Plot
In the sewers of London, two workers are attacked by an unseen force. In the meantime, The Doctor is trying to make repairs to the TARDIS's systems, in particular the chameleon circuit, which will enable the ship to alter its external form to something more suitable than the police box it normally looks like. His efforts have little success though and cause the ship to behave chaotically in-flight, much to Peri's consternation. The Doctor eventually manages to pilot the TARDIS to Earth in the year 1985, where he treats Peri to the sight of Halley's Comet, although Peri is more worried about the prospect of crashing into it.
Back on Earth, the former Dalek mercenary Lytton (from Resurrection of the Daleks) has apparently taken up a new life as a London gangster, and is plotting a £10 million diamond raid on the Bank of England with his cohorts Griffiths, Payne and Russell. The four intend to enter the bank the same sewers that the two workmen were ambushed in, though Lytton activates a strange transmitter before they enter the sewer. This emits a distress signal that the Doctor picks up, and he lands the TARDIS in a scrapyard in Totter's Lane to investigate. The TARDIS changes shape, albeit to a rather conspicuous ornamental stove. After some searching around the area, he determines that the transmitter in that area is a dummy, and returns to the TARDIS to find the real source. They arrive at the sewer entrance (where the TARDIS reshapes itself into an organ) and find the transmitter, but are attacked by two policemen who are under Lytton's control. After dealing with them, the Doctor and Peri enter the sewers.
In the sewers, Payne falls behind the other three, and is beaten to death by the force that attacked the workers. In the meantime, Lytton and the other two come to a dead end, and find a Cyberman approaching them. Griffiths shoots it, but Lytton disarms him and surrenders himself to the Cybermen, who have a base in the sewers. Russell flees and encounters the Doctor and Peri, and after an initial misunderstanding he reveals himself to be an undercover police officer, who is investigating Lytton.
On the Cybermen's adopted homeworld of Telos, two slaves named Bates and Stratton escape from their work party and decapitate a Cyberman so that they can use its helmet to disguise Stratton as a Cyberman and enter Cyber Control. The Cybermen have captured a time-travelling vessel from Bates and Stratton, who intend to reclaim it and escape from Telos.
The Doctor, Peri and Russell return to the TARDIS, where they are ambushed by the Cybermen, who have also brought Lytton and Griffiths with them. Russell manages to kill two of them, but is then killed himself, and the Cyber Leader orders the other Cybermen to kill Peri.
However, the Doctor threatens to self-destruct the TARDIS if the Cybermen do not release her. The Leader agrees to spare their lives, and reveals that the Cyber Controller (whom the Doctor had previously thought destroyed) is still alive on Telos. Reluctantly, the Doctor sets course for Telos, and is imprisoned in one of the TARDIS's rooms along with Peri, Lytton and Griffiths. During the journey to Telos the Doctor fills Peri and Griffiths in on the history of Telos and its former inhabitants, the Cryons, who the Cybermen apparently wiped out in order to use their refrigerated cities to keep the Cybermen in cryogenic stasis. All the while, the Doctor notes that Lytton seems oddly familiar with the history of the Cybermen, Telos and the Cryons.
Meanwhile on Telos, it is revealed that most of the hibernating Cybermen have somehow become damaged, and go on a rampage destroying anything in their path when revived. The TARDIS arrives on Telos (now looking like an ornamental gate), but in the depths of the Cybermen's cryogenic tombs rather than in Cyber Control thanks to the Doctors interference. Just as the Cybermen prepare to take the four there, a damaged Cyberman breaks out of its tomb and destroys one of the other Cybermen, before the leader disposes of it. Lytton, Griffiths and Peri escape in the confusion, but the Doctor does not. Peri is nearly killed by another rampaging Cyberman before two Cryons - who it turns out are not extinct after all, and have been sabotaging the tombs, resulting in the damaged Cybermen - deal with it and take Peri to safety. In the meantime, Lytton and Griffiths meet with another Cryon, and it transpires that Lytton has been working for them all the time. Griffiths is offered £2 million in diamonds (which are very common on Telos) if he will help Lytton to capture the time vessel. The two subsequently track down Bates and Stratton, who it transpires are failed attempts of Cyber-conversion who have had their arms and legs replaced by mechanical equivalents. The four agree to work together in order to escape Telos.
The Doctor is imprisoned in a cold storage room with Flast, the former leader of the Cryons. She reveals that the Cybermen intend to prevent their original homeworld of Mondas from being destroyed, by using their timeship to divert Halley's Comet into Earth, which will render it incapable of protecting itself from an attack by Mondas the following year. It is at this moment that the Doctor realises that, much to his disgust, he has been sent by the Time Lords to avert this situation. By a stroke of luck however, the cold storage room happens to be filled with vastial, a mineral that becomes a powerful explosive when raised significantly above freezing point. The Doctor uses some to dispose of a guarding Cyberman then gives Flast a sonic lance to heat up the vastial to detonation point before he escapes. Flast puts the sonic lance in a box of vastial which she then hides away, and shortly afterwards the Cybermen arrive and suspecting that she helped the Doctor escape, torture her to death by throwing her out into the much warmer corridor, where her blood quickly boils away.
Lytton, Griffiths, Bates and Stratton get through Cyber Control, but Lytton is captured near the landing pad. The Cyber Controller demands that Lytton tell him his plans, and when he refuses to do so, has two other Cybermen torture him by crushing his hands. Lytton still does not tell them anything though, and the Controller orders that he be converted into a Cyberman. The other three make it to the landing pad, but their efforts prove to be for nothing as a Cyberman emerges from the time ship and shoots them dead. In the meantime the Doctor manages to reclaim the TARDIS and the Cryons return Peri to him. However, they also reveal that Lytton was working for them all along, rather than the Cybermen as the Doctor assumed, and he agrees to try to save him.
The TARDIS arrives in Cyber Control (with the chameleon circuit stuck in police box form once more), where the Doctor finds a partially converted Lytton who begs the Doctor to kill him. The Doctor still tries to free Lytton, but the Controller arrives with a gun. Lytton attacks the Controller, who in turns strikes back and kills Lytton. The Cyber Leader and his lieutenant also arrive, but end up killing each other in the crossfire. The Doctor then grabs one of the dropped guns and shoots the Controller, finally destroying it. However, it's too late to save Lytton, leaving the Doctor feeling guilty at having misjudged his character. He and Peri escape in the TARDIS, and seconds later the rigged box of vastial detonates, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that obliterates Cyber Control and the tombs.
Read more about this topic: Attack Of The Cybermen
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“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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