January 28: "Cyberwoman" (TW)

It's really hard to see what the point of this episode is.  I can see what director James Strong is going for -- he wants to make this a scary episode, with lots of handheld camera shots and dark shadows for Lisa the Cyberman to get lost in.  He even partially succeeds.  But what is Chris Chibnall trying to do with this script?

In some ways the script wants to be tense and claustrophobic and terrifying, and those are probably the moments where "Cyberwoman" comes the closest to succeeding.  The moments that pit Jack against Ianto work surprisingly well, even if Ianto's repeated accusations that Jack is a monster and "worse than anything locked up down there" ring rather hollow (they want it to be like Margaret's accusations against the Doctor in "Boom Town", but works even less well here because Jack's trying to stop a rampaging alien monster from destroying them the way Torchwood One was destroyed, so it's really hard to keep sympathizing with Ianto by the end).  The tension as they point guns at each other is very effective (even if it's hard not to see this as a success on Strong's part rather than Chibnall's).

Ianto looks at the partially-Cybernized Lisa. ("Cyberwoman") ©BBC

But there are some massively stupid things going on in "Cyberwoman".  The first one is the appearance of Lisa herself.  They bend over backwards to explain why her body is still there when we saw in "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" that all the Cybermen were taking was the brain (because they needed to move fast or something), just so they can present us with this bizarre sexualized creation.  It's not just the literal breastplate, or that fact that the Cybermen cut a groove on the butt plate to make it look like she has a butt.  It's not even the way the bellybutton is highlighted and exposed.  It's the fact that she's wearing Cyber-heels, for heaven's sake.  It's like a technofetishist's wet dream.  There's also no explanation as to why she wasn't sucked into the Void along with the rest of the Cybermen in "Doomsday", beyond a passing reference to using "Earth technology", which could mean anything.  (The associated website tried to explain this -- and it's not a good sign when you have to explain plot holes on your official website -- by arguing that the Cybermen started using our resources to convert people, and that only things that had originated in Pete's World were pulled into the Void.  Fair enough, but that doesn't explain why Lisa seems to be the only person made entirely with "our" Earth parts, or why there's only one Cyber-conversion unit made with our resources. -- or why they decided to start giving their fellow Cybermen defined breasts.)

There's also the stupidity of Ianto hiding this thing in Torchwood's basement -- it's understandable, entirely human stupidity, but it's still stupidity -- and the longer it goes on, as he refuses to see the evidence of his own eyes, the less we feel for him.  Owen snogging Gwen while in the mortuary cooler is in keeping with what we know about Owen.  What's not in keeping is Gwen deciding to kiss him back.  Lots of people stop and stare at Lisa even after being told to run and do things as quick as they can while others buy them time that they're currently wasting by stopping and staring.  And the fight between Lisa and the pterodactyl is also daft -- and it doesn't seem to have done a damn thing one way or the other.  And why do all the doors to the top-secret base obligingly open for Annie the pizza delivery girl?

Here's the thing: you can forgive stupid things if there's a good reason behind it, or if it adds to the drama in some meaningful way (such as the fifth Doctor not drinking the queen bat's milk right when he gets it, because his impending death overriding just about everything else is part of the reason the end of The Caves of Androzani works so well).  But there's no sign of that here.  There's no point to any of this.  At least Chibnall's last script ("Day One") had something to say about sexuality in Western culture (even if that something appeared to be little more than, "Hey, Western culture is sexualized!").  There's not even that here.  This looks like it was designed to have a sexy Cyberwoman scare everyone and nothing else.  There don't even seem to be any real consequences at the end of it, as we see Ianto back to work and cleaning things up.  It's unbelievably shallow, worryingly misogynist, and ultimately pointless.