Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter
Written by Gerry Davis
Produced by Philip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Michael E. Briant
This story introduced one of the most unfortunate elements of Cyberman "mythology", and one that would bedevil the poor creatures throughout the remainder of the classic series. It seems that gold is somehow inimical to their function. The reason for this is infuriatingly vague. Evidently, gold "clogs up their chest units, and in effect suffocates them". Okay. Wait, really? Okay.
It's all to do with that new backstory I mentioned. In this story, Nerva Beacon is being used an aid to navigation, warning space ships of the presence of a new asteroid which drifted into the solar system and settled into orbit around Jupiter. That asteroid is actually Voga, the Planet of Gold. During the last Cyber War, the humans discovered the Cybermen's unfortunate weakness and developed a gold-based weapon called the "glitter gun", and achieved a glorious victory. Now the last vestige of the Cyber race wants to wipe out Voga and its gold before rebuilding their army from spare parts they're lugging around with them on their ship.
That's all fairly sketchy, but it basically makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that the Vogans are completely unable to defend themselves against an assault by two Cybermen. This is a planet where gold is simply laying around all over the place, and they use gold for basically all of their metal needs. Except, it would seem, for bullets. Because the Vogan guns are completely unable to harm the Cybermen in any way. The poor guys are slaughtered.
Instead the Vogans have Vorus, a recklessly ambitious leader who dreams of the day when his people can come out of hiding and begin trading their gold with other civilizations. His plan was to lure the Cybermen to Nerva by revealing Voga's presence, and then use the rocket to destroy the Beacon with the Cybermen on board. Like much of this story, that very nearly makes sense if you don't think too much about it.
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