It’s the 26th century on Earth. A team of commandos (it’s never explained whether they’re soldiers or police) is heading down into a cave where a group of scientists on a research survey were attacked, leaving only one survivor. As the commandos go further into the cave, they’re stalked by shadowy figures that don’t show up on their scanners— though the leader of the team points out their scanners only detect mammalian life forms. Meanwhile, deeper in the caves, the TARDIS materializes and, after coming out, the Doctor is very interested to see the abundant dinosaur fossils. He talks about the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years earlier.
So, this is exciting! Caves, dinosaurs, some hidden menace missed by a scanner we’re carefully told only detects mammals— it’s the Silurians! It’s got to be! How excit— oh, it’s the Cybermen.
Viewers at the time were probably much more excited by the return of the Cybermen, Dr Who’s second most famous monsters, than they would have been by the Silurians (which, in the days before either home video or repeats on the BBC, many of them had probably never heard of). Still, from the more series-global view of today’s fan, it’s hard not to feel a sting of disappointment that so perfect a Silurian set-up turned out to be something else entirely. Writer Eric Saward and producer John Nathan-Turner both wanted to keep the Cybermen’s appearance a complete secret until the surprise reveal at the episode 1 cliffhanger. Saward doesn’t say he had the Silurians specifically in mind when writing the episode, but it’s interesting that the misdirect ended up (seemingly) so specific.
The Cybermen have hidden a bomb in the cave, and left a couple of androids to protect it, which forces the question: why are Cybermen using androids? (Other than the writer’s desire to keep them offstage for the first episode.) The bomb is powerful enough to largely devastate the Earth, and a Cyberman invasion force is on the way to mop up the survivors, hidden in cargo containers on a freighter whose crew have no idea what they’re carrying. It seems that Earth is currently hosting an interstellar summit meeting of many planets planning to ally against the Cybermen, and the plan is to take out the summit and the Earth along with it.
The first episode and a half of the 4-part story takes place in the caves, and then shifts to the freighter as the Doctor traces the source of the bomb’s control signal, and, unusually, allows the commando team to come aboard the TARDIS to help fight whatever’s threatening the Earth (our heroes don’t learn it’s the Cybermen until after they reach the freighter). The story moves at a brisk pace and (as you might expect from the presence of the commandos) features more action-movie shootouts than we’ve seen in Dr Who since the heyday of the UNIT era. This time around the battles seem definitely darker, and more graphic, than the largely comic-bookish standoffs between UNIT and its various foes, but not so much as to really stand out except for one thing: the Doctor himself picks up a gun a couple of times, and finally uses one quite brutally against the Cyberleader at the climax of the story. Although Tegan is allowed to say at one point, “guns aren’t the Doctor’s style at all,” it’s hard not to watch this episode and think the Doctor is behaving out of character.
It wasn’t an accident: this is a direction script editor Eric Saward wanted the series to go, and although there was only so far he could take the shy, unassuming persona of the Fifth Doctor in that direction, it would later go to extremes with the Sixth.
More in character for the Doctor is a short scene in which he debates the Cyberleader over the value of emotions— but it’s undermined by the fact that the Cybermen are not portrayed in this story as remotely unemotional. In fact the Cyberleader, played by David Banks (who will reprise the role for the duration of the Classic series) is distinctly emotional, starting with his determination that the Doctor must be taken alive because “he must suffer for our past defeats.” (Note to all villains: if you value your existence, do not tell your underlings to capture the Doctor alive.)
On the whole, despite some concerns about emotional Cybermen and a gun-wielding Doctor, this is an exciting story that goes from a creepy-suspenseful adventure in the caves to a fast-paced action story aboard the freighter. It is, however, completely overshadowed by what happens at the very end, which I’ll save for the “details” section.
Details
- Another interesting moment in the story occurs early in episode 2, right after the Cybermen have been revealed (to the viewers, not yet to the Doctor). Watching video relayed from their androids in the cave, the Cyberleader recognizes an image of the TARDIS. “I know that object!” he exclaims, and then calls up records (actually video clips from old episodes) of the First, Second and Fourth Doctors from their encounters with the Cybermen (the Third Doctor never met them). Although the series has occasionally referred back to events of earlier episodes, this is the first time Classic Dr Who ever did anything like that. It was partly prompted by the fact that around six years had passed since the Cybermen’s last appearance, which in turn was around six years since the one before that. But it also reflects something that will come to dominate Dr Who for the remainder of the Classic series: the rise of “organized fandom.”
- JN-T taking over the producer’s office coincided with the start of publication of what would later become Doctor Who Magazine (originally Doctor Who Weekly, and then Doctor Who Monthly) and he was the first producer to start addressing himself, and the series, to a new breed of fan who both knew and cared about the long history behind the series. Around the same time, the line of novelizations from Target books started to really take off, after a slow start in the seventies, publishing novelizations of older episodes which until the advent of home video were the only way fans could experience the early stories. In the soon-to-come hype over the 20th anniversary of the series, JN-T will start to orient the series more and more toward its own past. The results will not always be good— but here, were quite a thrill for young fans who most likely had never seen William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton as the Doctor at all.
- On the other hand, if you live by the Dr Who continuity, you die by the Dr Who continuity: the kind of fan JN-T was targeting is also the kind to realize there’s no way the Cybermen should have the “records” they display. Everything about this episode suggests it happens at the dawn of the Cyberwars, while the episodes Tomb of the Cybermen and Revenge of the Cybermen emphatically take place after the end of them, but are cited by the Cyberleader here in any case. Revenge of the Cybermen in particular seems very clearly to show us the destruction of the very last Cybermen in existence. Even if there were others, it’s certain that no Cyberman who could have recorded the video of the Fourth Doctor that we see survived the encounter. Nevertheless, the Cyberleader in Earthshock is apparently supposed to be the same Cyberleader the Doctor met on those two previous occasions. He even gets to deliver the classic villain line, “So, Doctor, we meet again!” Invoking the Continuity Beast is a hazardous project…
- At one point in episode 1 of the story, in a critical moment when Tegan is frightened, the Doctor says, “Brave heart, Tegan” for the first time. It’ll become a catch-phrase between the Fifth Doctor and Tegan until she leaves the series.
- Okay, now the big news: the problem of the crowded TARDIS gets addressed, as Adric leaves the series, and he does so in a shocking way. Their bomb having failed, the Cybermen decide to crash the freighter into the Earth to achieve the same result. Adric and the commandos, along with survivors of the freighter crew, are left on board with the controls locked off, while the Cybermen take the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa with them. Adric attempts to use his mathematical skill to break the code the Cybermen have used to lock the controls. When the others manage to reactivate an escape pod to evacuate the ship, Adric stays behind to keep trying to save the Earth from the crash. His efforts are partly successful: he causes the warp drive to jump the timelines and hurtle back into the past: 65 million years into the past, where the freighter crash will be the “asteroid” that wipes out the dinosaurs. Meanwhile the Doctor escapes the Cybermen, but only after realizing that Earth’s history means the crash is inevitable. He can’t materialize the TARDIS on the freighter while it’s jumping time lines. He can only watch helplessly as the freighter explodes with Adric on board.
- Adric thinks he’s finally cracked the code when a lone surviving Cyberman destroys the freighter’s control panel. His last words are “Now I’ll never know if I was right.”
- Adric becomes the first companion of the Doctor to die since Katarina and Sara Kingdom were both killed in The Daleks’ Masterplan back in the William Hartnell era. When deciding how to write Adric out of the series, both Eric Saward and JN-T believed it was a good move to let audiences know there was no immunity in being a companion of the Doctor, and that the life-and-death perils the crew encounter in every adventure are, indeed dangerous. Actor Matthew Waterhouse was upset by the decision at the time, saying he would have liked to have Adric leave the TARDIS to marry someone like most of the other companions did, but in more recent years has come to agree Adric’s death was the better dramatic choice.
- A subtle touch that few viewers probably noticed: in his very first appearance, Adric has an argument with his brother. Adric is proud of his “badge for mathematical excellence” but his brother gives him a hunting belt and tells him it’s a far more important badge. In his last few moments, Adric takes off that belt and clutches it tightly as the freighter crashes.
- His mathematical badge had by that point ended up in the Doctor’s hands, who at one point uses its gold to attack the Cyberleader (drawing on the vulnerability to gold introduced in Revenge of the Cybermen). At the episode closes, for the only time in Dr Who’s history the end credits roll in silence, without the theme tune, over a picture of the broken mathematics badge.
Next Week:
“Time Flight,” 4 episodes and the season 19 finale.
