The Tenth Planet episode 2 discussion:
M: Wow, attack of the inappropriate sound track.
Sp: I… EEEEN…JOYED… IT.
Cz: Space is really loud.
Sp: WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT ANY OF YOU PEOPLE. WE DO NOT HAVE EMOTIONS. NOW QUICKLY, COME WITH US BEFORE WE DESTROY YOUR PLANET.
H: To be fair, they have logical reasons for that.
M: Yeah, they need more spare parts.
R: DRINK FROM ME AND LIVE FOREVER.
H: Wow. Ah…
P: Okay, so they put on their disguise at the very beginning of the episode and I thought “Robots In Disguise.”
M: Anarak-bots
R: It’s a robot that turns into a robot… wearing a coat.
P: And he has seen the light!
H: Speaking of the weapons, I liked that when the guard was shot you saw smoke coming from his chest as if he was actually shot by some heat weapon. I thought that was really cool. And I actually like the original Cybermen voices. I think they do a very good job at being unsettling. Especially with the effort at showing no mouth movements, it’s very unsettling in some ways even more than the later voices.
K: But I wish the mouth opening the closing was timed with the voice. That was really distracting.
P: How they would open after the voice started speaking?
K: Yeah.
Sp: I liked it.
E: That kind of threw me off. And there was one point where he just closed his mouth and yet continued talked.
R: I AM A CYBER VENTRILOQUIST.
Sp: So these are emotionless ruthless scavengers from space, but they’re kind of inconsistent about who they shoot and who they take prisoner. Why didn’t they just shoot Ben?
M: THERE IS NO NEED. THAT WOULD SERVE NO PURPOSE.
P: The purpose served by shooting Ben would put fear into others, but that’s something they would not understand.
M: I figured they would just not want to deal with everyone picking up a gun. They shot one and then another one picked up a gun.
K: Change tactics?
M: Yeah. They showed that they weren’t dumb.
Sp: But they bent the gun to show off their strength, which showed a certain emotion.
P: No, they could argue that they were simply disabling the gun.
M: I thought it was great.
H: It wasn’t about instilling fear, it was about demonstrating that “your weapons are useless against us.”
SG: It was just more indifference than trying to instill fear. They don’t see humans as a threat in any shape or form. Take our gun, you’re not a threat.
P: It’s like taking the gun away from a child.
SG: It’s more like taking a bee bee gun away from a child.
R: “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” I got the distinct impression that the first guy they killed to establish that “look, our guns are way better than yours” and then with Ben they didn’t kill him because they didn’t have anything to show by killing him.
M: And they’d already not killed the general by that point.
R: So then they showed that not only are they superior in terms of weapons, they were superior in terms of raw strength. I think the idea was they want to control this group of humans and use them. So the less breakage the better.
M: I think that’s more to the point. The guy with the gun was like “Oh, foot soldier, kill him.” They didn’t know what Ben was. So they kept him in case they might need him.
H: Speaking of Ben being captured, my little MST3K moment of the episode <while he was shuffling through the films>, he’s like “What’s this? Reign of Terror episode 5? Fury from the Deep?”
Sp: Ben being captured was an awesome awesome sequence…
M: No!
Sp: From the… shut up! From the blinding, get the gun away, giving a warning. Not wanting to shoot him but obviously not wanting to take a life. And then handing the gun to the guy who was willing to take a life.
M: Everything about that sequence was great except the Projector Ex Machina.
P: I have a couple problems with this episode. One, I took physics. So therefore I wonder why a spacecraft that should be in range for 3-4 minutes is here for the duration of the show and not orbiting the planet.
K: They’re on the south pole. It’s like the sun being visible all winter from the pole.
P: But they have to orbit around the center of the mass of the earth, not some point on the earth.
M: They could be in equatorial orbit.
H: I think that was addressed in the first episode. How they went out of range and saw various sun rises. But you’re saying they were in range way longer than they should have been?
P: I had trouble suspending my disbelief.
H: To be fair they were in range for the episode, which was only 25 minutes.
M: Well, if the planet was close enough to disrupt the orbiter and make it so it couldn’t reenter, what about the moon?
P: The premise of the story is that they are stealing the energy. Therefore they are stealing the fuel from the ship somehow.
M: But they were stealing the kinetic energy, because they said something about how nothing would move.
P: In that case the moon is an awesome energy source, because it has a lot of kinetic energy.
<off topic discussion about moon quakes.>
M: It was a rockin’ good time!
<giggles and groans>
H: So this is the last full moving episode we’ll see Billy acting, because Hartnell, for health reasons, is not in next week’s episode. Oh, and interesting story about the fake snow – this is the first story of this recording block (the Smugglers was recorded at the end of the last season), and the actor who plays Ben was in a small accident. And the snow in the scene kept blowing in his face and irritating the wound and he acted through it.
P: As a good actor does.
H: And not only did he act through it, but he was together enough to ask out the woman who was in charge of the snow blowing apparatus who he later married.
P: I thought his acting was good. I think there were almost no fluffs. I can’t recall one.
K: There was one fluff, I think, were he was saying lines at the same time the Cyberleader was asking phone numbers and email addresses.
H: That was not a Billy Fluff. That was clearly intentional, as it happened by many actors throughout the scene. It’s interesting, this is the only Cybermen story where the Cybermen have names.
M: One of them was Talon.
H: They’re in the credits.
P: A new point of contention, when they were opening the thruster up they never shut it down. They turned on the one thing, then they turned on the second and they were out of gas.
R: They swept the throttle control all the way forward and left it there. But if you want to see a fun counter point to that, watch a couple of Star Trek episodes and when Kirk says “fire phasers” look at what buttons are hit. It’s never the same ones twice.
H: I actually thought that, in general, the guest artist acting was quite good. Including General Cutler, which I know some people think is a little over the top, but I actually really like him.
P: I think it’s believable if you think of him as a very dominant person.
M: The whole episode had a very Twilight Zone kind of vibe, in a good way. The sort of self contained paranoid little world, and sense of impending dread. It was nice drama.
Sp: And the staccato dialog.
H: Welcome to the “Base under siege” type story.
M: Yes, this is certainly a prototype of many other…
H: Many, many stories. In a lot of ways this is the of the first modern Doctor Who story.
K: Final thoughts? I’m getting tired of typing.
M: Cookies!
E: I liked this one.
P: I moved.
E: I thought William Hartnell did a particularly good job. But this is one of the only ones I have seen that wasn’t a recon.
Cz: I feel like this is still a really popular idea in scifi. The idea that there’s something out there that doesn’t have feelings and it’s only purpose is to live, and it seems like they’ve gone back into an animal stage before humans evolved. But instead of animals they’ve gone to robots.
H: And the only reason for their existence is survival?
Cz: Yeah. I kind of want to see a new age scifi movie with this topic.
A: I liked it. Although I am dumb founded that no one seems to recognize Australia upside down.
M: Astronomers are still debating because they haven’t invented the technology of turning the pictures around.
H: To be fair, Polly did recognize Malaysia.
M: Of all the things to recognize, as North and South America is going by, to recognize Malaysia.
SG: I think she recognized it because she spent a rockin’ weekend in Malaysia.
P: What happens in Malaysia…
E: Stays in Malaysia!
A: I thought the Cybermen were both sillier and more creepy than the current version.
E: I thought that too.
A: And the scene where Ben killed the Cyberman and then felt bad about it felt odd.
M: He’s a soldier.
H: He’s a sailor. That’s different.
SG: But he’s in the military. Killing is part of military training.
Sp: He’s a young kid.
R: Sensitive new age companion.
SG: One, I like to see that yet again no one on this cast has actually met anyone outside of England, as proved by the Russian accent.
E: That was Russian? I thought it was supposed to be German.
H: They were in Geneva.
SG: That’s how bad it was. But besides that, it was good. It’s nice to see the Borg show up.
H: I wonder where the idea of the Borg came from?
Cz: Trek was better.
SG: I agree.
K: You two, get out! The Cybermen were FIRST!
Cz: If only because the Borg did a better job at “we need space parts”
M: The Cybermen in this said both the gist of “resistance is useless” and “you will be assimilated.” They didn’t use the exact words, but it is the same thing as the Borg.
K: Star Trek had 20 years to perfect it! After stealing it!
SG: So they needed the coats to get into the base. But the coats didn’t really cover their metal legs peaking out from under the coats of the seven foot robots. Where was the security?
H: They killed the security men who were out there. And it was actually mentioned in the episode that the other security men were on a rest period.
SG: And the balaclavas on their faces. But past that I liked the tension and the drama. It’s building up to a cool point.
K: Pun intended?
SG: No. Anyway, overall good episode.
Cz: So, if Next Gen was ripping of this for Borg, did Doctor Who come up with the idea of robots assimilating people?
H: Cybermen came about because Kit Peddler was acting as a sort of scientific advisor for the series. And he had some up with a new story line for the script editor Jerry Davis. Davis suggested that the story line wasn’t enough and that they needed a villain. Peddler had been doing a bunch of reading about artificial limbs and transplants and extrapolated the idea of what happens if everything gets replaced.
SG: So in that case we’re actually the Cybermen. We’re assimilating them into us, since we’re using robot parts to make us better. The Cybermen are merely trying to protect themselves.
H: Huh? The Cybermen are trying to replace their parts.
SG: No, we’re using them for parts. So who’s really the monster? Dun dun dun!
K: Probably the one doing it against people’s will?
H: Okay…
P: Liked it. Good sound, good acting. I really that the strong character really added to the overall story.
M: Let’s see. “The Man That Was Used Up.” 1843, Edgar Alan Poe, was the first time this type of story was used. But it’s tough to quite call that a Cyborg cause the parts were made out of things like wood.
P: Awesome! This story was more carried over by acting than by plot in my opinion. Good story.
M: Before tonight I was looking forward to this episode and I was not disappointed.
Sp: Poor Doctor. He seemed so frustrated for the whole episode. He knew what was going to happen and no one would listen to him.
H: Polly listened.
Sp: No one important would listen. And then he knew they were Cybermen. And they wouldn’t listen to him. And then the ship blew up in a fiery wreck. Did they listen? No. I think he was pretty much this episode’s Kassandra figure.
R: And so setting things up for the future of Doctor Who.
Sp: Exactly. So yeah, it was fun.
R: I did really enjoy the episode. That said, there was a certain amount of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it stuck.
Sp: Like sending the General’s son up?
R: Exactly like that. One thing I did want to highlight – it’s hard to do good zero G effects when you’re effects budget is $4 and whatever Benny at the canteena can kick in. And I thought they did a really great job. It was pretty convincing – simple and effective.
P: So, when they were firing their retros they were leaning forward instead of leaning back.
H: I’ll give you that.
M: They could have been in a funky capsule.
P: Fine.
K: Inconsistent, yet entertaining. The thing about commenting nearly last is that everyone else has pretty much said what I was going to say.
H: I know exactly what you mean. My feeling about this story are a little contradictory – I think it’s great, I love the story, I love the original Cybermen. I think they’re a really interesting and creepy design. But at the same time, I’m just feeling kinda melancholy because we’re going to be saying bye to William Hartnell.
Sp: You’re like the Doctor, you know what’s coming!
H: And no one will listen to me!
Sp: Huh?
H: It’s one of those things were it’s a great story. But it’s also with some excitement as I know that something new is coming. On the whole it’s very strong and I enjoyed it.
