A bizarre scene from ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ remains undiscovered to this day – and may have been written by a paranormal entity…
It may sound like something straight out of Doctor Who itself, but the 1975 adventure ‘Revenge of the Cybermen‘ was beset with unusual happenings, including a strange scene between Sarah Jane and Harry that seemed to write itself.
First, a little context. For those of you who have never seen ‘Revenge of the Cybermen,’ some of it takes place on Voga, the legendary planet of gold. In reality, this is the Wookey Hole cave system in Somerset, where filming took place under the leadership of director Michael E. Briant.
“Everyone had to stay down in Wookey Hole,” said Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) speaking in a 2003 interview. “You couldn’t go away after your scene like you normally can wander off and eat a bun or a Mr Kipling cake or something. And it was very oppressive. And the guy who was in charge said, ‘The Witch of Wookey doesn’t like you here, she doesn’t like you here…'”
Indeed, although it doesn’t appear in ‘Revenge of the Cybermen,’ there is a strange witch-shaped rock formation in the caves, which the production team reportedly dressed up in a witch’s cape – and this certainly didn’t help the atmosphere on set.
Sure enough, Elisabeth Sladen and her co-star Ian Marter weren’t in the best frame of mind when they took a moment to run lines in-between takes. “Ian Marter and I were sitting under the Witch of Wookey,” Sladen recalled, “and I said, ‘Ian, I can’t actually understand this scene, why is it here?’ He said, ‘You know, Sladen, I’ve been looking at that and I can’t understand it.’ I said, ‘Well, can we ask Mike [Briant.]’ And we marked it. When I’m not sure of a scene, the scene before that I’ve done, I mark in a red pencil, so I know to quickly nip over to the director…
“And we finished that day’s shooting and I said, ‘Mike, we haven’t done this.’ And he said, ‘What scene?’ And Ian and I… there was a mark in our thing, and we looked at it, and there was no scene. And it was a scene between Sarah and Harry. And if you put this in the documentary, I really will be made out to be stupid, but I promise you that’s exactly what happened.”
It seems, then, that ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ may well be the first Doctor Who story in history to have been co-written by a paranormal entity, if Elisabeth Sladen’s story is to be believed. Sadly, there is no chance of ever finding out what it said given that Sladen and Marter have since passed away. By all accounts, it doesn’t sound like it would make much sense – but then, for any Doctor Who fan who has sat through ‘Ghost Light‘ or Doctor Who: Flux, it probably wouldn’t be a hurdle.
So were the two actors simply letting their imaginations run away with them? It’s possible, but it’s also worth noting that this wasn’t the only weird occurrence during the filming of ‘Revenge of the Cybermen.’ According to the director Michael E. Briant, he had a strange encounter down in the caves when he was planning for the shoot. He was working alone, and had been locked in by Wookey Hole’s security guards. He was to let them know when he was ready to leave, and they would unbolt the gate.
But whilst he was down there, a man in scuba-diving gear entered the caves and walked past him. Naturally, Briant checked in with the security team when he was ready to leave and enquired as to the man’s identity – only to discover that the gate had been locked the whole time, and nobody had been in or out. Was this the ghost of a potholer who had died in the caves some three months earlier? The staff at Wookey Hole seemed to think so and, apparently, Briant wasn’t the only person to have seen him.
Perhaps the most famous tale from ‘Revenge of the Cybermen‘s filming involves the famous motorboat. In ‘Revenge of the Cybermen,’ Sarah uses the vehicle to mount a daring escape from the Vogans, and sails across an underground lake.
But when she came to film, the boat took on a life of its own and tried to ram Sladen into the cavern wall. The actor was forced to jump into the water to save herself, and had to be rescued by the stuntman Terry Walsh, who later fell ill.
Then there were the malfunctioning pyrotechnics, and the electrician who broke his leg when a ladder fell from beneath him. Then, the story’s armourer fell ill, and the assistant floor manager had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia.
So was ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ really under attack by forces from another realm? Had the Cybermen employed a rather unique method of stopping the Doctor in his tracks? Or was it all just a series of unfortunate coincidences?
At the time, Michael E. Briant wondered if his actions had brought ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ under some kind of curse. Prior to the shoot, he’d discovered some Iron Age arrowheads down in the cave system, which he had taken home for his wife as souvenirs. From that moment on, the production team was beset with issues. It was only when he returned the arrowheads to Wookey Hole that the strange goings-on seemed to stop. So perhaps there was a paranormal explanation after all.
Whatever the reason, it still leaves us with a mysterious ‘missing’ scene that was either borne out of the actors’ imaginations, or composed by the Witch of Wookey. Who knows what these missing sections of ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ would have been like if they’d gone before the cameras, and what they would have done to the Doctor Who canon…
So tell us, reader: what do you think is the explanation for the production problems on ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’? Had the team really invoked an ancient curse? Let us know in the comments below.
That was a great little strange account from Sladen!! It would also seem that it was corroborated by Marter, too! Pity that both of them have since passed.
Keep up with these little titbits!
I really enjoyed this!