June 29: "Nightmare in Silver"

I'm not quite sure what goes wrong with "Nightmare in Silver".  The premise is sound enough -- make the Cybermen scary again, as we were told over and over in the publicity material -- and author Neil Gaiman has a proven track record.  But somewhere along the way, "Nightmare in Silver" turned into a thoroughly pedestrian affair mixed with some genuinely problematic elements.

The Cybermen advance across Natty Longshoe's Comical Castle.
("Nightmare in Silver") ©BBC

This episode's big draw was the return of the Cybermen, in an effort to make them genuinely scary, like they hadn't really been since the 1960s.  To that end, these "upgraded" Cybermen have a number of tricks up their sleeves that we haven't seen before.  The most effective one is the introduction of the Cybermites, insect-sized creatures that can you turn you into a Cyberman -- this is a genuinely clever move, and the fact that they could be lurking anywhere, ready to convert you, adds to the tension (or at least it would if they'd actually gone down this road).  The scene of the Cybermites streaming out of the dead Cybus Cyberman's eyes might be the best shot in the show.  All the other new tricks range from acceptable (the increased speed) to the weird (they can spin their heads all the way around) to the ludicrous (they can detach body parts -- okay, decoy head, silly but fine, but a scurrying Cyberhand that attacks you like a Facehugger from Alien?  Really?).  And then there are all the other bits, like developing immunities to weapons (and the Cybermites, to an extent) that feel like stealing from Star Trek: The Next Generation's Borg.  Fair enough, I suppose, given that the Borg often felt like Star Trek stealing from the Cybermen, but it still means that they don't come across as particularly original.

And here's the first problem: if your stated goal is to make the Cybermen scary, you need to use the most effective tool in their arsenal -- being converted into a Cyberman.  Part of the reason things like The Tomb of the Cybermen work as well as they do is that they play on that.  "You shall be like us," the Cyber Controller grates in that story, but we get little in the way of that here.  Mr. Webley is the most effective because he's partially converted, but people like those two troopers and the two children get a blinking light attached to their heads and that's it.  No body horror, no people dragged away or instantly converted by Cybermites.  We're told the Cybermen are dangerous and terrifying, but we don't see enough evidence to really believe that.

The other major problem is the inclusion of Artie and Angie, the two children Clara babysits.  To be frank... why are they in this story at all?  There doesn't seem to be anything requiring their presence (there's a suggestion that children's brains are needed by the Cybermen because they're clever, but that's immediately (as in, within the same line) discounted in favor of the Doctor's brain), and they tend to be a drag while they're around.  Well, that's not fair; Artie is actually rather likeable, as he actually seems to be interested in his surroundings, but Angie is presented as an obnoxious teenager, which is as much fun as it sounds.  I'm all for realism, but did no one think that having Angie walk into a room full of soldiers and declare that she's bored was taking things too far?  She's incredibly unpleasant to be around, and it's frankly something of a mercy when the Cybermen put her in a "walking coma".

So we've got new look not-actually-very-scary Cybermen and a kid and his annoying sister wandering around, but there are some good moments here.  The best one is the partial conversion of the Doctor himself, mainly because Matt Smith is so good portraying both the Doctor and the Cyber Planner -- it's a surprisingly nuanced performance for a character that seems to involve a lot of smug shouting, but Smith pulls it off.  And I'm happy any time Warwick Davis shows up in anything, and his portrayal of Porridge/Emperor Ludens Nimrod Kendrick Cord Longstaff XLI doesn't fail to deliver.  The resolution of the storyline, where Porridge activates the planet-imploding bomb and then his imperial ship comes and rescues everyone, should feel like a massive copout but doesn't.  And the Cyber redesign looks nice -- and the Cyber-tombs underground have nice visual callbacks to The Tomb of the Cybermen, just like Attack of the Cybermen should have done.

But in the end "Nightmare in Silver" fails to deliver.  The feeling you get, watching this, is that this should have undergone either one more rewrite or several fewer.  It feels like Neil Gaiman's authorial voice was slowly edited out of the episode, but nothing was brought in to replace it, and the purpose behind some of the decisions (such as the presence of the kids) was lost in the rewrites.  It's not incompetent, and like all Doctor Who there are good moments in here if you look for them, but the final result falls far short of the intended goal.

Oh and look: in fine old tradition, they've misspelled Kit Pedler's name as "Pedlar" in the closing credits.