Our first two-parter of this series takes the TARDIS to a London with zeppelins in the skies and Pete Tyler alive and well and a millionaire, thanks to hawking a drink called Vitex. (Which you might remember as one of the products in his flat in "Father's Day".) Yep, nineteen episodes into the revived series and they've decided to do a parallel universe story. Fortunately we don't see too many duplicates between Pete's World (as it'll be called in "Doomsday") and our regular world, so the actors aren't using this as an opportunity to do something different from normal -- and in fact the two who do show up in both universes (Noel Clarke as Mickey/Ricky and Camille Coduri as Jackie) don't play significantly different versions of themselves: Ricky is more intense than Mickey, and this Jackie seems a lot more stuck-up than "our" Jackie, but that's about it. (Incidentally, we get confirmation of the "+1" dating, with Mickey commenting that it's right when they left their universe, on 1st February, and that Jackie is claiming that she shares a birthday with Cuba Gooding, Jr., even though she's a year older and is actually turning 40.172) Rose really wants to find Pete, and when the Doctor is forced to choose between her and Mickey, he chooses Rose. Even though Mickey has by this point replaced her as the audience identification figure, being a lot more likeable and sympathetic -- check out the scene between the Doctor and Mickey in the darkened TARDIS console room, where they both seem really comfortable with each other, if you need proof.
So then why is this set in a parallel universe? It's not to destroy it, as in Inferno, and while it's nice to see Shaun Dingwall back as Pete Tyler, it's unlikely that's the main impetus either. No, it looks like this is designed to jettison all the backhistory of the Cybermen and start afresh. (And in fact, this story started out as another Big Finish remake, like last year's "Dalek" (which was a remake of Rob Shearman's own Jubilee): this time of Marc Platt's "genesis of the Cybermen" story Spare Parts -- although you can be forgiven for not realizing that, as there's very little overlap between the two. (Nevertheless, Marc Platt gets a "thanks to" credit during the end titles.)) No one apparently wanted to untangle all the Mondas/Telos stuff, so we get a brand-new beginning here. Instead of being created on Mondas as a desperate response to deteriorating conditions there (if Spare Parts is to be believed), the Cybermen of Pete's World were created on Earth by a wheelchair-bound genius named John Lumic. It seems no one mentioned Davros to writer Tom MacRae (and MacRae is on record as having to be brought up to speed on Doctor Who when he wrote this, so he wouldn't have known about Davros on his own).
But that's fine; other than the "it's been done" factor, there's no real reason the Cybermen couldn't have been created by a Davros-like character. The problem with the episode as broadcast, though, is that Roger Lloyd-Pack is woefully miscast as Lumic. Lloyd-Pack seems to be taking the opportunity to play Lumic as one-note as possible, with wide staring eyes and a melodramatic tone to every one of his lines (one online commentator -- I don't remember now who -- described the performance as if Lumic is spending the entire time touching cloth, which is as good as a description as you're likely to find). It's thus incredibly hard to take Lumic seriously, and even when his Cybermen are stomping around he's still essentially a buffoon of a villain.
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| Lumic's Cybermen stomp around the grounds of Pete Tyler's mansion. ("Rise of the Cybermen") ©BBC |
But they still look pretty good (even if I still prefer the Earthshock design), and thanks to some good direction their big reveal is held back until the end, when they burst into Jackie Tyler's birthday party and kill the President of Great Britain (as played by Don Warrington, who Big Finish fans will recognize as Rassilon from various Doctor Who audios). And look! It's the return of Graeme Harper, last seen directing Revelation of the Daleks in 1985; there's nothing quite as visually striking as anything in either of Harper's '80s stories (partly because stylistically, the rest of television had caught up with him by 2006), but there are still a lot of nice touches, with a number of blurred shots and out-of-focus elements in the extreme foreground while we concentrate on something further back in the shot.
It's not a perfect first half, but it's got enough to keep us engaged and wondering what will happen next time. (And there's no "next time" trailer to tease us for this episode either -- apparently because the episode was running long as it was, but it's still a good move to keep us in the dark.)
172 Well, sort of. Cuba Gooding, Jr. was indeed 39 in 2007, but his birthday is actually January 2nd. But in American dating, where the month comes first, that's written as 1-2-1968 -- which, if you think it's British dating with the day first, looks like 1st February. So the question is, is this a mistake made by Jackie/her biographer and included as a (very) subtle character detail, or a genuine one by Doctor Who's production team?