Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Moonbase

1967. It's hard to review stories where half of the episodes are missing, and its hard to critisise the black and white stories based on their aesthetics. These are the difficulties I face, as I listen/watch The Moonbase, the second Cyberman story from far back in 1967.
      As I said in my review of Tomb, The Tenth Planet was important in Doctor Who history for two reasons; it introduced the concept of Regeneration, and it introduced the Cybermen. As the most common recurring monster of Troughton's era, the Cybermen returned in this serial. It needed to reintroduce the concept while spicing up the monsters.
     For the story, the Cybermen were given a robotic makeover (pictured) as well as new voices and a new aim. (It's explained in bonus material from around 1988 that these are a different subspecies of Cyberman than in The Tenth Planet.) I find that while these Cybermen lose one type of fear from their counterparts (in that they are less human, and therefore they are less easy to envisage as the next stage of humanity,) but they do have their own fear - an eerie emotionless face and voice.
     The story is basic, and more-or-less a rerun of The Tenth Planet - The Cybermen attack the Doctor, his companions and a specialist team while cooped up in a base. In this case, that base is the Gravitron Weather Controller, or the titular moonbase. The base has been affected by a virus that is strangely selective, and when the Doctor arrives, he soon finds that an old enemy are involved... (The Cybermen, obviously.)
     Only the second and fourth episodes remain, leaving me to have to listen to the audio recordings of the first and third. While it doesn't make up for the loss of picture, I can certainly get a slim idea of what's going on. It doesn't feel right to criticise the story. But the truth is that it is dull, repetitive and doesn't make use of any of the concepts with any skill.

Thanks.