The Tenth Planet

8TH OCTOBER 1966 - 29TH OCTOBER 1966

(4 EPISODES)

An end, but more importantly a beginning, The Tenth Planet is one of the most famous Doctor Who stories of them all. Not only can it boast having introduced us to the legendary Cybermen, but it also gifted the Doctor effective immortality when in its final moments the features of actor William Hartnell bled into those of Patrick Troughton. But The Tenth Planet’s fame is eclipsed by its infamy: of its four episodes, it just has to be the pivotal final instalment that’s been lost since the 1970s archive purge, leaving fans of the show with only the other three less important episodes to enjoy, only two of which featured the outgoing star. To add insult to injury, the discovery of a film copy of the missing final episode was widely reported in 1992, only to be proven false, and then after years topping almost every fan’s DVD wish list, the serial’s DVD release was overshadowed by the unearthing of a cache of lost Troughton treasures rush-released onto iTunes. History has certainly not been kind to the first Doctor’s swansong.

Doctor Who fans, on the other hand, are seldom anything but – and with good reason. Dr Kit Pedler’s story about the dangers of technology and dehumanised medicine really raises the fear factor to fever pitch. Not only are viewers scared of the Cybermen, but they are also scared of becoming Cybermen. These seminal four episodes of television would unwittingly lay the foundation not only for the enduring legacy of Doctor Who, but also for what almost amounts to a sub-genre within science fiction, perhaps best typified in more recent times by Star Trek’s Borg.

The Cybermen’s design in this story is certainly original; their cloth masks are particularly impressive as they eradicate any vestige of humanity from their faces, whilst still leaving no doubt that what lies beneath the masks was once human. However, they certainly don’t look cybernetic by any stretch of the imagination, and they are far too front-heavy to be practical. Their voices, on the other hand, are flawless; they put the Darth Vader wannabes of the 1980s to shame. These Cybermen’s high-pitched, disjointed ‘Microsoft Sam’ voices suit them perfectly, which is no doubt why Big Finish have returned to it time and again in their audio dramas, most notably in their chilling Cyber-origin story, Spare Parts.

Above: The Tenth Planet is made whole with a spare part

 
It’s not just how they say it, either - it’s also what they say. You don’t get any of that “excellent” nonsense from these originals; despite their anomalous penchant for individual names, they are completely and utterly devoid of emotion, and their application of cold logic is often frighteningly reasonable. One of my favourite scenes in the second episode sees Polly remonstrating with a Cyberman about how it doesn’t care that two astronauts are going to die. The Cyberman replies by simply stating that people are dying all over the world every day, so why does she not care about them too? It’s hauntingly written, thought-provoking stuff.

 
However, there is much more to The Tenth Planet than Cybermen and regeneration; the whole backdrop to the story is inspired. In particular, I love the romantic notion of a dead planet – and not just any dead planet, but Earth’s long-lost twin, Mondas – drifting off through space on its own. It may not be predicated on the most sound of scientific premises, but it makes for one hell of a story, and moreover, it makes things even more personal for the audience by implying that if the inhabitants of Earth’s twin planet could do this to themselves, then so could the inhabitants of Earth. So powerful is this twin world idea, in fact, that Tom MacRae would put only a slightly different spin on it when penning Rise of the Cybermen for the revived series’ 2006 resurrection of the men of steel.
 
The Tenth Planet must also be credited with pre-empting Gene Roddenberry’s bold, metropolitan vision of the future as it shows a black man leading humanity into space, as well as a South Pole base manned by various different nationalities. Admittedly though, the main player, General Cutler (Robert Beatty), is far from exotic, but he’s nonetheless an immense character, and one that it’s hard for the audience to get a handle on at first. The sub-plot involving his son and how far the vexatious general is willing to go to save him is executed with real anguish, and actually manages to salvage the otherwise poor third episode. Cutler is one of those brilliant human antagonists that Doctor Who tends to do so well – although he’s a pain in the arse and a menace, he has his reasons for everything that he does, and that’s what makes him such a disturbing character. Watching the serial, you really believe that he could sacrifice the world to save his son.

 
Furthermore, the Polar setting of The Tenth Planet is recreated incredibly well in the studio; often these black and white stories look more realistic than some of the early colour stories. The production is also unwittingly aided by some thrifty set design, which doesn’t fall foul of the usual faux-futuristic trappings, and thus does actually look quite like the 1980s. The high quality of the stock footage together with the unique titles and credits further enhance the production’s unique feel – for once, it looks like the programme actually had some decent money spent on it (which I’m sure it didn’t).
 
Now even though he’s my least favourite of all the Doctors, I have to say that Hartnell really goes out guns blazing here. I’ve yet to notice a single fluff, and even more importantly he is as intense and as focused as he ever was. He’s buoyed, however, by a script that for the first time since Totter’s Lane puts a bit of real mystery back into the Doctor. He’s no longer just a grouchy itinerant, blundering into trouble and then doing his best to sort it out - he’s the man with all the answers. He knows of Mondas. He knows about the Cybermen’s impending arrival. The audience’s future is his history. And, even though we trust him by now, that’s still a little bit eerie. I love that.

As fate would have it though, illness prevented Hartnell appearing at all in the serial’s surviving third episode, which really suffers as a result of the lead man’s disappearance. In a way, though, the Doctor’s hastily-scripted collapse lends the final episode even more credence. The first Doctor is spent, having given his all, but from somewhere he finds the reserves to fuel him through the finale - “once more unto the breach…”

Above: The Tenth Planet was originally released as part of the Regeneration box set, where it appeared for

the first time with its animated final episode, but without any of the special features discussed below

The regeneration itself isn’t really broached here, the hows and whys instead falling within the purview of Troughton’s first adventure, The Power of the Daleks. It’s literally just one flash of blinding light, a twitch, and then Troughton. As such we don’t really know what triggered the first Doctor’s regeneration – hell, he may have been the only incarnation of the Doctor to date to perish of old age. Most estimates would place him round about the four centuries mark by this point in his life, which for one of his incarnations is bloody good innings.

 
Watching the regeneration though, it’s hard to focus on its mechanics as, even today, it still has a sense of shock and awe about it; funereal and exhilarating in one confused breath. And, even though the final episode itself has been lost to time, we can still enjoy the moment as it was originally intended to be thanks to the stunning animation of Episode 4 that crowns the disc, completing the serial far more satisfactorily than the Restoration Team’s Loose Cannon-style reconstruction of Episode 4 that was included on the VHS release, and is preserved here for the sake of those unwilling to relinquish the original elements.
 
The DVD’s first disc complements the completed serial with a half-hour documentary, Frozen Out, that’s title is cleverer than it first appears. Echoing the same sentiments expressed in the surviving episodes’ commentary, the contributors speak with startling candour about how William Hartnell was ultimately frozen out of the show that he made such a success. It seems that falling ratings and failing health conspired to give the forbidding actor little option but to leave, and matters weren’t helped by his increasingly unprofessional behaviour. Anneke Wills talks frankly about how she and her co-star Michael Craze were often embarrassed by their leading man’s behaviour in the studio, and never more so than on the set of The Tenth Planet when he reportedly demonstrated racial contempt for black performer Earl Cameron, who, to his credit, still says, “It was his problem - not mine.”

Above: Anneke Willis and others discuss how the series' star was Frozen Out

 
After listening to three episodes’ worth of Toby Hadoke doing his level best to keep things light and watching a documentary that shone a spotlight upon every flaw in Billy Hartnell’s character, I was feeling like someone had punctured my yolk. I didn’t really want to have the late actor’s gruff-yet-grandfatherly image sullied by the ugliness of the truth. It was with a sense of foreboding, then, that I watched the second disc’s three-minute Points West interview with the man himself, which I understand was recorded in late 1966 while he was starring in a production of Puss in Boots. The significance of this clip is difficult not to overstate - I’ve been a fan of this show for as long as I can remember, but I have never come across so much as a soundbite from the man behind the “original” Doctor. Billed as an “extremely rare glimpse into the mind of the man”, this short interview certainly lives up to its billing. The total sum of curmudgeonly adjectives ever thrown at Hartnell don’t even come close to doing him justice; at least, not as he appears here, in this eternal digest of his bad temperament. He sits before a dressing room mirror, doing a pantomime while slagging it off, flitting between cold and condescending as he scoffs at his “not legitimate actor” co-stars. Granted, the interviewer didn’t do himself any favours with his combative line of questioning, typified by the sure-to-incense, “Why do you think children liked you, because you’re rather a grumpy sort of person?”, but even so, this interview suggests that the recollections espoused by Wills and others have, if anything, been toned down. A cross between the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas? The Doctor, perhaps - but certainly not the man who made him.

Above: A short and sour introduction to the real William Hartnell

 
With Hartnell having incriminated himself already, Anneke Wills’ thirteen minutes of Doctor Who Stories further the case for the prosecution before mercifully dovetailing into tales of T-shirts and tea from the Troughton era that are far easier to digest. Next up, historian Dominic Sandbrook explores the idea of a “golden age” of Doctor Who in a programme that’s spoilt only by the spoiler in the booklet’s liner notes précis. The further that we move away from it, the more I believe that Russell T Davies’ tenure was the real golden age of Who (and not just because of the colour of its logo or the results of the recent Radio Times poll), but this feature doesn’t concern itself with individual views. It’s a critique of the public’s perception of the series rather than the quality of the series itself, exploring the righteous rage of do-gooders and the fervent frustration of fans (a fashion-conscious, mid-1980s Chris Chibnall amongst them!) as it attempts to answer whether there really was a golden age, or whether it’s just a myth.

Above: Dominic Sandbrook explores the idea of a “golden age” of Doctor Who in The Golden Age

The second disc then turns its focus to the Doctor’s companions with two substantial featurettes, the twenty-minute Boys! Boys! Boys! and twenty-five minute Companion Piece. As its title suggests, the first is the male counter to the range’s various Girls! Girls! Girls! offerings. Peter Purves and Frazer Hines have a bit of a chinwag about their time on the show as companions, with Mark Strickson looming behind them on a huge viewscreen via satellite link-up, occasionally chiming in. It’s an odd setup, by its very nature lacking the same sense of down-the-pub intimacy that particularly the recent Sutton / Fielding / Aldred Girls! Girls! Girls! had, but nonetheless an intriguing one as the three lads discuss being boys in a girls’ world. Companion Piece is more stimulating, as a number of former companions and their writers turn to a television psychologist to look at why anyone would risk life and limb to run away with a strange man in a blue box. The examination really shows up the holes in ’60s and ’70s Who, where everyone but the Coal Hill Schoolteachers and, to a lesser extent, Liz seem bonkers, but as we progress towards better-rounded characters like broken-home botanist Peri and little-girl-lost Ace in the 1980s, the companions suddenly start to fit the psychological model. By the noughties, of course, the whole thing was turned on its head as companion psychology became the starting point, as proudly declared by the revived series’ first episode, Rose. Cue the golden age...

Above: Anneke Willis shares a few of her Doctor Who Stories in an extended interview recorded in 2003
 

Comprehensive in the extreme, The Tenth Planet DVD also contains a number of throwaway extras, including a ten-minute clip from the Blue Peter episode responsible for preserving the priceless clip of the Doctor renewing himself in the closing moments of this serial’s lost fourth part and, of course, the usual photo gallery and invaluable production subtitles.
 
And so despite being dwarfed by recent returns, The Tenth Planet DVD is as impressive as I’d always hoped it would be. I’m surprised though, and a little bit saddened, that its bonus material goes as far as it does in its dismantling of Hartnell, particularly this close to the fiftieth birthday of the show that he made so famous, but hopefully the modern audience will view him with the same forgiving eyes that they do dogmatic old grandparents, as opposed to judging him by the standards of today. Personally, I’d rather focus on the irony of listening to the musings of an actor with two titanium knees commentate on a near fifty-year-old production that reflects society’s fear of “spare parts”; a production that itself is now one-quarter artificial, sporting the serialised equivalent of a prosthetic limb.

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