The Fourth Dimension

The Tenth Planet

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

The Tenth Planet is the First Doctor’s farewell adventure, although the character would make two further appearances in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. Having decided that the series would continue with a new actor playing the Doctor, the production team devised the radical idea of having the Doctor transform into a new, younger body.

MEN FROM MONDAS

The last adventure for the First Doctor was also the first adventure for one of the Time Lord’s most enduring enemies – the Cybermen. Here it is explained that they were once human beings who gradually replaced their bodies with mechanical parts and eliminated the weakness of emotions. The Cybermen would return many times to face the Doctor, although their appearance would evolve over the years.

CYBER SEQUEL

In 1985, the Sixth Doctor adventure Attack of the Cybermen revisited some of the ideas originally presented in this story. The Cybermen have hatched a plan to divert Haley’s Comet into Earth, causing its destruction. This would mean that in 1986, when Mondas arrives in the Solar System, it will not be destroyed by the energy drain and the Cybermen will have changed history.

ABSENT DOCTOR

William Hartnell was unwell during the production of the penultimate episode of this serial. His absence was explained by having the Doctor collapse from exhaustion and Doctor Barclay, one of the Snowcap team, takes on much of the Doctor’s role in the episode. Fortunately, Hartnell recovered in time for the last episode where he would make his farewell appearance.

TITLE TICKER TAPE

The story title and episode number for each episode were presented as animated graphics that resembled computer tape.

CYBER VOICES

The strange, sing-song-like voices of the Cybermen were provided not by the actors inside the Cybermen costumes but by regular voice artists, Roy Skelton and Peter Hawkins. Both had previously worked on Doctor Who – Skelton was the voice of the Monoids in The Ark and Hawkins had been a Dalek voice in all the Dalek adventures to date. Both would return to provide Cybermen voices in the future, although they would sound quite different than they do in The Tenth Planet.

LOVE CRAZED

Production assistant Edwina Verner thought it would be a laugh to throw a polystyrene ‘snowball’ at Michael Craze. It hit him on the nose, aggravating an existing injury. He obviously forgave her as they were later married!

I NAME THIS CYBERMAN...

For the first and only time, the Cybermen have individual names – possibly a hang-over from when they were actually humans. Regos Krang leads the attack on the Snowcap base. Not spoken in the story but appearing on the credits and in the scripts are further named Cybermen: Krail, Talon, Shav, Jarl and Gern.

CYBER THEME

Although used previously in the series, the stock music Space Adventure by Martin Slaving and Norman Ramin used in this story would become strongly associated with the Cybermen as it was used for several of their future stories.

AUDIO RELEASE

The first three episodes survive intact in the BBC’s video archive. Fortunately, although the fourth episode is missing, the all important sequence showing the change of the First Doctor into the Second also survives and this short clip is included as part of the DVD box set, Lost in Time. The full audio soundtrack to all four episodes, along with linking narration by Anneke Wills, has been released on CD and for MP3 download by BBC Audio.