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LONGLEAT CYBERMAN.com
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It didn't make the programme, but the picture stayed on my hard drive and would eventually lead to the creation of this website. |
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Early in 2007 while browsing coverage of a film and TV costume sale at Bonhams of London (Alec Guinness' Star Wars cloak was making the news), I followed a link to the Dr Who Collector messageboard and discovered a world of prop and costume collecting that I had never really suspected was out there. Seeing that it was exactly their area of interest, I posted my Cyberman picture. After explaining that I owned the whole costume and not just the head, the response was surprising. It soon became apparent that monster costumes from Doctor Who are far more scarce than I had ever imagined and a complete monster from the 1960s is virtually unheard of. Inspired by the meticulous and dedicated research employed by some collectors, I dragged the costume out of its hiding place for some photos and began to examine it really closely for the first time. I realised that since the costume last saw the light of day, significant changes had occured which greatly improved my chances of discovering its true history....
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In 1983 when I bought the costume, The Tomb of the Cybermen was considered a lost story, with no copies known to exist. Incredibly, film reels of all four episodes were discovered in the archive of a Hong Kong TV station in 1992 and returned to the BBC.
So the original source material was now unexpectedly available, along with other Cyberman episodes. Add to this the development of the PC and DVD, and it would now be possible to examine these episodes in previously unheard of detail. Crucially for a research project of this type, the internet had appeared; I now had access to a wide range of reference photos, plus the accumulated wisdom of fans and collectors. The chance of success did not appear high, but I hoped that with careful study of the TV episodes and Doctor Who material on the internet, my Longleat Cyberman might at last be identified.
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The main points of this search are set out on the following pages. To try and keep things clear when different Cyberman costumes are being described, my costume will usually be referred to as the "Longleat Cyberman" or "Longleat costume", since that's how I tend to think of it.
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