The Moonbase

033 – The Moonbase
Doctor Who serial
The Cybermen plan their attack in their spaceship
Cast
Doctor Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
Companions Anneke Wills (Polly) Michael Craze (Ben Jackson) Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Others Patrick Barr — Hobson André Maranne — Benoit Michael Wolf — Nils John Rolfe — Sam Mark Heath — Ralph Alan Rowe — Voice from Space Patrol / Dr Evans Denis McCarthy — Voice of Rinberg Barry Ashton, Derek Calder, Arnold Chazen, Leon Maybank, Victor Pemberton, Edward Phillips, Ron Pinnell, Robin Scott, Alan Wells, Mark Heath — Scientists John Wills, Sonnie Willis, Peter Greene, Keith Goodman, Reg Whitehead — Cybermen Peter Hawkins — Cybermen Voices
Production
Directed by	Morris Barry
Written by	Kit Pedler
Script editor	Gerry Davis
Produced by	Innes Lloyd
Executive producer(s)	None
Incidental music composer
Production code	HH
Series	Season 4
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Episode(s) missing	2 episodes (1 and 3)
Date started	11 February 1967
Date ended	4 March 1967
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Underwater Menace The Macra Terror

Doctor Who and the Cybermen

Author	Gerry Davis
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	14
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	20 February 1975
ISBN

The Moonbase is the half-missing sixth serial of the fourth season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 11 February to 4 March 1967. The story features the return, and first redesign, of the Cybermen. It is the fifth now-incomplete Doctor Who serial to be released with full-length animated reconstructions of its two missing episodes.

The TARDIS makes a bumpy landing on the Moon in the year 2070 and, dressed in spacesuits, the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie, Polly and Ben venture outside and enjoy the low-gravity environment. Jamie is injured while they fool around.

The only building on that part of the moon’s surface is the Moonbase, a weather tracking and managing station staffed by an international crew managed by the bullish Hobson. They are using a gravity machine called the Gravitron to control the Earth’s weather. When the time travellers arrive, the Doctor ingratiates them and does detective work because some of the crew have been collapsing in comas with a strange virus. International Space Control responds to the crisis by quarantining the Moonbase. The station doctor, Evans, was the first one to get the disease, and in a delirium talks of a silver hand but immediately dies of the disease.

Another of the Moonbase crew, Ralph, has disappeared in the food stores, and the Moonbase radio transmissions are being monitored from somewhere else on the moon. Jamie has been placed in the sickbay where, feverish and delirious, he begins mumbling about a "Phantom Piper", a figure which Jamie believes appears to a McCrimmon before he dies. While attending to Jamie, Polly sees a large figure leave through the door. When Hobson, the Doctor, Ben, John and Nils arrive to collect Evans' body, it has disappeared. They then leave to investigate where this 'piper' is. Polly goes to get water, and Jamie wakes up to see the 'piper' advancing on him.