Ah, the Cybermen. Always my favourite monsters, it must be said that they never really reached the heights of the Daleks. Whereas the Daleks got gems like ‘Evil of the Daleks’, ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’,¹ the Cybermen were regularly stuck with crummy, insert-monster-here scripts, and inconsistent motivations. Bionic giants from the planet Mondas, they came back to the Earth in 1986 to drain the planet of its energy — but they miscalculated and blew their own planet up. This, I fear, is only too typical of the general standards of their evil plans. For an emotionless, logical race, they did get angry and irrational an awful lot, too. Hence, I’m sure that Cybermen everywhere were only too happy to get a chance for a reboot.²

‘Rise of the Cybermen’ manages it nicely, if unspectacularly. In fact, it’s so very much an old-style Doctor Who parts one and two that it’s almost jarring, after a season and a bit of the new flavour. Slow, steady build-up of the monsters, the Doctor and his companions getting separated, even rebels who recruit a companion! Classic. A bit dull and awkward in places, but classic nonetheless.

And the Cybermen are awesome. Strong, powerful, logical, and almost innocently adorable voices. “Delete!” Brilliant, though I wish they wouldn’t repeat it. In fact, I wish they wouldn’t do cliffhangers like that. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back, back to the beginning!

After a bit of an issue in the TARDIS,³ the Doctor finds himself in a parallel Earth this week. It’s all a little bit dodgy, but not so much that the Doctor’s automatically wanting to overthrow the government. He is, however, more than a little concerned when Rose spots that her Dad’s alive, famous and rich in this reality. The old Time Lord has clearly learned his lesson after the events of ‘Father’s Day’, and is very very insistent that Rose mustn’t go near him. But how can he resist those puppy dog eyes? Meanwhile there’s an evil villain making homans into robotic drones…

And how evil is he? Very. Roger Lloyd-Pack pulls out all the stops to make John Lumic, rich bastard and scientific genius, the most over-the-top villain ever seen in Who.⁴ I can see how this might not work for some, but for me it seemed to fit the story perfectly. Perhaps he’ll get a little more depth in part two. The other stand-out this week is Mickey, though not for the same reasons. Given his own plotline, Noel Clarke excels, both in a lovely scene with his grandma, and in panicked torture scenes.⁵

David Tennant’s Doctor is going from strength to strength, too. I enjoyed his scenes with Mickey — the Doc’s always around women, it seems, and it’s amusing to see him dealing with blokes (well, dealing with blokes who don’t want to destroy the world). His hilarity at Rose’s ‘parallel equivalent’ is brilliant, too, as is his general plan to sneak in by being waiters rather than guests. Luckily for Rose, meanwhile, she’s getting her own little plot this week, though at times it comes off as a poor repeat of the aforementioned ‘Father’s Day’. Normally I love Jackie, and I was glad to have Pete back, but they’re just a bit wasted in this episode. Hopefully they’ll play a bigger part next week.

The story itself is a bit clunky. It keeps almost going places, then changing it’s mind. The TARDIS is dead, oh no it isn’t. You can’t see your Dad, oh alright I’ll take you. For an opening part that only really has to set things up for part two, it seemed inefficient. Only the Mickey plot really satisfied, with Lumic pottering along in a pretty standard mad scientist manner — getting his brilliant plans rejected and going ahead anyhow. Luckily, the direction is awesome this week, courtesy returning classic Who veteran, Graeme Harper. Cool angles, some cute handheld work when the Doctor and Rose go undercover, and the most awesome Cyberman entrance ever go a long way to making the story much better than it had a right to be. The first scene sums up the story to me; classic, almost stereotyped Who, but done with such enthusiasm and panache that it almost makes up for it.

1. Good to see a return to form in the title this week, too. ↩
2. If you like computer-puns, you’ll like this story. ↩
3. Odd, this. I thought it’d be hanging over their heads for the whole story, and then it goes and gets fixed. Still, if they were going to fix it like they did, then I’m glad they didn’t hold off on it, as it would’ve been something of an anticlimax. ↩
4. Well, second most. I think Zaroff will always have the upper hand. ↩
5. By the way, I feel I must protest at the state of Doctor Who these days. So far, we’ve had the Doctor topless, Mickey in his jocks, and Captain Jack completely naked. That’s every member of the TARDIS crew save one. Why in this day and age is there no equality for women? ↩

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Thursday, May 18th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as cybermen, Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.