From: steven.k.manfred@UWRF.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: REVIEW - "The Tomb of the Cybermen" CBS/Fox video !SPOILERS!
Date: 9 Oct 92 02:55:55 GMT

I can't wait.  I want to review these shows tonight.


So in this posting you will see a review by me of the long-lost
Cyberstory that opened the fifth season, "The Tomb of the Cybermen,"
but first....in case anyone wants to be surprised....


SPOILERS!






"Struggle is futile."
SPOILERS!




The tape starts out with a rather superfluous small interview with the
director of the story, Morris Barry.  Morris as a chap is an interesting
person I suppose, but he doesn't really have much to say.  He mainly
tells the story of Michael Kilgariff's casting as the CyberController.
I would rather have heard his "nostalgia" memories of the story as a whole
rather than that casting bit.

But that interview is just a little add-on to the real meat of the video,
the story itself, "The Tomb of the Cybermen."

And just as they've always told us (they being the fans from the 60s), it
is indeed superb.

I won't give away or tell the entire plotline in this post as it exists
in novel form and as a script book and as some of you will still want to
see the video and because I just might write up a complete plot synopsis
of the story in the near future, as I did with many McCoy stories over
the summer.

But I will talk freely on the story's good and bad points.

Good points:
Story:   The plotline itself isn't very original, but recalling this was
	for Sixties TV that shouldn't be as heavy a criterion as I place
	it nowadays.  What is very original and EXTREMELY good is the
	detail in the story, and the premise of the story.  I cannot
	recall seeing or reading any other "curse of the mummy" 
	archaelogical science fiction stories anywhere else, and so this
	adds to the freshness.
Acting:  The acting isn't alpha perfect in this, but it is on the whole
	rather good, and given the standard quality of acting in those
	days and the small rehearsal time they usually got and the
	somewhat inexperienced guest cast, I would say it definitely is
	excellent.  I must agree with DWM's Gary Russell that Klieg
	steals the show completely.
Set Design:  Sweet.  Simply sweet.  I just wish that Television Centre
	was larger and that the Tomb could have been built to the
	utterly enormous size of legend, but it still succeeds well for
	what it is.
Direction:  Surprisingly good.   When you only have one week of rehearsal
	for everything in a twenty-five minute episode, the director
	usually doesn't have time to do anything other than just shoot
	the story.  Morris Barry clearly tries to do more than just line
	up the principals in shot and some of the scenes are quite
	effective indeed.  Where this shows best I feel is in any and all
	of the scenes where someone or something is being shot.  
	Almost every time we see the person fire the weapon, a pause,
	and then we catch the effects of the impact about fway-
	completed on the victim, and the effects were actually dwelled on
	a little in some cases.   Rare to see in Sixties Who (or any Who)
	and is all the more effective since it is so rare.
	(Don't get worried, the dwelling isn't disgustingly so, just
	the right amount to get you involved in the story.)
	There is also some quite staggeringly good location work at the
	start of episode one, and I was also staggered that I was able to
	actually tell that this is the same quarry used for "Attack of
	the Cybermen!"  And I also loved the atmosphere of the TARDIS
	scene at the start.  Doing that on film made it very slick indeed.
Music:	All taken from stock, no special incidental music was composed
	for the story.  Much of it is extremely effective.
Special FX:  Again, for the era, surprisingly good.  There are only two
	scenes that really jarred me (rare for ANY Who story) and they'll
	get mentioned in the bad points.

Bad Points:
Story:  How the plot will advance is a little predictable, and there is also
	a dialog flaw where a line is used over and over again by everyone
	when talking to Klieg.  Perhaps it was intentionally done for a little
	humor, but I did eventually get sick of everyone from the Doctor
	to the Professor to Victoria asking Klieg, "Do you really think
	you can bargain with the Cybermen?"
	There are two other points I should mention.  "Tomb" can easily
	be accused of both sexism and racism in the chauvinistic attitudes
	the male characters have towards the female ones, and the racism
	charge can be laid against the monosyllabic black servant 
	Toberman.
	In both cases, I think the charges can be defended to at least the
	point of a draw.  The sexism is the weaker case, but for the
	defense we have Victoria shooting a Cybermat and standing up to
	the males who want to keep her out of harm's way against her wishes,
	and lots of nasty behavior from the superb character of Kaftan.
	The racism I can excuse too, because Toberman is not the only
	monosyllabic servant we've ever seen in Who before or after this
	story, and by far most of them are white.  Also it is made quite
	clear that Toberman definitely is a servant, not a slave, and he
	manages to do something that to date, no other guest character in
	a Cyberstory has ever managed to do on their own without technological
	help, i.e.  overcome the Cybermen's conditioning after he'd been
	under the influence for a while.  (and in a big way too, he flings
	the Controller across the room!)
	Add on top of that the time and the country this was being made in
	and Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis' previous black character in "The
	Tenth Planet" who is certainly not in a stereotypical role (the
	captain of the two-man space capsule that gets pulled out of
	orbit by Mondas) and I think I can ease my mind enough that Pedler
	and Davis certainly didn't mean anything by it.
	Actually come to think of it, the worst stereotype in the story is
	probably the two American characters who crewed the space "rocket"
	(now there's a term we haven't heard for a while)!  
Direction:  there are a handful of missed shots, where something is going
	 on that I would like to see but can't because the camera isn't
	there, but that's time constraints acting on them again.
Music:   There are a few minor moments where the stock music is being
	inappropriately inserted for the mood of the scene.
Special FX:  I said there were two "bad" ones and they both involve
	somebody being picked up over the other person's head and being
	thrown across the room.  The one is the Controller tossing 
	Toberman across th Tomb area (we can see the entire flying harness
	on Toberman), and the other is Toberman tossing the Controller
	in the upper chamber (the Controller is obviously a dummy).
	Other than these two, the other FX work surprisingly well, 
	including the gooy deaths of one Cyberman, and the Cybermats.
	Next time the Cybermen come back , I want the Cybermats to come
	with them.
Acting:  Some bad American accents yet again, but at least these two guys
	seem likeable.  A few of the other characters could also have 
	used a bit of fine tuning such as the actress playing Kaftan,
	(almost but not quite right) and Cyril Shaps' little nervous
	character.  Shaps would go on to play two other little nervous
	characters in the series, and that's probably why I'm irked by
	him here as I think he did quite a bit better on those two other
	stories.



Adding it all up I give "The Tomb of the Cybermen" a nine out of ten,
no, let's amend that to nine point five.  


Steve/Iain


p.s.  Once again, only $20 and should be available by special order through
any video store local to you.  Just tell them the title and the label,
CBS/Fox.  I'll even give you the catalog number here: 5731