The Invasion

Episode 1

Hannah: Isn't there already one called The Invasion?
Me: No.
Hannah: Yes, there is. The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Me: Are you insane?
Hannah: It sounds like the same story.
Me: Anyway, this is Dr Kit Pedler's last story, if you're interested.
Hannah: So are there Cybermen in it?
Me: Er... you'll have to wait and see.

Episodes one and four are missing from this eight-part adventure, but once again (and for the very last time) the DVD release has plugged the holes for us.

Me: These two episodes are going to be our last animated reconstructions.
Hannah: Ever?
Me: Yes. Ironically they were also the first ones to be animated, so we're actually finishing them at the beginning. It's all a bit River Song.
Hannah: This is yet another different style of animation, isn't it?
Me: These ones are animated by Cosgrove Hall, the animation studio that made Danger Mouse. You know that Doctor Who animated web series from 2003, starring Richard E. Grant?
Hannah: No.
Me: We'll get there one day. Anyway, that one was animated by Cosgrove Hall three years earlier; there was a sequel planned, but the TV series was revived shortly afterwards so it was abandoned and the unused money from that project was assigned to this instead.

The TARDIS is on the blink again; this time it's a fault with the visual stabiliser, so when it lands in the middle of a field on Earth it's completely transparent.

Hannah: Oh, has he actually made it invisible? How are you supposed to find it again? Why don't they always use the camouflage bit?
Me: It's just a broken circuit. It already has a built-in camouflage device, remember?
Hannah: Does that mean he's never going to bother fixing this one, either?

The Doctor and his companions flag down a car and hitch a lift.

Hannah: They haven't animated the face of the driver. It's either completely irrelevant, or very important.
Me: Or the animators just wanted to save a bit of money.

The Doctor decides to track down his old friend Professor Travers to help repair the circuit, but Travers is in America and the house has been leased to Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel.

Hannah: Why couldn't they have used Professor Travers instead?
Me: It was originally going to be Travers and his daughter Anne from The Web of Fear, but the creators of those characters refused to grant the rights after they fell out with the BBC over the whole Quark debacle in The Dominators.
Hannah: Just because you have a falling-out, surely you should still acknowledge the writer's vision and accept that someone has written a story and wants to honour you by using your characters. It's just spite. I don't understand people like that.

Isobel writes everything down on the wall instead of a piece of paper, reasoning that "you can't lose a wall."

Hannah: Yes, you can. They just lost all the walls of the TARDIS in the last story.
Me: It's not an everyday occurrence.
Hannah: No, but it happened.
Me: I don't think it's going to happen in Shepherd's Bush.

The Doctor and Jamie take a trip to International Electromatics in search of the missing Professor Watkins, but managing director Tobias Vaughn only gives them a freebie disposable transistor radio for their trouble.

Hannah: "Disposable"? You're supposed to dispose of a transistor radio? You just throw it away after using it?
Me: Well, "Little Arrows" by Leapy Lee was in the charts at the time, so it's hardly surprising people wanted to throw their radios away.
Hannah: It's clearly a tracking device, or a listening device, or a bomb or something.

After recognising his wife Sheila Dunn's name in the closing credits (she was the voice of the Quarks in The Dominators), Hannah also spots her favourite director.

Hannah: Oh, it's a Camfield! I can't wait to see a proper one.

Episode 2

Hannah: Oh, this is a bit jerky. They didn't do much restoration here.
Me: This is what it looked like.
Hannah: Yeah, but we watched that documentary about how they made another story smoother by filling in extra frames and things.
Me: But this is what the original was like; you can't "restore" it to something it wasn't in the first place. That's not restoration, that's George Lucasing it.

Tobias Vaughn is easily one of the most impressive and charismatic villains the series has ever had.

Hannah: I like him.
Me: Do you recognise the actor? He's been in the show before.
Hannah: No, of course I don't. I don't usually recognise anyone.
Me: His name is Kevin Stoney, and it was a very big role.
Hannah: No. Give me a clue.
Me: He was a major villain.
Hannah: No...?
Me: The Daleks' Master Plan?
Hannah: No...?
Me: It's Mavic Chen.
Hannah: It looks nothing like him.
Me: It's the same actor!
Hannah: It still looks nothing like him. He didn't have that squint last time.

While Zoe and Isobel drink coffee and listen to "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" on the gramophone, the Doctor and Jamie are abducted by two men ("Jamie likes touching the Doctor") and escorted to a military base on a plane where they meet their old friend Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, now promoted to Brigadier.

Hannah: That's a nice surprise; I didn't even consider that the Brigadier would be in this, even though the Doctor was looking for Travers. I have been wondering how soon he would be back, though. I'm glad he's been re-introduced so quickly. I like his rapport with the Doctor.

The Brigadier is now in charge of UNIT, the newly-formed "United Nations Intelligence Taskforce". (At least until 2008, when it becomes "Unified Intelligence Taskforce" because the actual United Nations suddenly decided it was a problem after 40 years.)

Hannah: Odd that the UN saw the Yeti threat as such a major event that they've created a task force for these occasions, when other stories like The War Machines and The Faceless Ones didn't provoke the same kind of reaction. A couple of Yeti and some kind of fungus in the London Underground triggered the creation of a military task force, but not the disappearance of hundreds of young people or an army of sentient tanks in the streets?

Zoe and Isobel go looking for the Doctor at IE but only find a computer in the reception area. Zoe apparently shares the Doctor's hatred of computers ("Surely his TARDIS is a giant computer?") and cheerfully blows it up with an unsolvable equation, laughing in delight at her act of vandalism.

Hannah: She's a little bit evil. She's taking too much pleasure in destroying things.

Vaughn has a complex piece of machinery in his cupboard for chatting with his alien allies. When his allies recognise the Doctor from a previous encounter on another planet, they order his destruction and Vaughn captures Zoe and Isobel as bait.

Hannah: Why is it always the girls getting captured?

The episode ends with the Doctor and Jamie cornered by Vaughn's sadistic security chief, Packer.

Hannah: I love the pacing of this; that's probably why I haven't been talking much, because I'm actually engrossed in it. There's enough happening for it to be interesting, but nothing feels clumsy or wasted. And obviously the direction's good, because it's Camfield. So, yes, very nicely paced.
Me: It needs to be, there's another six episodes to go yet.
Hannah: It might change; it might get tedious. But for now, it's thrilling.

Episode 3

The Doctor and Jamie are ushered into Vaughn's private car; the Brigadier tells Sergeant Walters to keep an eye on them.

Hannah: Does that sergeant stick around? There's always one with puppy-dog eyes who does everything.
Me: Actually, one member of UNIT does stick around for future stories.
Hannah: It's the Brig!
Me: Apart from him.
Hannah: Is it Captain Jimmy?
Me: You've got until the end of the story to give me your final answer.

They're taken to the IE factory (which looks suspiciously like the UK Guinness brewery) and into Vaughn's office, which turns out to be identical to his London office. It's a blatant budget-saving device, but Vaughn passes it off as business efficiency.

Hannah: Yeah, "business efficiency", but he's got loads of wasted space in his office. His little video communications device has three separate screens that always show the same image. That's not very efficient, is it?

Much like Mavic Chen, Vaughn is calm and suave but also dangerously sinister at the same time.

Hannah: He does play a good villain.

When the Doctor and Jamie make their escape by sabotaging the lift, Packer uses his wrist-communicator to send guards after them.

Hannah: That communication watch is really awkward, because he's got to speak into it and then hold it up to his ear, and then when he's moving between those two positions he's got to make sure he's not missing what they're saying. You'd think an electronics corporation could come up with something more effective than that.

But it only takes a couple of minutes for the engineers to get the lift operational again.

Hannah: What?! It takes hours for them to fix the lifts at work!

Vaughn completely loses his temper, and it's far more terrifying than any Dalek.

Hannah: Not so calm anymore, is he? That's what stupid people do to your patience.

Jamie takes refuge by hiding in a storage container on the IE train, but finds something stirring in there with him.

Hannah: Dramatic, but it's probably just one of the girls. They opened up the containers to look for the girls, and saw there was something inside, but for some reason they didn't think to look under the blankets for them.

Episode 4

Ever since we watched the first episode I've been trying to hide the identity of Vaughn's alien allies from Hannah, but it looks like the game is up when Vaughn tells Packer that he's planning to use emotion to destroy them.

Hannah: It is them, isn't it? They don't have any emotions. So he's just like Mavic Chen, using another race of evil villains to get what he wants and hoping to one-up them later, even though they're obviously going to be the ones betraying him.

Vaughn tries to drive the Doctor out of hiding by threatening Zoe over the compound's tannoy system.

Hannah: So all these security guards and other people are working for this electronics company. Don't any of them hear him threatening to hurt a young girl, and think that maybe they're working for the bad guys?
Me: Maybe they're bad guys themselves. There's probably a recruitment agency for villains who need a workforce to build a Death Star, or a secret base in an active volcano.

Zoe thinks this is a bit of an overreaction to her destroying a computer.

Hannah: It's not all about you.

Vaughn calls his inside man at the Ministry of Defence and orders him to obstruct UNIT's investigation. For a major general, his composure under pressure leaves a lot to be desired.

Hannah: What a wet wipe.

Speaking of IE's professional ethics, Packer has no qualms with his job description.

Hannah: Sometimes the top baddie isn't the one you hate the most; it's often their henchmen who are the truly sadistic ones that deal out the pain, and they've got him spot-on as well. He's the one that you actually despise, the one that really relishes hurting people, and it makes him a much more horrible person than Vaughn. I mean, obviously an invasion of the Earth isn't a nice thing to be organising...
Me: That's one way of putting it.
Hannah: But when you've got someone threatening to torture you, and you know they're going to enjoy it, it's a much more horrible concept because it's a more immediate threat. The end of the world is such a distant problem compared to someone sticking a gun in your back.

The technicians revive one of Vaughn's allies by attaching electrodes to its cocoon...

Hannah: They look like nipple clamps. Don't put that in the blog.
Me: Don't worry, I won't.

...and, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, it turns out to be a Cyberman.

Hannah: Did they have irons on the side of their head before?
Me: What?
Hannah: I don't remember them having quite such a big headdress.
Me: You mean the handlebars?
Hannah: No, they had handlebars, but they look like they've got their head in a vice.
Me: They've been redesigned a bit, but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Hannah: I don't remember them having such big slabs on either side of their head.
Me: Are you happy to see them again?
Hannah: Yeah, why not. I was expecting it the whole time, though, because it was Pedler. You shouldn't teach me to recognise things if you want them to be a surprise.

But she seems to be enjoying it anyway.

Hannah: I don't think I've found anything particularly wrong with this story yet. Still, there's another four episodes to go, so there's always a chance it could still go badly wrong.
Me: Yeah, that's the spirit.

Episode 5

Hannah: Why do these evil plots always take place in England? What is it about this country that attracts so many aliens and villains?
Me: We can discuss it after the Jon Pertwee era.
Hannah: It's so weird; they're like robots, but they're bursting out of a womb or a cocoon. It's very natural-looking, but synthetic at the same time. But where are these powered-down Cybermen coming from? They've been sent down here from the spaceship, a few at a time, and only to London? It doesn't sound like a large army for an invasion force, and if they need to be revived before they're ready, it makes them heavily reliant on humans. Why can't they be awake while they're being shipped in? Are they running out of power or something?
Me: What do you think of the new design?
Hannah: They look like scuba suits.

We see some Cybermen delicately climbing down a manhole into the sewer.

Hannah: Oh look, the Cybermen are helping each other!
Me: That's quite sweet.
Hannah: Yeah. But obviously they're doing it because it's logical, not out of compassion.

Like a child with a new toy, Vaughn tests out his new emotion-inducing machine and transmits fear into one of the Cybermen, which promptly goes berserk and begins running amok.

Hannah: It's sad, because there are people inside there. A screaming Cyberman is horrifying. That's why they're such good aliens; they're a terrifying concept, and it's especially terrifying to become one.

When the Brigadier dares to suggest that dealing with an army of alien monsters is a job for trained soldiers instead of a dolly-bird photographer, Isobel lays out her feminist credentials: "You... man!"

Hannah: I like her. Is she the next companion? I know changeovers can happen in big stories, and she's already caught up in this adventure. She's a fun character, but it might be too soon to have another young girl like her again.

Isobel takes Jamie and Zoe down into the sewer for a Cyberman photo shoot (as one does) to gather evidence of the invasion. A policeman follows them down the manhole, with predictable results.

Hannah: Oh yeah, that's going to be an excellent shot of a policeman getting murdered by a cyborg. Good one, guys.

Nobody seems too worried about being responsible for the poor man's death; they're far more concerned about being trapped by Cybermen on all sides. Jamie helpfully explains to us that "they're coming at us from both directions."

Hannah: Well done, Jamie. It might be time to take you back to the Highlands.

Episode 6

One of the advancing Cybermen happens to be Vaughn's demented test subject.

Hannah: Aw, they're going to blow up the poorly one.

UNIT comes to the rescue, but when the Brigadier tells Isobel that her photos are too blurry to be any use, she retorts "I don't know why I bothered."

Hannah: No, nobody does. It was a terrible idea.

Vaughn gives Professor Watkins a gun and offers himself as a target, but the gunfire just ricochets off his cybernetically-augmented chest.

Hannah: That's so cruel. He's very good at playing mind games.
Me: And that's why Vaughn is the real villain of this story, not the Cybermen.
Hannah: He's still very lucky he didn't get shot in the head.

UNIT plans a full-scale assault to rescue Professor Watkins. It all sounds very impressive, but we don't get to see any of the action; instead, we cut straight to the aftermath of the battle, with one of Vaughn's scientific researchers telling him what we would have seen. I ask Hannah for her thoughts.

Hannah: It's a little bit unsatisfying, but plenty of TV shows do that. It's a problem if you do it too often, but for this one time it's okay; there's already been enough action and shooting things and running around that you don't need to see that full-scale attack to make sure you keep the audience. I would say they're pretty much hooked, anyway. I don't feel cheated by not having it.
Me: There was supposed to be a filmed battle, but they ran out of time on the location shoot.
Hannah: It's a bit of a cheap move, cutting from the Brig's comment to a dishevelled survivor, but there's also a nice sense of comic timing in it.

Despite all the excitement, Jamie somehow manages to take a nap. Even the Doctor seems slightly peeved.

Hannah: Is the Doctor going to dump him now, for not being engaged enough?

IE's products contain an extra circuit that will produce cyber-hypnotic signals and send everyone in the world to sleep, but the Doctor reminds us of the anti-brainwashing devices he threw together during their last encounter in The Wheel in Space, something Hannah would rather forget.

Hannah: Ah, we're back to the silly science of depolarising and wearing a little thing on the back of the neck to jam signals. It was all going so well.

The episode ends with an iconic cliffhanger, as the Cybermen rise up out of the sewer and march past St Paul's Cathedral into the streets of London.

Hannah: They've still got Doc Martens and scuba suits, but they actually look impressive.
Me: That's partly because they're doing that same trick from The Dalek Invasion of Earth and marching around some well-known London landmarks.
Hannah: Yeah, it makes it feel closer to home. It feels different, seeing them in the real world instead of a moon base or a space station.

Episode 7

Hannah: I've just noticed, it looks like the Cybermen have got metal or latex nappies.
Me: This is definitely my favourite Cyberman design.
Hannah: When was The Tenth Planet set?
Me: 1986.
Hannah: So why do these Cybermen look a lot more advanced than the ones that arrive twenty years later? They've also become a lot less effective at organising an invasion by then, which is even more strange.

Vaughn's thugs attempt to recapture Professor Watkins, and Jamie is shot down in the process.

Hannah: Not surprised. It's been far too long since a main cast member had a proper injury; you need to show just how dangerous their adventures actually are. He's very lucky it was only a flesh wound, after being shot that close.

Hannah's observations on the similarities between the UNIT plane and the SHIELD Helicarrier are abruptly cut short when she's presented with a close-up of the Brigadier strapping on his gun-belt.

Hannah: Groin shot. I mean, Camfield's great, but... groin shot?
Me: Perhaps "artistic" is the word you're looking for?
Hannah: I love the way the camera shots work together, I like the zoom into people's faces when there's a particular expression that really needs showing, and I like the mix of detail and wide shots. I can see that's what they've tried to do with the Brig's belt, by showing a small, simple detail at the beginning of the scene and then pulling back to locate it in a greater context, but really, it's just a close-up of his crotch.

In his office, Vaughn tells the Doctor about his plan to betray the Cybermen. (Like we didn't know.)

Hannah: That alien computer-brain thing is only behind a door; it can still hear you.

But the UNIT boys have already managed to wipe out the incoming invasion fleet with the help of Zoe's calculations, so the remaining Cybermen take umbrage and deploy a megaton bomb instead.

Hannah: If they had let Vaughn carry on with his plan, then at least he'd have managed to kill off all the Cybermen with his special fear weapons, and then all they would need to do is defeat Vaughn. Whereas now, Vaughn is incapacitated and the Cybermen are still going to come, and now they're going to bring a bomb. Unless UNIT manages to shoot down the rest, but I think they're out of missiles.
Me: You think Vaughn would have beaten the Cybermen?
Hannah: Probably not, but you should always let your enemies fight each other.

Episode 8

Zoe and UNIT have destroyed the invasion fleet, but their victory celebrations are interrupted when UNIT hears about the bomb.

Hannah: I mean, it was nice to see them all celebrating, but when you're dealing with an alien invasion you shouldn't be so complacent about it. I was half-expecting everyone to be sitting there with a beer.

Packer is killed by a Cyberman ("He didn't suffer as much as he probably deserved"), so the Doctor takes Vaughn's machine and blasts it full of emotion.

Hannah: I wonder what setting they're using. Are they killing them all with fear? Or love?
Me: I like the idea of killing a Cyberman by making it feel love. Maybe they're killing it with kindness?
Hannah: Why doesn't the Doctor remember the emotion gun when he fights them later? I'm sure he could work out how to build one.
Me: He doesn't carry weapons; he might as well carry a revolver around with him otherwise. Besides, there's no point inventing a complicated machine when you can just spray their chest units with nail varnish remover.

Vaughn joins forces with the Doctor to take revenge against the Cybermen, but gets killed by his former allies in the process. Then, when UNIT arrives and the Brigadier sends the troops in, there's a wonderful bit of physical comedy from Patrick Troughton; Isobel starts photographing the Doctor, who protests at first but then starts to tidy himself up for the camera.

Hannah: (laughing) I love this story more and more.

There's just the small matter of having to wait for a Russian rocket to take out the mother-ship, and then it's all over.

Hannah: So there are loads of photographs of the Cybermen, and everyone was asleep for two days. Do people believe it actually happened? Or is it one of those things that never gets mentioned again?

I deftly side-step the question.

Me: Have you given any thought to which member of UNIT stays around for the later stories?
Hannah: I don't know. One of the Brigadier's lackeys.
Me: Which one?
Hannah: I don't know. Any of them.
Me: Your heart's not in this.
Hannah: The radio operator? I don't know, they all look the same to me. I couldn't tell you any of their names. There's one who seems to be on the radio all the time, and then there's a captain and a sergeant.
Me: Here are your options: it's either Captain Turner, Sergeant Walters, Corporal Benton or Corporal Tracy.
Hannah: Is it the captain? Does he get to stay?

The Ministry of Defence is acknowledged in the credits.

Hannah: Did they tell them the kind of things that they would say over the radio? Or was it just for the use of their footage?
Me: The British Army took part in the final battle scene, playing soldiers with flamethrowers and bazookas and things.
Hannah: That's impressive. But has everyone just glossed over the fact that lots of people would have died? The whole world got put into a trance for two days; diabetic people wouldn't have been able to take their insulin, planes would have crashed, submarines would probably have run out of air, people on the operating table would have died, and people who were in moving cars or trains at the time would have died. And at the end of all of this, we just get a glimpse of life going back to normal and we're told that Isobel has got a new job because she took some pictures of the Cybermen. Everything else carries on as normal.
Me: You'd rather they finished an eight-episode story by taking a poll of the dead while the camera pans over a mass grave?
Hannah: I just want it to be addressed somehow. I'm not asking them to show someone regaining consciousness and realising that their baby has starved to death next to them, or anything like that.
Me: Maybe their metabolism slows down when they're under the influence. Anyway, people die off-screen in the show all the time.
Hannah: I know, but the scale of the devastation must have been massive, and there's no acknowledgement of it at all.

The Score

Hannah: That was excellent. It kept my attention throughout and there was nothing I particularly disliked or disbelieved, except for a few little flaky bits of science.
Me: It's Doctor Who, you can't hold that against it. Within reason, anyway.
Hannah: I have. Repeatedly.
Me: Yeah, but you have to accept that the science in any long-running science fiction series is occasionally going to be a little shaky.
Hannah: The direction was superb.
Me: Well, that's Camfield for you.
Hannah: He just knows how to make it work; he knows exactly what kind of shots he needs to create a particular kind of emotion or interest in the story. It fully held my attention throughout the entire eight episodes; the pacing was perfect, the story was perfect, the acting was almost perfect, and the villain was amazing.

10/10

Me: So what do you think of this new format? The Doctor working together with UNIT, backed up by their military connections?
Hannah: It's an easy way for the Doctor to kill people without having to do it himself.
Me: But do you like the setup?
Hannah: It's more like modern Who in that respect, so it feels more familiar to me, although obviously this is where it comes from. I don't think it makes Doctor Who better, it just makes it different.
Me: So you'd be happy to see more of that?
Hannah: Yes, as long as there's also the usual "having a jolly around the universe" stuff; if it just became the "Doctor Who on Earth" show, that would be boring. I liked this one very much, but I wouldn't want every episode to be like this.

The Wheel in Space

Episode 1

We rejoin the TARDIS as it breaks down aboard a deserted spaceship. (For those of you keeping score at home, the existing episodes this week are 3 and 6.)

Hannah: The fluid link has gone again. Where are they going to find all that mercury?
Me: Ah, you remember it from The Daleks?
Hannah: Of course.
Me: It feels like such a long time ago now.
Hannah: The film did the same thing, so it was covered twice.
Me: He really should have started keeping an emergency supply on board after that incident on Skaro.

The TARDIS has detected danger outside, but the early-warning system (although clearly improved since The Edge of Destruction) is a little on the abstract side: it projects pictures of suggested alternative destinations onto the scanner. Hannah is hard-pressed to think of a rationale for this particular strategy.

Hannah: Why is the TARDIS' response to danger always to play guessing-games with them? A sophisticated piece of technology like that should have a much clearer way of communicating danger to its crew and advising a course of action; a nice clear message saying "leave immediately" would have done the trick. And if it can detect danger outside, why hasn't it done that before?

After five consecutive earthbound stories it's a relief to finally see another off-world adventure, even if it means listening to vast swathes of dialogue-free audio while the ship's servo-robot pilot waddles around the ship.

Hannah: I'm just glad to see some kind of robot that's not a Yeti.

The Doctor and Jamie locate a food machine ("Go on, be the stupid little tablet things"), so the Doctor orders roast pork with potatoes and carrots (a man after my own heart) and Jamie requests roast beef with all the trimmings.

Hannah: Did they have that phrase in his time?
Me: No, I don't know where he got that from. Maybe he picked it up when they stayed for dinner with the Harrises at the end of the last story.
Hannah: When was Yorkshire pudding invented?
Me: 1842.
Hannah: Really?
Me: No.

Jamie still misses Victoria, but the Doctor reassures him that she's chosen a good and prosperous historical period to settle in.

Hannah: How does he know? He never asked anyone the date!

The servo-robot starts sealing the doors shut, trapping them inside.

Hannah: I hope this isn't going to be six episodes where it's just the two of them and a robot that doesn't talk.
Me: How did you know?
Hannah: It's just a theory.
Me: That's exactly what happens.
Hannah: I don't want you to tell me that, even if you're lying.

The Doctor pulls something out of his pocket and neatly unseals the door.

Hannah: Is that his sonic screwdriver?
Me: Not this time.
Hannah: Obviously his lightsaber, then.
Me: It's the time-vector generator.
Hannah: Oh. Convenient that it also doubles as a laser, then. The one thing they've grabbed from the TARDIS before they ran out the door has helped them to survive, even though its main function is something completely different.

Hannah is disappointed when Jamie rudely uses the device to destroy the robot, rather than talking out their differences first, but she really starts to worry when the Doctor passes out after hitting his head.

Hannah: Last time he felt unwell and went for a lie down, he regenerated. It's too soon for him to change; I'll be very disappointed if that's what happens.

Episode 2

Our heroes have been brought aboard a nearby wheel-shaped space station, where the second-in-command Dr Gemma Corwyn (who reminds us both a great deal of Judi Dench) is giving Jamie an examination.

Hannah: I like that they've addressed the need for a psychologist on a space station. It's a reasonable thing for them to need, and not enough sci-fi shows seem to realise it.

Jamie is at a loss to explain the Doctor's identity, so he comes up with a false name: Dr John Smith.

Hannah: Is that the first time he uses that name?
Me: Yep, and he continues to use it all the way up to the present day.
Hannah: I know he uses it later on, but it's interesting that Jamie is the one who originally came up with it.

Gemma, clearly not entirely satisfied with his story, arranges for Jamie to take a tour of the wheel.

Hannah: Suspicious man arrives in suspicious circumstances; give him a tour of the entire facility!

Jamie's tour guide is the wheel's genius teenage librarian astrophysicist mascot, Zoe.

Hannah: I feel a companion coming on. She's exactly the right kind; young and excitable. She seems interesting, although I'm worried that a know-it-all is going to get annoying very quickly.

Gemma wonders whether the Doctor and Jamie might be saboteurs.

Hannah: If he is an agent, he's a bit shit at it. He's turned up in a kilt and done loads of things to give himself away.

Some white spheres (which apparently have the ability to pass through the hull of a spaceship) begin to grow, their skins glowing and becoming translucent to reveal a humanoid shape curled up inside, until one bursts open to reveal a silver metal fist.

Hannah: Oh, it's a metal man in a ball. It looks like a Cyberman, except they're not born; I don't want it to be something we've already seen, again.

Her suspicions are confirmed when she realises that this story was written by Dr Kit Pedler, co-creator of the Cybermen and the writer of all their stories to date.

Hannah: I'm confused about the Cybermen's ball size.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Hannah: Did they start off small, and then grow after they floated through the ship's walls? Why are the Cybermen hatching out of glowing eggs?

Episode 3

The wheel is preparing to destroy the rocket with the TARDIS on board, so Jamie is forced to sabotage the laser.

Hannah: I don't know why he's doing this. Why doesn't he just stop them and say he's left something important on board?
Me: Because they wouldn't care.
Hannah: But now he's just a vandal. I think he's done a really, really stupid thing.

The Cybermen have been redesigned yet again, with their helmets now sporting the iconic "teardrop" in the corner of each eye.

Me: Look, they've got the teardrops!
Hannah: I don't like the idea of an enemy that can just phase itself through walls anywhere it likes. Do they walk through walls at any other point? It's terrifying.
Me: I know. But look at the new design!
Hannah: I can't remember what they looked like last time.

But when one of their little helpers turns up, she greets it like an old friend.

Hannah: Oooh, a Cybermat!
Me: You remember them?
Hannah: Yes. Why would I forget an electronic horseshoe crab?
Me: I'm more surprised that you remembered the name.
Hannah: Only because it's a stupid name.

Jamie, unable to explain his actions, has decided to let the Doctor deal with it instead.

Hannah: He's just woken up from a concussion, and now he's got to think of an excuse that doesn't make Jamie look like an absolute tit.

Hannah is unclear on Zoe's credentials.

Hannah: Is she a parapsychologist?
Me: No, she's an astrophysicist.
Hannah: Oh. But it's a parapsychology library?
Me: That's right.
Hannah: Do they have more than one library? What about a psychics library?
Me: Not as far as we know, although you'd think a space station would have books on some other subjects as well. Either way, it's a very specific topic for a whole dedicated library.

One of the crew members is attacked by Cybermats...

Hannah: Oh no! They've got shooty eyes now. Evil little lice!

...and ends up dying horribly. Quelle surprise.

Hannah: That felt way too over-dramatic.

Episode 4

The Doctor and Zoe are trying to explain the Cyberman threat to the wheel's commander, Jarvis Bennett, but he's stubbornly refusing to believe them. If you think this is getting repetitious, you're right.

Hannah: Once again, the writer has put another over-worked idiot in charge just so that the enemy can take hold a little further and increase the threat. It's getting very annoying.

The crew have apparently never heard of the Cybermen, so while Hannah spends a large portion of the episode trying to get her head around the Cyberman timeline, the Doctor surmises that the Cybermats had been sent in to destroy the laser; Jamie takes this as proof that his act of vandalism is no big deal.

Hannah: Oh, so that excuses his actions, does it, because it was going to happen anyway? Hmmm.

Jamie, although demonstrably capable of sabotaging operations on a space station, is nonetheless completely baffled by Zoe's tape recorder.

Hannah: Jamie's travelled so far across time and space, and he hasn't heard of a voice recorder?
Me: Not only that, but they used one in the previous story to destroy the seaweed monster at the end of Fury from the Deep, so God only knows what he thought was happening there.

One of the engineers (all of whom might as well be labelled "Cyberman fodder") goes down to the loading bay.

Hannah: Poor chap. He's going to die. And he's done two shifts in a row. That's a tough day.

The Doctor suspects two other crew members are under the control of the Cybermen ("Nobody has noticed that they're speaking monotonously and acting a bit weird"). The good news is that each crew member has an implanted circuit that gives off a signal when the owner is being controlled; the bad news is that it needs to be checked manually.

Hannah: Odd. Why isn't it something that's constantly monitored? Shouldn't there be a little alarm that pings in the corner somewhere when this sort of thing happens? It should go ping when there's stuff.

We get to see a censor clip of one of the victims, an engineer called Duggan, committing suicide by smashing a communications console with a heavy spanner.

Me: I'd forgotten how unpleasant that scene is.
Hannah: Oh, he kills himself by electrocution; that's why someone cut that bit out.
Me: I'm not surprised.

The Doctor prescribes an anti-brainwashing device: just tape a metal plate and a transistor to the back of the neck and it absorbs the Cybermen's control signals.

Hannah: Their brainwashing can't be very effective if a piece of metal Sellotaped to the back of the neck can stop it from happening.

Episode 5

The past three seasons have been a bit of a struggle at times; out of 128 episodes, 79 have been reconstructions. But, after a difficult few months, this is going to be our last missing episode for a while. [Insert thanks to the deity of your choice here.]

The Doctor is concerned that the Cybermen are going to start tampering with the wheel's air supply.

Hannah: Do they not need air at all?
Me: We've already seen them marching across the surface of the moon, so presumably not.
Hannah: But they've still got some organic tissue left. Surely their brains still have some tissue?

I make an effort to distract her from some of the more ridiculous story elements (like the plot).

Me: So, do you like the new teardrops on the Cyberman helmets?
Hannah: They're like gangster tattoos.
Me: It always gives me the feeling that they're weeping for their lost humanity. Maybe I'm just more poetic than you are.

Meanwhile, Bennett has finally flipped.

Hannah: So it turns out that the commander is actually completely unstable, which seems highly unlikely if he's been hand-picked for this job and having regular psychological evaluations. At the first sign of an unexplained event he starts spouting off about conspiracy theorists, and how he's right and everybody else is wrong. It's just completely unfathomable that a commander who's being evaluated regularly and thoroughly is going to flip out like that.

While the Doctor and Gemma wonder if he could be shocked back to normal ("They're going to give him a brain shock because he's having a sulk?"), Zoe bemoans the fact that her training has left her with a sense of emotional detachment and a blind reliance on facts and logic.

Hannah: I like Zoe. She sounds a little bit precocious, a little bit Hermione Granger, but she's not that extreme; she's really clever but realises that there's stuff she doesn't know, which redeems her.
Me: She's more interesting because she's got a lot of knowledge, but none of it's contextualised; she's got no real-world experience of anything, so she's super-intelligent but also naïve and inexperienced at the same time.

The Doctor needs the time-vector generator but it's still on the rocket, so he gives Jamie a homework assignment.

Hannah: He just wants Jamie out of the way, doesn't he?

Zoe accompanies Jamie on his space-walk (leaving Hannah in no doubt that she must be the next companion), but then Gemma gets blasted by a Cyberman.

Hannah: No, don't die! Not Judi Dench! Oh, she did. I liked her. She was intelligent and level-headed and she was in charge now. Now what's going to happen?
Me: It's a shame, she would have been a good companion.
Hannah: It's got so much more impact when it happens to the main characters who are helping to keep things together, rather than just random redshirts.

In fact, it has so much impact for us that it somewhat undermines the cliffhanger, in which a cluster of meteorites hurtles towards Jamie and Zoe. Hannah is in no mood for sympathy.

Hannah: Well, you were warned, weren't you? You were told that there's loads of debris out there and it's coming straight for you, and then you go outside and find loads of debris coming straight for you. I mean, no shit.

Episode 6

Hannah: The wheel isn't symmetrical. It's wonky.
Me: Never mind that; we're watching this episode 50 years to the day since it was first broadcast.
Hannah: That's quite a coincidence. It's almost like you planned it.
Me: If I was going to make the effort to plan a 50th anniversary viewing, why would I have planned it for The Wheel in Space?

The Doctor urges the crew to switch over to the "sectional air supply". Maybe. There's some ambiguity within fandom over what Troughton actually says, so I play the line again so that Hannah can judge for herself.

Hannah: "Sectional". Why? Do people think he's saying "sexual air supply"?
Me: A lot of people do think it's a Freudian slip, yes.
Hannah: It's "sectional".
Me: Well, that's certainly what was in the script...
Hannah: It sounded like "sectional" to me, and I always pick up on rude bits. I'd be the first person to tell you if it sounded like "sexual".

We've missed most of the scene by this point, so I rewind the DVD.

Hannah: Now I hear it! That's annoying. It sounds like "sexual" now.

Gemma's body is still lying on the floor.

Hannah: It's really sad that they don't have the time to pick her up and move her.

The Doctor confronts the Cybermen but their fleet is drawing closer to the wheel and, as if the plot wasn't already absurd enough, swarms of Cybermen are marching through space towards them.

Hannah: Oh, they walked across from the rocket, did they?
Me: Erm, yes...
Hannah: But... if the rocket is close enough for them to space-walk across, then it's close enough that the wheel would have felt the impact if they'd blown it up. You don't explode something when it's that close to you.
Me: So you're not going to question how they walked over?
Hannah: Well, people have already been walking backwards and forwards to the rocket and I never mentioned how stupid it was. If you made one push, you would maintain your momentum all the way across, so I don't see how Jamie and Zoe were waving around and pushing away from each other when there's nothing to push on. You can't do that in space.
Me: It's not great, I'll grant you, but it still makes more sense than hatching out of eggs that can pass through solid metal.
Hannah: Did you say this was written by a real scientist?

After the Cybermen have been thwarted and sucked out into space (again), Zoe wants to join the Doctor and Jamie. Jamie isn't so keen on the idea, but promises not to forget Zoe.

Me: (under my breath) We'll see about that.
Hannah: What?
Me: Nothing.

The Doctor is more receptive but thinks she should know what she's getting herself into, so he dusts off an old gadget and starts projecting his thought patterns onto the TARDIS scanner.

Hannah: What? When did he develop that, then?
Me: It could be part of the TARDIS, maybe?
Hannah: And this is the first time he's decided to get it out to convince someone not to come with him? People have stowed away so many times now so he's trying to be careful not to accidentally steal anybody again, and really make sure that this is what they want. He didn't do this for Jamie! Nobody even told him what was happening, let alone mentioning that there's stuff out there and he's probably going to die.

The image on the monitor shows a man being confronted by a Dalek.

Hannah: We've never seen that bloke before, have we?
Me: Yes. This is the last episode of the fifth season; the BBC repeated The Evil of the Daleks during the summer break before the sixth season started in the autumn, so for the first and only time in the series' history we're getting a scripted introduction to a repeat.
Hannah: (laughing) What?
Me: They showed all seven episodes as a flashback, basically.
Hannah: And to think that repeats became a regular thing, but back then it was so special that they had to allude to it in some way. I like that. Most shows have a flashback episode, but this is an entire story. It's very odd.
Me: By the way, have you noticed that all seven stories in the fifth season - from The Tomb of the Cybermen onwards - have been "base under siege" stories, where the Doctor turns up at an isolated base somewhere and helps the personnel defend themselves from an outside invading force? The only exception has been The Enemy of the World.
Hannah: That's a good point; they're all camps or research stations of some kind. Why was it like that? They've all had different writers.
Me: Has it felt repetitive at all, or have you not really noticed it?
Hannah: It has felt a little bit repetitive. I've noticed that there hasn't been so much running around lately; I hadn't noticed that they've all been the same kind of setting, but I've felt the same kind of mood.
Me: I think you'll find season six a lot more varied. What do you think of having a companion who's as clever as the Doctor?
Hannah: Differently clever. I don't see why not, as long as she doesn't become too much of a know-it-all.

The Score

Hannah: It was alright, although the Cybermen were barely in it; they could have been any enemy.
Me: That's probably true of almost any Cyberman story apart from The Tenth Planet.
Hannah: The Cybermen usually want to make people like them, but they weren't interested in doing any of that here; all we saw was them trying to take over a space station by controlling some people and then killing others. It was such a convoluted plan, and the whole story is just nonsensical to me.
Me: It's not just you; the whole story is nonsensical.
Hannah: I liked a lot of the characters, especially Zoe and Gemma - I was very sad that Gemma had to die - and Tanya was alright, and then I can't remember any of the guys' names. But it felt very much like a family in space; it's a high-stress environment but they're all pretty cool and getting on. I did enjoy it, but I wanted it to be better than it was; so much of it was farcical, like an interesting idea being presented by an inept waiter on roller-skates who was constantly fumbling and trying to keep it level. I just couldn't take it seriously.

6/10

Hannah: If it wasn't for Gemma and Zoe, it would have been more like a 5. Try harder next time.

The Tomb of the Cybermen

Episode 1

Hannah: This is very atmospheric. Whistly wind, flashing lights...
Me: This is still Skaro. We're not staying.

The Doctor welcomes Victoria aboard the TARDIS, handily summarising the premise of the show as he does so.

Hannah: Is that the first time he's ever said how old he is?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: So he's already 450 years old... but why did she ask how old he was in the first place? "If you travel through time and space, how old are you?" That's a silly thing to ask; why would that matter? If he travels through time and space, he can still do that in a human lifespan because he can chop and change and go all over the place. What an odd question.
Me: It was a bit of a non sequitur, I'll grant you.
Hannah: "You've lived in loads of different countries; what colour is your hair?" But it's interesting that we finally found out how old he is. Maybe they wanted to shoehorn it in, for a reason that comes up later in the episode.
Me: I think it's more that they're trying to appeal to American audiences now; they're giving us a recap of what the TARDIS is and what it can do, and this opening scene is shot on film instead of videotape.
Hannah: They also could have done a text card saying "The Doctor travels around with people."
Me: Like Star Wars?
Hannah: Yeah, exactly. A scrolling intro. But I like the way they did it, except that it was a bit of a random question.
Me: Are you going to be keeping track of his age all through the series?
Hannah: I'll try, but even he doesn't keep track of his own age.
Me: No, it's definitely not consistent.
Hannah: Is that because the writers aren't consistent, or it's part of the Doctor's character that he doesn't really know and he doesn't really care?
Me: I'll leave you to make up your own mind as the series goes on.

We join a group of explorers, who are on an expedition to find the last remains of the Cybermen in the lost city on the planet Telos. It doesn't take long for Hannah to realise what's going on here.

Hannah: (wearily) Are they archaeologists?
Me: Yes, I thought you'd appreciate this.
Hannah: Archaeologists who use dynamite. We'll have to see.
Me: You don't seem particularly surprised to see them.
Hannah: Well, the sixties was the height of the archaeological revival.
Me: This is basically a Doctor Who version of all those "archaeologists excavating a cursed mummy's tomb" stories.
Hannah: Except that it's a Cyberman's tomb. I suppose it's like historians who research the Nazis because they're a such a big part of history, but at least with the Nazis you can't bring them back to life and have them kill more people.
Me: Not yet, no. Either way, I thought your background might come in handy here.
Hannah: Oh god, that guy's haircut! Is that a widow's peak?

Her first impressions of these tomb raiders aren't very favourable.

Hannah: The acting is awful! You know what I'm getting? Star Trek flashes. (American accent) "We're running around on a planet, Jim, with guns in our hands, walking through a wasteland."

After the Doctor has deactivated the electrified doors, it's up to Toberman to open them. Having just watched The Evil of the Daleks, the presence of an almost-mute giant black strongman feels more than a little repetitive.

Hannah: It's another strong Kemel man; he's not speaking and he's just being told what to do. Yeah, you shift that polystyrene.

Once inside, everyone fans out like children on a school trip and starts exploring the central chamber.

Hannah: Why is everyone touching everything?! I think people who tend to be archaeologists don't walk around touching everything.

In fact, everything about their methodology is wrong.

Hannah: They say everything has to be "carefully measured and recorded" and all they've got is a piece of paper and a pen.
Me: What would you suggest?
Hannah: Well, it depends what kind of recording you want to do. You can geolocate things, or you can use tape-measures and plumb-lines, or you can do laser scanning.
Me: I really thought you were going to say that they could use a camera.
Hannah: Yes, or they take a picture of it! But then you don't get any 3D information unless you're doing 3D tomography; you've got to record what it looks like, but also where everything is. You can't just walk in and write a few things down on a piece of paper.

Eventually, one of the explorers finally has enough presence of mind to remind the others that "the first rule of archaeological work is that nothing must be touched until it's been described and recorded."

Hannah: But--
Me: Are you happy now?
Hannah: But everyone is just walking around the front entrance touching everything! Walking up the steps. They even blew the bloody thing open! They opened the doors without recording the doors! It's all very well saying that now.
Me: I really wish our blog readers could hear the level of exasperation in your voice.
Hannah: Why aren't we doing a podcast?

Victoria finds a big googly-eyed metal silverfish, which the Doctor identifies as a Cybermat.

Hannah: (laughing) What is that?
Me: Don't you remember them? They turn up again in the Matt Smith era.
Hannah: No! I remember the name. What do they do, and why do they look so cute?

The cliffhanger, in which a fake Cyberman slides into view and shoots one of the party, doesn't seem to do much for Hannah either.

Hannah: Ooh, that is unfortunate. It's not a live one, though. It's on a stick.

Episode 2

Hannah: Death, back-stabbing, mystery, and archaeologists in the desert. I'm getting Murder on the Nile vibes from this.
Me: Before it was rediscovered in Hong Kong in 1992, this was the Holy Grail of missing stories; it had this monumental reputation as an amazing lost classic.
Hannah: I wish they'd left it buried. Bad archaeology and bad acting.
Me: Well, a lot of people agree with you that it doesn't live up to the hype. Imagine if you'd spent 25 years hearing people talk about this hugely atmospheric "greatest story ever" about Cybermen in tombs; probably nothing could have lived up to that kind of reputation. But there are still a lot of people who consider it one of the best stories ever.
Hannah: I'm not saying it's bad, it's just... not great.
Me: When Matt Smith was cast, he didn't know very much about Doctor Who so he went back and watched some of the older ones; Patrick Troughton immediately became his favourite, as well as the one that most inspired his own Doctor, hence the bow-tie. Anyway, this is the story that struck the biggest chord with him; he absolutely loved it.
Hannah: Ah, interesting.

Before we rejoin the story, Hannah has some questions about Cyberman lore. Maybe she just wants to delay watching it for as long as possible.

Hannah: Is Telos a planet?
Me: Well, they call it "the city of Telos" here so it's a bit ambiguous, but yes, it's later confirmed as a planet.
Hannah: What's the difference between Telos and Mondas?
Me: Mondas is their home; Telos is the planet they occupied after Mondas was destroyed in The Tenth Planet.

The Doctor offers Jamie and Victoria the opportunity to sit this one out and wait in the TARDIS, but they decide to stick around.

Hannah: Because they've packed the TARDIS set away and don't want to get it out again until they have to.

The explorers discover an underground ice vault, with a honeycombed tomb full of dormant Cybermen.

Hannah: They're surrounded by tombs, and there's an opening device; I wonder what's going to happen! Odd that they use the word "tomb" rather than "stasis chamber". Why doesn't anybody want gloves or anything? And Jamie's still wearing his kilt. He's going to get frostbite on all kinds of things.

The Cybermen awaken and rise from their tombs. This is one of the most iconic sequences in the entire history of the show, and I turn to Hannah, expecting her to soak up the scene in reverent silence.

Hannah: They're having trouble getting out and stepping over the plastic. They're as wonky and ungraceful as a newborn deer.
Me: They've been dormant for thousands of years!
Hannah: I know. They're a little bit stiff.
Me: This is quite scary, don't you think?
Hannah: Well, yeah. You think "How many were there?", and the answer is "Oh, loads." You can't get out, and they're all in there with you. And they all seem to be fine, no damage from storage.

This may not be the level of engagement I was hoping for, but the scene where Victoria fends off an attack from a Cybermat doesn't even manage to reach those lofty heights.

Hannah: What did it do? Can we go back? I missed it because I was looking at the display on the DVD player to see how much time was left.

The reactivated Cybermen open their leader's chamber at the bottom of the tomb, like the big door on an advent calendar.

Hannah: There's the Cyber-Commander or whatever he is.
Me: Cyber-Controller.

He emerges from the tomb and announces to the humans that "you shall be like us".

Hannah: They haven't changed.
Me: What, you thought they might have mellowed a bit?
Hannah: No, I wasn't expecting anything else. "Good morning; would you like a box on your chest?"

Episode 3

I agree to switch on the DVD subtitles for the first scene so that Hannah can understand what the Cybermen are saying, but for some reason she's still not happy with the Controller. Maybe it's the large transparent dome on his head containing his exposed organic brain.

Hannah: This is awful.
Me: Why?
Hannah: It just looks awful.

One of the Cybermen lifts Toberman over its head and throws him into a pile of barrels.

Hannah: Wow. That is such an obvious harness, it hurts. This is awful! Who directed this? I don't even care.
Me: Douglas Camfield.
Hannah: Really?!
Me: No. It's Morris Barry.
Hannah: Like I said, I don't really care about the name, I just want to know who he is. Apart from blind, deaf and incompetent.
Me: That's a bit mean.
Hannah: The acting is awful, the directing is awful, and the production is... well, it's alright.
Me: He also directed The Moonbase.
Hannah: The Moonbase wasn't bad. Okay, well maybe it's not the direction, but... I really think it is. The acting is bad, where they're standing is bad, the way that they interact with each other is bad, and having a full-on shot of the harness... it's not smooth in the slightest.

A Cyberman grabs the Doctor's leg as he scrambles out of the hatch, but Victoria hits the Cyberman's arm with a thermos until it lets go.

Hannah: This is so shit.

Luckily, we come to this story's trump card: a quiet scene with a beautiful heartwarming  exchange between the Doctor and Victoria.

Hannah: Very touching.
Me: It's such a lovely scene.
Hannah: It's like a six-month review. "Are you happy in your current position? How do you feel it's going so far with the team?" A little one-to-one catch-up.

But it's not long before the group are confronted with a swarm of Cybermats.

Hannah: Can you get remote control ones?
Me: That might be a bit niche.
Hannah: You've been to Forbidden Planet, right?
Me: You know I have; you were there when I bought that Sonic the Hedgehog mug. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted by the Ecco the Dolphin t-shirt.
Hannah: I had pet Triops that looked like Cybermats.
Me: You kept Triops as pets?
Hannah: Yeah. Sea monkeys are boring.
Me: What makes Triops less boring than sea monkeys?
Hannah: Sea monkeys are tiny; Triops are about the size of your thumb. You can watch them eat and play.

The Doctor generates an electrical field to deal with the Cybermats, giving them a "complete metal breakdown." Jamie groans.

Hannah: Funny, but he shouldn't understand the joke.

Episode 4

Hannah's reaction to Kaftan's death is about as appreciative as you'd expect.

Hannah: That was all really stupid. That was a really shit death. Why is all of this so rubbish?

I genuinely haven't seen her display this kind of anger towards any episode of Doctor Who since The Edge of Destruction.

Hannah: I've had a horrible thought.
Me: Yes?
Hannah: Maybe I like so many of the missing episodes because I can't see that they're rubbish.

This time it's Toberman's turn to lift the Controller over his head and throw him around. It's only an empty Cyberman costume, but as far as Hannah's concerned it's more convincing than the harness.

Hannah: Now that's a good effect.

In fact, some of the effects are a little too good and she's fairly disturbed by the sight of a dying Cyberman with its frothing innards oozing out of its chest unit. The explorers' ship has now been repaired ("That was a quick 72 hours"), and once all the survivors are safely outside, the Doctor re-seals the tomb doors; just for good measure, he also rigs them with enough electricity to give a fatal shock to whichever expedition turns up next 

Hannah: Just leave a note on the door this time. "Don't wake the Cybermen up, we will all die. They trick us a lot."

The Doctor says goodbye to the two remaining explorers that haven't been killed, and our heroes are on their way back to the TARDIS.

Hannah: What happened to the Cybermat? There was a Cybermat outside. There it is! Trundle trundle through the sand. Draggy draggy tail. And the electricity has reactivated his Cyberman-ness. Cybermanity. It's a Cyber Manatee! Or maybe it's a Robot Dugong.
Me: See, this is why we're not doing a podcast.

The Score

Hannah: Right. I like archaeologists, and I like finding out about Cybermen...
Me: Ah yes, your two main hobbies.
Hannah: But there was very little archaeology in it, and even what they claimed to be archaeology wasn't archaeology, so it was disappointing. I like the idea that the Cybermen weren't the main villain; they were just doing what they do, and then somebody else is there to stab their own entire species in the back by co-operating with aliens that want to alter us. I also like how the whole place is just one big testing school to see whether or not they're clever enough to open up the hatch; that's a good premise, but the execution of the entire thing was just awful. Bad acting, bad positioning, bad movement, bad editing! Usually it flows a bit better than this. It might be because we've had so many missing episodes recently; you can't see all these things in stills, so maybe I'm being overly critical, but this was rubbish. And Toberman, or whatever his name was; it feels like they re-used the Kemel character. He's a big strong man who doesn't speak much, who's being told what to do and then dies while they're all trying to get away. And the deaths were awful. Cybermats were cute, although I still don't understand the name. Anyway, lots of interesting concepts and I wish it could have been awesome; however, I find it atrocious.
Me: Any positives?
Hannah: Victoria's good, we get to see a lot of her development. I like the fact that she's a little bit scared, but she's not a wuss. Jamie has grown a lot, too; he's comfortable enough to answer back to the Doctor now. I really like his cheek and wit, and he's a great balance for the Doctor. I hope he's not leaving the series anytime soon; I don't want him to go. So yeah, there's some good script in it, but the story was just a shambles.

4/10

Hannah: What do you think?
Me: I'd probably give it a 9, to be honest.
Hannah: Really?
Me: I love it.
Hannah: Really?!
Me: It's always been one of my favourites.
Hannah: Sorry.
Me: No, it's alright.

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?

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.