Cybermen, corporate espionage, and Patrick Troughton sneaking around in a bowler hat—it’s basically “Doctor Who: The Spy Who Tripped Over a Teacup.”
Short Synopsis
The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe uncover a sinister plot by shady tech mogul Tobias Vaughn, who is secretly in league with the Cybermen. Their plan? Use microchips to take over the world. UNIT shows up for the first time to help save the day, and the Doctor proves that even cybernetic invasions can be foiled with a bit of sneaky improvisation and some convenient explosions.
Extended Storyline
The TARDIS materializes on contemporary Earth (well, the swinging ‘60s version of it), and the Doctor immediately finds himself knee-deep in corporate skullduggery. Enter Tobias Vaughn, the smarmiest businessman ever to grace the show, who runs the ominously named International Electromatics. He’s got it all: a shady monopoly, endless henchmen, a disturbing fondness for monologuing, and—oh yes—secret Cyberman allies stashed in his basement.
Vaughn’s master plan? Slip mind-controlling circuits into consumer products, giving him and the Cybermen a ready-made army of meat-puppet humans. You’ve heard of “planned obsolescence”? This is “planned assimilation.”
Luckily, this is the story where UNIT makes its grand entrance under the command of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart(back from The Web of Fear with a shiny promotion). UNIT are called in to investigate, which gives us the proto-version of the Doctor teaming up with a military outfit—a formula the show will milk for years.
The Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie team up with UNIT, dodging Vaughn’s thugs, sneaking around corporate headquarters, and hacking into computers before “hacking” was even a thing. (Zoe, naturally, does most of the actual brainwork, while Jamie mostly tries not to break the computers by poking them.)
Eventually, Vaughn unleashes his Cyberman army on London in one of the show’s most iconic sequences—Cybermen marching out of the sewers and down St. Paul’s Cathedral steps like they’re on their way to invade a really depressing tourist brochure. Unfortunately for Vaughn, the Cybermen double-cross him (because of course they do), and he ends up trying to bargain with the Doctor to stop his own allies. Spoiler: this does not go well for him.
UNIT brings the big guns, literally, and after some excellent explosions and a lot of running around, the Cybermen are defeated. Earth is saved, UNIT is established, and the Doctor gets to wear that fabulous bowler hat one last time before slipping back into the TARDIS.