History Trivia / DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen

** Creator/KevinStoney (Tyum) was also the {{Big Bad}}s [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan Mavic Chen]] and (ironically) [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E3TheInvasion Tobias Vaughn]].

** The team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier.

** On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Creator/ElisabethSladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where stuntman Terry Walsh had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill.

*** In the original script, most of the action took place on board the Nerva beacon. The Nerva crew at this stage include a scientist named Anitra Berglund, and Warner was female. The Cybermen have been smuggled onto Nerva by Kellman before the story begins, with the aim of destroying a gold-rich asteroid in the station's vicinity. Kellman has betrayed a group of miners (led by a man named Evans, and also including Jones and Williams) who have been marooned on the asteroid for a quarter of a century; they eventually kill him by dynamiting a tunnel. The Doctor manages to reprogram the Cybermats to destroy the Cybermen using gold dust he has retrieved from the asteroid.

*** In the absence of a concrete idea of how Baker would be portraying the new Doctor, Davis originally elected to essentially write the character as a timid, reserved figure in the vein of the Second Doctor, including the use of such signature elements as his 500-year diary.

** Creator/MichaelWisher returns, this time playing Magrik. He had previously played John Wakefield in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E3TheAmbassadorsOfDeath The Ambassadors of Death]]", Rex Farrel in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E1TerrorOfTheAutons Terror of the Autons]]", Kalik in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters Carnival Of Monsters]]" and Davros in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]" [[note]]The latter story was filmed ''after'' "Revenge of the Cybermen, but broadcast before it.[[/note]]
** Creator/KevinStoney (Tyum) had previously played {{Big Bad}}s [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan Mavic Chen]] and (ironically) [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E3TheInvasion Tobias Vaughn]].

* PropRecycling: The secret radio transmitter disguised as a clothes brush, used by Kellman, is the very same prop that appears in ''Film/LiveAndLetDie''. The prop was handed over by none other than Creator/RogerMoore himself when he visited Creator/TheBBC in 1973. He later told the ''Magazine/RadioTimes'' that the props master, not recognising Moore, had paid him 2/6 for the item.[[note]]Two shillings and sixpence, still legal tender at the time, which post-decimalization converted to 13p, or £1.61 today.[[/note]]

** Kevin Stoney (Tyum) had previously played {{Big Bad}}s [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan Mavic Chen]] and (ironically) [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E3TheInvasion Tobias Vaughn]].

** Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe hated the production, feeling it belonged to the old way of doing things. He didn't like the Vogans, the masks, or the way the actors played Vogans with "Shakespearean projected shouting". He was particularly unhappy with the incidental music score by Carey Blyton, which had been commissioned by director Michael E. Briant (who had previously worked with Blyton on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E3DeathToTheDaleks "Death to the Daleks"]]). Hinchcliffe made substantial edits and changes to the score for the final transmitted version, along with getting BBC Radiophonic Workshop staffer Peter Howell to provide a few replacement music cues uncredited. After this, Dudley Simpson would be the only composer employed on the show all the way through to the end of Season 17, with the notable exception of the two serials directed by Douglas Camfield, who refused to work with Simpson.

* WorkingTitle: ''Return of the Cybermen'', which got reused for the EarlyDraftTieIn adaptation by ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho''.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Gerry Davis' original script was sufficiently different from what made it onto the screen that in 2021, Big Finish adapted his drafts as a retrospective EarlyDraftTieIn audio story titled "Return of the Cybermen", with Creator/ElisabethSladen's daughter Sadie Miller taking on her mother's role and Christopher Naylor as Harry.
** In the original script, most of the action took place on board the Nerva beacon. The Nerva crew at this stage include a scientist named Anitra Berglund, and Warner was female. The Cybermen have been smuggled onto Nerva by Kellman before the story begins, with the aim of destroying a gold-rich asteroid in the station's vicinity. Kellman has betrayed a group of miners (led by a man named Evans, and also including Jones and Williams) who have been marooned on the asteroid for a quarter of a century; they eventually kill him by dynamiting a tunnel. The Doctor manages to reprogram the Cybermats to destroy the Cybermen using gold dust he has retrieved from the asteroid.
** Prior to this, the space station would be operating as a casino.
** In Davis' earlier drafts, the Cybermen appear much earlier, which explains the presence of the Cybermats on the Beacon. In the broadcast version, the Cybermen do not arrive until the end of Part Two, so how the Cybermats got onto the Beacon is never explained.
** In the absence of a concrete idea of how Baker would be portraying the new Doctor, Davis originally elected to essentially write the character as a timid, reserved figure in the vein of the Second Doctor, including the use of such signature elements as his 500-year diary.

* WorkingTitle: ''Return of the Cybermen''.

** Creator/MichaelWisher returns, this time playing Magrik.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Gerry Davis' original script was sufficiently different from what made it onto the screen that in 2021, Big Finish adapted his drafts as a retrospective EarlyDraftTieIn audio story titled "Return of the Cybermen", with Elisabeth Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller taking on her mother's role and Christopher Naylor as Harry.

* ScienceMarchesOn: The Doctor refers to Jupiter having 13 moons (including the asteroid Voga, which was captured by Jupiter's orbit fifty years before the story's setting). Many more moons have since been discovered[[labelnote:*]]as of 2018, Jupiter has '''79''' known moons[[/labelnote]]. In fact, Leda was discovered in September 1974, whereas the story was broadcast in early 1975, meaning Science Marched On between recording and transmission!

* TroubledProduction: The serial suffered from a long string of bad luck attributed by the director to witchcraft. When scouting the ancient cave system of Wookey Hole — a place associated by the locals with bad luck and supposedly the grave of an ancient witch — for its suitability for location shoots, the director's wife found some Iron Age arrowheads and decided to take them home, unwittingly calling an ancient curse on the production team. First, the team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier. The boats used in the cave scenes repeatedly broke down; one production team member had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia, and another was taken seriously ill. On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Elisabeth Sladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where a stuntman had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill. An electrician broke his leg when a ladder collapsed under him, and the pyrotechnician found nothing would light or work correctly. The director took the arrowheads from his wife and reburied them, after which production ran smoothly.

* ActingForTwo: Michael Wisher, credited as the Vogan engineer Magrik, also provides the voices of Colville, the crewmember on the Earth ship, and the Vogan technician who tries to warn Nerva.

** Michael Wisher returns, this time playing Magrik.

** A more mundane explanation for all this mess is available: there was less oxygen so far underground, and the production team stayed significantly longer than usual, depleting it more than the average visitors, which would inevitably create an accident-prone atmosphere. The trouble with the boats has been attributed to the company that provided them not being fully briefed on the circumstances in which they would be used.

** Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe hated the production, feeling it belonged to the old way of doing things. He didn't like the Vogans, the masks, or the way the actors played Vogans with "Shakespearean projected shouting". He was particularly unhappy with the incidental music score by Carey Blyton, which had been commissioned by director Michael E. Briant (who had previously worked with Blyton on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E3DeathToTheDaleks "Death to the Daleks"]]). Hinchcliffe made substantial edits and changes to the score for the final transmitted version, along with getting BBC Radiophonic Workshop staffer Peter Howell to uncreditedly provide a few replacement music cues. After this, Dudley Simpson would be the only composer employed on the show all the way through to the end of Season 17, with the notable exception of the two serials directed by Douglas Camfield, who refused to work with Simpson.
* ExecutiveMeddling: One of the reasons why this ended up becoming the first Doctor Who story to get a home video release. A fan poll had been conducted in 1983 to select the first story to be released on video, but no-one remembered to take out the stories that the BBC no longer held copies of, resulting in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E1TheTombOfTheCybermen The Tomb of the Cybermen]]" being the runaway winner of the poll. It was decided to at least release a story featuring the Cybermen, effectively narrowing it down to this story or "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock Earthshock]]", the only two Cybermen stories the BBC held all episodes of at the time -- and despite "Earthshock" being the more recent and more popular of the two, the BBC mandated that the first video release had to be a Creator/TomBaker story, as he was the most popular of the Doctors up until that point.

* TroubledProduction: The serial suffered from a long string of bad luck attributed by the director to witchcraft. When scouting the ancient cave system of Wookey Hole — a place associated by the locals with bad luck and supposedly the grave of an ancient witch — for its suitability for location shoots, the director's wife found some Iron Age arrowheads and decided to take them home, unwittingly calling an ancient curse on the production team. First, the team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier. The boats used in the cave scenes repeatedly broke down; one production team member had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia, and another was taken seriously ill. On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Creator/ElisabethSladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where a stuntman had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill. An electrician broke his leg when a ladder collapsed under him, and the pyrotechnician found nothing would light or work correctly. The director took the arrowheads from his wife and reburied them, after which production ran smoothly. (A more mundane explanation is available: there was less oxygen so far underground, and the production team stayed significantly longer than usual, depleting it more than the average visitors, which would inevitably create an accident-prone atmosphere. The trouble with the boats has been attributed to the company that provided them not being fully briefed on the circumstances in which they would be used.)
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** In Gerry Davis' original script, most of the action took place on board the Nerva beacon. The Nerva crew at this stage include a scientist named Anitra Berglund, and Warner was female. The Cybermen have been smuggled onto Nerva by Kellman before the story begins, with the aim of destroying a gold-rich asteroid in the station's vicinity. Kellman has betrayed a group of miners (led by a man named Evans, and also including Jones and Williams) who have been marooned on the asteroid for a quarter of a century; they eventually kill him by dynamiting a tunnel. The Doctor manages to reprogram the Cybermats to destroy the Cybermen using gold dust he has retrieved from the asteroid. The original version was sufficiently different from what made it onto the screen that in 2020 it was announced that Big Finish would be adapting it as a "Lost Story", with Elisabeth Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller taking on her mother's role, and Christopher Naylor as Harry.

** In Davis' earlier drafts, the Cybermen appear much earlier, which explains the presence of the Cybermats on the Beacon. In the broadcast version, they do not arrive until the end of Part Two, so how the Cybermats got onto the Beacon is never explained.
** In the absence of a concrete idea of how Creator/TomBaker would be portraying the new Doctor, Davis originally elected to essentially write the character as a timid, reserved figure in the vein of the Second Doctor, including the use of such signature elements as his 500-year diary.

** Kevin Stoney (Tyum) had previously played [[TheBigBad Big Bads]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan Mavic Chen]] and (ironically) [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E3TheInvasion Tobias Vaughn]].

* PropRecycling: The secret radio transmitter disguised as a clothes brush, used by Kellman, is the very same prop that appears in ''Film/LiveAndLetDie''. The prop was handed over by none other than Creator/RogerMoore himself when he visited Creator/TheBBC in 1973. He later told the ''Magazine/RadioTimes'' that the props master, not recognising Moore, had paid him two shillings and sixpence for the item.

* TroubledProduction: The serial suffered from a long string of bad luck attributed by the director to witchcraft. When scouting the ancient cave system of Wookey Hole — a place associated by the locals with bad luck and supposedly the grave of an ancient witch — for its suitability for location shoots, the director's wife found some Iron Age arrowheads and decided to take them home, unwittingly calling an ancient curse on the production team. First, the team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier. The boats used in the cave scenes repeatedly broke down; one production team member had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia, and another was taken seriously ill. On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Creator/ElisabethSladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where a stuntman had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill. An electrician broke his leg when a ladder collapsed under him, and the pyrotechnician found nothing would light or work correctly. The director took the arrowheads from his wife and reburied them, after which production ran smoothly. (A more mundane explanation is available: there was less oxygen so far underground, and the production team stayed significantly longer than usual, depleting it more than the average visitors, which would inevitably create an accident-prone atmosphere.)

* TroubledProduction: The serial suffered from a long string of bad luck attributed by the director to witchcraft. When scouting the ancient cave system of Wookey Hole — a place associated by the locals with bad luck and supposedly the grave of an ancient witch — for its suitability for location shoots, the director's wife found some Iron Age arrowheads and decided to take them home, unwittingly calling an ancient curse on the production team. First, the team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier. The boats used in the cave scenes repeatedly broke down; one production team member had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia, and another was taken seriously ill. On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Creator/ElisabethSladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where a stuntman had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill. An electrician broke his leg when a ladder collapsed under him, and the pyrotechnician found nothing would light or work correctly. The director took the arrowheads from his wife and reburied them, after which production ran smoothly.

* RecycledSet: The set from "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace The Ark in Space]]" is reused and redecorated.