Cybermen on the Poppy Appeal

A surprise appearance by Cybermen and other characters was made in Leicester Square today.  We just happened to be walking that way looking for a place to eat and saw the Cybermen and 3rd Doctor lookalike on the Odeon balcony.  There were many other costumes, most were Star Wars, and were all part of a collection for the Poppy Appeal.

Fortunately they came down with their collection tins for us to get up close.  It was great to see the older styles of cybermen out.  The costumes were first rate.

I persuaded my Lillian to get her photo taken with them...

Great show and quite unexpected.  I gave them a couple of pounds towards the appeal, hope they did well as much effort was put in.

VHS Memories of Doctor Who

Currently we're reaching the end of our Pertwee one-episode-a-night marathon, and I am close to putting all the Pertwee DVDs in order on a shelf barely more than a foot long.  Two thoughts come to mind.  Firstly, that if it were not for the express purpose of watching all the Pertwee's in order, I would never have thought to purchase a number of them, such as Colony in Space and Death to the Daleks, but I'm glad for having done so.  Secondly, that the entire era takes up so little space, approximately 14".  VHS on the other hand filled my bedroom as a child, I had no where near the full set and they filled an entire bookcase even when doubled up.  They're all gone now, as the DVDs came out they were much easier to store, they had numerous features, the image quality was significantly higher in many cases.  I no longer owned a video player, there was just no point to VHS.  In the end I sold most of them to some eager young Dr Who fans at a car boot sale for 50p each, they went to a good home.  So many VHS cassettes have ended up in landfill, I hope these were watched at least once more.

False advertising?  The story only has three Daleks, one of which was gold.  For years the cover persuaded me that there were more. 

Aged about five my Dad bought me my first Doctor Who on VHS.  I can't remember which came first, it was either Day of the Daleks or The Daleks.  After this I probably had Death to the Daleks, followed by Revenge of the Cybermen and the Time Warrior and other early videos, likely Robots of Death, Seeds of Death.  One thing common to most of these early releases is that they were omnibus editions, with the episode breaks removed.  This seemed preferable at the time, but on reflection Doctor Who loses a lot from the episodes not being bookended with the cliffhangers.  Stories also benefit from being watched episodically, as my Pertwee marathon has found, in a single viewing many come off for the worse being a drawn out slog.

The Daleks was a bit odd in that it came in two cassette boxes, one black and white, the other the same in sepia tones.  Almost all double videos afterwards came in a double sized box.  The Daleks I recall was gripping stuff, aged five I loved every minute, the black and white didn't faze me one bit. My dad's comment since was that I used to enjoy the radio a lot as a child and that I probably didn't notice the lack of colour.  While colour TV was obviously the norm when I was a child 25 years ago, it typically wasn't that good by todays standards, which are a sensory overload of colour and CGI.  I wonder if I was unusual as a child, or whether young children today really are less receptive of black and white TV.  The Hartnells were only 25 years old then as compared to 50 years now, maybe the gulf has expanded more than I appreciate.

Unlike those other early VHS releases the Daleks was episodic, but had other edits.  Such as the story ending with the crew in the Tardis and fading to credits.  The cliffhanger of an explosion rocking the Tardis leading into Edge of Destruction wouldn't be restored until a much later release.  This edit was made so as to make the story seem a complete a more complete entity, and not to have a confusing end.  As with the episode breaks, I think people generally prefer the complete package.

The iconic moment of Death to the Daleks largely because the exploding Dalek picture was so widely published in early Doctor Who material.  Used again on the one of the most memorable Target novels.

I'm fairly sure my third VHS was Death to the Daleks. There's certainly a bias towards Dalek stories as clearly they thought that's what the public wanted, and that's what I was bought. They could have chosen better stories, but it's short and has Daleks. BBC Video seemed to avoid anything beyond Tom Baker at this time as well, it would be some years before Remembrance of the Daleks or Earthshock were released despite having major monster appeal.  I distinctly remember being more frightened of the Exillons than the Daleks.  It's a surprise it took so long for them to release Genesis of the Daleks, that was a real treat on VHS.  That had a radio release and is the most repeated story by BBC TV.  Note when they started to repeat old Doctor Who some time in the 1990s, starting with Spearhead they only got as far as Silurians.  Then some BBC boss decided that it wasn't doing well enough so decided it should skip to something obviously popular to get ratings.  Most popular Doctor, Tom Baker, most popular monster, Daleks obviously, thus Genesis was repeated yet again.  Everyone had already seen it or bought it by this point.

I had Revenge of the Cybermen a bit later which was a novelty as the only available Cyberman story.  The alternatives were a bit thin on the ground, even if they delved into the 1980s only Earthshock would have been suitable, Attack and Silver Nemesis are just awful continuity-fests best avoided by anyone.  Revenge was the first story to receive an exorbitantly priced home release in 1983 on Betamax, Laserdisk and VHS (with an Earthshock Cyberman).  1984 saw an absurdly butchered release of Brain of Morbius with an hour long running time.  By the time I came to the videos, they were being released for a sensible price, around £10 and often cheaper.  Revenge was quite entertaining aged six or so and my first exposure to Tom Baker's Doctor.  Baker's Doctor spooked me quite a bit, like other children of the 70s I imagine. The scene with the Doctor controlling the Cybermat to force information from Kellman made me uncertain that Tom Baker's Doctor was supposed to be the good guy.  I didn't know where he would draw the line.

Various things scared me in these stories available on early VHS, though perhaps not all the most obvious things.  The two most frightening were Brain of Morbius and Death to the Daleks.  As mentioned, the Exillons were fairly frightening, the story opens in the dark with Sarah especially vulnerable in a marooned, 'dead' Tardis.  The loss of that safe haven really does make it seem more frightening, in a normal story there's always the security of being able to flee back to the Tardis.  The crew rarely do, but it's a comfort that's always there.  That's something that Death to the Daleks actually achieves beyond its many other faults.  TO be clear, after the mid way point of episode one it becomes a lot less scary for the most part.  Brain of Morbius is similarly scary for being dark and creepy.  In that case, I was mostly scared of the Sisterhood oddly enough.  Other frightening moments include Harry attempting to stab Sarah with a pitchfork in Terror of the Zygons, the same story in which the world's scariest and bloodstained nurse stoves a soldiers head in with a huge rock.

As years went by the VHS range became more complete and the price crept up.  Not unreasonably, but one source of contention was the pricing of double video packs.  These seemed contrived for the purpose of charging far more money.  Unlike DVDs, little or no restorative work was done on the majority of VHS releases so the running time costs could not have impacted the RRP that much.  Talons of Weng-Chiang was first released on a single VHS cassette proving from the beginning that six episodes could be put on a single release.  Much later in the VHS range, the Daleks was re-released on a single cassette, all seven episodes together.  However, early on it became the norm to split six episode stories across two cassettes in a bigger box and charge £20 for a single story rather than £10.  This is the reason that I didn't have many of theses six episode stories, it's was more expensive given the content and the box was unnecessarily about the size of a house brick.

Charging double for stories with six episodes got just a bit silly with the release of Shada.  Undoubtedly there were costs involved, but the linking material was scant and ultimately you ended up with piecemeal material for six episodes that barely added up to four episodes.  Further was the revelation that, exciting as a never previously seen 'lost' story was,  Shada just wasn't very good at all.  It's been somewhat fetishised since with multiple attempts to 'complete' it.  The New Zealand fan club published a fan novel, Gareth Roberts recently wrote a novel, Big Finish did an audio/webcast and Ian Levine even produced an animated 'reconstruction' with some questionable voice acting.  You'll thankfully have to arrange a private viewing to see this last delight.

Back to the original point, the story cuttings with some linking material by Tom Baker was released on VHS at £20.  The double boxset was justified by the inclusion of a script book which I doubt anyone ever sat down to read.  The 'scriptbook' style font was wearing on the eyes, my copy was especially stiff with coarse paper and the diamond logo-shaped hole in the cover didn't help for easy reading either.  Also the book was much slimmer than a VHS, so everything rattled around inside the double cassette box which defeated the point of having a protective case.

Other boxsets were somewhat more interesting but difficult to store as they came in a variety of metal tins and rather highly priced.  Trial of a Timelord came in a large Tardis tin, which I kept after discarding the redundant VHS tapes.  If you desired consistency in the VHS designs you were in for disappointment.  The DVD are mostly uniform and do look smart when lined up together.  The VHS releases started with the diamond logo sideways on the sleeve, but later on turned upright, and then the logo changed entirely after the McGann TV movie was released and the BBC decided everything must have the Pertwee/McGann logo.  Also with all these boxsets, you ended up with things in tins or in paper sleeves rather than plastic cassette boxes, it all looked a jumble.

If you never saw this for sale..

Which brings me to another oddity.  The Hand of Fear was for years the most valued of the VHS range.  Simply it was the last release prior to the TVM, at which point the BBC decided nothing could have the diamond logo and it was promptly deleted from the catalogues.  I didn't seen Hand of Fear until it came out on DVD, as did many others I imagine, I simply never saw it for sale other than second hand for about £30.  Once the DVD came out it was worth pennies overnight.

As previous described the black and white of early stories didn't bother me as a child, no did the overall picture quality, which was atrocious on some releases.  The Restoration Team have worked wonders on the DVD range.  Recolourisation techniques have improved greatly, Claws of Axos looks good on DVD and Terror of the Autons looks gorgeous.  The original VHS releases were very blurry and fuzzy by comparison, it only becomes so apparent after having seen the DVD release.  Ambassadors of Death was a very late DVD release and ended up a curious combination of black and white, and colour footage.  Episodes would change from one to the other mid way through, the DVD is colour throughout.  It's not perfect by a long way but it greatly appreciated, as is the entire colourisation of Mind of Evil and part one of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  The Dæmons was recoloured in 1993, and then cleaned up even more for DVD.

A stand out moment in the VHS range was the return of Tomb of the Cybermen.  The importance of this find seemed to enter the mainstream, it was featured in newspapers at the time and went on it be one of the biggest selling of the VHS range.  This was in spite of it being rushed to production and looking rough as hell.  The DVD release is a huge leap in quality.  Be careful what you wish for, a lot of fans seemed disappointed that the classic didn't live up to the mythical hype.  A similar reaction was more recently seen with Web of Fear.

As the VHS range wore on I had less and less.  This was for several reasons; I seemed to have many of the best ones, added to which I had seen a large number of the remaining stories recorded by a family friend from UK Gold.  Lastly, they were getting more expensive, whereas I had got earlier releases for as little as £8, they were now £14 as standard.  By comparison, the DVDs now are widely available for £6-7 a few months after initial release even in shops like Forbidden Planet.  They're always available, unlike the VHS that appeared for a matter of months before drying up and being unavailable.

UK Gold has its own sets of memories.  In the earliest days they only seemed to show the black and white stories on a loop.  The person recording the stories occasionally had issues with his reception and the already ropey quality of the Hartnell's was compounded by a snowstorm of interference.  The Web Planet, which is supposed to look like it's filmed through a layer of vaseline, was almost unwatchable.  Later on they started showing the stories in colour, and later they only showed the colour stories and excluded the Hartnells and Troughtons, just looping from Pertwee to McCoy.

UK Gold sometimes did odd things to mess up the schedule.  I distinctly recall watching the Key to Time season for the first time, despite its faults it does get exciting towards the end.  I was hoping for all the loose ends to be tied up but upon receiving the video for that week, it turned out that UK Gold had decided to show Planet of the Spiders in place of the Armageddon Factor.  While I didn't have a copy of this, it was a bit of a disappointment.  The following week was Destiny of the Daleks, meaning Armageddon Factor was skipped entirely.  I didn't get to see the last part of the Key to Time until finding the individual VHS for sale quite some time later.

At some point UK Gold started showing one or two episodes of Blake's 7 before each weekend Doctor Who, and it was then I was able to see that series too.  The VHS releases covered all my earliest years of watching Doctor Who and were mostly focused around the first four Doctors.  In later years I plugged most of the gaps through recordings from UK Gold.  It's a real shame that the BBC have been so reticent to repeat any classic Doctor Who.  Since it's return in 2005, BBC4 have repeated Hand of Fear after Elizabeth Sladen died, Web of Fear part 1 for a themed London Underground night, and Unearthly Child for the 50th anniversary.

Revenge of the Cybermen

'Revenge' of the Cybermen? Ugh, here we start the Cybermen descending into emotive behaviour. While entertaining, David Banks' cyberleader frequently showed too much relish for an unemotional being. Here they crack the odd joke (the cyberleader comments when tying the Doctor up on the Beacon that he won't be around to see the 'magnificent spectacle' of the crash with Voga) and a bit of monologuing about the destruction of Voga ending with "This is good!". The cybermen are restyled from the Invasion cybermen with more pipes and flares (it was the 70s).

Something about it all seems a bit lacklustre. Kellman is a great villain, he sort of comes out on the good side working for the Vogons, but still murdered a lot of people. I can't help wondering why his plan needed to be quite this ruthless, but he was going to help the Vogons blow the Beacon up anyway. The location shooting looks great, the main cast all come out of it well. The ark looks a bit cheaper this time around but the caves of Voga are much richer being filmed at Wookey Hole. It's probably just that the Cybermen are so naff reduced to just a few men with a silly scheme. The Vogon plan doesn't seem so smart either. There's a lot of things that don't add up, such as the Beacon not being able to radio for any help, the transmat removing the cybermat 'plague' by being set up for human tissue, but transporting the Doctor, Cybermen and their cloths and other non-human tissue. The surface of Voga as the Beacon flies over is obviously a revolving log in front of the camera and isn't well realised. The Cybermen fall for the old 'tie them up and leave them to die' trick which has been old since moustache twirling villains tied women to railway tracks. It makes no sense for the Cybermen to do this unless they bizarrely relish imaging the Doctor and Sarah having the front seat for the collision of the Beacon with Voga.

This story is the first to introduce the cyber-weakness to gold, yet oddly enough the only cybermen to die from gold is that injected by the captured cybermat. A cybermat is disabled with gold dust but the Doctor quickly gets it working again to terrorise Kellman. Both occasions when the Doctor tackles cybermen with a handful of dust they he is beaten back, people just can't get the opportunity to use it effectively as a weapon. While being a weakness, it's not an entirely practical one to exploit. Also we can assume that only gold dust is effective, as Vogon bullets are undoubtedly made of gold yet are ineffective. Either the gold needs to be a dust or the gold bullets, like regular bullets, just bounce off. I'm guessing both are true. But compare to Silver Nemesis where anything made of gold cuts through the cybermen like a hot knife through butter. Bullets are ineffective but gold tipped arrows and coins fired from a catapult cut them down. As soon as gold penetrates their armour they die, no talk of "clogging their respiratory systems", it's more like a puncture wound from gold is akin to blood poisoning from a lethal snakebite. Maybe gold in contact with the coolant circulating within a cyberman is lethal, but ultimately you have to ask why?? It's an inert metal.

It's a shame that Tom Baker only met the Cybermen once, and Pertwee only in the Five Doctors. The gap between the Invasion and Earthshock seems a long one with only this unsatisfying morsel in the middle. Hard to imagine now, what with the Daleks appearing in every season of Doctor Who, that you could go for years without these 'regular' monsters. People criticised the 80s for being continuity laden, probably with the nadir being Attack of the Cybermen, but throughout the 70s the old series was braver than the new by constantly creating new stories and pushing the horror to the limit. Currently the New Series relies on its past a lot more than is generally admitted with the Daleks appearing more frequently than ever over the last 6 years, and plays it quite safe regarding horror as seems in line with BBC paranoia regarding receiving complaints on any matter.

You will be like uzzz...

Cybermen have changed significantly across their many appearances, even when they appear similar there are often small differences. I think it gives great variety for costuming, although a lot of effort is involved. When I was young my dad brought home large sheets of some plastic material with a chrome layer on one side. It was some sort of packaging for computer equipment and came as an enormous square bag several feet long in every dimension. But when I first had it my young imagination raced, because it seemed ideal for a Cyberman costume, and I was very keen on a Tomb-style, as these episodes had recently been released. The stumbling point was always the mask, they aren't easy to find and never cheap.

Mark I

The Tenth Planet style only had a single outing before a total redesign, but it's probably one that reflects the body-horror element of the cybermen the best, still being obviously part human. They rarely appear in other media either, though most notable in the audio Spare Parts, where their unique sing-song voices work very well. They still have flexible faces hidden behind fabric, and they are often described still having flesh hands though I've not seen an original colour set photo confirming this. The lack of a helmet seems to avoid some of the problems with the expense of other costumes but overall the costume has many fiddly parts, largely plastic sheeting with a cumbersome chest unit and probably a bit fragile for repeated wearings. I'm not aware of anyone dressing as one for a convention which is a shame.

Design - 6/10 - but only cosplay if you don't mind wearing a washing machine on your chest.

Mark II

A total redesign came for The Moonbase and reused in Tomb of the Cybermen. There might be a few differences in the positioning of the pipes but they are effectively the same. These are my favourite design from the moment I saw them in Tomb of the Cybermen. They appeared brutal and strong, with powerful three-fingered hands. They were made from some one-piece rubber wetsuit sprayed silver, as the paint kept flaking off during the filming of Tomb according to one interview. There's a bit of obvious use of practice golf balls at the shoulders and joints but otherwise they need to be largely custom made. The chest unit is smaller and more manageable but the helmet is difficult for the costumer. Expensive as it is, it's probably worthwhile buying one as it will be the centrepiece for the costume, the rest can be home made, even the chest unit, and pipes are easy to find. The Cybercontroller from Tomb is more straight forward as he does not have a chest unit but the head might be hard to locate.

Design - 9/10

Mark III

Wheel in Space cybermen are similar to the previous design but with several distinct differences. The pipes on the arms are replaced with rods and the chest unit is upside down while the helmet gains the memorable 'teardrop' design on the eyes. The hands are slightly different too, still three fingers but with metal caps on them. Same issues with acquiring a helmet present themselves and making the chest unit, and the arm rods are probably more difficult to make than the previous piping. I don't greatly care for the two-part costume, more obviously a wetsuit but probably more comfortable to wear, as far as comfort goes in such costumes.

Design - 7/10

Mark IV

All change again for The Invasion, some aspects of the Wheel design still present on with the two-piece wetsuit and the rods on arms and legs. New chest unit and I like the new head, but the use of the wetsuit is even more obvious as are the lace up boots on the feet. A bit of me likes it, a bit of me doesn't. I only got to see the Invasion recently with the DVD release, which is grand, so it doesn't hold a childhood nostalgia value. It's a memorable design though and would be a lot of fun to cosplay, if you could get the head. Fortunately, there seem to be more props of this head that come up for sale than the Tomb/Wheel version.

Design - 7/10

Mark IV

There was a huge gap until the next Cyberman story which hopped right over the Pertwee era which was a shame. They resemble the Invasion style but the heads are modified and the chest unit is reused again from Wheel, and it's been turned around again. Joints have a concertinaed sleeves and thick pipes are all over the costume. I don't really care for it, but maybe that's influenced by the fact the story isn't up to much. Also the cybermen strut around a lot with their hands on their hips (see above), it's all a bit silly.

Design - 6/10

Mark VI

Awesome redesign for the 80s, gone are are the wetsuits and now there is a far more complex looking RAF flight suit. The head and chest unit are done again and look fantastic. I think the cybermen became a lot more fluid and human in their movement with this design, and somewhat less robotic. The costume was used in Earthshock, Five Doctors and Attack of the Cybermen with minor modifications. In Earthshock the chin piece was clear revealing a little movement inside, but later on it was just painted silver. Attack of the Cybermen had one painted entirely black to hide in the sewers. The loose fitting suit is probably the best choice for a cosplayer, but getting hold of an accurate RAF suit is difficult and the head and chest unit are a costly purchase that probably can't be avoided. They do however look grand on screen and still look good over 20 years later. But I was never scared of them, not like those in the 60s.

Design - 8/10 - but is more difficult to home build than those previous.

Mark VII

The cybermen get a very shiny makeover for Silver Nemesis, this just look a bit glitzy and not particularly realistic. The story is god-awful with the cybermen's allergy to gold so strong that even lumps of it hitting them kills them outright. It's a sad 25th anniversary. Anyway, the head and chest unit are chrome, but also the plate in the middle is different inside. Pipes and wires are rearranged particularly around the wrists and shins, the RAF suit is replaced with some sort of more generic looking fabric, hands are the 'cricket glove' style. A lot of work for the costumer but at least the complex RAF suit is gone. The head is difficult to achieve unless you compromise on the chrome finish or have means to chrome plate something large. The original props in this story can be found in the hands of various collectors online and all have all discoloured with age turning a rather uncharacteristic gold colour for the cybermen.

Design - 5/10 - hate the chrome.

Mark VIII

And that was it for a long time through the 'wilderness years' with a few speculative designs for various aborted projects throughout the 90s like that of the "Dark Dimension". But the New Series came back and with it in the second series new Cybermen. Concept artists came up with all sorts of ideas for the new cybermen, some taking inspiration from the old, like the image below.

That is first class in my opinion. Heavy set, industrial, brutal and a mix of the old. A really lovely design. And there were a lot of other great looking designs. What we got was this...

Dreadful. Did someone really walk around the many designs and pick the shit bit from each, and then come out with something that looks like a damn toy? I really believe the 'action figure potential' was a factor in this design, because apart from the jug handle ears it does not evoke anything cyberman-ish to me and flares went out of fashion with Revenge of the Cybermen. I really hoped that we'd get a new design after the "parallel universe" shtick in the New Series but no, this is what out cybermen now look like in every story, probably because the costumes cost so damn much. It's all armour and very little to suggest they are organic in any fashion, they are as good as robots. It wouldn't be so bad, but seeing many pieces of the concept art just makes me think we lost out. The costume is nigh impossible for a cosplayer to adequately construct, I've seen someone making one from folded paper and card, but the investment to make something durable would be high.

Design - 2/10 - please get rid of it.