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I was one of the first to rush out and buy the video release of "The Tomb of the Cybermen" in 1992 when it "miraculously" turned up on the cutting room floor in Hong-Kong completely intact, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its broadcast and just a few months before Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary. I am glad I did.
The third appearance of the Cybermen, "The Tomb of the Cybermen" is without doubt one of the all-time classics of Doctor Who. Perfectly scripted and superbly executed, the story is tense and atmospheric.
This story is the opening serial to season five of Doctor Who, known as the "monsters season" for the number of alien races that the Doctor meets during the run. Beginning with Cybermen, followed by two appearances of Yeti, the Ice Warriors, the deadly weed creature and ending again with Cybermen, the only let-up in season five is "The Enemy of the World", seen by many as Doctor Who's answer to James Bond.
"The Tomb of the cybermen" falls into the Troughton formula which brought so many classics during this era: an isolated community being picked off one by one by a deadly menace. In this case, the isolated community is an archaelogical expedition, temporarily stranded on the planet Telos, in search of the reasons for the extinction of the Cybermen. The deadly menace are of course the Cybermen who are not as extinct as the archaeologists believed.
The Cybermats, small robotic creatures controlled by the Cybermen, make their debut in this story. With bulging eyes and gnashing teeth they are much more impressive than their rather static counterparts in the later "Revenge of the Cybermen".
One of the great moments of Doctor Who comes in this story when the Cybermen are awakened from their tombs and begin to break out of the honeycomb structure which had been their resting place for five hundred years.
"The Tomb of the Cybermen" is the eighth Patrick Troughton story but it is the first complete story to survive in the BBC archives. It is the first complete Cybermen serial and the first story to feature Victoria Waterfield as a member of the TARDIS crew.
Here we see a much more serious Doctor than in Troughton's last season. The story is full of humourous moments but the humour is in the dialogue rather than in the slapstick clowning around which later became a feature of Troughton's portrayal.
The cast perform splendidly in this excellent story. Cyril Shaps, who died in 2003, merits special mention for his performance as the jittery John Viner whose panic-stricken outbursts do much to heighten the drama and tension of "The Tomb of the Cybermen".