Full Notes: The Moonbase
Full Notes: The Moonbase
The return of the Cybermen sets the bar for all "base under siege" stories to come.
Plot Summary
The Cybermen plan to destroy the human race by capturing a base on the moon that controls the Earth’s weather.
Notable for:
Second appearance of the Cybermen; first redesign of the Cybermen.
First story set on the moon, either partially or totally.
John Levene’s first “appearance” in Doctor Who, as a Cyberman.
First (and only?) time that the Doctor’s medical degree is mentioned, which he received on Earth in the 19th century.
Partially missing: episodes 1 and 3 are animated recreations.
Last time the original title sequence is used.
Definitive year given: 2070. Given how close this likely occurs to The Seeds of Death, it’s strange that neither story mentions the other with regard to world-altering technology being controlled from the moon.
Pete commentary:
This might be the most linear Doctor Who script ever made. It’s a classic base-under-siege, similar to The Tenth Planet. The Cybermen’s presence is slowly made clear and then increased as the story goes on. Problems at the base ensue and get worse as the Cybermen execute on their plan. The good guys slowly discover the plan, push back, and eventually use a bit of ingenuity to get rid of the monsters. No twists, no surprises (other than the Cybermen themselves), very little character development. Nothing serious, nothing political.
That said, thinking back to a person in 1967, who had seen the Cybermen once before, that must have been such a treat to see the big reveal at the end of episode 1. Just like the reveals at the end of Earthshock or Army of Ghosts or Spyfall, these dramatic reveals are the kind of thing that creates hardcore fans of Doctor Who. As fans, we all know The Moonbase has the Cybermen in it, so we’re robbed of this, but we can give credit for what it must have felt at the time.
There must have been a debate on the playgrounds of Britain, though about what the deal was with the redesign — maybe even a debate on whether it even WAS they Cybermen, since they look so different. Everyone has an opinion of which is better or more evocative of the original idea of enhanced humans, but the question should be whether the look works for the story. My view is that it 100% does in the case of The Moonbase: Their suits look like a great match for the environment: the vacuum of the lunar surface. They’re more like wet suits, which are also something that optimizes for specific conditions. Since they’re more sleek and the chest units are smaller, they can actually move and don’t look like every one of them is carrying a refrigerator.
No one in the story comments on the Cybermen’s new look, apart from Polly seeming a little unsure if what she saw even WAS a Cyberman. Clearly the redesign was done more for production reasons, relying on dialogue and the common design emblems (handlebars on the helmet, the chest unit, the blank face) to ensure the audience understood. The absolute WEIRDEST decision was to make the hands three-fingered. It feels like they decided to do this to make the Cybermen more “monstrous,” but it was a bad decision: what makes the Cybermen scary is that they’re us, and we don’t have three-digit hands. Thankfully, this was eventually reversed by the time of The Invasion.
Nice bit of continuity that everyone on the base knows what the Cybermen are, since they invaded in 1986. Subsequently, you could point to any adventure, especially Army of Ghosts. For hardcore fans, you can invoke Cracks in Time, jigsaws of histories, etc. to justify anything, but The Tenth Planet was so recent that you really needed this line for even CASUAL fans.
The Cybermen voices are definitely different from what we hear in The Tenth Planet, and not necessarily for the better. They’re not as weird, but they’re creepy in a different way: computerized and with no inflection at all. I like the choice, but there is so much distortion it’s actually hard to understand what they’re saying at times.
They do a little educating about gravity (mavity?) on the moon in the first episode, having a little fun with the TARDIS team jumping all over the lunar surface. Too bad it didn’t occur to anyone that the gravity INSIDE the Moonbase would be low, too. We can head-canon this pretty easily: since the human race has gravity-altering technology to control the weather, it stands to reason that there is some kind of artificial gravity in the base. All it needed was one line of throwaway dialogue!
More education: Ben explaining how a spray bottle works. Must have been high-tech in 1967!
Why does Polly always get stuck with making coffee for “the boys” in these Cybermen episodes? Even the Doctor tells her to go make coffee at one point. She’s also the only woman in the entire thing — you have to wonder how hard up the men are on the moonbase (or what their sexuality is). It’s ’60s gender politics at play, of course, and it’d be fun for NuWho to go back to one of these old episodes and subvert those politics.
To be fair, at one point Ben is given menial work as well: clearing coffee cups and getting food.
Love that there’s some jealous tension between Ben and Jamie. Classic Who sometimes gets a bad rap for being too formulaic and plot-driven and not having enough of these character moments, but they’re there!
Nice that they have a mix of nationalities (Star Trek influence), and even a guy (Benoit) speaking French here and there. Blink and you’ll miss the one black guy! Hey, they tried.
Damn I wish episode 3 survived! Seeing the Cybermen “die” from getting sprayed with nail polish remover has foam pour out of their chest units, which looks like it would be quite a moment in live action.
So, using nail polish remover as a weapon: Old Who (and lots of sci-fi at the time, to be fair) often had these kinds of solutions where monsters had to have a weakness that was (surprise!) something we happen to have loads of in a back room somewhere. Hard to kill off your big, bad monsters credibly by the end of episode 4 if you don’t have it, though. And I get it — the whole show is about intellect and ingenuity triumphing over brute force (fun when they subvert the expectation, though, like in Journey’s End with the Dalek/paint gun). It’s just that some stories do this better than others. The Moonbase isn’t necessarily bad in this regard, but having the weakness literally be nail polish remover makes it sound a bit silly. (At least Ben says “acetone” at one point.)
So the Doctor wanted to go to Mars, and ended up on the moon. Ben says he missed by 200 million miles, which is roughly correct, depending on the timing.
Let the debate begin: who is more poorly treated in The Moonbase: Jamie or Polly? Jamie is laid out for most of the story and gets few lines. Polly is in it, but constantly is dismissed to make coffee. It’s not even close, really: Polly has some great moments, especially with the Doctor when they discuss his medical degree. She also plays a vital role in fighting back against the Cybermen by discovering acetone can be used as a weapon against them (the “Polly cocktail”). Jamie is just along for the ride.
Have to give top marks for the production on this story — it looks fabulous for the time. The moon landscape is convincing, and the swinging ’60s spacesuits look amazing. The set for the base itself is excellent: it’s clearly very big, and both the control room and the sickbay have lots of room for actors to move, with plenty of props. The Gravitron itself is really cool — they really went for it by creating the look and feel of a large telescope in a dome, and they pull it off. Finally, the Cybermen look good, with neat little details like the antenna on their chest units and the little “door” on their mouths. And there are 11 of them! That might be more than any other story (outside of NuWho). They have clearly NOT run out of money yet.
Everything about the tech is delightfully analog: reel-to-reel tapes, the “noise” in the communications that alerts them that the Cybermen are listening in, all the switches and levers.
Jamie has a dream about the Phantom Piper, some kind of legend in his family. It’s so slapdash that it’s almost good. Gives Frazer Hines something to say, at least.
My God, Patrick Troughton is so good. This isn’t his most impish performance (the director apparently was pretty strict), though he gets to do some comic-relief stuff when he’s “taking samples” from the base crew. (How does that guy not mind having his boot taken off?) However, his serious lines are some of his best, especially this gem:
DOCTOR: Because there is something evil here and we must stay.
HOBSON: Evil? Don't be daft.
DOCTOR: Evil is what I meant. There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought.
So the Doctor really is an MD, is he? It’s odd that this is never referred to again, though I understand pragmatically why: They hadn’t yet decided on his background as a Time Lord, so any medical degree would be from Earth, since it seemed probable the Doctor was a human from the future. Polly questioning his credentials as out of date is a nice exchange.
What is the nonsense with the “time scanner” at the end? How come we never hear about it again?
It’s interesting to see the patterns in Doctor Who monsters and stories that involve them: Cybermen+”base under siege” just works, and their methods repeat too: use something that infects/spreads to weaken the target first. Here, it’s a virus spread through sugar, and they do it again in Revenge of the Cybermen.
That said, since the base has no weapons, you wonder why the Cybermen bothered with this elaborate “infiltration” plan. In part 4 they finally puncture the dome, which threatens to kill everybody by sucking out all the air. Why wasn’t that Plan A?
Great cliffhanger to episode 3, though: Beautiful shots of the Cybermen marching across the lunar surface. “They’re coming,” all right.
Oh and remember kids: SUGAR IS BAD!
What did Pete’s family think?
Grace liked it! She really likes Polly, and she thought the set looked really good. Jack admired the scientific accuracy and science-evoking lines.
Four Questions to Doomsday
Why did the Randomizer take us here? So much is made of Benoit being French, this seems like a logical place to go so soon after The Reign of Terror.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? World over. Like I said, pretty linear.
Where's the Clara splinter? Someone had to leave all that nail polish on the base.
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, or Lady Cassandra? I’ll Dalek this, sure. All about atmosphere. (Or the lack of it.)