Doctor Who 0033 The Moonbase Four part story that aired February 11 to March 4 1967. Written by Kit Pedler, directed by Morris Barry. Linking story by Sue Cowley, read by Frazer Hines. The BBC has animated episodes 1 and 3 to replace the missing video.
I hadn't seen this story before, the disc hadn't come out when I watched the series back in 2013. As usual the library didn't have the audio CDs. I watched the DVD, including all the extras, and sampled the BBC Audio CDs.
The Tardis plops down on the Moon in 2070. The humans have built a base for controlling the weather on Earth. The Tardis gang leave the ship and jump about in the lower gravity. Jamie hurts himself on landing, he falls in front of an entrance to the base, men take him inside.
The Doctor, Polly and Ben enter the base and find the men hard at work at the Gravitron. It's what they use to control the weather on Earth. They've been having a couple of big problems on the base, issues with the equipment and some of the men have been getting sick. The station's doctor is one of the men in sickbay.
The Doctor steps in to help. Even though the commander of the station is suspicious of the Tardis gang, he lets them help. The base is quarantined by Earth's International Space Control. Soon after the base's doctor is missing from the sickbay.
The culprits turn out to be the Cybermen, they've got small ship nearby and they've cut a secret door into the store room. It's them that's been poisoning the food. The sick humans are being turned into slaves for the Cybermen.
Jamie wakes up to see one and Polly walks in as the Cyberman is leaving the room. The commander doesn't believe that they are Cybermen, he thinks they were wiped out a long time ago. He's still suspicious of the Tardis gang and wants them off the moon. He's willing to give the Doctor 24 hours to figure out what's going on.
The Cybermen take the sick and turn them into remote controlled slaves. Polly makes some coffee and the Doctor figures the poison was in the sugar, he was a bit too late for that one guy. The Cybermen seize control of the base and kill some more men. Even poor Polly gets knocked out with a blast from a Cyberman's hand.
The human's fight back and destroy some of the Cybermen with spray bottles of solvent sprayed on their plastic chest parts. They fall down and foam comes out of their special areas.
A couple more Cybermen ships arrive but the Doctor is ready for them. He turns the Gravitron on them and flips them of the planet. Time for the Tardis gang to exit stage left.
A fairly entertaining story with plenty of Cyberman action. The massive set for the base is quite nice but Anneke Wills tells a story that the Gravitron fell over when Patrick Troughton was walking near it. He could have been hurt but it just missed him. The commentaries were generally interesting, Toby Hadoke interviews 2 of Kit Pedler's daughters and others for over episode 1 and 3, actors Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines and Edward Phillips join sound effects creator Brian Hodgson and moderator Toby Hadoke for a look at episodes 2 and 4. There's a making of, some photos and PDFs of the Radio Times listings and some production notes.
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