Product Details

• Actors: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison
• Writers: Sydney Newman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: August 24, 1994
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301801261
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,848 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

In this adventure the Doctor, with Sarah and Harry, returns to Space Station Nerva to find that the Tardis has drifted back a few thousand years in time. Plague is raging through the Nerva which is manned by only a handful of frightened survivors. Sarah falls victim to the mystery virus. The Doctor discovers that the Cybermen have taken over the station in order to use it to destroy the planet Voga where there are extensive gold mines. They wish to destroy all the gold in the solar system as it is a deadly metal to them. Will the Doctor manage to defeat the Cybermen and find an antidote to cure Sarah?

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome back, Cybermen. Has it really been 7 years?, April 16, 2002

By 

Daniel J. Hamlow (Narita, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It's been seven years after the 1968 story The Invasion that the Cybermen put in a full appearance, apart from a cameo in The Mind Of Evil and Carnival Of Monsters. As the Cybermen were overused in the Troughton era, coming out in four stories in three years, perhaps a long absence was necessary. But guess what? It would be another seven years until Earthshock in the Peter Davison era.

The adventure starts aboard the space station from The Ark In Space, where the TARDIS crew are waiting for their wayward time machine. The Doctor opens a door and a body leaning on the other side falls toward him. But in a sterile atmosphere, with "no sign of injury" and "nothing to indicate a cause of death," what could have happened? The Doctor, Harry, and Sarah have to tiptoe through a trail of bodies sprawled along the corridor. Captured by Commander Stevenson and his second-in-command Lester, they learn that a plague is responsible. With the discovery of a Cybermat, the Doctor realizes who's behind the deaths of 47 crewmen.

Key to this is Voga, the legendary planet of gold instrumental in wiping out the Cybermen in the Cyber Wars centuries ago. Two factions, the long-haired Councillors wearing tatty fishnet robes, and the Guardians, with clipped shorter hair and wearing black vests with gold pinstripes, are at odds with each other, although the cautious but kindly Councillor Tyrum is clearly the wiser as opposed to the audacious and ruthless Guardian leader Vorus.

A Cyberleader makes his first appearance here and this is one of the most curious ones ever. He has an obvious non-British accent and speaks of Voga in a hateful tone. How can creatures of logic use words like "unhappily," and "it is good"? Even the Doctor says, "For a moment, I thought he was going to smile."

The Doctor also has fun taunting the Cybermen: "You have no home planet, nothing. You're just a bunch of tin soldiers skulking around the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." And thanks to the glittergun, Cybermen were nothing but "gold-plated souvenirs that people used as hat stands." Ouch and double ouch!

The Cybermen are the same as in The Invasion, with the handlebars on both sides of their heads, but with slight modifications.

One item of curiosity: the Seal of Gallifrey is apparent in Councillor Tyrum's chamber, appearing on his table, and on Vorus' uniform. Was there a Gallifreyan influence on the Vogan civilization, i.e. a time agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency? The symbol later appears in The Deadly Assassin so I wonder if the series producer coopted it to become the Seal of Gallifrey. Interesting. Another is Sarah's remark of travelling for weeks, meaning that there were further adventures after Genesis Of The Daleks, the previous televised story.

Michael Wisher who plays the worrying Magrik, has an offscreen role as crewman Colville. Busy guy, considering he was Davros in the previous story, Genesis Of The Daleks. Kevin Stoney (Tyrum) also appeared in another Cybermen story, The Invasion, playing Tobias Vaughn.

Goof: English words on a Cybership's screen? Uh, hello?

Revenge Of The Cybermen is a perfect season closer and was the last story of Tom Baker's debut season, but as the second Nerva Beacon story, was filmed back-to-back with The Ark Of Space so they could continue using the same set before it was taken down.
Some have criticized this for story weakness, but in terms of story entertainment, it works.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A much maligned classic!, July 9, 2003

By 

M. G Watson "Miles Watson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Okay, I admit I gave this episode four stars just to catch your eye. I'm that kind of deceitful, attention-grasping loser. But now that you're here, I'll be honest and say that I do indeed consider this an episode scorned by vengeful fans, who hate it for all the wrong reasons. I would give it a solid three and a half stars, or better.

"Cybermen" is Tom Baker's only tangle with this staple villain of the Dr. Who series; the clanking, droning, mechanical men bent on...gasp!...conquest of the universe (why do machines always want to conquer the universe?) He twice battled both the Daleks and the Sontarans, and crossed swords with the Master at least three or four times, but for the tin men, this his is his sole contribution. Apparently, fans of previous doctors found the Cybermen as they are portrayed in this episode to be extremely lame and toothless, and felt a good villain had been wronged with a weak portrayal. I have admittedly little interest in the other doctors, being a Baker freak, so I can't really say, though I admit the more mobile (and combustible!) versions I saw in "The Five Doctors were more threatening.

"Revenge" is an underrated episode for several reasons. First off, it makes excellent use of the underground caves in which it was primarily shot; given the show's modest (meaning pathetic) budget, Dr. Who episodes were generally stronger when shot on location than when they were entirely confined to sets. The costume design is very good, the script clever and full of double-crosses, the villains suitably evil (excluding the admittedly boring Cyberleader), and the plot imaginative and well-developed. I also thought the regular cast (the Doc, Harry & Sarah) and the guest starts worked very well together.

The story is, I think, one of the better and more inventive of the series, since it does not depend on the standard formula of A) the Doctor delivering some or other race from oppressive masters or B) the Doctor foiling yet another conquest of Earth by aliens. "Revenge" is about an earth beacon designed to monitor space traffic around Jupiter is quaranteened when a plague breaks out on board. Only three crewmen and a smarmy scientist named Kellerman, who is on board to study a newly discovered moon of Jupiter, remain alive on the dismal space station. Cue the Doctor and friends, who as usual arrive just in time to be blamed for causing the plague. Of course, the Doc quickly figures out that the plague is not a plague at all, but a poison delivered by a nasty mechanical slug which, as it turns out, answers to Kellerman, who controls it like a homicidal radio-controlled car (but then he's a homicidal guy). The Doc recognizes the technology as that of the Cybermen, and when he realizes Jupiter's new moon is in fact the blasted remains of planet Voga, whose population are the Cybermen's natural enemy, he puts two and two together: the tin men, still smarting from the beating they took in their last war with the Vogans, have arrived to wipe them out once and for all. Unfortunately, he does not do his addition in time to stop the Cybermen from showing up and knocking everybody cold with their silly head-mounted stun guns, and then forcing them to carry into the planet core the bombs which the metalheads plan to use to blow the planet to bits, thus eliminating the universe's most ready supply of gold (which said Cyberman find lethal) and allowing the Cyber army to, well, conquer everybody.

The story moves to the planet, where it turns out a scheming Vogan bigshot named Vorus has been planning all along to lure these last remnants of the Cybermen back to Voga and then blast them into tin foil with a big ass rocket. This is the story's nicest twist, and features a very unexpected double cross, but Vorus' scheming backfires all the same, and now it is a race to see which side's ultimate plan will carry the day.

This episode has some silly moments (those head-mounted guns are as intimidating as slingshots that shoot marshmallows), the Cybermen are indeed dull villains with their plodding gait and monotone voices, and there are some logical inconsistencies you can drive a truck through (if gold kills Cybermen, why are guns which fire gold bullets useless against them but handfulls of gold dust thrown into their chest apparatus fatal?...why isn't the gold-dust-laden air poisonous to them? Why don't the Vogans, the arch-enemies who defeated them in the space war, have weapons that would kill them?) But I feel none of these things does enough to drag "Revenge" down. It is a good, solid, fun episode from, if you will pardon the pun, the show's "golden age" and it deserves a second chance.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Crummy story, pretty nice DVD, January 13, 2011

By 

Little Roy Blue (Staten Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doctor Who: Revenge of the Cybermen (Story 79) (DVD)

I'm honestly baffled to see so many positive reviews of "Revenge of the Cybermen" here. According to the critical literature on Doctor Who, and in my own humble opinion, this story is one of the great clunkers of the Tom Baker era. If fans label creaky stuff like this a "classic," and encourage new viewers to check it out, we'll only perpetuate the unfair stereotype that the original Doctor Who was always cheapo rubbish.

In fact, many episodes of the original Doctor Who possess true intellectual sophistication, witty humor, and even effective production design (given the budget). "Revenge of the Cybermen," on the other hand, confirms all the negative stereotypes that Doctor Who was badly acted, badly made, and written by hacks. Almost every aspect of this production falls flat - including the static Vogon masks, the cardboard characterizations of the humans, the irksome music, and the menace-free Cybermen. In short, this serial isn't fit to kiss the posteriors of "The Caves of Androzani," "The Deadly Assassin," "The Aztecs," or any other genuine classic of the original series.

With that said, I can be a little kinder to this serial now. Parts of it are ... OK. The setup in Episode One, which involves a "plague" spreading through a space station, is somewhat creepy and involving. It would work better if the characters had real personalities, but it works OK as is. And Episode Three is pretty good, because that's when the Cybermen really get involved in the action - plus, the Doctor gets some great mocking dialog, as he baits the Cyberleader at length.

But the rest of the story doesn't work. The two Vogon characters have the same tedious argument over and over again, and never rise above being dull "types" (specifically: cautious old guy, hotheaded young guy). The location shooting at Wookey Hole is fairly effective, but the intercutting between these real caves and the overlit studio-set caves is highly distracting. The action scenes, meanwhile, fall totally flat; is there anything exciting about watching sparks fly out of a Cyberman's helmet, and a Vogon extra falling over very slowly in response?

In short, the serial is 95% a clunker, despite the always-entertaining presence of Tom Baker. However, the DVD package of special features is surprisingly decent. It comes with a making-of special, "The Tin Men and the Witch," in which various members of the production team frankly own up to the production's shortcomings. It's interesting to hear from producer Philip Hinchcliffe that he recognized the weaknesses of "Revenge" and tried to compensate for them, but lacked the time and money to do so effectively. (For an interesting point of contrast, watch the making-of documentary for the equally weak "Silver Nemesis," in which the production team acknowledges none of that serial's flaws.)

Other DVD features include a period interview with Tom, and a fun/nostalgic documentary about collecting Doctor Who on videotape during the early 1980s. All in all, I think the DVD more than does justice to this pretty awful serial. So I'd give * or ** to the serial itself, and *** to the DVD, which averages out to about **. This one is for dedicated fans only, I think.