The Longleat Cyberman - A Doctor Who Monster Story

Longleat Cyberman Chest Unit
In view of the BBC's mix and match approach to Cybermen costumes outside of the TV studio, I began to wonder what was the true origin of the Longleat costume's chest unit?
The unit generally matches those seen in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Wheel in Space but significant differences needed explaining; the central mesh and the circuit boards do not match any Cyberman of the 1960s, and there is no hole for one of the rod-like Moonbase guns to fit through. It looked like the chest unit might be a later replica, added to produce a complete Cyberman costume for the 1983 auction. The knowledge of Doctor Who fans was invaluable at this point: working from pictures I had posted, members of the Doctor Who Collectors Board realised that the interior circuits can be positively matched with a genuine chest unit - not to one from any 1960s Cyberman story, but to one featured in their sole 1970s outing, Revenge of the Cybermen, made in 1974! For this Season Twelve story, some original units from The Moonbase were modified and reused, and some new ones made from scratch.
	To determine whether this chest unit had been made in the 60s or the 70s it would be necessary to look inside. I discovered that behind the Revenge circuit boards the Moonbase circuits are still present, which are just black and white photographs of electronics stuck directly to the backboard. The fibreglass gun channel is also present on the interior of the unit. Coupled with the circuit board photos, this demonstrates that the unit was originally made for The Moonbase, and only later adapted for use on Revenge of the Cybermen. A new copy cast from an adapted unit would never have had either the gun channel or circuit photos.
At some point subsequent to Revenge the unit has been repaired. The gun channel opening has been filled, and two of the four control knob holes on the right perspex panel have been hidden with squares of tape to replace missing controls. Four tape squares have also been applied to the opposite window in a similar position to those first seen on The Moonbase Cybermen. The "window frames" on the unit have been slightly enlarged since use on the series. The alteration has been carefully carried out, with the black border edge detail reapplied. The repair also involved reattaching the perspex panels onto the inside of the unit with adhesive pads and the central mesh has also been attached to the interior. As this interior view shows, the inside of the mesh board still has a significant amount of glue residue present, used for its previous fixing on the outside.
My earlier doubts had been unfounded. The chest unit was definitely an original from The Moonbase; it was probably re-used on The Tomb of the Cybermen, and possibly even on The Wheel in Space. Most surprisingly, it had been adapted to become part of a Mark V Cyberman - the one seen here apprehending Tom Baker in Revenge of the Cybermen: Having uncovered the chest unit's unusual history, I returned to work on the main costume; there were still a further ten years to account for after the Radio Times publicity photos of 1973.
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