The Tenth Planet

Episode 1

The good news is that Hannah is completely oblivious to the significance of this story, having skipped the 2017 Christmas special "Twice Upon a Time" to avoid any potential spoilers about the end of the William Hartnell era. I hope she'll be pleasantly surprised.

Hannah: So which episode is missing?
Me: Episode 4.
Hannah: But it appears to be on the DVD?
Me: That's because it's been animated.
Hannah: Ah! Sweet.

Yes, for only the second time since we started (after The Reign of Terror), a missing episode has been animated to plug the gap in a partially-missing story to make it "complete" for the DVD release.

After another bespoke title card (slightly more understated than the one used for The War Machines) the writing credit introduces us to Dr Kit Pedler, someone who will become very important to the series in about 20 minutes' time.

Hannah: This is a cool introductory sequence.
Me: This story was written by an actual doctor.
Hannah: What kind of doctor?
Me: He was an ophthalmologist.
Hannah: Really? Is that what the story is about? Or was he just doing this in his spare time?
Me: Sort of. He was working as the head of a research unit at the University of London, but then he also became the unofficial scientific adviser for the Doctor Who production team. He's trying to introduce more science into the series, so the enemies in this story are inspired by real technology.
Hannah: Seems a bit odd for an eye doctor to write a science-fiction story.
Me: For some reason a fair amount of medical professionals seem to move away from practising medicine and end up working in television. Graeme Garden, Harry Hill and Graham Chapman are all qualified doctors who went on to become comedians, so it's not that far-fetched.

The Doctor, Ben and Polly have arrived at the South Pole in the middle of a snowstorm.

Hannah: This looks good; the outside shots aren't 100% convincing but they've got the right feel with the blustery, dark conditions. Good atmosphere.
Me: Yes, it's amazing what you can do with polystyrene and a wind machine.
Hannah: Why would you choose to go outside? Surely you'd just say "Nah, not this one."

On the contrary, our heroes are more than happy to go for a walk; indeed, Polly doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in dressing appropriately for the weather conditions, much to the delight of the surveillance guards in the international military base.

Hannah: I don't like this. Hot-blooded Italians, trapped in an underground bunker.

The international flavour of the cast does have its advantages, though.

Me: Look, one of the characters is a black astronaut!
Hannah: Well, you've already pointed out that the previous story had the first speaking part for a black actor in the series. So this is the second one.
Me: Yes, but it's so much more progressive! For a start, they've actually got black people being astronauts here. Even in Star Trek they've just got her answering the phone.
Hannah: She is a scientist. But yes, in fairness they've just got her answering the phone and wearing a really short skirt.

The Doctor's sarcastic response to the howling sergeant ("Why don't you speak up, I'm deaf") goes down very well with Hannah, but his riposte to General Cutler ("I don't like your tone, sir") is met with a churlish "I don't like your face, nor your hair."

Hannah: (appalled) How rude!
Me: What do you think of the story title?
Hannah: What about it? Obviously they're thinking there's going to be another planet beyond Pluto.
Me: Yes, but the title doesn't make sense now that Pluto has been re-classified; there were nine planets when this was written, but now there eight planets so it's scientifically inaccurate.
Hannah: I don't care about that. It was correct at the time.

The extra planet in question is identical to Earth right down to the shape of the continents, except that the continents are all upside-down. But even this isn't as absurd as the sight of everyone trying to put their finger on why it looks so familiar.

Hannah: It's the Earth upside, you fools! How does she recognise Malaysia but not Asia? Malaysia is tiny in comparison; how would she pick it out without noticing any of the actual continents?

Meanwhile, some of the soldiers are trying to break into the TARDIS.

Hannah: I wish the TARDIS was like R2-D2.
Me: What?
Hannah: It should have a little squirt gun or something. People stand there for ages trying to break in, and it just whips out a nozzle and goes "psst" in their faces, like when R2-D2 brings out a little taser and goes "tzzz" any time anyone gets too close and he doesn't like them. I want the TARDIS to have a cheeky little attitude.
Me: Interesting idea. Although it might be tricky to squirt someone with water in the middle of a force 8 Antarctic blizzard.

But before it comes to that, the soldiers are intercepted and struck down by some uninvited visitors.

Hannah: I can't see them clearly enough. Oh! Hello! I wondered how early they'd turn up.

It's the first appearance of the Cybermen, and Hannah is furious at herself for not expecting them sooner.

Hannah: I should have got it when they said "twin Earth"! The Cybermen are from a twin Earth! They come from Mondas. As soon as they said "twin Earth" I should have known. But I didn't think it meant that the continents were literally the same; that would be a fluke of geology and tectonics and time and water levels, so both planets must have been created absolutely identically to have the same continents.

She's been familiar with the original Cyberman design for years, and the sight of their cloth faces (which falls squarely into "uncanny valley" territory) is something she's been dreading since we began watching the series. Fortunately their recent appearance in the Peter Capaldi era has done much to lessen her anxiety.

Hannah: I've seen Sock-Face before.
Me: It's surgical cloth from the surgery.
Hannah: Yes, tube socks. I've seen the original Cybermen before, so it's not such a creepy shock. I still don't like them - I don't like things that look "not quite human" - but at least I can watch it now that I'm slightly desensitised to them. If I was seeing them here for the first time I'd be slightly freaked out, but also really impressed by the design. Modified humans. It's a creepy idea.

Episode 2

Hannah: It's unsettling that these Cybermen have got real, uncovered hands. Which also means that they must be freezing to death out there.
Me: In retrospect this feels like a transitional phase for them, in a lot of ways. They haven't quite been fully converted from their human form yet, so the body horror implications here are a lot more vivid than usual.
Hannah: They're just surgically altered humans. Mondasians, I mean. But they must have been altered quite a lot to have bare hands out in a blizzard.
Me: Well, Polly's wearing a miniskirt, so obviously the South Pole can't be that cold.
Hannah: In the last episode the Doctor seemed to know exactly who they were and where they were coming from. It's like he's met them before.
Me: Or it's a known historical event.
Hannah: Oh yeah. Earth forgets about it, but Time Lords know about it.
Me: Which is odd, because other alien invasions aren't treated like that; they're always treated as aberrations in the timeline, things that need to be put right.

Having forced their way into the base, the Cybermen serve up a heaping helping of exposition: once upon a time, their home planet Mondas drifted away to "the edge of space" but has now returned to its twin planet Earth.

Hannah: Which is stupid, because without a sun they would have been cold. At the very least.

The design isn't the only unsettling thing about these Cybermen; the lilting sing-song voices, with the inflections placed on the wrong syllables, is almost as eerie.

Me: What do you think of the voices?
Hannah: They're alright. They sound like K9.
Me: I really like them. They're far more interesting than any of the later voices.
Hannah: I find it creepy that they open their mouths to speak, but they're clearly not using their lips or their tongues or anything to speak. They just open their mouth and the electronic voice comes out.

But the creepiest part is when their cold emotionless logic refuses them to allow the base to save the lives of the two astronauts, declaring that human lives are an irrelevance to them.

Hannah: Shame about the astronauts. They acted being up in space very well, and they were left up there not knowing what was going on and then they got flung into space and blew up. Poor guys.

Ben immediately dismisses the thought of tackling them with a screwdriver.

Hannah: That's a very slow way to stop them. Taking them apart one screw at a time and then stabbing the fleshy bits.

Speaking of their fleshy bits...

Hannah: There are some very odd shot compositions here. Has that Cyberman got one leg cocked up so that we can see the General through its legs? The director has just framed his head perfectly with the Cyberman's groin. What a mastery of filming that was.
Me: It wouldn't be so bad if that Cyberman didn't look like Mrs Robinson in the seduction scene from The Graduate.

It doesn't take long for Ben and Cutler to clear the Cybermen out from the base, but the radar screen shows a large formation of incoming spaceships.

Hannah: What formation is that? Dandelion head? I like the fact that they thought that in 1986 we'd be able to fight an alien invasion.

When we get to the credits, a few of the character names seem unfamiliar to Hannah.

Hannah: "Shav"?
Me: In this story, and only in this story, the Cybermen have individual names.
Hannah: Ohhh. That's just weird.
Me: At this point in the series they're just another alien race. It sort of makes sense; the Cybermen still have a bit of individuality at this point, but in all their later appearances they're more advanced and act more like generic robot villains. In retrospect this feels like a transitioning phase from their lost humanity into proper Cybermen.
Hannah: That's why Ben was sad when he killed one in self-defence.
Me: But the really interesting thing here is that they're actually trying to help us. They have positive, rational motives and they honestly believe they're doing humanity a favour by trying to upgrade them. In later stories they're doing it as a means to galactic conquest, but here they're doing what they think is the merciful and logical thing for our survival and they're so far removed from their emotions that they can't understand why anyone would object. I always think this is the story where they're at their most interesting, both in design and concept.
Hannah: I'm going to have to try and judge this as if I'd never met them before. The Daleks were easy enough because they haven't changed that much, but with this I'm going to have to pretend that I don't know anything about future Cybermen.

Episode 3

Hannah: We're two episodes in and there's still no explanation as to how they brought Mondas to Earth. How can a planet fly from one place to another? I like how this massive event never gets remembered, like so many others.

The Doctor (or a reasonable likeness thereof) collapses from exhaustion and is taken to the crew quarters to recover.

Hannah: Is the Doctor on holiday by having a nap?
Me: No, William Hartnell had bronchitis.
Hannah: Oh! So he's ill because he's ill. Did they have to change the story at the last minute, then?
Me: Sort of. They gave all his scientific dialogue to the head scientist.
Hannah: Did they make the story rubbish? Is there an original script somewhere of what it was supposed to be?
Me: Episodes 3 and 4 were finished by someone else after Kit Pedler was rushed to hospital during the writing.
Hannah: So they were both ill. Was he okay?
Me: Yes, he comes back to write the Cybermen's next appearance.
Hannah: Is the Doctor sick for two episodes, then?
Me: No, he's in the next one. It would be a bit rubbish if he was absent from the final episode of a story.

Cutler intends to tackle the Cyberman problem by destroying Mondas with a doomsday device that conveniently happens to be lying around the base.

Hannah: So why did anyone invent that? It will kill everybody; no one will ever use it. And I doubt they've made a bomb big enough to turn a planet-sized lump of matter into a nuclear sun. Why is their bomb being kept in the same place as their space tracking station? Or is that just the safest place for it? The South Pole?
Me: It doesn't seem that safe at the moment...
Hannah: It looks safe enough when it's not being invaded by Cybermen. But why put the same people in charge of the most dangerous thing on the planet and also their space missions? They're spreading themselves a bit too thin for my liking.

It doesn't help that the base is a health and safety nightmare; the ventilation shaft leading from the bunk room to the rocket silo is handy enough when Ben wants to immobilise the rocket, but completely impractical if you don't want anyone to get roasted alive.

Hannah: That means any exhaust fumes from the rocket silo would go into the bunk room. That sounds like a really great design plan.
Me: It also means that anyone who happens to be in bed when the rocket takes off will get incinerated.
Hannah: It'll certainly be very noisy.

As the episode ends Hannah is looking forward to seeing Hartnell back in action again, if only in animated form.

Hannah: I wonder how they're going to explain away his being unconscious for half an hour?

Episode 4

We don't need to wait long for the answer. When Polly asks the Doctor what happened to him, he suggests that it could have been the result of some outside influence; either that, or "this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin."

Hannah: Are they trying to imply that he's getting on a bit? I wonder if... how far in advance did they realise that they would need to make the Doctor change?
Me: The concept of regeneration was invented for the story in which it happens; someone was given the task of writing a story where he changes.
Hannah: So, whenever it happens, they weren't planning it long in advance and dropping hints by having the Doctor saying "my body is getting a bit old"? It just happens when it happens, and when he says "this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin" he's literally just saying that he's an old man. But it really does sound like they're dropping hints, like he knows he changes his body.
Me: It's just an expression.
Hannah: I know, I'm just saying it sounds like that.

Before she can read anything else into it, the Cybermen kill General Cutler's son.

Hannah: It's annoying that the Cybermen are being proved to be correct; emotions are bad for people. He's gone mental because he cared for his son.

Ben, meanwhile, is coming up with a plan to take down the Cybermen while they're waiting for Mondas to disintegrate.

Hannah: If Mondas is absorbing too much energy from the Earth, why don't they just fly it away again? The Cybermen are cool, but the science of their planet is stupid.
Me: What do you think of Ben now? You weren't too impressed with him last time.
Hannah: Somewhat clever; he's got tactics. He's very brave, even if he's a bit foolish.

Fighting the Cybermen with radiation sounds feasible in theory but Hannah wonders about the practicalities of Ben and the scientists wandering around the base irradiating everything, including any humans who they might potentially find along the way. Not that there was any need because Mondas eventually melts anyway, causing all the remaining Cybermen to do likewise.

The Doctor isn't looking well, either. I can sense Hannah eyeing me with increasing suspicion when he announces "It's far from being all over" and starts urgently making his way back to TARDIS; by the time he's inside, she definitely knows something is up. She watches as William Hartnell collapses to the floor and inexplicably changes into Patrick Troughton, not saying a word until the credits.

Hannah: You mean that episode doesn't exist?!
Me: Correct.
Hannah: Ohhhh!
Me: And actually, given that he was absent from episode 3, the last surviving episode of the Hartnell era doesn't feature William Hartnell; the last we see of him is episode 2. But you'll be glad to hear that the important bit still exists.
Hannah: So when I said he seems to be dropping hints... he really was?
Me: Yes. The concept of regeneration was conceived in this story when they needed a way to write him out, although they don't call it a regeneration for a while yet and it's not actually explained here at all.
Hannah: I wasn't expecting that to happen yet. I thought we had another full series, but he leaves after the second story.
Me: A while ago I suggested to you that he might leave in the middle of a season, and you dismissed the idea as being utterly ridiculous.
Hannah: Yeah, I suppose they didn't have much choice if he was too ill to continue. I know you told me that Hartnell had the most episodes apart from Tom Baker, so I thought it couldn't be too much longer because there can't have been that much Tom Baker really... otherwise it's just getting silly, in terms of the proportion of Hartnell compared to everyone else. I was beginning to think one of the other Doctors must only have two stories in order to fit this number of episodes in.

There's just one piece of unfinished business before we move on to the scoring.

Hannah: I want to see the actual clip first.

We watch the clip from the DVD extras, and Hannah finally gets to witness this pivotal moment of TV history.

Hannah: He looks very sweaty.
Me: Is that it?

The Score

Hannah: Well. It's very difficult, because that was quite a big surprise.
Me: Thank God I don't need to keep that quiet anymore.
Hannah: The story itself is good, and it looks good; I like the outdoor shots, it all looks dark and mysterious and atmospheric and windy and cold, even if they're not going to be sensible and wear proper clothes. But the science is, like so many times, rubbish. There's lots of weird science bits that I don't think make sense. Good story idea, but it's all a bit messy and clumsy, especially when they have to write the Doctor out for a whole episode and Ben and Polly have to move the plot along.
Me: I think a lot of fandom has a tendency to rate this story on the basis that it's the arrival of the Cybermen and the departure of William Hartnell, rather than considering the merits of the story itself.
Hannah: It makes it really difficult to score. The Cybermen are good, and I've always thought they were a particularly good design; it's body horror, and also the horror of removing your emotions. They're a good enemy, and if I didn't know they were going to become a successful recurring enemy I'd definitely want to see them again and know more about them. And it's also really an important story because of the Doctor regenerating at the end. I only want to give it a 6, because although it has good aliens and good ideas it's also really clumsy. Are the Cybermen and the regeneration enough to redeem it as high as a 7? Nah, probably not.

6/10

Hannah: Hmm, so he's gone. I want to watch the next one now. I want to know how different he is. I want to see the contrast. I want to see how they react to him being a different person. I want to know how he explains what's just happened to himself. I want all those questions answered; I don't want to wait.