Doctor Who Re-Watch: 'The Tenth Planet' (First Doctor regeneration story)

BBC

Two Doctors will be facing their regenerations in the upcoming Christmas special, ‘Twice Upon a Time’. But what lead to the First Doctor’s regeneration? Let’s find out, as we recap the classic Hartnell story, ‘The Tenth Planet’.

The Tenth Planet is an incredibly significant story, for two reasons. One, it’s the first ever appearance of the Cybermen. Second, and even more importantly, it features the first ever regeneration.

Of course, when the story begins, there’s nothing that remotely hints at just how important it is. Not even where it’s placed in the season. Instead of the regeneration story being saved for last, it’s actually just the second serial of season four.

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The First Doctor, Ben and Polly have arrived at the South Pole, where they’re quickly brought into the Snowcap base, led by General Cutler. The base is monitoring a routine mission for spaceship Zeus IV, but something has gone very wrong. The spaceship is being drained of energy, and a new planet has appeared in the sky. Even stranger, the planet is an exact copy of Earth!

The First Doctor’s reaction to this development is interesting. He’s aware of what this planet is and how it relates to Earth, so he has a wider knowledge of Earth’s history than even humans do. He’s even expecting visitors from the twin world. But when the Cybermen do appear in part two, he’s still completely unfamiliar with them at this point.

The Cybermen

The Cybermen in The Tenth Planet are virtually unlike any later incarnation. Even in their return appearance in The Moonbase, they have a radical redesign. And that was just a few stories later in the same season!

If you haven’t seen The Tenth Planet, but have caught up on series 10, then they’re almost exactly the same as the ones seen in World Enough and Time. The lamps are significantly larger at this point, and they don’t wear gloves, but everything else is the same. The clothed faces, the chest units, and the sing-song voice of both designs are virtually identical.

Personally speaking, I’m a big fan of this early design. I’ve always enjoyed seeing the parts of humanity that were still there, especially with the hands and faces. With later designs, it almost looks completely robotic. As a result, it’s sometimes all too easy to forget that pieces of human are mixed with the cybernetic in their creation. So a distinct element of their creepiness feels lost, sometimes.

Mondas

Mondas, the Cybermen’s original home planet, is a dying world. After moving across the universe for millennia, it has come back to Earth. This isn’t a happy reunion, however. The Cybermen plan on drawing as much energy as possible from Earth so that Mondas will survive.

Earth will die in the process, but the Cybermen have decided that some humans will be brought to their own planet. However, they’ll be converted into Cybermen. The situation becomes even more desperate when Zeus IV explodes because of Mondas’s power drain.

Surprisingly, the Cybermen – or at least, the first group of them in The Tenth Planet – are disposed of very quickly. However, in part three, while the Cybermen are invading worldwide, Snowcap soon has bigger problems.

Robert Beatty as General Cutler. (BBC)

The Z bomb

First, the Doctor falls unconscious. In fact, he’s not seen at all until part four. This was due to Hartnell falling ill at the time. Considering episodes were produced on a weekly basis back then, kudos should be given to Gerry Davis for rewriting the script to explain the Doctor’s absence so quickly.

The second and much larger problem is General Cutler himself. When he finds out his son had been sent on a mission to rescue Zeus IV, he’s desperate for Mondas to be destroyed, before it’s power drain destroys his son’s spaceship, too.

That’s when he announces his plan to use the “Z bomb”! (Yeah, you can tell this was written in the Cold War, can’t you? Nothings say “nuclear paranoia” like a bomb so terrible, it’s on the opposite end of the alphabet!) Apparently, the bomb has enough power to wipe out not just Mondas, but potentially the Earth, as well. But Cutler doesn’t care one bit. He just wants to save his son.

What I really appreciated about this unexpected threat is how grounded it feels. Oh, the bomb itself might be a heavily exaggerated doomsday weapon. But Cutler’s reasons for using it are understandable, and you feel a degree of sympathy. However, you also feel a degree of horror at how single-minded he is.

Robert Beatty’s performance as Cutler is fantastic to watch. He packs a lot of emotion into the performance, and manages to keep the character believable but still terrifying.

The General is also an interesting counterpoint to the Cybermen. While the Cybermen are horrifying due to their lack of emotions, Cutler is letting his emotions destroy both himself and possibly the Earth. So there’s a really fantastic balance there.

The destruction of Mondas

Fortunately, Ben is able to prevent the launch of the Z bomb in part four. Cutler comes close to killing the Doctor and his friends out of anger. Luckily, everyone is saved by the arrival of…another group of Cybermen. Yeah, as far as cavalries go, they’re not the best ones to hope for.

Unsurprisingly, the Cybermen immediately want the Z bomb currently pointed at their home planet to be dismantled. They get Ben and a few others to do this by taking Polly hostage.

However, the Doctor quickly works out what they’re really planning. Mondas is absorbing too much energy, something that was interestingly pointed out in part three. When it absorbs too much, it’ll be destroyed. The Cybermen plan on preventing that by destroying the Earth with the Z bomb first!

Thankfully, Ben is able to work out that radiation is a key weakness of theirs. He and the others manage to hold the Cybermen off until Mondas eventually explodes.

I love how smart Ben is in this story. He may not be quite as intelligent or as knowledgeable as the Doctor. But he is smart enough to fight back against both the Cybermen and Cutler throughout The Tenth Planet. He’s also great at working key things out on his own.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love both Ben and Polly. The Tenth Planet certainly gives plenty of examples why Ben’s so brilliant. (Admittedly, Polly isn’t given quite as much to do. Thankfully, that’s balanced out more in the next story, The Power of the Daleks).

The First Doctor regenerates… (BBC)

Regeneration

When everything settles, and Ben finds the Doctor and Polly, everything seems to be ok. At first.

But something is still not quite right with the Doctor. While no one human had been affected by Mondas’s power drain, the Doctor has been visibly weakened by it. Earlier in the episode, he had described his body as “wearing a bit thin”. And when Ben tells him that “it’s all over”, the Doctor responds with:

"It’s far from being all over."

And just like that, the Doctor leaves the base, without Ben and Polly, and rushes back to the TARDIS. In fact, when he’s preparing to take off some time later, he almost leaves without them. But then, seconds before his collapse, he lets them through the TARDIS doors.

And so we come to the end of the story, and a moment that would change Doctor Who forever. When the regeneration scene arrives, it’s not an emotional ending. At least, not the emotional ending that we expect from stories such as The Parting of the Ways, The End of Time, or even Planet of the Spiders.

With the first regeneration, the moment Hartnell changes to Troughton in front of Ben, Polly and the audience, it’s clearly meant to be a shock ending. Honestly, I don’t think any of us who weren’t there when it was first broadcast could even imagine the impact of this ending.

Impact

These days, we expect regeneration. Television events are made announcing who the next Doctor will be in advance. Regeneration episodes are always big events. It’s a huge part of Doctor Who.

Back in 1966, though? Hartnell wasn’t just the First Doctor. He had been the only Doctor. He had been the only actor to play this major lead role for three years. To suddenly replace him with a completely different actor – one that didn’t even look like him – was bold. Perhaps the boldest and riskiest decision the programme had ever made. And while these days, the idea has become a part of the show’s longevity, it could also have meant its own demise, if Troughton hadn’t been brilliant in the role.

For over fifty years, we thought we knew everything about the First Doctor’s regeneration. We thought The Tenth Planet was his final adventure. But what if, when he ran away from Ben and Polly in the story’s final minutes, he had met someone else out in the snow? What if, just before he regenerated, he had been given one more adventure?

Next: Doctor Who Regen: What should be the 12th Doctor’s final words?

Next time: ‘Twice Upon a Time’

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Doctor Who Re-Watch: ‘The Tenth Planet’ (First Doctor regeneration story)

By James Aggas | Dec 22, 2017