The Tenth Planet

Chapter the 282nd, which covers the animation of a significant episode, plus the animation of another much less significant story.

Plot:
The Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive at the South Pole in 1986, and enter a monitoring base for a global Space programme. A rocket in orbit is in trouble because a new planet has arrived in the solar system, which has knocked them off course and is draining their energy. The energy drain starts to affect Earth. Creatures called Cybermen invade the base. They are from the new planet, Mondas, an ancient twin planet of Earth that floated away and has now come back. They have replaced their body parts and organs with cybernetic components and removed their emotions. The Cybermen on the base are destroyed but it is too late to help the rocket. Another rocket has gone up, though, piloted by the base commander General Cutler's son. Cutler wants to use a powerful bomb to blow up Mondas to save his son, even though this risks the Earth. The Doctor says that all they have to do is wait and Mondas's energy intake will cause it to explode, but Cutler will not listen. Ben is pressganged into helping prepare the bomb, but persuades some of the crew to sabotage it. It fails to launch. Cutler wants to try again, but is killed when more Cybermen enter the base. They take Polly and the Doctor to their ship as hostages, and want to use the bomb for themselves. There are mass landings of Cybermen across the Earth. Ben realises the Cybermen don't like radiation, so uses radioactive rods to overcome his guards. Mondas explodes and all Cybermen collapse and disintegrate. The base starts working to get General Cutler's son down from space. Ben goes to the Cyber ship and frees his two friends, but something is wrong with the Doctor. After they take off in the TARDIS, the Doctor collapses and starts to change... 

Context:

Knowing that I would post the blog about the next story in November 2023, the month of Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, I overrode random selection to pick something significant. Looking at the stories that were left unblogged at this point, there was only one contender: William Hartnell's last story, the first ever regeneration from one Doctor to another, the introduction of the Cybermen... The Tenth Planet has 'Significant' running through it like 'Blackpool' in a stick of rock. I watched the whole story in one go one afternoon from the DVD with the animated version of the final (currently missing aside from its audio) episode. I didn't realise until afterwards that I had watched the story on the 29th of October, the 57th anniversary of the day that fourth episode originally aired and the change from Hartnell to Patrick Troughton was first seen.

Milestone watch: This completes another season of Doctor Who for the blog; this time it's season 4 (the last couple of William Hartnell stories plus the initial run of Patrick Troughton tales). This is the 17th season completed by randomly ordered blogging (out of the total of 39 seasons that have been broadcast at the time of writing). In full, these are classic seasons 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 23 and 25, and new series 2, 6, 10, 11 and 13). 

First Time Round:

November has for a long time been a significant month for Doctor Who, even if not in a big anniversary year. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was the month of the final VHS or DVD release of the year, and often these would be special sets. In November 2000, the big release was the Cyberman tin, a nice container for two VHS tapes starring the cybernetic nasties, Attack of the Cybermen and The Tenth Planet. The black-and-white story was completed with a reconstruction of part four marrying the existing audio with surviving clips and off-screen photographs. I first saw the animated version of the episode when it came out on DVD many years later in October 2013, another big anniversary year.

Reaction:

As a story that was part of the same season as The Tenth Planet, in fact broadcast only three stories later, and as they both have had episodes animated for commercial release, I thought I would pair up this main blog post on The Tenth Planet with my write-up of the BFI screening of The Underwater Menace from October 2023 (see Deeper Thoughts section below). The Tenth Planet, as mentioned above, is a very significant story in the Doctor Who canon; The Underwater Menace meanwhile is usually thought of as silly and maybe embarrassing. How unexpected it therefore was that I enjoyed the latter much more than the former this time round. As will be detailed below, the latest version of the fishy Troughton tale now has a stylistic coherence the story has never had before, which helps it enormously. Bad luck makes such a unity of style impossible for The Tenth Planet. While the last episode remains missing from the archive - there have been many rumours about its return over the years, but they've always turned out to be false - it can never be wholly complete as a live action piece. Even if the whole story was animated as Underwater Menace has been, there would still be the issue of the third episode, where the Doctor - in the part of his swansong which is building towards the end and his departure - isn't in it. William Hartnell was unfortunately ill that week of production, and the usual last-minute stop gap is employed where he, played by an extra in a wig seen from behind in a long shot, faints and spends 25 minutes in bed recovering off-screen. It means that his big plan to solve the problem of the Cybermen at the South Pole has to be relayed by other characters whom he's supposedly told earlier in the story, even though the audience has not been privy to this.

If one could travel back in time and somehow reverse those two pieces of bad luck, though, the story still wouldn't be improved sufficiently to be good to my mind. The Doctor's big plan mentioned above is.... drumroll... to do nothing. The Cybermen's own plan contains a flaw that will lead to their destruction, so things just need to be allowed to play out. That's interestingly different to the steps normally required to solve the problems the TARDIS crew face, but it means that the Doctor has no active role in the denouement, which isn't acceptable in his big finale. It would work if this just a smaller story in the middle of the season, and in a very real way it is just that. In 1966, Doctor Who was being made on a rolling production line, and decisions dictated by unexpected circumstances (like one's lead actor being ill for a week) had to be reactive rather than proactive. Unless there was coincidence of timing, decisions related to circumstances that might have been a bit more expected but not by much (like one's lead actor finally giving up the role) wouldn't line up with the story before the brief break in the Summer where Doctor Who wouldn't be on TV (not really thought of as a season finale in the modern sense anyway). Hartnell instead bows out in the second story of the run, and the new bloke debuts properly the following week in the third. The passivity of the Doctor is just one way the writers fail to capitalise on the unique opportunity this offered to the storytelling. The concept of regeneration, as it later became known, is rightly praised as an imaginative solution for recasting, but it is in no way the focus of The Tenth Planet. It is tacked on at the end of the story, and only explored in Patrick Troughton's first story, The Power of the Daleks.

What The Tenth Planet does have to explore is a new villainous race, one that would go on to become one of the most popular returning foes of the series, the Cybermen. The backstory and - even though its a bit unwieldy - the design of the creatures seen here is magnificent. But the Mondasians don't appear until the end of the first episode, and like the Doctor they don't really have an active contribution to the third. Half the running time is essentially Cyber-free. This happens because a squad of them invade the base but are destroyed, then later another squad invades the base again. Such a repeated story beat is clumsy, and points to the scripts needing at least another draft; it also undermines the threat of the Cybermen if they can be so easily destroyed. If the story was reworked so that the same Cybermen are in control of the base throughout and only dispatched in the last episode, it would be much stronger. The script is making room, though, for a lot of time to be spent on the base crew and their efforts to save a stricken rocket. Well, two stricken rockets. In another double story beat, they cannot save one rocket, but another is then sent up. The issue for me with so much screen time being given over to the base crew's efforts is that they aren't very interesting characters. Script co-writer and the show's scientific adviser of the time Kit Pedler loves his teams of scientists working away diligently under pressure, but I'd rather have more of the TARDIS team and the Cybermen. As the solution to the main plot is a passive one, the conflict comes from the crew continually ignoring the Doctor's wise counsel, which doesn't exactly endear them to the audience.

It also doesn't help that the base crew's leader General Cutler is played as aggressive and unpleasant, so it's hard to empathise with him even when his son is in danger. It also seems ridiculous that his son has been put into danger in the first place. Why would the authorities on Earth send up another rocket when the situation is so unclear and potentially dangerous, unless they were all idiots? Again, a redraft to focus on only one rocket, which has Cutler's son as one of the crew from the outset, would fix this. There's still the massive coincidence that in a story on the scale of planets in the solar system and an entire global space programme, two significant people are related, but that can be explained in a few lines of dialogue (Cutler pulling strings perhaps) and would be forgiven as it humanises the drama. Cutler shouldn't then become so unhinged - there are already Cybermen to provide villainy, it doesn't need Cutler planning to nuke the Earth just to get his son back too (Pedler's desire for scientific rigour has been completely abandoned here, as there would obviously be fail-safes in place). Cutler goes so far in the story as it ended up on screen that the only option is to kill him off, which means father and son are never reunited even though the latter is saved. It's an unsatisfactory end to that subplot. The main plot's ending is not much more satisfactory. When Mondas blows up, all the Cybermen conveniently disintegrate. As their weakness to radiation has been discovered earlier, it might have been better to use that in some way to get rid of the final few.

It's not all bad. There are significant efforts to show diversity in the future, with Earl Cameron portraying an astronaut of colour, and even - though it's a much smaller role - a technician job shown to be held by a woman (though not in the all-male South Pole where men are seen to leer at Polly in a sexist way). The snowy scenes are well realised, and the scenes of ranks of advancing Cybermen in that snow, underscored by the stock music tune 'Space Adventures' that would become their theme in their early appearances, are thrilling. The idea of a twin planet to Earth returning to the solar system is an interesting one. As had been trialled in The War Machines a few stories earlier, use of newscasts intercut into the drama to add scale is effective. The original voices of the Cybermen are unique and eerie (they'd go a different way in future Cyber stories, so this wouldn't be capitalised on again until Peter Capaldi's time as the Doctor decades later). There's a few individual moments that have gone down in Who's history ("Love, Pride, Hate, Fear - have you no emotions, sir?", "This old body of mine is wearing a bit thin", "It's far from being all over!"). Steve Plytas gives a decent performance as Wigner, but his voice is so distinctive and I've seen the Gourmet Night episode of sit-com Fawlty Towers so many times, that I couldn't stop seeing him as Kurt the drunk chef instead of a space commander. At least that was interesting on some level, though, The Tenth Planet was mostly dull apart from the last few minutes. Funnily enough, "dull apart from the last few minutes" describes exactly how I felt about a later story that links into the events depicted in The Tenth Planet, Twice Upon a Time - perhaps that later story was an apt sequel after all.  

Connectivity:

The Tenth Planet and Thin Ice both see the TARDIS landing in a cold environment.

Deeper Thoughts:

Zaroff's experimental journal entry: BFI Screening of The Underwater Menace animation, 21st October 2023. I was lucky enough after over a year of clashes or rapid sell-outs to get to the BFI Southbank again for a Doctor Who related event. This was the unveiling of a new animation, and what a difference a year makes. The panel at the last event I went to in September 2022 (for the animation of The Abominable Snowmen) indicated that there would likely be a long pause before any further stories got this treatment, but with The Underwater Menace the range is back, back, back. As will be noted later, the main panel on the 21st October strongly suggested that other stories are being worked on, and other animated releases will be coming out soon. For any Doctor Who fan who's liked these releases, this was great news. Before we got to that, though, the event started as they always do with an introduction from hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy. The latter gentleman, who had watched the original broadcast, said it is now as he always remembered watching it as a child in 1967, i.e. animated and in colour.  There was the usual quiz where the audience answer Doctor Who trivia questions to win swag. Johnson then read out an appreciation of the story from the Radio Times a few years back written by Patrick Mulkern. Mulkern was in the audience, and this led to an impromptu short interview about his memories of interviewing The Underwater Menace's director Julia Smith, and - sweetly - led to the revelation that the story was his first ever memory of Doctor Who. Another impromptu interview onstage happened with Cutaway comics' Gareth Kavanagh talking about his latest releases.

(L to R) Fiddy, Johnson, Kavanagh

The lights then dimmed; before the first two episodes were shown, a lovely and heartfelt video message from Anneke Wills (who played Polly in the story) was projected onto the big NFT1 screen. Wills is not currently doing public appearances, but Johnson happened to be close to her Devon home before the screening, so was able to capture this on his mobile phone. After the first two episodes, Mark Ayres - Doctor Who music and sound archivist who remasters the soundtracks for use in the animations - was interviewed onstage by Fiddy. The soundtrack for the animation was mostly from the home recordings made by fan Graham Strong, as they are of best quality even compared to the optical soundtracks of the two episodes surviving on film. At Fiddy's prompting, Ayres explained why this was, as audio stored as patterns of light on the celluloid is subject to noise from any dirt that gets onto the film. In the second episode, 10 minutes of the optical soundtrack had to be used, and one of Ayres's jobs is to ensure that the listener does not notice the difference. Though he tries to be careful to be as faithful as possible, this isn't always possible, as sometimes changes need to be made to serve the new medium. As an example of what he described as "slight liberties", he mentioned a sequence with a brazier fire that wasn't quite coming across in the animation, so needed to be beefed up a bit. He also talked about the dangers when remastering that one can make something sound too clean. He revealed that he has an audio file with looped "studio sound and magnetic tape noise" to apply at a subtle level underneath a soundtrack to make it sound human again, and also to smooth out any edits.

(L to R) Fiddy, Ayres

The final two episodes of the story followed. As mentioned above, the colour animation really pulls this story together. My original review of the story, from early in the blog's life when it came out on DVD, can be found here. As mentioned in that post, the story is a cartoon, a heightened comic B-movie science fiction creation like the movies of Ed Wood in the 1950s. It's almost certainly deliberately so, though the original production maybe didn't quite realise this. It therefore suits the animated medium, and the addition of colour. It's always robbed the experience of something watching this story in half episode / half reconstruction form, or listening to the audio only. This is the best it's ever going to look and feel I think (even if the missing episodes are found, as it lives to be larger than black-and-white). Animation director-producer AnneMarie Walsh said later that she enjoys hearing all the laughter when the animations are shown to an audience, and the laughter didn't really stop this time. The comedy is almost certainly deliberate too; I don't believe that Joseph Furst is pitching his performance as Professor Zaroff for drama. The animation leans into this, creating some more humorous bits (e.g moments between Zaroff  and his pet octopus). The immortal line from this over-the-top baddie "Nothing in the world can stop me now" got a round of applause both times (at the end of episode three, and in the recap at the start of episode four). My only mild criticism is that Polly's likeness is not as good as in some of the other animations, but it isn't a big deal. I thoroughly recommend you order a copy on shiny disc, if you haven't already.

Next was the big final panel chaired by Johnson, where Walsh came onstage alongside The Underwater Menace executive producer Paul Hembury, and Charles Norton, who was billed on the animation as a Doctor Who consultant, and played down his role on the episodes. This led to him being gently chided by the other two for excess modesty as he had been a prime mover for the animation range as a whole (having directed early animations). AnneMarie talked on similar themes that she has covered at these events previously. When creating the new imagery, it's impossible to be faithful to surviving episodes as framing and movement for the animated medium need to be very different to live action. For example, two characters in a shot not talking or moving much can work if they are real people with body language and full facial expression, but to do the same with two animated characters "looks weird". They instead go back to the scripts and imagine what the original production team would have done if they had fewer budgetary fetters. Norton agreed with this saying that, for every animation project they have embarked on, they've done so with all the reverence for the material that the original production teams had "which is none at all"! Walsh consoled any purists in the audience telling them that all surviving materials and reconstructions using them are also on the discs that will be out to buy ("I've learned how to plug" she jokingly said to Hembury).

(L to R) Walsh, Norton, Hembury 

Paul Hembury was the first executive for the animations (or the Blu-ray range for that matter) to come up on stage to answer questions on a panel related to Doctor Who product, at least as far as I can remember back through my seven years attending these BFI sessions. This is very brave, as questions can be very probing, of the "What's the next story you're working on?" style when usually the people involved can't even confirm whether they are working on anything at all. Hembury joked that he'd have to give politician answers, "I'm glad you asked me that, but I'm not going to answer", but it was most eyebrow-raising - and was picked up by online entertainment news channels immediately afterwards - that three questions by my count were answered with a simple "Yes". The first was in answer to whether any further animations were planned, and his response caused an immediate round of applause, to which he added "And that's why": as long as there's budget - and it seems like an alternative source of funding has been found to replace BBC America's contribution, as it was confirmed that they are no longer providing any money - and as long as there's an audience, they should keep coming. The second "Yes" was in response to whether the plan is eventually to cover every missing episode and story. It was qualified with a mention that the physical media sell-through market is not getting any bigger, so alternatives will need to be found. He couldn't comment on whether putting the stories on BBC iplayer might present a new market opportunity, but only because he didn't know at that moment in time (since the screening, animated classic Who episodes, though not all of them, have arrived on iplayer). The final "Yes" confirmed that the animations will be put on the relevant Blu-ray box sets when the time comes, which presumably also contributes something to the coffers.

Hembury was keen that the event, and any other such event, should be a celebration of the creative teams that make the animations, and praised them for delivering "Routine Magic", quoting a NASA slogan. Some discussion inevitably went to selection criteria for what is up for animating next. There are known challenges (e.g. The Highlanders, as it is hard to animate Tartan-clad characters), and they also tend to take into consideration fan opinions on what stories are most desired, and then go in the exact opposite direction to keep things surprising. There's no conspiracy or even rationale why, for example, there have been more Troughton animations than Hartnells, and past decisions shouldn't be used by fans to predict future releases. Nothing the animators have ever changed has meant the certification of a story has changed, though they are conscious on not making things more violent (the DVD and Blu-ray of The Underwater Menace is certified 12 in the UK, but this is because of a special feature on the disc). Superfan Ian Levine was in the audience, and was allowed to ask a question because - as Justin Johnson put it -"he's promised to be on his best behaviour". This is a reference to Ian's being somewhat less than diplomatic in the past when taking exception to recreations of stories that weren't faithful to the original. Obviously, he can be direct, but he's passionate and honest, and nobody should ever have a problem with that. Anyway, Ian went out of his way to praise the efforts of the people on stage, particularly Walsh's previous production The Evil of the Daleks.

A final audience question was asked of the panel: which remaining unanimated story they would choose to do next if time and budget were no issue? As Walsh thought about this, Johnson added "So, if you had, say, five years and three million pounds?" She in the end went for the 13 episode behemoth of linked stories Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan. "3 million won't be enough" piped up Norton. "30 million then," added Johnson, "Sold to Ian Levine!". It ended the event good-naturedly, and I went off out of NFT1 and into the main part of the BFI building looking for a couple of people to say Hi to that were there. Not many people from the usual group of us that attend these events could make it this time, and there isn't to be a similar event for the rest of the year. Showrunner Russell T Davies had recently gone on record that there would not be big public screenings or conventions tied in to the 60th anniversary, unlike the 50th, as the current team wanted to concentrate on things that everyone could get to see. Because of the anniversary, though, a lot of new product is being released - like the 60th anniversary specials which have sell-through release dates following fast after their television broadcasts -  that will mean that the classic releases of animations and Blu-ray box sets that the BFI events tie in to will not now be happening again until 2024. I'll certainly be trying to get tickets when these screenings start up again. 

In Summary:

Unsatisfactory for such a significant episode; it makes the Doctor a bystander in his own swansong. Also, somewhat ironically, it's a story that's a bit emotionless.