The Tomb of the Cybermen episode 2 discussion:
R: And the winner of the 2347 Darwin award for archeology is…
<laughter>
P: Cybermat like the purse. Cybermat eat purse.
K: No, Cybermat just came out of the purse and ate evil lady.
H: Kaftan.
Sp: <Spiderman song> Cybermat, cybermat. Bite your shoulder, that is that.
All things considered, the cybermat stayed on the adorable side of goofy. I didn’t even see the fishing line.
P: I think they used the magnets.
H: Apparently… I’m not sure I believe this, but what I read was…
A: Hampster in a costume?
H: No.
R: Hedgehog in a costume?
H: No. So, what I read was that they created several Cybermats, once of which was pulled on a string, one of which was radio controlled, and one of which was windup. I don’t as they used all three of them. And clearly the Cybermats, in case you didn’t guess, was created with marketing in mind.
Sp: Moichaindizing!
H: Exactly.
P: Can I have one?
E: No.
H: The toy companies are selling a new version of it based on the one that showed last season on Doctor Who. So, yeah. I’ve seen the toy.
Cz: Oh yeah! That’s horrible.
Sp: Alright, bets from people who are not Ketina or the Historian <we’ve seen it before> on whether the American is just gonna up and leave.
H & K: <laughter>
Sp: “I fixed the rocket. I’m out of here. Baseball, America, apple pie, yous guys.” Rocket sound.
H: We can check to see if he was actually American you know.
Sp: I hope not. So all it took to defeat the logician… is that what he is now?
H: That’s what he was the whole time.
K: I heard magician at one point.
P & Sp: I did too.
<most of the room apparently heard magician>
Sp: So all it took to defeat him was to squeeze his wrist forcefully.
A: I picture the cyberman said “nerd.”
E: I have taken judo, and I know for a fact that there is a way to grab someone by the wrist that puts them in excruciating pain.
Sp: I have also taken judo. And then I put it back. And I know that while you can put them in pain, you cannot knock them out.
H: He wasn’t knocked out.
Sp: Yeah he was. He didn’t do anything else for the rest of the episode.
H: All 90 seconds more of it.
Sp: My point stands. Or lays down in excruciating pain. Whatever.
K: Their schtick is grabbing people’s arms or wrists like that.
Sp: A dumb schtick repeated is still dumb.
P: Well, that might be because “his logic is a little thin.” I love the rocket pilot telling how some character sabotaged our ship and “it practically wrecked our chances of leaving this crummy planet.”
Everyone: America. Baseball. Apple pie. Yous guys!
R: I think we have our new Mavic Chen.
H: Well, it’s better than Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent. Then again, a kick in the head is better than that.
R: Or a squeeze on the wrist.
H: Anyway, moving on.
Sp: So the doctor is an accomplice to murder. Yay!
K: How? What?
R: Hardly the first time.
P: Or last.
Sp: “Well, let’s see… I’m pretty sure that this fellow over here is trying to…”
P: KILL US ALL!
Sp: “So I think I shall help him along a bit to test my theory.” A few button pushes later. BLAM! THUD! “I was right.”
K: Ah. Accessory to murder, not accomplice. He didn’t help him do it, he just didn’t stop him.
Sp: Ooh! Look who’s a legal expert now!
R: Look, did anybody really think that Dr. “Hudson” there was really going to get out alive.
H: He name was Viner. And that’s what he was. <whiner>
R: “We’re in some pretty shit now man! What are we going to do man! What are we gonna do now?”
H: “It’s Cyberman hunt man! It’s a Cyberman hunt!”
P: “Game over!”
R: “Hey Kaftan! Have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
<And yet more miscellaneous references to Aliens>
P: So, did anybody else find the sequence with Jamie not wanting to take the risk and leave the room funny?
Several folks: Yes.
E: “Not you, Jamie”
H: I will almost guarantee you that it was an ad lib cooked up by Pat and Frazer during rehearsals, because they did that a lot. For example, in the first episode the little business with the hand holding I know is one that they did in rehearsal and was somehow missed the by the director.
P: I was wondering what the deal was with “let the Doctor pass” because Toberman was blocking the Doctor and then let’s him pass.
A: Because Toberman realized that the Doctor had probably figured out that he was the one who sabotaged the ship.
Sp: <Sings “Sabotage”> “I can’t stand it! I think she planned it! I’m going to escape this crummy planet!”
H: Baseball.
<laughter>
R: Damn, Victoria is a crack shot!
H: She’s probably been hunting many times, but not with a pistol.
K: And certainly not with a futuristic ray gun.
H: It was futuristic, but it was still a pistol.
R: It just used caseless ammunition.
K: But a weapon from the future, none the less.
R: None the less she shot an object the size of a rat from across the room with a handgun.
P: Okay, on that. When she was moving to the control console she never saw or felt the gun behind her. So how did she know to stop.
Sp: Determined voice of Kaftan.
P: Maybe she knew from rehearsals.
R: No, she knew from living in a madhouse with Daleks. It’s conditioning. When something tells her to stop, she stops.
H: And you know what. She will never feed the flying pests again either.
Sp: I just got this image of her retired in her 80’s in an aviary with all these dead birds all around her.
H: So, while I know to modern eyes the defrosting and emergence of the Cybermen might have seen a little slow.
K: Yeah! Just a bit.
H: It likely scared the crap out of kids at the time. I thought it was really well directed.
<Several people agree>
Sp: “Tonight on Doctor Who, you’ll never go into the freezer again.”
A: Yeah, I thought them breaking through the membrane was more interesting that usual of them just going through a doorway.
P: And cheaper too.
Sp: It does lend an air of preservation to the proceedings. “First we defrost them. Then we undo the wrapping. Then we set them in the microwave for four minutes. At the four minute mark we remove the wrapper from the pudding or the cake. Then put back in the microwave for two more minutes. Then stir vigorously.”
R: I’m surprised no one interrupted Spoo during all of that.
P: I did. Several times. But Ketina didn’t seem to care.
K: I can only follow one voice in my head at a time!
R: Regardless of how effective the scene was, we haven’t had a good interpretive dance for a while.
P: I was surprised they had a five story set.
Sp: I thought it was a model at first and they were only going to use it from a distance. And then oh! It was actually there.
R: It was a model at first.
H: Basically when it was frozen it was a model.
Sp: I caught that. But I thought that was the only view we were going to have.
H: Let’s talk a little about the design work of this story, which was just phenomenal. Unified look. Just really, really impressive.
P: Same levers everywhere. They did a decent job with the control panel. Although the display was only in one room, the same control panel was everywhere.
K: They put it on wheels and just rolled it from room to room.
H: Probably. The thing you have to remember is, other than the filmed bits – which in this version we can’t tell from anything else – it was all done in a really tiny studio.
P: That’s why I was impressed with the five story part.
H: The five story part was a filmed bit. In the special edition you can tell the difference.
P: It’s really easy to tell which Cyberman is the smart one, with the really huge brain.
H: Well, that’s the Cybercontroller. Played by Michael Kilgarriff. Who also played the Cybercontroller in 1985’s “Attack of the Cybermen” Only a much rounder in the middle Cybercontroller.
<laugher>
Sp: “The Cybercontroller reigns supreme… oh a donut!”
P: So, the ending line was “You belong to us. You shall be like us.”
H: Uhhuh.
Sp: That’s kind of their idiom.
P: I did actually find that line threatening.
K: You should have. They’re Cybermen.
P: But usually you get something lame. And that wasn’t lame.
H: So, final thoughts?
E: I liked this episode. I do not have much to say. But I think I liked it a little bit more than the last one. I’m also quite fond of the pilot. He cracks me up with his “Amerika!”
A: Everytime I see Kaftan, I just want to smack that smug smile off her face.
R: No longer a problem.
A: She just seems so happy about being a complete bitch.
P: I found the whole poisoning of the coffee beneath the dignity of Victoria as she was warned.
H: She’s still new.
P: Call it a learning experience.
R: Yeah. That many over acting pills could have killed her.
H: I like Deb Watling. <actress who plays Victoria>
A: Victoria seems, for a Victorian person, she seems willing to get into shorter skirts and things like that, surprises me. And she said something this episode “What on earth” that seems anachronistic.
H: No. That seem okay to me.
K: The phrase. Not necessarily the skirt.
A: For me, if I went into the future and everyone was walking around without a shirt on I would be a little more hesitant than she was about the skirt. I would have felt quite awkward and she seemed to be “well, okay, whatever.”
P: I think that the set and the acting and the stage movement was much better than say, the first two seasons of Doctor Who. We’re seeing a much more complete stagecraft.
K: At least for television.
H: It’s less stagey and more televisiony. If you review our comments in the first two seasons we repeatedly described it as looking like a stage play.
P: I did catch a point where they were leaving the women behind because it’s safety in numbers. But we already saw that sort of thing in the last episode. It seems to be that Victoria is smarter than the part she’s playing in this episode. Easily falling for the trap.
H: Isn’t that the case with most female Doctor Who companions? I think possibly for Barbara and Vicki, at least up to this point.
Sp: WOO! That’s it. That’s my final thought.
Cz: I really liked the five story floor Cybermen birth. Yeah. It was good.
R: So, “Oh my god! The building is killing us all!”
H: Ah, Viner.
R: No, everyone. “We much abandon the expedition.” Two minutes later “We can’t return to Earth, yous guys. The rocket has been sabitaged.” “We’re all doomed!” “We’re gonna die like.. those guys that died.” and two minutes after that. “Oh well, if we’re going to die we mine as well go down there and push some more buttons.”
<applause>
R: In other words, typical black and white scientist horror movie behavior.
H: <whisper> It’s almost as if this story might have been inspired by Mummy movies and King Tut’s tomb.
R: I’m just saying.
K: Passing on thoughts this week.
H: Ketina’s not feeling well, so I’m going to hold my thoughts for next week as well. Yous guys.
Everyone: Apple pie! America! Baseball! Guns! Rocket sound!
