The Longleat Cyberman - A Doctor Who Monster Story

The Mark II Cybermen Costumes
Naturally enough, my attempt to establish the history of the Longleat Cyberman began with looking at the surviving episodes of the programme itself.
Episodes two and four of The Moonbase still exist and have been released on the Lost in Time DVD collection. Episode one involved the Cybermen only very briefly, and so its unfortunate absence does not hinder my search. Eleven Cyberman costumes were made for this story. As well as appearing in publicity photos, all eleven can be seen together marching towards camera in the opening shot of episode four. This shot clearly shows that the length of the leg-tubes varies between costumes, as does the placement of the ankle balls; some are right on the lower edge of the material, others are considerably higher, as they are on the Longleat Cyberman. Although not helpful in itself, such variations offered hope that it might actually be possible to identify one costume out of the crowd. The eleven costumes all appear in shot together again when the Cybermen spread out on the lunar surface near the end of episode four.
	It is possible to see that some costumes had their chest units secured with straps on the top and back, which then led through slits in the costume fabric and around the wearer's shoulders and waist inside the suit. The resulting strap slits in the costumes are very noticeable when seen without a chest unit and tubes obscuring the view (as revealed in a behind the scenes feature on BBC special effects from Late Night Line-Up in 1967). The Longleat Cyberman costume has no slits in the front for straps. This only made it possible to say with certainty that, where straps are visible, a particular costume was not the one I was looking for. Unfortunately the existing episodes of The Moonbase did not reveal any other detail which could positively identify the Longleat costume as a particular individual in that story. If the missing third episode should ever be recovered, I'll be looking at it very closely. The search moved on to their next appearance...
Doctor Who budgets were always tight, particularly by the end of each year's production block. To save the expense of making new Cybermen, the existing Moonbase costumes were reused on The Tomb of the Cybermen, filmed in June and July 1967 at the end of block four. One of the costumes became the Cyberman weapons test robot featured in the first episode's cliffhanger. In a further money-saving move, this costume's right arm was cut off to be used later in the story as a human character's cybernetic arm. Since the weapons robot was only a static dummy, the missing arm could be replaced by tubes and cables. An incomplete chest unit was attached, possibly the same unit used in pre-filmed sequences of a Cyberman being killed (which also had the front plate removed to expose internal wiring). The ankle balls seen on Cybermen in The Moonbase were retained on this suit (which was not the norm, as I would soon discover). The presence of the ankle balls was a point of similarity with the Longleat costume, but the missing arm meant that the test robot could immediately be eliminated as a potential Longleat Cyberman candidate.
	Eight of the ten remaining Moonbase costumes were again used as standard Cybermen. Despite there being nine transparent cells in the set, no more than eight Cybermen ever appear in The Tomb of the Cybermen. These eight costumes all had the ankle balls seen in The Moonbase removed. This was to allow the leg tubes to be tucked into the tops of new rubber boots, which replaced the lace-up variety used on the previous story. The fact that the Longleat costume has ankle balls attached did not seem to bode well for matching to any on-screen Cyberman. After many, many hours of work, and nearing the end of episode two of The Tomb of the Cybermen, the search had still not produced anything positive. Although I had so far been slightly more focused on trying to match the mask rather than the costume with an on-screen appearance, that was about to change dramatically on seeing the episode two cliffhanger...
At the climax of episode two, the Cybermen open a hidden cell of the tomb and out steps their Controller. The front of this costume - the tenth of the eleven re-used from The Moonbase - was left without a chest unit, the standard Cyberman helmet was modified into a special high-domed version, and extra sections of tubing were added to the shoulders and legs. If some of the tubes and the chest unit on the Longleat Cyberman were ignored, its resemblance to the Cybercontroller was striking; they had similar shoulder tubes, which I had not seen on any other costume; the ankle balls had been retained on both; and neither had strap slits in the chest. The sudden realisation that the Controller resembled my Cyberman stirred a faint memory: I had already considered this possibility in 1983 as an explanation of the Longleat costume's quirks - and forgotten about it. At the time, advice from Doctor Who Monthly or the Doctor Who Appreciation Society (or maybe both), had been inconclusive so I discarded the idea and gradually formed the vague suspicion that the costume might well be a replica. When I saw the newly recovered Tomb episodes years later, the Longleat costume's exact appearance was long forgotten and I never made the connection. Now really was the moment of truth - could my Cyberman be in Doctor Who after all?
	But it soon became apparent that this exciting discovery still might not allow the Longleat costume to be uniquely identified, because the eleventh and final costume from The Moonbase had also been used as the Cybercontroller; it became a stunt dummy used for a single scene, on screen for about ten seconds in episode four. Had the Longleat Cyberman perhaps played this very brief minor role, or had it been a star of the show - the "hero" costume worn by actor Michael Kilgariff in episodes two, three and four? Closer inspection of the stunt dummy's brief scene revealed that it was not a duplicate of the lead costume at all. Creating a stand-in for the Cybercontroller had simply been a matter of using a replica of the domed head, with an unmodified Moonbase costume - minus a chest unit - used for the body. There were no extra shoulder tubes or leg tubes added to the dummy, and even the thin black tubing seen on the regular Cybermen was not removed, as it had been from the lead Controller costume. As the ankle balls also remained in place, the stunt dummy had the distinction of being the only Cyberman bodysuit to survive unaltered from The Moonbase.
Against expectations, the Longleat costume might not only be traceable to a specific individual, but could potentially be a unique costume; a Moonbase Cyberman which later became the Cybercontroller from The Tomb of the Cybermen, one of the great icons among Doctor Who monsters! This rather startling possibility meant that a marked resemblance between the two costumes would not be enough proof to end my investigation; I needed to know for sure whether I had found the Cybercontroller costume or not.
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