The Tomb of the Cybermen

Story Code: MM / Season 5	UK Airdate: 2 Sep to 23 Sep 1967	Doctor: Patrick Troughton
First airings by location	UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite	Previous Story / Next Story

This story aired in the following four countries. They are listed in chronological order according to known airdate. (Refer also to Selling Doctor Who for expanded airdates.)

Listing for "The Tomb of the Cybermen" for Hong Kong, from 3 October 1969 – but replaced with The Abominable Snowmen

Listing for "The Tomb of the Cybermen" for New Zealand, from NZ Listener, 1970

Australia	Jul 68	b/w
Singapore	Feb 70	b/w
Hong Kong	Jun 70	b/w
New Zealand	Aug 70	b/w

• The films were evaluated by the Australian censors on 10 January 1968, but they had to be reclassified due to issues of violence. Likewise, the New Zealand censors, who viewed their copies in October 1969, had to assess the serial twice.

• Curiously, the same four countries to screen this, were also the same four to screen The Evil of the Daleks. Why did Gibraltar, Zambia and Nigeria not pick up the serial in 1973?

• In DWM #187 (June 1992), it is claimed by writer, Adrian Rigelsford, that the film prints for The Tomb of the Cybermen were sent to Hong Kong when war broke out in an unnamed country...

• The serial was recovered in full from Hong Kong in late 1991. After its May 1992 VHS video release, it was subsequently made available for inclusion in TV syndication packages:

United States	1992	b/w
Canada	1990s	b/w

• The serial screened on UK Gold in October 1998.

Movement of the Films

Being one of the missing stories from the 1960s to have been recovered in its entirety, and for which there were only a few countries in which it aired, The Tomb of the Cybermen is a perfect case study for investigating and tracking the possible movements made by the prints.

Let's bullet-point the key dates:

• Australia:
  • Censored: 10 January 1968
  • Airdates (regional): from July 1968
  • Last Repeat: December 1969 (Perth)
  • Films returned to London: 4 June 1975

• New Zealand
  • Censored: 24-30 October 1969
  • Airdates (regional): August to November 1970
  • Films presumably destroyed or junked by late 1974

• Singapore
  • Airdate: February 1970

• Hong Kong
  • Originally scheduled for October 1969
  • Airdate: June to July 1970

What we can see here is that Australia had prints from January 1968 until June 1975. New Zealand held prints for over a year, from October 1969 to November 1970. New Zealand was the last of the four countries to screen the serial - so it's unlikely that New Zealand sent its prints to Singapore or Hong Kong.

Of note, the recovered prints all exhibited a splice around the 12-minute mark, which suggests this was where the broadcaster inserted a commercial break. The published timeslots for this serial in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong are only 25 minutes, whereas in Singapore, the slot was 30 minutes. This suggests these films may have previously been used in Singapore.

Hong Kong originally had the serial scheduled for October 1969, but that screening was replaced by The Abominable Snowmen. The serial did eventually air in June 1970. Why the delay?

• Maybe there was an issue with censorship? (Both Australia and New Zealand experienced censorship issues with this serial.)
• Maybe the expected film prints did not arrive on time? (Melbourne and Hobart repeated the serial in September 1969; Perth was the last region to repeat the serial in December 1969. Was Hong Kong waiting for Australia to send these prints, and because of the late repeat in Perth, Hong Kong had to wait? After all, the original Hong Kong scheduled date was October 1969...)
• Were the prints they had unuseable (damaged?) and they had to source prints from somewhere else, but had to wait until that country had finished with them first? (If so, Singapore is the most likely candidate, as they had commercials and there is a four month window between the two screenings.)
• If RTV in Hong Kong did acquire a second set of prints, they probably destroyed their original set. And if as far as they were concerned the 4-parter had been destroyed, could that be why the "other" set managed to survive destruction?

SUMMARY

We don't know for sure how many prints there were in circulation. The maximum would be four (one for each country), and the minimum three, with Australia and New Zealand each having their own, and one set shared between Singapore and Hong Kong.

For what it's worth, we favour their having been four prints from the out-set, one for each country, but with Singapore having to supply Hong Kong with replacements, as that best accommodates the fact that the serial was delayed and screened in Hong Kong months after its original scheduled airdate. It would also explain why there would be "commercial break" splices in prints recovered from a country that didn't have breaks during Doctor Who...

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