{"id":268,"date":"2017-12-14T20:30:43","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/?p=268"},"modified":"2023-07-15T22:12:36","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T02:12:36","slug":"the-tenth-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/first-doctor\/the-tenth-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tenth Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cCome to Mondas and you will have no need of emotions. You will become like us.\u201d \u2013 Cyberman<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A very important story for introducing the Cybermen and the concept of regeneration but unfortunately not the most exciting one. The plot could actually have been a very tense one if the storyline and direction were tweaked a bit—all the elements are there for a good \u2018base under siege\u2019 story. (These would pretty much come to rule the show during the Troughton\u2019s reign so it\u2019s interesting, therefore, that it comes in at the end of the Hartnell era.) Yet the moments when the Cyberman are massing at the door are not built up—they simply walk in and the actors are left to signal a sense of confusion instead by all yelling and talking at once. Our worry for the fate of the astronauts is undercut by slow pacing and miscast actors (hard take the danger seriously when the supposed ace pilot sounds and talks like a teen character from \u201cMy Three Sons\u201d.) Also, we\u2019re already told the ultimate conclusion halfway through the story that Mondas will absorb too much energy and explode, so it doesn\u2019t come across as the last minute salvation that it is presented as.<\/p>\n

All that said, I saw many elements on this viewing that I hadn\u2019t noticed before. Like how many times the Doctor sees through the Cybermen\u2019s plans through pure reason\u2014from seeing through their ruse of invincibility to especially how, upon hearing them use the word \u2018evacuate\u2019, he immediately connects the dots and knows that their request to deactivate the warhead by moving it below ground is just a trick to get it to a level where detonation will destroy the Earth. It\u2019s also interesting that he already knows about the appearance of Mondas and the arrival of the Cybermen\u2014presumably from a knowledge of history from future earth. (But the show missteps having the leaders ask the Doctor to explain things before having reason to trust him and the Doctor having to tell them to look at the note he wrote about it to confirm. It would have been much more effective for them to see the planet on their own, discover to their amazement that he had already written about it, and thus suddenly come to his in recognizing his authority.)<\/p>\n

Even though the costumes of the first wave of Cybermen leave much to be desired (amazing that the new series brought them back!), this is one of the few stories that show them as not cruel but just callous due to emotionless logic. (To Polly\u2019s questioning of their lack of concern for the dying astronauts, the one honestly replies \u201cI do not understand you. There are people dying all over your world yet you do not care about them.\u201d) The process of how a planet can \u2018absorb\u2019 energy or how the Cyberman can simply fall apart without their planet is not explained which does make things a little murky.<\/p>\n

Even murkier is the Doctor suddenly going under the weather (due to a real illness by Bill Hartnell). Ben and Polly have to step in and carry the third episode. They do start to take on their familiar roles: Ben is a rash and headstrong action-taker; Polly is over-emotional but quick to think and use her ability to win over others. It\u2019s nice that the rest of the crew are shown to be quite an international bunch even if it is signaled in some rather stereotypical ways. (It\u2019s hard to believe they get away with introducing us to obviously woman-crazy Italian Tito by panning from his barracks wall full of pinups!) Other reviews have already pointed out that Barclay is a bit of a cartoon and it\u2019s unbelievable that someone that high up would be so irresponsible in protecting a family member. I do have to smile broadly at Ben\u2019s line when finding nothing but tools to use as weapons: \u201cOh, I can just imagine trying to tackle one of them geezers with a screwdriver.\u201d How prescient for the future of the show indeed!<\/p>\n

And so we come to the end of the time of the first Doctor. It\u2019s unexplained what\u2019s happening beyond an \u201coutside influence\u201d (presumably Mondas drawing of power affects the energy of the Doctor just as much as the spaceship power cells [perhaps his Time Lord energy was crucial to the overload that destroyed the planet?]) and that the Doctor\u2019s body is \u201cwearing a bit thin\u201d. Hartnell is either tired or plays it very well because you can hear a heaviness and slowness of age in his final conversation with Ben and Polly. We only have a dim, flickering version of his last moments at the controls but it does build the tension well\u2014and thank goodness we have the actual regeneration scene itself well preserved (thank you Blue Peter!). How great that they used what was a rather innovative technique for the time of turning up the white contrast into a blinding peak, thereby making the unexplained change that much eerier and fitting with the importance regeneration would later hold in the series.<\/p>\n

Best unsettling moments:<\/h4>\n

It should be that the death of the pilots in the spaceships is horrifying, but it\u2019s played out so slow and dispassionately that it lacks impact. Instead, I find the brief sight of poor silly Tito lying dead under the quickly burying snow to be much more disturbing.<\/p>\n

Firsts:<\/h4>\n
    \n
  • Cybermen!<\/li>\n
  • Earth base under siege<\/li>\n
  • Multi-national crew (many more to come in the Troughton era—but the women are still secretaries!)<\/li>\n
  • As the secretary general points out, Earth\u2019s \u201cfirst interplanetary war\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Regrets:<\/h4>\n

    I wish Hartnell\u2019s last story had been stronger as noted above—it\u2019s especially sad that illness kept him sidelined for a lot of it. Unfortunately, the first Doctor loses his chance to shine in the third episode when much of his plan is put into play because of Hartnell\u2019s absence. They try their best to keep him at the forefront (with Ben saying lines like \u201cThe Doctor said\u2026\u201d) but really it lacks his presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cCome to Mondas and you will have no need of emotions. You will become like us.\u201d \u2013 Cyberman A very<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1354,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}