An Hour of Who a Day: 07/20/14

July 20: Revenge of the Cybermen Parts Three & Four

400! Revenge of the Cybermen Part Three is Doctor Who's 400th episode -- quite a milestone (and the halfway point for the entire series, as of time of writing). And it helps that this is probably the most interesting episode of the story, as we see Tom Baker being dangerously flippant with the Cyberleader and forced to travel to the center of Voga with a Cyberbomb strapped to his back, in order to blow the place up. (Voga, remember, is the source of all the gold that was so deadly to the Cybermen in the last Cyber-war -- and yes, this is the story that introduces the gold weakness.) Tom Baker is very entertaining in this scene -- it looks like the Doctor is playing with fire and knows it, trying to get a rise out of the Cybermen: "You've no home planet, no influence, nothing. You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship...." The Cyberleader tries to defend his race by blaming their defeat on Voga, but the Doctor will have none of it. "It was a glorious triumph, for human ingenuity," he says. "They discovered your weakness and invented the glitter gun, and that was the end of Cybermen except as gold-plated souvenirs that people use as hat stands."

But in any event, bombs strapped to the back and sent to blow the planet up. We also learn that Kellman has actually been working for the Vogans, trying to lure them to Voga so that Vorus can blow them up. For some reason he hasn't discussed this at all with their leader, Tyrum (as played by Kevin Stoney, who was last seen as Tobias Vaughn in the last Cyberman story), and so this is what the civil war is about? Or something? It looks like Gerry Davis hasn't bothered to really give much motivation to this, and the cause has to be largely inferred. Either way, Kellman's actually working for the Vogans, and all he had to do was kill an entire station of people to enact Vorus's plan -- so it's still hard to be on his side.

Doesn't matter, though -- he's killed in a rockfall at the cliffhanger that also knocks the Doctor out. This means that we get a somewhat unusual cliffhanger, as Harry finds him and tries to remove the bomb, not knowing (like the audience does) that the release mechanism is bobby-trapped...

Fortunately he's warned off by Lester, one of the Doctor's fellow bomb carriers from Nerva, so tragedy doesn't strike. And when the Doctor learns that Harry caused the rockfall and tried to remove the bomb, he bellows "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" and passes out again. The camera cuts away, but not before we get a marvelous look of "gee, thanks" from Ian Marter.

The rest of the episode isn't that exciting, unfortunately. There's some farting around with the Vogans' rocket, while the Cybermen decide to load Nerva Beacon full of outlawed bombs and send it toward Voga (though not before the Cyberleader attempts to kill the Doctor with a violent shoulder rub). The Doctor is able to just barely prevent Nerva from crashing into the planet -- a sequence which gives us the silliest "hurtling towards the ground" effect ever: first they show Nerva crashing toward Voga by just zooming the camera in (which doesn't work since the stars therefore appear to be closing in as well), and then someone's gotten the idea to take a tube, decorate it with a rocky landscape, and then spin it really fast -- as if the Beacon is going to crash into a giant spinning chocolate log.

But the Beacon is saved and the Cybermen are destroyed and everything is fine again. Unusually for a season-ender, Revenge of the Cybermen ends with a cliffhanger, as it seems the Brigadier has an emergency and needs the Doctor's help (which will tie in with Terror of the Zygons, the first story of season 13 but made at the end of this season).

On the surface there's not really anything wrong with Revenge of the Cybermen -- it's competently made, and there are some nice moments here and there. Even the music isn't as inappropriate as it was in Carey Blyton's last score, for Death to the Daleks (although there are still moments where the music insists on going "plod...(plod)...plod...(plod)"). No, the main problem with this story is that you never get a sense that anyone's really invested in this. It feels less like an effort to work out some personal demons on the writer's behalf or to make something strikingly visual or memorable (as About Time notes, they missed the chance to do a definitive "body horror" story here by focusing on the Cybermen converting people) and more like someone's realized they haven't done a Cyberman story since 1968 and so maybe they should. It's not the mess you may have heard -- which may be because it was the first Doctor Who story ever released on home video (in an edited form, no less)⁹⁰, and so people had a greater opportunity to be disappointed by it -- but it's by no means a classic. It feels more like a leftover from season 11 -- which should say it all, really.

This is the exception rather than the rule for season 12, however. Tom Baker's (and Philip Hinchcliffe's) first season has been a smash hit, giving the show a new sense of energy and vitality that was lacking last season. The decision to also go in a more "serious" direction has paid off marvelously -- the way in which these stories treat their themes has been incredibly successful. It's also paid off for the audience -- the ratings have been extremely healthy for this season. It's a shame the season is so short, but what we get is largely high-caliber, and a definite triumph for everyone involved.

⁹⁰ Allegedly they took a poll at the 20th Anniversary celebration at Longleat for which story fans wanted released on video first ("allegedly" because this story gets mentioned a lot, but never with a source attached), and the winner was The Tomb of the Cybermen -- which didn't exist at the time. So the powers-that-be figured any Cyberman story would do (not that they had many options at that point, the state of the archive being what it was) and put out this one instead.