![]() The Tomb of the Cybermen is the first serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was originally broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 2 to 23 September 1967. Hans de Vries, Tony Harwood, John Hogan, Richard Kerley, Ronald Lee, Charles Pemberton, Kenneth Seeger, Reg Whitehead – Cybermen.That was the last regular episode of the Jodie Whittaker era that isn’t a season finale or a special. It is nice to see him given a brilliant character to play on the show. I should have pointed out last week that McNally has been in Doctor Who before – he played Hugo Lang in Colin Baker’s (generally poorly regarded) first story as the sixth Doctor, The Twin Dilemma. This was the seventh episode in which she has appeared to date. Redgrave first appeared as the Brigadier’s daughter Kate Stewart in 2012’s The Power of Three. The reference to the Post Office Tower business was talking about 1966 Hartnell story The War Machines. ![]() The line Courtney says in the background – “Lethbridge-Stewart here I want a call to the RAF, please” – is dialogue taken from part four of Terror of the Autons, broadcast on 23 January 1971. His final television appearance in the role was in 2008 in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode Enemy of the Bane. ![]() He later played Colonel and then Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who, from 1968’s The Web of Fear to 1993’s Dimensions in Time, featuring in 24 stories alongside every Doctor from Patrick Troughton to Sylvester McCoy. He first appeared as Bret Vyon in The Daleks’ Master Plan with Hartnell. It was a delight to hear the tones of the late Nicholas Courtney in Doctor Who again. Have they really killed the Doctor’s mum after just one episode? Surely not … Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios Deeper into the vortex Swarm (Sam Spruell) and Azure (Rochenda Sandall). In many ways, this brings us closer to what William Hartnell told us in 1963 about him and Susan Foreman being exiles “cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection”, rather than the idea that the Doctor just got bored and wanted to see the stars. We have been given so many different half-explanations of why the Doctor fled Gallifrey in the past 58 years. It makes the first Doctor’s flight from Gallifrey instinctive – to get away from the abuse and misuse that had happened before their mind was wiped. I know the Timeless Child arc has been divisive, but it works. Tecteun tried to turn the tables on the Doctor, suggesting that her habit of picking up companions and friends and taking them on a journey was akin to a form of experimenting on them, just like Tecteun had experimented on the Timeless Child on Gallifrey all those lives ago. The monster of the week had a very human face: Tecteun, the Doctor’s own “mother”, willing to destroy the universe to cover up her actions. Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios Fear factor Karvanista (Craige Els) will face the Sontarans alongside Bel (Thaddea Graham). ![]() Plus, finally, we found out how Joseph Williamson had been making his slightly irritating 19th-century gobbledegook cameos in different times and places throughout the story. Bel and Karvanista fighting Sontarans should be fun, while the combination of Vinder’s principled soldier and Di’s furious modern-Earth scouser immediately showed promise. One of the nice things about the story was the way it set up mixed double-acts for next week. The scene between Gill and Whittaker’s hologram message was touching, and Kevin McNally’s Jericho made a great foil for the dynamic between Yaz and Dan (John Bishop). The hermit in Nepal issuing a string of dad jokes, and Karnavista’s exasperation after they went to all that trouble to get a message to him, were amusing – but these sequences also made it clear that Yaz (Mandip Gill) had taken charge of the team in the absence of the Doctor. Like something out of Jules Verne, Indiana Jones or Tintin, their worldwide quest to decipher an ancient inscription gave us action as well as laughs. My favourite strand of the episode was the adventure of Yaz, Dan and Jericho in 1904. Kevin McNally’s Jericho helped bring some levity to this episode.
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