Product Details

• Actors: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison
• Writers: Sydney Newman
• Producers: Peter Bryant
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: August 24, 1994
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301801261
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,116 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  #23 in	Video > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Television > Doctor Who > Patrick Troughton
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• This is item 5 in The Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker (1974-1981) Series.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 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 (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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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.

5 of 5 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 (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My first WHO episode, March 6, 2002

By	Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In this extended Who story, The Doctor, Sarah-Jane and Harry return to the Nerva-Beacon, the space station seen in the earlier serial "Ark in Space", but at an earlier point in its existence. Now Nerva is filled with corpses - men killed by a mysterious plague spread by small robots called "cybermats". The Doctor also realizes that the station is orbiting the planet Voga - a world-sized hunk of gold. Because gold is famous as the only known weapon against the insidious "Cybermen", a race of mechanized men intent on conquering the universe, the Doctor realizes that they are responsible for the outbreak on Nerva. Down below, different Vogan factions argue over the fate of their world - with the established government intent on keeping their planet under wraps. Were the gold planet to make itself known, it would invite certain attack from the remnants of the evil Cybermen. (In an aside, the Doctor notes that the Cybermen were stopped because of the "glitter-gun"). Unbeknownst to the ruling Vogans, a rogue faction has its own plans - lure the last of the Cybermen to Voga, and destroy them with a huge missile they are feverishly working on. (The human Professor Kellman, initially revealed as an agent of the Cybermen, actually works for these rogue Vogans.) With the Cybermen gone, these Vogans will lead the planet out of its fearful hiding and take their place as the planet of wealth. The Cybermen appear too early, however, trapping the Doctor and the last of Nerva's crew on the station. Strapping huge bombs to Harry, the Doctor and Kellman, they force our heroes to travel down into Voga, where the bombs will destroy the planet. Beamed down Voga before the strike, Sarah-Jane is captured by suspicious Vogans and must convince the captors that she doesn't work for the Cybermen.

FOR ALL OF YOU DR. WHO FANS: My knowledge of the Cybermen is pretty limited, so I can't really compare this to their other episodes, and I just loved this one. (The Cybermen were pretty scarce in comparison to other Who-fiends like the Daleks - they wouldn't appear until "Earthshock" in the Davidson years, and had missed the critical Pertwee years completely) I'm biased towards it because it was one of my first Who episodes, because I loved the settings (both the Nerva station and the dark and watery caves of Voga) and mostly because you've got Liz Sladen as Sarah-Jane and that can't be bad. The Cybermen can't rely on their superior numbers as they had in previous stories and would again on "Earthshock", but the script gives them incredible resilience to other weapons (though living in a planet made entirely of the only substance known to harm Cybermen, the Vogans' weapons are harmless against them; the Cybermen however dispatch their enemies with nifty guns mounted in their helmets). It's also a great Tom Baker episode (it was still his first season), having him stare down the Cybermen despite their obvious might. "You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers scuttling about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship! " he says of them. If anything, this is the episode where we hear the Doctor utter that unforgettable phrase "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!"

FOR THE REST OF US: this is even a better show. Doctor Who has a simple premise which it works to great effect - the timelord who travels through time and space, and the poor human slobs who have to tag along with him. The show can easily go from 12th century China to London of the distant future; from South Croyden to the planet Skaro, though you never feel lost. This is mostly due to the wonderful characters (I loved the conflict between hawk and dove Vogans, a pristine example of how Dr. Who plunks us down on worlds we've never heard of and immediately establishes complex relations between its inhabitants.) Cheesy special effects abound, but that's part of the show's charm (compare to the superior effects of the less sucessful "Space 1999").