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The Doctor and Adric
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At the entrance to a largely uncharted cave system on Earth, a party of troopers prepares to descend. Professor Kyle is the only survivor of a group of palaeontologists and geologists who have been surveying a cave full of fossils. The troopers, led by Lieutenant Scott, enter the caves. As they do so, two black figures, follow them. Outside, Walters, the soldier in charge of a tracking scanner device, notices the screen flare.
In the TARDIS, The Doctor and Adric have a heated argument. Adric is angry about the lack of attention and respect he receives compared to Nyssa or Tegan Jovanka. The argument ends with Adric wanting to be taken back to his home planet Terradon, a feat The Doctor claims is impossible due to it being in E-Space. Instead The Doctor brings the TARDIS to Earth in the year 2526. As they all exit, bar Adric, they discover they have arrived in a dark underground cave full of fossils. Welcome by the distraction The Doctor discusses the fate of the dinosaurs with his other two travelling companions, Nyssa and Tegan, and postulates that their demise was due to a massive asteroid crashing into the Earth. They move elsewhere in the caves until Nyssa finds a metallic door hidden behind a rock fall.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Scott and his troopers are making good progress, in another part of the cave system, when one of the troopers hurts her leg and has to turn back. However, she and her helper soon killed by the strange black figures. Snyder, waiting outside with Walters, decides to find out why the scanner trace of the wounded party has stopped moving. She too ends up reduced to an organic puddle on the ground. Another group of troopers, Mitchell, Carter and Bailey, who have also gone to investigate, suffer the same fate.
| The Androids |
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Unaware of the fate of the other troopers Lieutenant Scott’s main group arrive at the main cave and confront The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan. Suddenly they are all attacked by the two black figures who turn out to be androids with laser weapons set into the palms of their hands. The troopers try to fight back, but to no avail. Watching the action through a camera placed in one of the androids’ heads are three Cybermen. The Cyber Leader orders the people in the cavern destroyed.
With The Doctor’s assistance, and also that of Adric who has left the TARDIS to see where the others have got to, the androids are destroyed. This allows The Doctor to investigate the hatchway, which he correctly deduces the androids were programmed to protect. To his horror The Doctor discovers the hatchway is concealing a bomb. He deactivates it just as the Cybermen send a signal to try to detonate it. Following the signal back to its source in the TARDIS, The Doctor and his companions, along with the remaining troopers and Kyle, arrive on a massive space-freighter which is about to leave a space station and head back to Earth under the command of Captain Briggs and her deputy Berger. Earth is on red alert due to an interstellar conference being held there, but Briggs has been given clearance and is determined to deliver her cargo on time and gain the bonus for doing so.
| The Cyber Leader |
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While The Doctor and Adric investigate the space-freighter’s hold, Lieutenant Scott Scott and the troopers remain in the TARDIS. Unbeknown to The Doctor and Adric they are being observed on monitor screens by the Cyber Leader, who has identified The Doctor and is determined that he must suffer for the Cybermen’s past defeats. Two crew members, Vance and Carson, are killed, and the space-freighter’s security officer, Ringway, arrests The Doctor and Adric.
The two prisoners are taken to the bridge, where they watch as a power surge is detected. This has been caused by the Cyber Leader activating his personal guard. Briggs orders the guards positioned around the hold to contain whoever is down there. The Cyber Leader’s guards meanwhile stir in their cocoons and break out into the hold. Scott, Tegan and the troopers have ventured out of the TARDIS, and they find themselves surrounded by awakening Cybermen.
The space-freighter’s crew are unable to stop the advancing Cybermen and fall back. Ringway reveals himself as being in league with the Cybermen and holds Captain Briggs, Berger, The Doctor and Adric hostage. They manage to overpower him and close the doors just as the Cybermen appear. The Cyber Leader orders the door burnt through, but The Doctor rigs up the space-freighter’s anti-matter stabilising container and temporarily prevents the Cybermen from breaking in. However, the Cybermen then detonate an explosive and blast their way onto the bridge. Ringway is killed and the as more Cybermen are being been revived, the Cyber Leader informs The Doctor that the Cyber-race wish to destroy the Earth.
| Captain Briggs |
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In the hold, Lieutenant Scott and his party find themselves facing more Cybermen than they can comfortably deal with, and try and return to the TARDIS. Two Cybermen await them there and they try to force their way through. The Cybermen are destroyed, but Kyle is killed and Tegan is captured and taken to the bridge. Lieutenant Scott and two troopers again leave the TARDIS, armed with the Cybermen’s own weapons.
The Cybermen incorporate a machine into the flight controls of the space-freighter. The Cyber Leader reveals that the purpose of the conference on Earth is to unite the planets in a war against the Cyber race. Its destruction will be a psychological victory for the Cybermen.
The Cyber Leader forces The Doctor and Tegan to take him and his Lieutenant on board the TARDIS, leaving Adric, Captain Briggs and Berger on the bridge of the space-freighter. Adric decides that he must try to decipher the three logic codes that are locking the space-freighter on a collision course with Earth. He manages to solve two of the codes and is reluctant to leave, when Lieutenant Scott and the remaining troopers decide to leave in the last remaining escape pod. Adric therefore is left alone on the bridge continuing his task as the space-freighter plunges ever closer to Earth.
| Demise of a Cyberman |
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Due to Adrics tampering the space-freighter, partially freed from Cyber control, starts to travel back through time, watched from the TARDIS by The Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and the Cyber Leader. When distracted The Doctor jumps the Cyber Leader and rubs the gold edge of Adric’s badge for mathematical excellence against his chest unit. The creature writhes in agony and The Doctor then snatches its gun and fires into its chest unit, killing it.
Adric is interrupted in his attempt to solve the last code as a wounded Cyberman blasts the console before dying. Having finally run out of time Adric watches helplessly as the image of prehistoric Earth grows larger on the screen. While inside the TARDIS, The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa watch helplessly in silence as the scanner shows the space-freighter, with Adric still aboard, explode on impact with the Earth.
As the credits roll in silence, a close up of Adric’s badge of mathematical excellence lies broken on the TARDIS floor…
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