The Tomb of the Cybermen | Sophisticated Idiots

In 1985 everyone was wowed by Dire Straits’ performance at Live Aid. Classy and entertaining, it would’ve set a standard which fans could reminisce about over a beer for years.

But who was up next?

Once the be-vested Freddie strutted his way into the history books, nobody mentioned the Dire Straits slot again.

You can probably see where we’re going with this in the context of our Cyber Season.

The Moonbase was a great Cybermen story. No ifs, no buts, we’re talking genuine greatness: only two Cyber tales surpass it in our rankings.

But there’s no denying the history-making Tomb of the Cybermen its richly-deserved Queen moment.

Tomb assembles similar themes to its predecessor – the claustrophobia, the ratcheting tension, the feeling of utter helplessness. And dials them up to (dare we say it?) perfection.

The upshot is the finest Cybermen story of them all (as a reminder for irregular readers, we’re excluding The Five Doctors, where our tin friends offer nothing but a humiliating cameo).

Granted, viewers are required to engage a chonky degree of forgiveness for the oh-so troublesome predilections of the 1960s. And we’re not just referring to the way Toberman is handled; some of the practical effects relied upon here are as adorably ineffective as Victoria.

We hope we’re not being unfair with our leniency towards Tomb’s foibles.

We hold our hands up to making an Olympic sport of castigating the 80s stories, but we try to exercise restraint if a serial’s sole weakness is its wafer-thin budget.

After all, Doctor Who wouldn’t be Doctor Who without some laughably cheap workarounds.

But The Tomb of the Cybermen earns such granting of latitude with a sheer abundance of brilliance.

The standard is set from the off with the bants-heavy opening in the TARDIS.

Victoria’s given a whistle-stop welcome and then she’s hustled into a more practicable outfit (the 60s, remember, so it’s a pretty dress…) and landing in a quarry. Smoothly, mind, to appease Jamie.

There’s zero faffing here – nor, in fact, in the remainder of the story, Episode Three Cybermat recharging excitement aside – and we love that no time is wasted as the Doc and co instantly team up with the merry band of grave-robbers from The Mummy.

Our first observation of the death-wish tomb raiders is there’s a helluva lot of them. We start sweating at the prospect of remembering all their names.

We needn’t have worried. Of the 10 characters who slip-slide up the sandy hill in that early roll-call past the camera, only two of them make it back.

Naturally, it being the 60s, those two survivors are the white men in charge: the 2D shouty one from the rocket – his skin still fitting tight – and the beardy fella of the archaeology team. Oh look, his insisting all the time paid off after all.

Thankfully, the daring group are as familiar with the tropes of 50s B-movies as the writers, so offer nothing more than a shrug when Mr Canon Fodder #1 gets zapped by the Tomb doors.

And then we’re away. Racing into, ahem, dire straits…

Obviously, as soon as the suicidal adventurers take their feet away from the polystyrene doors and break into the Control Room, we’re treated to effortlessly-built tension that Doctor Who rarely betters.

Unusually – but pleasingly – for a Cyber story, the presence of the silver dudes isn’t held back as a thoroughly underwhelming reveal.

They may not arrive on screen until that tomb scene, but their presence looms over this story from the outset.

We don’t just mean the story’s spoiler-tastic title either – their awesome branding jumps out like a Cybermat at the throat, leaving us in no doubt that, sooner or later, they’ll be entering stage left.

Their marketing gifts us:

Cybermen fakeouts
Cyber gun rooms
Cyber tanning booths
Cybermats (we wonder what scary-ass caterpillars Jamie encountered in 18th century Scotland – the “king of the beasties,” perhaps?)
and, erm, Cyber logic puzzles.

Suitably inspired, we’ve fitted a logic lock to our Doctor Who DVD collection.

After all the teasing, the audience is FINALLY taken into the frozen tomb itself. And by Jove, it doesn’t disappoint.

The wall design (Wonderwall?) is a stroke of genius – and earns extra Brownie points for its Blankety Blank vibes.

TBH, it may well be the production design high-point of the entire series. We’re struggling to think of a set in all of Classic Who to rival it: the first TARDIS interior in An Unearthly Child, we guess, but beyond that?

Maybe the ark/beacon from Tom’s first season. The Warriors’ Gate blank aesthetic is a personal favourite. Adric’s tunic, perhaps?

Anyway, what’s indisputable is that the sequence in which the Cybers bust out of their cling-film pods warrants the iconic status that’s routinely attached to it.

Yes, it’s as familiar to viewers as Del Boy falling through the bar, but it’s still a genuinely chilling (pun forgiveness sought) piece of imagery.

Plus, it re-uses the superlative Martin Slavin theme with aplomb (qué? If you haven’t read our review of The Moonbase then you deserve an overly sugared tea).

Stern statement of fact incoming: the Cybermen are a fearsome proposition here. And bloody massive: they tower over the rest of the cast, flexing a physical presence that’s never more pant-filling. Even though their innards are apparently made of mallow.

Here at Sophisticated Idiots, we’re card-carrying members of the Party of Cybermen Lore.

The backstory here is great (helped, undoubtedly, by only having two prior appearances to stitch together): the universe has been blessed with 500 glorious years without the Cybermen after they raided the Moonbase following the Doctor’s destruction of their home planet (the tenth).

We're mega fans of how neatly it’s all thought out, in a golden era when writers still care about such things. You just wait till 1985, folks (a year which lurches from Live Aid to Attack of the Cybermen? The phase ‘mixed bag' springs to mind).

While we’re hailing aspects of Tomb of the Cybermen as The Best Ever in an egregious display of click-baiting, we have an important declaration…

…this is Patrick Troughton’s best performance in the role (that we can watch, anyway – if a stronger performance was wiped from the Beeb archives, we’ll launch a retaliatory psychotic campaign of door-electrocution).

Paddy T puts every one of those 450 years of character into this showing: by turns he’s bumbling, dominant, cowardly, clever, other-worldly.

Oh, and paternal in a way we haven’t seen before or since (yep, even when Doc One’s actual granddaughter was travelling with him). Pat’s heart-to-heart with Victoria brings a lump to the throat and is the closest this show comes to extracting tears from the audience. Until Bonnie Langford turns up, anyway.

Overall, ‘classic’ is an awfully over-used descriptor in the world of professional (ha!) reviewing.

But The Tomb of the Cybermen is as classic as a classic story gets – to the extent that this is one of the rare examples of a Doctor Who serial that non-fans would likely recognise.

Or, as Freddie would holler about it in Queen’s encore at Wembley, We Are the Champions.

Other stories referenced here we've reviewed: