A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet
The Cybermen are here! It’s far from being all over.
Describe The Tenth Planet in six words:
Alien planet overeats and then explodes
This is…
Okay. So retrospectively this is the first one with the Cybermen and the last one with William Hartnell.
However, no-one watching this at the time was going ‘Ooh, Cybermen’. They were going ‘What the Hell are those things!’ because at the time, the Cybermen were just the monster of the week in the tradition of the War Machines, Monoids, Chumbleys, Zarbi and Voord.
Following that, and ignoring the continuity, it’s more accurate to think of The Tenth Planet as the one with South Pole base battling a vampire planet.
Episodes: 131–134 out of 869
First broadcast: 8 October — 29 October, 1966
First overseas broadcast: June 1967 (Australia)
Key Characters
Doctor: First Doctor (William Hartnell)
Companions: Ben Jackson (Michael Craze), Polly (Anneke Wills)
Villains: Various Cybermen (played by Harry Brooks, Reg Whitehead, Gregg Palmer; voiced by Roy Skelton, Peter Hawkins)
Other Key Parts: General Cutler (Robert Beatty), Dyson (Dudley Jones), Barclay (David Dodimead), Schultz (Alan White), Williams (Earl Cameron)
I’m New To This. What Should I Know?
- Well, you’re probably going to know that this has Cybermen in it. It’s their first appearance. So, um, spoilers, I guess. But unless you’re on Britbox watching this straight after The War Machines, any key visuals — including the DVD cover — will have Cybermen.
- You’ll also probably going to be aware that this is the last William Hartnell story (It’s a point of mine not to refer to William Hartnell stories as First Doctor stories, seeing as there was no concept of First Doctor stories until Patrick Troughton started playing the Doctor)
- This story is partially missing. It’s four episodes long and the missing episode is the last one. Yes, the one with Hartnell’s regeneration.
You can still watch it as the surviving soundtrack has been combined with animation for the DVD release. - If you’re going to mention how you’ve seen the regeneration so how can that episode be missing, there’s an explanation. In 1973, children’s magazine show Blue Peter ran a feature on Doctor Who’s 10th anniversary (this feature was hosted by Peter Purves). In this feature, they used footage from episodes including the regeneration form The Tenth Planet. It is this episode of Blue Peter that survives.
- William Hartnell is absent from Episode 3 as he was unwell. As such, the second episode is your last chance to see Hartnell ‘live’.
The Narrative
Location: Snowcap Base, South Pole
Time: December, 1986
What Happens?
The TARDIS lands in the South Pole, above Snowcap Base, an international ground control for space flights with a military presence. As such, they don’t take too kindly to the travellers landing here.
The crew are trying to get two astronauts home. However, there’s something new out in space: a new planet that looks like Earth upside-down. The Doctor seems to be predicting what happens (he is a clever scientist, but Hartnell plays it as if the Doctor knows ‘the Mondas incident’ as a historical event).
The planet is Mondas, home planet of the Cybermen. They land and warn people that Mondas is absorbing energy from Earth (a nice scientific idea from Kit Pedler there) and that soon Earth will be destroyed. The Cybermen offer to take humans with them, with the caveat that any humans that do will need to be converted into Cybermen.
As you can imagine, some people go ballistic at this idea and General Cutler is one of them, determined to put everyone at risk and wage war with the Cybermen. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that the Cybermen are lying: Earth is too great for Mondas and Mondas is absorbing too much energy putting Mondas at risk. Ben and the Snowcap Base delay the Cybermen long enough for this to happen. The Cybermen are connected to Mondas and wither away and die when their planet does.
The Doctor is not well (Unclear whether it is old age. Hinted that it could be Mondas draining energy from him). He makes it to the TARDIS but collapse on the floor. Ben and Polly watch as his features glow and he is replaced by the figure of a younger, dark-haired man.
Cliffhangers!
1: Tito and Joe, Snowcap personnel, approach the TARDIS with cutting gear. An alien in a cloak attacks them. One of the aliens checks if Tito’s dead. The camera tilts up from the alien’s hand, ending on a close-up of the alien’s ‘uncanny valley’ face. (Video clip here)
2. A Snowcap radar technician reports that there are hundreds of Cybermen ships flying in formation.
3. Countdown for the Z-Bomb has begun. Ben, who was trying to sabotage it but caught and knocked unconscious, cannot remember if he succeeded. The countdown reaches zero and the missile rockets ignite.
4. Ben and Polly watch as the collapsed Doctor glows and transforms into a stranger (Video clip here)
Key Quotations That Fans Love Repeating:
Polly: But we cannot live with you! You’re different. You’ve got no feelings.
Krail: Feelings? I do not understand that word.
The Doctor: Emotions. Love. Pride. Hate. Fear. Have you no emotions, sir?
Krail: Come to Mondas and you will have no need of emotions. You will become like us.
Polly: What’s happened to you, Doctor?
The Doctor: Oh, I’m not sure, my dear. Comes from an outside influence. Unless this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.
The Doctor: What did you say, my boy? It’s all over? That’s what you said… but it isn’t at all. It’s far from being all over…”
Key Quotations Fans Like To Ignore:
The Doctor: Pretty soon we shall be having visitors.
Ben: Visitors? What ‘ere? Well, who do you think’s bringing ‘em? Father Christmas on his sledge?
The Production
Recording Dates
Filming: 31 August — 2 September 1966 at Ealing Studios
Studio recording: 17 September — 8 October 1966 at Riverside 1
Any Behind-the-Scenes Gossip?
Sad news: Let’s start with William Hartnell who’s final story is this one. In the background of the production is the casting of Patrick Troughton. He developed bronchitis before recording the third episode so needed to rest. He recovered in time to record his last episode. The regeneration was shot first. Anneke Wills (Polly) commented how Troughton was very humble and respectful. After recording, a farewell party for Hartnell was held at Innes Lloyd’s home.
Fan only news: Normal recording practice was to rehearse Monday to Thursday and record on the Friday. As of this story, the practice became rehearse Tuesday to Friday and record on the Saturday, leaving Mondays free for pre-filming (Previously, if pre-filming was needed, the actors had to miss out on a rehearsal day).
And a happy note: During the recording of the film inserts on the Antarctica set, Michael Craze had a difficult time. He recently had surgery to remove a bone chip from his nose. As such, his nose was feeling a little sensitive. The polystyrene snow blown into fans to create a blizzard effect, irritated his nose. Not as much as it being thrown at him by production assistant Edwina Verner. Craze later reported that he felt the safest thing to do was to take Verner out for a coffee. They later married.
Does Anneke Wills Have Any Female Co-Stars to Talk To During Filming?
No, she doesn’t; a fact that she lamented in the interview attached to The Tenth Planet’s CD release. However, there is one other female cast member: Ellen Cullen who plays a Geneva Technician. However, all the Geneva sequences were pre-recorded meaning that Wills was the only female actor on-set in studio. (If only Barclay was a rather foxy middle-aged female. Then this story would prefigure the Troughton era!)
The Analysis
Where Does This Story Come From?
- The 1951 film The Thing From Another World (the Antarctic setting)
- Cybermen are partly inspired by Frankenstein and the design bears similarity to R.U.R. The name ‘Cybermen’ comes from the word ‘cybernetics’ which was coined in Norbert Weiner’s 1948 book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
Stray Observations
First multi-national base but run by Americans (belligerent war-hungry Americans)
Not actually clear it’s in Antarctica for a while for a while. The establishing shot happens in the lead-up to Tito’s quarters, not for Snowcap Base.
Ben and Polly think they could return to England only for the Doctor to point out their 20 years in the future (variation of the joke from The Smugglers)
Ep 2: Is that the edge of the screen the reprise was projected on? (At 38 seconds in)
Correct me if I’m wrong but is this the first use of the ‘Space Adventure’ in the series?
Doctor very quiet during the Cybermen’s first conversation exchange: Barclay and Polly asks all of the questions (The classic “Love, hate, pride, fear” line isn’t until 16 and a half minutes in, definitely after the ad break)
Doctor collapsing in Ep3 means that Hartnell isn’t in his last existing episode
Ben’s escape in Ep3: The first use of an air vent escape in Doctor Who
Polly makes coffee for everyone (gets snapped at by Barclay.) It’s Polly that encourages Barclay to resist Cutler. Go Polly!
Good music for the Ben sneaking sequences.
Ep4: Missing the Doctor in Part 3 makes his appearance in Part 4 powerful. After Cutler’s death, he takes charge.
The Doctor, negotiating with the Cybermen, offering them a chance after Mondas disintegrates: This is the Doctor. If Part 4 was ever discovered, it’ll be that scene that will redefine the serial.
Going a Bit Deeper
This is the first fully-fledged base under siege model of Doctor Who. In your studio, you have one large set with a few smaller ones that you can cut away too. You have characters of various nationalities inside it, and outside, in a hostile landscape, Monsters are outside trying to get in. Your story is based on the Doctor arriving there, trying to convince the leader of the place that the Monsters are real, followed by a siege of the Monsters whereupon they need to be repelled and eventually are.
It’ll become the mainstay of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor for better or worse. It’s main attraction is it provides some claustrophobia and regular scares while be cheaper to produce. Unlike various Hartnell stories, no new characters and new new locations are introduced in last few episodes. Whether it actually was cheaper has not been proven and some scholarship here is probably much-needed to dispel some myths.
The result of this ‘base under siege’ model, is that it highlights humanity as being different from the Other. More than other models of the show, this is one that relies on terror. Doctor Who has been scary in the past but now with an ever-expanding gallery of monsters trying to kill you, it’s clearly aligned with the intent to frighten small children. And that’s an intent I can get behind.
The nature of the Other here then: the Cybermen. The Cybermen were borne out of Kit Pedler’s fear that if we replace people’s organs with mechanical parts, we’d end up creating mechanical men. This is, of course, a nonsense idea. To believe it, you’d have to believe that the physical heart genuinely does control emotions. It’s also hard to see the connection between a fake arm and a desire to give other people fake arms, or do things like invade the Moon, invade London, and hibernate. Let’s also deal with the fact that to consider this requires a ableist look at prosthetics: To believe that disabled people are an Other and one to be scared off.
Fortunately, there’s other aspects of the Cybermen, for instance, their lack of emotions. Yet, the story isn’t pro-emotion. Polly argues for compassion to convince the Cybermen to let them try saving the astronauts, to which the Cyberman replies “There are people dying everywhere yet you do not care about them.” It shuts Polly up. The Cybermen are allowed to win this argument. Why shouldn’t they? The most emotional character is General Cutler who is portrayed as a belligerent American constantly making hysterical outbursts and on a personal mission to save his son. As soon as Cutler dies, the Doctor gets to take control of Snowcap Base and even if things are difficult, there is a sense that the ordeal will be over soon now that people are listening to the Doctor.
So, The Tenth Planet is anti-disabled people and anti-emotion, then? Yeesh!
Well, not quite. The thing that connects the Cybermen and Cutler is a narrow focus: They both lack empathy and are driven by selfishness.
The Cyberman wins its argument against Polly not because it makes a rational point but because it changes the goalposts: Polly is worried about the astronauts because she’s in the base where the people who can save them are being stopped by the Cybermen. Her argument is that if the Cybermen stop doing Iconic Monster Things, these men can be saved. The Cyberman changes the argument into an accusation that Polly doesn’t donate enough to charity. The problem then isn’t a lack of emotions but a lack of empathy. Not on Polly’s behalf, but on the Cybermen’s. Polly, it should be obvious, cares about two astronauts that she’s never met, because it is possible to have a direct, material influence on their aid. The Cybermen decides to take cheap shots because it doesn’t care about the astronauts nor Polly. Later, the Cybermen realise that Mondas is going to disintegrate, therefore they plan on destroying the Earth (It’s at this point that the Doctor stops helping them which is a significant feature to revisit). Far from being emotionless, they do have a love and a pride of being Mondasian, and a fear and hatred of death. After all, what are they if not a rejection of death.
Cutler on the other hand has his lack of empathy and his devotion to selfishness manifest in other ways. If the Cybermen do it with cool rationality, Cutler is histrionic. He sees the Cybermen as invaders which surprisingly, they are not. The Cybermen believe they have already won and intend on offering salvation to the humans (this is my example of the Cybermen having a love and pride of being Mondasian). Cutler refuses to see the situation from the Cybermen’s perspective and sees it as an invasion. It becomes that, definitely, but notably only after Cutler dies. Cutler’s enemy is imaginary.
Part of this is his reaction to discovering that Geneva has sent another rocket up, and Cutler’s son is the pilot. Cutler believes his son is going to die and insists on attacking the Cybermen and convincing Geneva about the Cybermen. Here’s the thing: Cutler’s son survives due to the natural destruction of Mondas: His blinkered view only puts the base in danger.
So, what’s the alternative presented? Well, empathy as presented by the TARDIS crew. The Doctor works out / remembers what’s going to happen: He treats the Cybermen as people to negotiate with. He doesn’t consider them malevolent monsters to be scared by. Rather, as poor victims of circumstances the same way we might sympathise with the passengers of the Titanic or the citizens of Pompeii. Polly joins him in conversing with the Cybermen and Ben feels remorse when he is forced to kill a Cyberman in the projection room (Is this his first kill?). The ally in the Snowcap Base is Barclay who joins in, asking questions. As a scientist, Barclay wants to understand. This is no weakness, as Ben and Barclay also get to work out the Cybermen’s weakness.
So, it’s a shame that this isn’t refined in the finished product. Hartnell doesn’t play up the Doctor’s empathy but rather shouts his lines to appear strong and dramatic. He eventually settles down but then is carted off to be locked up by Cybermen. The series desire to be action-packed means that it isn’t humanity’s emotions that make them stronger and the Cybermen weaker but that Ben and Barclay can carry around radioactive isotopes. What begins as a concept belonging to the experimental, alien era of Verity Lambert’s producership isn’t seen through. Nor is the humour and wonder added to the series by David Whitaker and Dennis Spooner there. Cybermen are not the possibility of science, nor strange creatures that have a different morality. That’s flirted with and then surrendered for some action scenes. The normal take on this is that it’s Lloyd’s and Davis’ ‘base-under-siege’ model in its infancy. That’s half-correct. This story needs a Doctor that can do action, or rather a Doctor that can be a chameleon and do what is needed in these types of stories. Which isn’t the Hartnell Doctor.
This isn’t Lloyd’s vision underdeveloped but rather Lambert’s vision misunderstood. So, it’s rather fitting that this the story that kills the Doctor as created by Lambert, Whitaker, Spooner and Hartnell.
What follows is good. Some of it will be great. What is rubbish will usually still be interesting. In that way, it’s largely similar to what came before. Most important of all, a lot of it will still be magical and unlike anything else on television. Moving on isn’t a bad thing, it is necessary. But in those final seconds, when Hartnell stops being the Doctor and becomes a Doctor… There’s a vision of Doctor Who that dies.
Between You and Me
The William Hartnell Era: 35 months. 29 stories. 134 episodes.
Devoured this story as a novelisation (For me, it’ll always be set in 2000 and the regeneration will feature the Doctor speaking at the end). At the time, I thought all four episodes were lost. Like many other fans, The Tenth Planet “Episode 4” was the top of my list for episodes I wanted recovered.
However, by now I’ve seen stories based around regeneration, where the ending matters, not tacked onto a story. Just think, if Hartnell held on for a few more weeks, or if the BBC just wanted more time to ponder the idea of recasting, this could have been The Underwater Menace.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of William Hartnell. He was my Doctor, during the ABC’s repeats of the 40th anniversary. I was 8 and 9, loving The Keys of Marinus and The Sensorites. If we ever do find last episode, The Tenth Planet will still be incomplete. Not because of censor clips, not because now we’ll all want The Power of the Daleks “Episode One”. But because this is a story that doesn’t give as much to Hartnell, as Hartnell gave to Doctor Who.
Further / Recommended Reading: