4.2: The Tenth Planet
- Doctor: William Hartnell
- Companions: Ben, Polly
- Creators: Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis (Writers), Derek Martinus (Director), Innes Lloyd (Producer)
- Season 4
What's the rating?
Worth Watching, mostly for historical interest.
What's interesting about it?
The introduction of the Cybermen, and the exit of William Hartnell, creating the concept of regeneration for the show (though it wasn't called that yet), allowing Doctor Who to continue on without its original star. The Cybermen costumes are pretty dorky in their first outing, but this leads to the interesting factor that really sets them aside from Daleks: In each later story in which we encounter them, the Cybermen have upgraded their hardware and tweaked their appearance. They are fashion monsters.
Unfortunately the story is not up to the historical weight of the rest, no doubt in part because Hartnell became ill and episodes had to be rewritten on the fly while he was recovering. Nonetheless we're lucky to be able to watch the full story now, as the last episode was lost and only recently redone in animated form.
It turns out we're at a military installation at a pole in the (once) distant future of 1986. An unusual amount of time and complexity is put into setting up the situation before the TARDIS shows up. The snow blizzard effects are surprisingly good (done with a form of styofoam that was very problematic for the actors, as it turns out).
For the first time we encounter the template/cliché of a government mission control space operation on Earth dealing with astronauts and an alien invasion. This will come up several times as we go along, probably at its best when we get to the Pertwee-era story, The Ambassadors of Death. In the meantime, a cliché has to get its start somewhere, right?
Given that the last episode is animated, if you want to see the filmed version of the regeneration you'll need to watch the "Frozen Out" documentary on the DVD. Also if you want a sense of Hartnell the actor (which you may not really want), check out the William Hartnell interview on the second DVD.
What are others saying?
For decades fans decried the loss of the episode containing the first regeneration. The biggest compensation was a pretty good snapshot reconstruction of the episode, but now BBC has provided the animated version and the clip of the actual regeneration was found in the Blue Peter archives, so this is a wiped episode story with a pretty happy ending.
It's often noted that for the first time -- and apparently far from the last -- Polly fetches coffee for everyone else.
- Wife in Space (score: 3/10)
- Doctor Who Podcast #253