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The serial is set on Space Station Nerva, now called Nerva Beacon, and the "planet of gold" Voga, thousands of years before The Ark in Space. In the serial, the Cybermen plot to destroy Voga, as the gold there is lethal to them.
Plot
Following on from Genesis of the Daleks, the Fourth Doctor, Harry and Sarah use the Time Ring to return to Space Station Nerva. They arrive aboard the space station thousands of years before the events of The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment. The TARDIS is not aboard Nerva, as it is travelling back in time towards them. The trio discover that the space station is full of dead bodies, apparently the result of a plague.
The time travellers come into contact with the surviving Nerva crew, led by Commander Stevenson. The quarantined space station is now operating as an orbital beacon, warning ships away from a drifting, supposedly uninhabited planetoid named Voga, which is composed almost entirely of gold. Professor Kellman, a civilian planetary surveyor, has been using Nerva as a base for cataloguing Vogan geology, travelling there via a Transmat teleportation system. Secretly, he has entered into an alliance with the Cybermen to wipe out the station's crew using Cybermats, one of which attacks Sarah and poisons her, revealing the actual source of the "plague". The Doctor uses the Transmat to beam Sarah and Harry down and purge the poison from her body, but Kellman's sabotage leaves him unable to beam them back. Meanwhile, Sarah and Harry discover that Voga is in fact populated by a race called the Vogans, with the two being captured by a military leader named Vorus, who reveals that Kellman is in fact a double agent working to destroy the Cybermen once and for all, with Voga's gold reserves having been previously used to create weapons deadly to the Cybermen.
The Cybermen dock with Nerva and easily overpower the Doctor and the two remaining crewmembers, who they force to carry powerful bombs into the core of Voga, which will destroy the planet. Kellman beams down to Voga in an attempt to warn Vorus, but unwittingly identifies himself to some Vogans allied to Vorus' rival and the leader of Voga's government, Tyrum. After being arrested, Kellman reveals the full plan to Tyrum, leading to a truce between him and Vorus, the latter of whom reveals that his plan is to destroy Nerva and all the Cybermen on it with a missile called the Skystriker. With the missile not yet ready for launch, Sarah returns to the beacon, while Harry and Kellman intercept the Doctor and help to disarm the bombs they were outfitted with, but Kellman is killed by a rockslide.
Realising that their plan has failed, the Cyber Leader decides to crash Nerva itself into Voga. The Doctor beams back aboard Nerva and he and Sarah Jane try to turn the Cybermats on their creators, but are themselves captured and restrained. Seeing that Nerva is on a collision course with the planet, Vorus panics and launches the Skystriker, but is shot dead by Tyrum in the process. Stevenson manages to take control of the Skystriker and uses it to destroy the departing Cyberman ship, while the Doctor frees himself and steers Nerva away just in time to avoid disaster. Harry returns to Nerva via transmat and the TARDIS materialises on the station. The Doctor receives a message from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart asking him to return to 20th-century Earth due to an emergency. They quickly board the TARDIS and it dematerialises.
Production
Writing
Gerry Davis wrote the initial script, titling it Return of the Cybermen. Robert Holmes' rewrite added the Vogan elements and changed Return to Revenge.[1] Producer Philip Hinchcliffe was new to the programme; this serial was commissioned by his predecessor Barry Letts. Letts and Holmes felt that with a new Doctor coming in and at that stage little idea of how he would be played, it would be best to play safe by using familiar big-name monsters such as the Daleks and Cybermen in the first season. The script was modified as production developed to incorporate Tom Baker's style, and also had to be rewritten to modify how writer Gerry Davis had envisaged the new Doctor – as a more timid, reserved figure much in the manner of Patrick Troughton, which happened to be rather unlike Baker's portrayal. Davis was also unhappy with the story's title.[2]
Location filming
Wookey Hole Caves, used as a filming location for the planet Voga
The story was shot on the same set as The Ark in Space – representing a substantial cost saving – with location filming in Wookey Hole Caves. It was also shot in the production block immediately after Ark, which explains why the production code is out of broadcast sequence. The location filming at Wookey Hole was plagued by a series of problems which the crew blamed on a curse.[3] The curse apparently was brought about when the production staff found a small rock formation that the locals called "The Witch". Despite warnings, they proceeded to put a witch hat and cloak on it. Briant encountered an individual in spelunking gear, which the Wookey Hole staff had no knowledge of, whom Briant was convinced was the spirit of a potholer who had died in the caves, three years earlier. The assistant floor manager suffered a severe attack of claustrophobia, another crew member fell ill, and an electrician suffered a broken leg[4] when a ladder collapsed. During the scene when Sarah Jane rides one of the water skimmers, the boat went wild and Sladen was forced to jump off, treading water despite heavy boots until her rescue by Terry Walsh, the programme's longtime stuntman. Both required precautionary vaccinations at a local hospital but were otherwise unhurt. The boat disappeared and was never seen again.[citation needed]
Costumes and props
Cyberman helmet design
The Invasion Cyberman
Revenge Cyberleader
Cyberman costumes were derived from the 1968 serial The Invasion
The secret radio transmitter disguised as a clothes brush, used by Kellman, is the same prop that appears in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. The prop was handed over by Bond star Roger Moore when he visited the BBC in 1973. He later told the Radio Times that the props master, not recognising Moore, had paid him two shillings and sixpence for the item: "I'd popped into the Beeb [BBC] for a cup of tea and spotted a notice about an upcoming "Doctor Who", so I thought the darlings would be so cash-strapped they'd need anything they could get their hands on. It wasn't MGM, after all. But I didn't expect to walk out with two and six!"[5]
The masks for the principal actors playing the Vogans were specially moulded to their faces, but for the non-speaking artists the BBC had to cut costs. According to actor David Collings on the DVD commentary, who played Vorus, the masks for the extras were made using a facial mould of Dad's Army star Arnold Ridley. Originally, Cyber-costumes from the 1968 serial The Invasion were to have been used, but only two had survived, and in poor condition. This necessitated entirely new outfits,[6] which included chest panels constructed from the innards of old television sets and trousers which, for the first time since The Moonbase, were not tucked into the Cyber-boots. Director Michael E. Briant opted to put the characters on the Nerva Beacon into contemporary clothing and have them use modern machine guns rather than attempt to depict the future through fashion.
Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping gave the serial a negative review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), describing it as "a contradictory, tedious, and unimaginative mess", and considered the title to be "rubbish" too.[12] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker said that the story was neither good nor bad, but was a "disappointing way to end the season". They praised the new look of the Cybermen, the direction, and some of the supporting characters but said, "a story with a weak script and a poor plot is always going to have a struggle to impress the viewer, and Revenge of the Cybermen is no exception."[13] In 2010, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times gave Revenge of the Cybermen one star out of five, calling the gold revelation "a ridiculous development" and said that the Cybermen returned with "an overall lapse of scripting, performance, design and direction". Mulkern believed that the location work for Voga allowed the story to "occasionally gleam with life".[14]
SFX reviewer Ian Berriman called the story a "blandly competent, meat-and-potatoes action-adventure fare". On the other hand, Berriman was positive towards the camp appeal of the Cyber Leader, the Doctor being strapped to a bomb, and the "reliably brilliant" main cast.[15]DVD Talk's John Sinnot felt that not all of the story's criticism was warranted, and gave it three and a half out of five stars. Sinnot wrote that the Vogans were interesting and the Cybermen were "menacing" if not at their best. He still noted plot holes, and criticised the cybermats and Harry's "bumbling buffoon" character.[16]
In a 2010 article for Den of Geek, while choosing Philip Hinchcliffe as the greatest producer of Doctor Who, Alex Westthorp cited Revenge of the Cybermen as the least successful story of his tenure.[17]
A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in May 1976. A Polish translation was published in 1994. In the US, a novelisation was printed by Pinnacle Fiction in January 1989. An audiobook of the Target novelisation was released by BBC Audio on 3rd February 2022 read by Nicholas Briggs.
Home media
This story was the very first Doctor Who serial to be commercially released on VHS in October 1983.[16] It was initially released in an edited omnibus format, with the opening and closing titles of each episode removed. This omnibus was also released on Betamax and Laserdisc. It was one of the very few Doctor Who releases on Video 2000.[18] It was later released in an unedited, episodic format in May 1999 in the United Kingdom only.
The DVD of this story was released on 9 August 2010 as part of the Cybermen box set, along with the Seventh Doctor serial Silver Nemesis. It would later be released in the US as a standalone story on DVD in early November 2010. This serial was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files in Issue 111 on 3 April 2013.
It was released on Blu-ray with updated special effects in Doctor Who The Collection Season 12.[19]
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