The Moonbase

Episode 1

Hannah: "The Moonbase"! They're going to the Moon. Or a moon, anyway.

This story was broadcast in 1967, so of course the TARDIS has landed on our own moon. The Doctor supplies his companions with some very bizarre-looking spacesuits; unfortunately this is yet another missing episode, so we don't get to actually see them yet.

Hannah: Wow. They look... odd. Futuristic. Please tell me we get to see the actual costumes in the next episode? Or that there's some pictures, at least.
Me: I think we'll be seeing them later on.
Hannah: Cool music.
Me: What, you mean the weird Clangers sound effects?
Hannah: Simple, but cool.

It's not long before the travellers find the Moonbase.

Hannah: The people coming out of the base are wearing the exact same spacesuits; obviously the Doctor got spacesuits from the same era as them. What a coincidence.
Me: Maybe it's a design classic. I think they're slightly different, though.
Hannah: They just happen to find British people there as well.
Me: Actually I think you'll find it's a very international team. Well, there's a French one and a Danish one, anyway.
Hannah: They seem to be okay about people randomly turning up on the Moon. It feels like a massive security breach. Oh, they're expecting a doctor to arrive! How convenient!

The Doctor makes a casual guess at the date being 2050, and seems rather pleased with himself for being "only" twenty years out when base commander Hobson incredulously tells him it's 2070. Not that anyone on the base seems particularly troubled that their visitors don't know which decade it is.

Hannah: Why aren't they more concerned about that?

In fact, the Moonbase (which turns out to be responsible for controlling the Earth's weather) is so unconcerned about these four trespassers that they're soon asking Ben to run errands for them.

Hannah: They still haven't asked them "Where have you come from?"
Me: No, they're very trusting, especially given that they're controlling the weather for the entire planet. It's still not as bad as The Tenth Planet, where they were able to stroll right into a military base containing a nuclear doomsday device.

A mysterious infection has been spreading throughout the base; we don't get much time to puzzle it over, however, because a familiar shadow in the food store manages to completely give the game away. So much for the surprise cliffhanger.

Hannah: I saw that shadow. That was a Cyberman shadow.
Me: (innocently) Was it?
Hannah: Oooh, they've got electric-y hands now! I wasn't expecting them; definitely not so soon. It's not been very long at all, only a couple of stories.
Me: Yep, we've only had three stories since their previous appearance in The Tenth Planet.
Hannah: Did they decide The Underwater Menace was so shite that they needed something to pick it all up again?
Me: That's not what they wrote in the piece for the Radio Times, no.
Hannah: So they were always going to do Cybermen next?
Me: They're looking for another monster to rival the success of the Daleks, so the Cybermen are being teed up as a replacement.
Hannah: So they're trying to make them popular.

When Hobson hears that the station doctor has succumbed to the unknown plague, he decides to wait for more data before reporting it to the headquarters on Earth.

Hannah: Data? One person's missing and one person's dead. You might as well tell them.

Jamie has taken a blow to the head and spends most of the first two episodes in a state of delirium ("Odd how he gets so ill from having a little tumble"), and the cliffhanger sees him waking up in the sick bay and mistaking an approaching Cyberman for his clan's version of the Grim Reaper: the "Phantom Piper".

Hannah: Does he toot?

Episode 2

Our hot topic this evening is the Cyberman makeover.

Hannah: Hmmm, metal faces and covered hands; more robotic. Not as scary, because it's not a cloth face. And they can actually do stuff; they can zap people now with the zappy thing in their hand, rather than having a giant cumbersome lamp to shine at you, so they're a lot more threatening. I'm glad those silly lamps have been replaced with the weird arm balls; they still look silly but I assume that's what gives them zap powers, so it's excusable.
Me: They've also got bootlaces.
Hannah: I wasn't really looking at their shoes. Why have they got three-clawed hands? That doesn't seem right. How are they better than human digits? Stupid little lobster claws. With an extra bit.
Me: Why are they less scary than before?
Hannah: Well, they're more intimidating now, so it's a different kind of scary. They've been upgraded and given new powers, making them even more threatening and less human. But it hasn't got the same terror; the reason the Cybermen were terrifying last time was the body-horror of people who had changed themselves. Now they're basically just Dalek-like robots who want to kill everybody, so it's not scary in the same way. They're dangerous, but they're not horrific.

The Cyberman takes a body from the sick bay and carries it away ("Are they going to rip his wee-tubes out?"), but Hannah is wrestling with the idea that Hobson has heard of the Cybermen.

Hannah: So somehow Earth has remembered Cybermen this time, even though they usually forget everything? We're in 2070 at the moment... when was the Antarctic base in The Tenth Planet? 2020?
Me: 1986.
Hannah: Oh. So a tiny little incident happened there...
Me: "Tiny little incident"? A whole planet suddenly appeared in the sky!
Hannah: I suppose some people might remember that.

The Doctor's celebrated "some corners of the universe" speech goes down well, but the Gravitron has developed a fault that prevents the crew from controlling a major hurricane on Earth.

Hannah: It's such a finely-tuned instrument; I'm surprised there's only, what, twenty people up there doing everything. Like they said, they can't even turn it off because the Earth won't be able to revert to how it was without going through some catastrophes first. They've started messing with something and they can't stop.
Me: You're not impressed with a machine that can control the whole planet's weather, then?
Hannah: It's a nice futuristic concept - something that can improve the whole of humanity - but it's such a dangerous thing to have in the hands of just twenty people all the way up there on the Moon, and if it goes wrong, everyone dies! All it takes is a couple of people to get sick, and then they suddenly can't cope; only a few people are trained to use everything and if those people get sick, we're all doomed. So it's a bit of a rubbish idea; very interesting, but they didn't quite think it through.

Back in the sick bay, Jamie and Polly discover a Cyberman standing there...

Hannah: Bit bold, coming out while there's people there.

...so the Cyberman fires off a couple of electric charges and shocks them unconscious.

Hannah: Oh, well he can do that, so he's fine.

Hobson starts to suspect the Doctor and his friends of sabotaging the base after realising that their arrival tallies up with the timing of the engineering faults.

Hannah: See? This is why they should have been suspicious from the beginning. Because it could have been them.
Me: Oh look, there's the spacesuits!
Hannah: They don't look very resistant to anything.
Me: No, they look like they could tear very easily.
Hannah: And they've got great big pipettes on the back.
Me: That looks suspiciously like a plastic bottle of oxygen.
Hannah: It won't take long to get through that. That's a double-lungful; just the one breath. I suppose it could be compressed, but I don't think plastic can hold compressed air. And look, you can see the condensation in their helmets. They're all fogged up.

Polly makes coffee for the base crew, and the Doctor suddenly realises why the disease hasn't affected everyone: the virus is in the sugar.

Hannah: Properly dramatic, actually hitting it out of his hand. I like it when they actually do things like that.
Me: What, assaulting a pot of sugar?
Hannah: Yes. Why the sugar? Did they mean to selectively infect people? Why didn't they put it in everything? Then everybody gets sick and they can take over everybody, rather than missing a few people who are now resisting. That's bad planning. I don't think the Cybermen would be stupid enough to actually do that.

Once the Doctor realises that the enemy is hiding in the sick bay, one of the bodies whips off its sheet and a Cyberman leaps off the bed and advances towards them.

Me: Another of my favourite cliffhangers.
Hannah: It's terrifying when you realise you were right next to something and it could have killed you at any moment. That is horrible.

Episode 3

Hannah: The Cybermen are really lucky that Earth developed this weather station. Just the perfect hub where they can destroy the whole planet from one place.

The lilting sing-song intonations of the original Cybermen have been replaced with new, heavily electronic voices.

Hannah: I don't know what they're saying. I like their new voices, though. Creepier.

Meanwhile, back in the control room...

Hannah: Ah, Benoit. I have missed you.
Me: He was in the "Gourmet Night" episode of Fawlty Towers; he's the chef that Basil Fawlty is on his way to meet when his car breaks down and he gives it a damn good thrashing with a tree branch. Oh, and he was also a recurring character in most of the Pink Panther films.

She doesn't recognise him, of course. Sometimes during this project I find myself envying the guest stars in other programmes; if we'd been watching every episode of The Avengers we would have been treated to a wealth of Hannah-friendly guest stars (including Ronnie Barker playing a villain, as well as appearances from most of the regular cast of Dad's Army), but 1960s Doctor Who is full of people she wouldn't have a chance of recognising. I even showed her A Matter of Life and Death earlier this week, partly because it's such a wonderful film but mostly so that I can point out Marius Goring when we get to the final story of this season.

For a supposedly emotionless race, the Cybermen are very dismissive of our "stupid Earth brains."

Hannah: That's judgemental, and therefore emotional.
Me: Yes, for some reason they're very taunting and gloaty in this one.

Within thirty seconds, the same Cyberman smugly remarks on the crew's inability to notice their operation: "Clever, clever, clever."

Hannah: Sarcasm. They have no mercy, but they have sarcasm.

Ben, Polly and Jamie are trying to find a way to take down the Cybermen; Polly comes up with the idea of using solvents to dissolve the plastic on their chest units.

Hannah: Pour some acetone on their front bits.
Me: It's either that or tie their bootlaces together.

The only problem is that they're not sure exactly which solvent will dissolve their particular type of plastic, so they mix up a cocktail of benzene, ether, alcohol, acetone and epoxy-propane in the hope that one of them will affect the Cybermen.

Hannah: You're probably going to blow yourselves up. This is a really bad idea; mixing loads of things together that react with other things and seeing what happens. They've put loads of flammable things in a bottle and hope they don't die. Acetone itself is really dangerous if it's neat; you need a mixer.

The trio are confident that Polly's chemistry project will be sufficient to melt whatever plastic the Cyberman use, so they fill a spray-bottle with the corrosive formula ("That thing is made of plastic! How's that going to work?"). The spectacle that follows is even more graphic than Hannah was expecting.

Hannah: Eurgh, their insides are coming outside! It's coming out of the mouth!

As the remaining Cybermen prepare a fresh assault ("There's a shiny horde of them"), Hannah notices André Maranne's name in the credits.

Hannah: Is he actually French?
Me: Yes, he had the same accent in Fawlty Towers.
Hannah: Sorry, I ignored you earlier when you told me that; for some reason I thought you were just making a joke about small French people.
Me: Okay, I think we'll leave it there.

Episode 4

Hannah: When they said the machinery was sonic-based in the last episode, I was wondering if the Doctor would develop his sonic screwdriver to fix it all. I thought maybe this would be where he invents it, and he thinks "This is really handy, I'll keep this."

While the Doctor and the base crew deal with the Cyberman threat, Polly is doing her bit to keep up morale.

Hannah: There she is, having to make the coffee again.
Me: Maybe Polly just happens to be the best one in the group at making decent coffee.
Hannah: Okay, so she's got a skill, but why does it have to be the only woman?

There's a very bleak moment when a rescue ship from Earth is deflected into the Sun, unable to change course. Worse still, it's going to take over a week for the crew to get there.

Hannah: That's a horrible way to die. A week to slowly realise you're going to burn. That's not fair.

When the Cybermen breach the hull of the base, Hobson and Benoit manage to plug the hole with the drinks tray. Yes, really.

Me: Good job Polly made some coffee.
Hannah: Hmmm.

The Doctor puts his plan into action, and we're treated to the sight of an army of Cybermen floating off the surface of the Moon and drifting helplessly into space.

Hannah: Oh no, they've caught the jumpy disease! So they're still alive, but floating around in space? They clearly don't need oxygen to live, so they must have survived.

This doesn't seem to be a huge concern for the Doctor. And speaking of loose ends...

Hannah: They're not going to cure the sick people? They're just going to put their spacesuits on and bugger off back to the TARDIS. I suppose he said earlier that he doesn't know how to fix it, but then later he did work out what the problem was, so maybe he can fix it now. All these people with their neurological disease, but oh well, what a shame. They're off.

On their way back to the TARDIS, Polly notices a comet-like object streaking across the sky.

Hannah: Did they miss a few?
Me: That would be awkward. Imagine if the remaining Cybermen carried on invading the base after they'd gone.

Back on the TARDIS the Doctor decides to use the "time scanner" to give his companions a preview of their next adventure, and Hannah is delighted when the scanner shows a creature she recognises from the David Tennant era.

Hannah: It's a giant crab! Is it them?

After the credits, the forthcoming story is billed as "The Macra Terror".

Hannah: Yay! Random crabbies!
Me: Excited?
Hannah: Yes. I have literally no expectations whatsoever, it's just something I recognise and I like to cling onto those little things. Also, crabs are fun. I like crabs.

The Score

Hannah: Well, that was a pleasant little adventure. Full of people dying left, right and centre in horrifying ways, including the Cybermen themselves.
Me: You've seen Doctor Who before, right?
Hannah: I like the idea of them going to the Moon, and I'm happy to see the Cybermen back, but it's a bit of a surprise because we've only just seen them. I think they did it too soon. So overall, it's not terrible; it's kind of middling, because there were lots of things wrong with it and you have to suspend your disbelief for a few things. And they keep getting Polly to make the coffee. It's just rude.

6/10

Hannah: I like the new Cybermen; I wonder how long it'll be until we see them again. If they're "the new Daleks," which one are we going to see next: the Daleks, or the Cybermen?