Doctor Who And The Cybermen/The Moonbase
First Broadcast: 11th February 1967 – 4th March 1967
First Published: 20th February 1975
The next Target book published took the audience back in time to the Second Doctor’s (Patrick Troughton) adventures. On television, though, it was the first season of the Fourth Doctor that was being broadcast. The climax of that season would see the return of the Cybermen, cybernetic monsters who had renounced their human form and the accoutrements of it like emotions in favour of logic and strength.
But they hadn’t appeared on television since 1968’s The Invasion. So what better way to re-introduce them to a new audience than through a novelisation of an even earlier story?
First, though, let’s have a little backstory…
The Cybermen originated on the planet Mondas (or MONDAS, as it is rendered here), a twin to Earth. This planet was destroyed during The Tenth Planet and the Cybermen were likewise believed wiped out. However, as we find out here – and get confirmed in their next appearance – they also colonised at least one other planet, Telos. The Cybermen were created as a response to the seemingly poor health of the Mondasians, who gradually replaced their body parts until almost nothing human remained of them, not even emotions.
In our universe, the Cybermen were created by Gerry Davis and (Dr) Kit Pedler, extrapolating from the current medical procedures involving transplants and prosthetics that were making news at the time (Christiaan Barnard would make the first heart transplant just a few months after this story aired). Pedler and Davis used the term “cybernetics”, first coined in 1948 by Norbert Wiener as a basis for the creature. Pedler, a doctor in real life, explored with Davis the idea of what would happen to someone who gradually had more prostheses than human parts – when, they asked, would they stop being human and become a machine?
As an examination of enhanced/degraded humanity, though, the cybermen leave a fair bit to be desired: any ethical debate about the condition of their souls is largely abandoned after “Have you no emotions?” gets asked in any story. (Just as a note to the reader, the story that aired after this book was published was called Revenge Of the Cybermen, which probably answers that question.) As an exchange, though, we occasionally get some body horror about the cyber-conversion process, which is sometimes quite chilling.
Anyway, The Moonbase was broadcast during Troughton’s first season (the show’s fourth) and was a sequel to The Tenth Planet. There’s a moment here where the Cyberleader recognises the Doctor from the previous visit, but that inspires little further discussion. It’s probably for the best: villains that return frequently don’t often gain much from having a previous history with the Doctor save for continuity fans.
The televised version of the story is remembered fondly by a lot of fans but it is rather plodding in some places. The book does update itself by making the Doctor’s two twentieth Century companions, Ben and Polly (Michael Craze and Anneke Wills), appear to have come from the 1970s rather than the 1960s. It also gives new companion Jamie (Frazer Hines) rather more focus than he had in the serial: it was only Jamie’s third story so he was rendered unconscious for a large chunk of the first half. Here, though, he is given more attention, even while unconscious, possibly because long-time readers will be familiar with him from The Abominable Snowmen.
This sort of messing about with companions and their backstories would become an issue as the book series grew older: we’ve already seen how Jo Grant’s history was truncated in The Doomsday Weapon (her actual first appearance will come in two books time), while the first story of the series was almost completely ignored in The Daleks.
Speaking of the talking pepperpots, an attempt was being made by the retitling of this story to cash in on the success of that first novelisation by ditching the televised title altogether in favour of something that would announce the monster as having “arrived”. It will happen again a few more books down the line with The Ice Warriors, despite that story being their second appearance in the novelisations.
Confused? Well, wait until we start numbering these books…
So, given that it was the first novel to feature the second-most popular monsters of the series, as well as being advance publicity for their first new story in six seasons, is this book any good?
Yes, it is. However, I want to qualify this with a couple of caveats.
Davis is a pretty good writer – he was the story editor during the first part of Troughton’s run on the show and created the character of Jamie, the long-running companion of the Second Doctor. He also wrote or co-wrote three other stories as well as writing several other novelisations for the range. This retelling is fast-paced and exciting, with clearly defined characters and settings, and Davis makes it exciting enough that you almost forget that there are far too many scenes taking place in the medical centre or the control room of the moonbase and very few anywhere else in what is quite a large space.
But it’s a pretty clear remake of The Tenth Planet. While that story was set at the South Pole, it does feature a lot of things in common with this story – there’s an isolated base with an international crew; there’s a doomed space mission; the cybermen force their way into the polar base just as they do here; there’s a crusty but brave and goodhearted base commander – these are fairly superficial similarities but in a book that’s only 150 or so pages long, they do jump out at you.
Having said that, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Davis imbues his characters with personality and creates scenes of real tension. The Cybermen come across as being genuinely intimidating and implacable foes in this version of the story, too. It’s a terrific addition to the series by a seasoned writer.
Coming Up Next: Doctor Who And The Giant Robot
