The Moonbase
The TARDIS lands on the surface of the moon in the year 2070, and the Doctor provides Ben, Polly and Jamie with pressure suits so they can explore outside the TARDIS. They spot a massive lunar base in the distance, but when Jamie damages his space suit, reaching the base becomes a matter of urgency. Inside the base, the Doctor and his friends are shocked to find that Jamie won’t be alone in the sick bay – a plague is sweeping through the moonbase’s population seemingly at random, leaving those it strikes comatose. Worse yet, even the comatose patients have been disappearing without a trace, leaving the base – whose gigantic Gravitron controls the tides and governs Earth’s weather – dangerously short-staffed. The Doctor tries to find out what disease is slowly claiming the moonbase’s crew, only to find that the base has been deliberately infected by the Cybermen, who intend to take control of the base and use it as a staging area for an invasion of Earth.
written by Kit Pedler
directed by Morris Barry
music not creditedGuest Cast: Patrick Barr (Hobson), Andre Maranne (Benoit), Michael Wolf (Nils), John Rolfe (Sam), Alan Rowe (Dr. Evans, Space Control voice), Mark Heath (Ralph), Barry Ashton, Derek Calder, Arnold Chazen, Leon Maybank, Victor Pemberton, Edward Phillips, Ron Pinnell, Robin Scott, Alan Wells (Crew), John Wills, Peter Greene, Reg Whitehead, Keith Goodman, Sonnie Willis, Ronald Lee, John Clifford, Barry Noble (Cybermen), Peter Hawkins (Cyberman voice), Denis McCarthy (Controller Rinberg’s voice)
Broadcast from February 11 through March 4, 1967
Note: The master tapes of episodes 1 and 3 were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, leaving only episodes 2 and 4 in the archives. The missing episodes are still available as audio recordings, and are presented in that form both on CD and on the Lost In Time DVD set.
LogBook entry & review by Earl Green
Cast: Elizabeth Adare (Elizabeth), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Christopher Chittel (Chris), Jason Kemp (Robert), Ray Burdis (Johnson)
The Headhunter has finally gotten Lucie and puts her to work…in an office. Of course, it’s in Telford and she thought she was going to work in London, but it’s a nice enough place and she settles in quickly, having easily gotten over her dreams of travelling through time. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds that his TARDIS won’t work without Lucie (handiwork of the Time Lords) and accepts a time ring as a means to locating her. But Lucie is already finding trouble and even once she gets her memory back via the Doctor, she can’t keep from getting fired. As this involves her finding herself in the middle of an alien jungle during major hostilities, its hardly back to the dole queue on Monday. When the Doctor learns the sinister truth behind the “company” for whom Lucie was working, he tries to throw a spanner in the works only to be thrown himself by who is trying to do business with them. They’re a group with whom the Doctor has had plenty of experience and they give new meaning to the term “hostile takeover”.