!
These Cybermen are so much more scary.
They're silent and still. Kleig tries to recruit them, but the Controller just blanks him, until it finally grabs his arm, and announces...
"You belong to us! You will be like us!"
Took them ages to get out (and back in and out again) of their tombs, though, and you do have to tune yourself into their voices a bit.
I've always thought there should be a story that reveals a sort of elite of the Cybermen i.e. some that are still of the original Mondas generation, who have survived protected at the heart of the Cyber-race. Survival is supposedly their all-consuming imperative, not just conversion, so there should be some Cybermen that continue to achieve that and drive that agenda.
"Interesting" accent from Clive Merrison there. Great Sherlock Holmes, rubbish space American.
The Doctor wants to know why the Cybermen are so keen on snow.
"Our history computer has full details of you. We got them from the NSA."
They explain they needed a lie-in after feeling a bit knackered by the events of The Moonbase.
There's a struggle, and the Cybermen decide to pimp their Toberman.
"We have decided how you will be used." Like they've just had a good natter about it.
Troughton looks great in that cloak, doesn't he?
Hooper attacks with smoke bombs, allowing the others to make a run for it...
Toberman isn't so lucky and is knocked spark out...
And the Trout only just makes it as the others pull him free of the clutches of a rather grabby Cyberman...
Sadly, up close, the Cybermats really do look like something knocked up on Blue Peter.
But he's soon lost the plot again. "Master; the supreme moment in my life. It was logical!"
Apparently this magical little scene was a script revision by Victor Pemberton.
The "our lives are different" scene comes closest to the stunning magic of An Unearthly Child (the episode). But episode 10 of the War Games has it too.
The Space Pirate @Space_Pirate_73 · The farewell speech in Dalek Invasion comes fairly close, too.Good call! Thinking about it, that speech of Hartnell's at the end of The Massacre too. All those scenes give the lie to that
myth that the classic series didn't "do" emotion.
The Doctor takes over the watch, just as the Cybermats creep in...
CALLUM, DON'T MOVE, CALLUM!!! - this, Adric dithering at the keyboard in Earthshock, and Dimensions in Time
"going on a journey..." always remind me of @FictionStroker. Don't ask!
After dispatching the Cybermats, the Doctor nearly polishes Jamie off with his deadly "metal breakdown" pun...
Oh, it's okay, Callum's shoulder got in the way.
"I wish to speak to the Controller!" "Leave a message after the beep."
The Controller takes his new remote control Toberman out for a spin when he needs to go for a recharge.
Sorry, Trout, but you've lost me. Letting the Controller recharge is still a very stupid idea. Just wait it out till his battery's flat, surely.
The fully recharged Cybercontroller doesn't half have some swagger on him. "Dudes, I'm back!"
Kaftan fires some bullets that tickle the Cyber-controller. He shoots her down with his laser rocket wotsit.
The Doctor appeals to the human side of the partially converted Toberman, who's intent on avenging Kaftan.
Kleig still thinks he can boss the Cybermen. Just doesn't learn, does he!
Kleig plans to give the Doctor to the Cybermen in a part-exchange deal.
Great stuff as the Doctor zings Kleig once again.
Kleig is genuinely surprised when the Cybermen attack him. Clown.
Toberman goes on the rampage, allowing the Doctor and Jamie to escape...
Very considerate of the Cybermen to reform the clingfilm when they go back into their tombs.
"Last time they were frozen for five centuries. This time it must be forever. Not till 1985, anyway."
When I say run... leg it!
Toberman saves the day by resealing the doors, and being electrocuted in the process.
Why do they just leave Toberman's body there?!
The surviving Cybermat; they did this sort of "or is it the end?"/"they'll be back!" tease so well then. I hope to see the one at the end of #ThePowerOfTheDaleks one day!!
It's not the best story, but in a bizarre way what it's reputation suffers from most is the fact that it was recovered in 1992 when fandom was far more in thrall to the opinions of those privileged few.
It's far better than the post-recovery sniffiness from the self-appointed fan elite would have you believe. You know them, the lot that wrote the books of the 80s and 90s that were fan bibles, that other lot who dictated that the Gunfighters was the worst story ever, that the entire Pertwee era was rubbish, and the lot that tell you now that the Virgin New Adventures that they coincidentally wrote were the best thing since sliced bread, and every Doctor who fan across the land parroted those same opinions. Thank god we make our own minds up in the internet age!
I love the fact that viewers nowadays come to a DVD release blissfully ignorant of the opinions of others and fall in love with stories older fans would never expect or believe could be interesting to a new fan.
When it was missing it was unrealistically touted by those fans whose opinions were law as THE all time classic. When it was recovered and the news showed a clip with Toberman on Kirby wires, they got all embarrassed and there was some quite pathetic backtracking. Of course the truth is that it's somewhere in the middle. Not THE classic, but A classic, easily.
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Curse of Fenric
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