Serial Title:
The Moonbase
Series:
4
Episodes:
4
Doctor:
Patrick Troughton
Companions:
Ben Jackson (Michael Craze), Polly Wright (Anneke Wills), Jamie
McCrimmon (Frazer Hines)
Synopsis:
It’s one small step for
the Doctor as he lands on Earth’s moon in 2070. The group fools
about in spacesuits for a bit- and Jamie gets hurt. Fortuitously,
there’s a nearby moonbase, a weather-control station beaming gravity rays, the Graviton, to climate control and condition Earth.
However, Jamie is not the only under-the-weather man on the moon…
the moonbase crew have been collapsing by a spreading virus- several
members are already quarantined in the sickbay.
Suspicion falls on the
Doctor as the first victims succumb to death, but it turns out that
it is poison in the food supply- a location where a hole has been cut
into the wall for something to get in… and that something is-
THE CYBERMEN????
(But…! BUT…!!!! This
story isn’t called “Moonbase of the Cybermen!” They can’t use
them unless they do that. …Can they? Are they allowed to do this? I
don’t think they’re allowed to do this!)
After several “Oh,
you’re only a woman, Polly- anything you saw must be a hysterical
hallucination” ignored sightings, the Cybermen invade in force-
their fleet on the way, and the dead-of-virus crewmen resurrected as
cyber-slaves. The Cybermen- thought by the people of Earth as an
extinct menace after the failed Mondas invasion of 1986 ("The Tenth
Planet"), are back to take Earth- beginning by seizing the moonbase
and sabotaging Earth’s weather.
Polly comes up with a
chemical cocktail of acidic agents to dissolve the plastic breathing
apparatus mounted on the Cybermen’s chest plates- using it, she,
Ben, and the now-recovered Jamie are able to begin fighting back. (Note From Sarah: Not so bad for a HALLUCINATING WOMAN EH!?!?!) Meanwhile, the Cyberfleet lands, and an army of Cybermen begins an
inexorable march across the moon…
The Cybermen destroy an
Earth ship headed to rescue the moonbase crew- but are eliminated by
Polly’s acid-spray. The Cybermen outside retaliate by firing on the
base- but the gravitron is used to deflect the shots. The Doctor then
brings the gravitron to bear on the surface, creating a repelling
field that casts the Cybermen and their ships helplessly off into
space.
As the TARDIS leaves, the
Doctor consults his ‘unreliable’ future viewer and gets an image
of a great and terrible claw…
Review:
Kinda cool, really! A base with a
mysterious illness (and yes, that it was the coffee/sugar was
telegraphed so far away, it could probably have been seen from Earth
with the naked eye- and yes, it was both starkly similar and as
clumsily obvious- so much so that you wonder how stupid the morons
falling prey to it had to be to not have figured it out already- as
the poisoned water in The Sensorites), the moon, moon-walks on wires with goofy sounds (cursed reconstructions- we can’t see it! Another 2-of-4-are-video story), mounting paranoia among the
cast, and-
WHAT THE SACRED FIRE OF
ORB!?!?! CYBERMEN!??!?!
Wow, I was NOT expecting
that! It’s kind of hilarious, actually, the mindset that Doctor Who
has put us in- that the appearance of a major villain is kept a
shocking and unexpected surprise… merely by leaving their name out
of the title. If it isn’t called “X of the Daleks” or “Y of
the Cybermen,” we will be utterly and completely shocked if the
Daleks or Cybermen appear. (Star Trek: The Next Generation clearly
borrowed this concept and ran with it for its super-being Q.)
So, yeah- lots of cool
stuff… Cybermen reveals (whipping aside that blanket- how
scary/cool was that?!), (NFS: That was one of my most favorite moments! It was pretty amazing!) armies of Cybermen marching across the
airless moon to lay siege, Polly coming up with an ingenious solution
(albeit one requiring the Cybermen to have been constructed with
radically inferior parts- no space-age super plastic? Then again, it
apparently becomes traditional for the Cybermen to have an absurd Achilles-heel weakness in future…), the chilling scene in which
the Cybermen hurl an approaching rescue ship into the sun… and an
utterly absurd and hilarious ending in which the Cybermen are
forcibly floated off of the surface of the moon. Talk about camp!
Okay, so… the Doctor.
Some nice amusing physical comedy with his trying to unobtrusively
obtain ‘samples’ from the crew. Some nice moments in the lab,
from his ‘stalling’ to his realization that the Cyberman is
present.
Polly is especially and
unusually strong here. Yes, the femenists will note, she’s making
coffee for the men again (shouldn’t the feminists be too busy with
the jobs they’re always on about having instead of being at home,
tied to a man, to be constantly on the internet harping about the
portrayal of women in 1960s media?) (NFS: Not to sound 'harpy' but...you have to admit they did kind of make them look rather silly in the sixties.)- but that really seems to be her
specialty, as, again, she volunteered to in the Tenth Planet, and
again since. Having been a secretary, that’s probably a role she’s
used to. And likewise, it’s a particularly ‘girly’- yet extremely scientifically-savvy- method that she devises to defeat the Cybermen. But even so, this fits with the character we knew- a secretary and a club-goer with a fancy for dressing up and looking good, so it is consistent (if not terribly feministic). And she does take a fairly center-stage; this is only fair- she was relatively passive
and unhelpful in the Cybermen’s first appearance, so here she gets
a chance to shine.
And, in fair trade-off,
Ben, the action-hero of the previous Cyber-story, pretty much sits
around in the background for this one.
Still, Ben fairs better
than Jamie, out sick and raving in a fevered delirium for most of the
serial- though surprisingly, his rantings are apparently enough to
get the Cyberman to reconsider taking him… multiple times! …For
some reason. In any event, his newcomer status and
script-shoe-horning are still painfully evident. Thankfully, this
won’t be in effect much longer, and soon we’ll hit stories
written with Jamie in mind so that they don't have to find a gimmick to shunt him out of the way.
The special effects are
good- miniatures, lightning bolts (that occasionally miss due to poor
placement, but still…) wire-work, matte paintings- this one has it
all, practically an extravaganza… with a pretty convincing moon
environment!
This one is not as tight
a thriller as Who has ever produced, for some reason- though all the
elements- claustrophobic, isolated location, implacably marching
enemies, mysterious disease- are there. Still, it’s fun, exciting,
and has a few nice twists. I enjoyed it. (NFS: I liked this one a lot too, I thought it was definitely transporting and really fun.)
The reconstruction is…
well, pretty same-old, same-old. We have far too many
non-Loose-Cannons mixed into the 2nd
Doctor era, to the point that I’ve lost track… but too many of
them are merely mediocre.
Great moments:
The Cybermen reveal and
the march across the moon. Plus, you know- landing on the moon for
the first time in Doctor Who.
Rating:
The Moonbase orbits high
with 3.5 out of 5 Deadman’s Keys. It’s missing a little something
that I can’t put my finger on, which prevents it from quite
achieving the rank of the 4-of-5 classics… but it’s very solid
and lots of fun! Reconstruction gets the usual (at this point) 2.5
out of 5.
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