Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen Special Edition

For centuries, the disappearance of the Cybermen from the universe has been a mystery. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on Telos - once the Cyber home world - just as an Earth expedition uncovers the entrance to a long-lost control centre filled with baffling technology.

With the Doctor's help, the archaeological party discovers the last of the Cybermen, frozen and entombed in a vast underground cavern. But by entering the tombs, the humans have sprung a fiendish trap. All around them, the Cybermen begin to rise from the dead.

The TARDIS arrives on the planet Telos where an Earth archaeological expedition, led by Professor Parry, is attempting to uncover the lost tombs of the Cybermen. With a lot of help from the Doctor the archaeologists enter the tombs. There, one of the party, Klieg, reveals himself and his business partner, Kaftan, to be planning to revive the Cybermen.
He wants to use their strength, allied with the intelligence of his own Brotherhood of Logicians, to create an invincible force for conquest. It transpires however that the tomb is actually a giant trap designed to lure humans suitable for conversion into further Cybermen - a fate that almost befalls Kaftan's assistant Toberman.
After fending off an attack by Cybermats - small but dangerous cybernetic creatures - the Doctor eventually defeats the revived Cybermen, led by their Controller, and reseals the tombs. The Controller is apparently destroyed in the process.

Directed by Morris Barry
Written by Gerry Davis, Kit Pedler
Produced by Peter Bryant
Film Editing by Alan Martin
Costume Design by Sandra Reid, Dorothea Wallace

First Transmitted
1 - 02/09/1967 17:50
2 - 09/09/1967 17:50
3 - 16/09/1967 17:50
4 - 23/09/1967 17:50

Martin Johnson's set designs are truly excellent, and include some striking bas-relief Cyberman images on the walls of the tomb complex.

Producer Peter Bryant's then wife Shirley Cooklin appears in the role of Kaftan, which was written specially for her.

Klieg mentions 'Whitehead logic' in the first episode - probably referring to Alfred North Whitehead, co-author of 'Principia Mathematica' and one of the fathers of mathematical and computer logic, and maybe a bit of a nod to the actor Reg Whitehead, who had played a Cyberman in all their stories to date.

There is a wonderfully moving scene in which the Doctor comforts a frightened Victoria and tries to help her to come to terms with the death of her father by telling her that he can recall his own family, but only when he chooses to.

Toberman was described in the original scripts as wearing a hearing aid (tying in with the fact that he was virtually mute and perhaps with the story's theme of cybernisation), but this idea was dropped at the request of director Morris Barry.

Klieg was originally to have been played by Vladek Sheybal and the Cyber Controller by John Wills (who had appeared as a Cyberman in The Moonbase).

Orange squash was specially provided in the studio for the actors playing the Cybermen, who got very hot inside their heavy costumes.