Doctor Who #152: The Moonbase Part 2

"There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought."TECHNICAL SPECS: One of this story's two surviving episodes, it can be found in the Lost in Time DVD boxed set. First aired Feb.18 1967.

IN THIS ONE... The Doctor finds a virus in the sugar and a Cyberman hiding in plain sight in sickbay.

REVIEW: After putting on so many disguises, the new Doctor finally reveals himself to the audience. The quote above is his new credo. No longer content with exploration or, as the first Doctor originally did, trying to run at the first sign of trouble, Troughton's Doctor is an active agent against the forces of evil. His first story was against the Daleks, and here he is, holding the line against the creatures that were responsible for his first death, the Cybermen. But that's not all. This episode explains his clownish behavior quite well as an armor against the abuses of authority. When Hobson cooperates, the Doctor is quite serious and earnest. When Hobson doesn't, he starts acting frazzled and a little mad. Of course, comic bits of business are part of the character's core even when he IS serious, as exemplified by his gathering evidence from people's clothes and boots while they're going about their business.

And there's quite a lot of that business going on, isn't there? As in his first story, Kit Pedler has the base personnel do technical things in a way that sounds authentic enough. Of course, his science is not always sound, raising eyebrows with explosive decompression held at bay by bags of sugar over the sizable hole the Cybermen have made. I still can't believe this guy was hired as a scientific consultant. His characters' logic is off too, or how else do we explain Hobson's flip-flopping over the Doctor's presence? He fails to see him as a threat (bad things started happening when the Doctor arrived), then does, then accepts a suspicious cup of coffee from him (let's all have a cup, and then a man falls down... I would have thrown the coffee out earlier!).

So while the joke about Polly is that all she was ever good for was making coffee (and I don't agree with the assessment, though her existing episodes do act as evidence against her), here it's part of the plot and how they figure out what substance carries the Cyber-virus. That she questions the Doctor's 1888 medical degree make me like her no matter her role in the plot. At least she's central to it, which can't be said of Ben who's pretty much just an extra standing in the background through most of this. Was he supposed to be laid up on the bed in Jamie's place in the original script? Jamie at least has a couple confrontations with his phantom piper, and is justified in believing death to be at his door since each time the Cybermen steals another body.

A few words on design, since this is the first part of The Moonbase we still have all the visuals for... It's really one fashion nightmare after another, isn't it? Oh, the base itself looks fine, with a slightly feng shui roundedness and a dome open to the Moon exterior (if you can accept the dodgy gravitron), but what are its personnel wearing? I'd forgotten Benoit wore a scarf around his neck, just in case we forgot he was French (at least he's played by a real French actor - I do so hate it when my native language is massacred on screen), and those bathing caps they wear in the gravitron room are silly beyond measure. The spacesuits do not compare well with the TARDIS crew's, looking very cheap with the their plastic air bottles. Good protection for painting a house, maybe. Not so much for walking on the Moon. Like the Cybermen, I might have been tempted to carry out a brutal attack on the astronauts for no other reason than their clothes. The Cybermen, for their part, look good. The bulkiness and awkwardness of The Tenth Planet have been removed and it's for the better as we move towards a more iconic shape. The Cyber effects are also quite nice. That electric zap is very effective, and the animated veins forming on one of their victims' hands really cool as well.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Its weaknesses are the science and the humdrum base personnel. Its strengths are the Doctor and the Cybermen. I know which I'm watching the program for.

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