December 16: Silver Nemesis Parts Two & Three

The Cyber-Leader with his troops. (Silver Nemesis Part
Two) ©BBC

Part two continues the generally pleasant feeling established by part one, but this episode doesn't feel quite so choppy.  There are still some abrupt cuts and such (such as another trip back to 1638, this time for no good reason whatsoever), but in general it hangs together.  And as with the first episode, there are some good moments and some not-so-good moments.  I actually sort of enjoy the skinhead stuff, but I'm not at all sure why they're in this story to begin with.  The stuff with the Cyber-ship (both its arrival and the scene of Ace blowing it up) is executed well, though, and there's something marvelous about the Doctor blocking the Cybermen's signal with jazz.  Lady Peinforte and Richard also fare well here, with just the right amount of menace.  (If you're interested, you can spot writer Kevin Clarke in one of their scenes -- he's the only pedestrian at roughly 5'40" to actually react to two people walking down the street in 17th-century dress.)  Richard is in fact one of the highlights of the entire serial, giving us a common man's viewpoint after finding himself 350 years in the future, and he's tremendously watchable as a result.  And meanwhile the cliffhanger, with the huge Cyber-fleet revealed, is also pretty good.

Sadly, it all falls apart in part three.  Suddenly it turns out that the Doctor is in fact using the validium to set a trap for the Cybermen, but all the other villains obligingly wait their turn before charging in after Nemesis.  The subplot with de Flores and Karl borders on incoherent in the broadcast version (their motivations are clearer in the extended VHS version -- a version which curiously didn't make the transfer over to DVD, even though Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric both did (in improved versions, even)), and apparently Kevin Clarke's decided to turn Lady Peinforte into a raving lunatic, even though she seemed to be in complete control of her faculties when we last saw her in part two.  There's also the completely superfluous stuff with Mrs. Remington (a "celebrity" cameo, although you can be forgiven for not having any idea who she is -- Dolores Gray was apparently better known for theatrical work than anything else), which does go on a bit without contributing anything whatsoever to the plot.  This might have been acceptable in a four-part version, but this is another story with 22 minutes of deleted and extended scenes and so anything as unnecessary as that sequence should have been cut down to the bone.

This is also the episode with the incredibly daft idea that throwing gold coins at Cybermen is fatal to them, which means we get an action sequence of Ace running around with a slingshot, taking down Cyberman after Cyberman with a handful of change.  The gold arrowheads were ludicrous enough, but this is just risible.  And each group of villains, as previously noted, waits their turn before being defeated: first de Flores and Karl, then Lady Peinforte, and finally the Cyber-Leader.  The Peinforte stuff also involves a threat about revealing the Doctor's secrets, revealing things about "Gallifrey ... the old time, the time of chaos" -- which is frankly taking this idea of reintroducing mystery into the character too far too soon.  It feels clunky, and while bringing up the "Doctor who?" question isn't bad, the rest is just awkward.

But anyway, the whole thing ends with the Doctor tricking the Cyber-Leader into believing that the Nemesis statue is under the Cybermen's control and then using it to blow up the Cyber-fleet.  "Just like you nailed the Daleks," Ace remarks, which just makes one wonder why a story so similar to Remembrance of the Daleks (the Doctor uses an ancient Gallifreyan artifact to destroy the plans of an old foe) was allowed to make it to full production in the first place.  The ending music is nice though.

They went through all sorts of hoops to ensure that Silver Nemesis would be broadcast on Doctor Who's 25th anniversary (including rearranging the running order when they learned that coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul was going to delay transmission of the season by a month), but you have to wonder why they bothered.  Other than the constant silver references and Nemesis's 25-year orbit, there's nothing about this to suggest that this is an anniversary story, and worryingly, the final result is barely worth the effort.  It's a pale shadow of Remembrance of the Daleks, rendered perfunctory and occasionally jarringly choppy by the three-part format.  It just about manages to hold together for the duration, but upon reflection it's ultimately disappointing on a number of levels (scripting, design, publicity -- even some of the acting).  This is easily the weakest tale of season 25.