Doctor Who - The Tenth Planet Review

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the First Appearance of the Cybermen and the First Regeneration

Doctor Who:
The Tenth Planet
By Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis

“Emotions. Love, pride, hate, fear. Have you no emotions, sir?”

The Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive at the South Pole by the TARDIS in the year 1986.  There they quickly find the Snowcap Base which is a monitoring base for space rockets.  The crew of Snowcap Base is now in the process of supervising the mission of the Zeus 4 spaceship which is running a routine check of the Earth’s atmosphere.  But something unexpected happens.  Zeus 4 picks up a new planet heading toward Earth and suddenly Zeus 4 starts to experience power failures and the crew of Snowcap Base tries to help Zeus 4 back to Earth but to no avail as the ship is destroyed.

The Doctor quickly realizes what the planet is.  It is the Earth’s twin planet Mondas and he predicts its inhabitants will be visiting Earth soon.  While the crew of Snowcap Base are distracted with what happened to Zeus 4 no one noticed the three visitors that have entered the base wearing parkas that they acquired from the search party they killed earlier.  Once General Cutler realizes that something is wrong the Cybermen made their presence known and successfully takes over the base.  The Cybermen plan for the destruction of Earth has begun and it’s up to The Doctor, who isn’t quite his old self, with the aid of Ben and Polly to stop The Cybermen from siphoning the power from Earth causing Earth’s own destruction.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: The Tenth Planet - Far From Over by @Paul_Bowler

The Tenth Planet

Far From Over

By Paul Bowler

Born in London, 1908, William Hartnell grew up during a dark time of war and social poverty. His admiration for Charlie Chaplin inspired him to become an actor, and in 1926 he got this first job working with Sir Frank Benson’s Shakespearean Company. Further parts in theater quickly followed, along with small film roles, until his career really took off in 1943 with his memorable role as the army officer in The Way Ahead. Carol Reed’s film opened the door to numerous film roles for Hartnell, often receiving star billing, but the actor was frustrated by the “tough guy” roles he was always offered, preferring the comedy and farce of his early career.

However, fate would soon intervene when Hartnell’s roles in the Granada TV series The Army Game and Lindsay Anderson’s film, This Sporting Life (1963), led to Verity Lambert considering William Hartnell for the role of the Doctor. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the next three years William Hartnell would help forge the role of the Doctor, a mysterious time traveler  an outcast from his own people, a glorious - if somewhat cantankerous - grandfather from another world. Hartnell adored his time as the Doctor, becoming a hero to millions of children as he took his companions on fantastic adventures in time and space: visiting great historical figures like Marco Polo and King Richard the Lionheart, bizarre aliens like the Zabri and Sensorites appeared with strange cultures and customs, they experienced the futility of trying to alter history and the Aztec civilization in 15th Century Mexico, even turning on each other when the TARDIS drifted towards the edge of destruction, and they were always ready to fight the intergalactic menace of the Daleks which returned time and again to keep viewers enthralled as the Doctor valiantly fought them wherever their evil plans of universal domination threatened to destroy every living thing that dared to stand in their way.