January 23: "Army of Ghosts"

This week's TARDISode: a reporter learns about Torchwood, but just as he's about to print the story, Torchwood comes along and takes him away...

Odd opening notwithstanding (the whole "this is the story of how I died" thing, which is a nice hook à la The Lovely Bones but turns out to be something of a cheat -- but we're getting ahead of ourselves), "Army of Ghosts" is a solid, entertaining episode.  It's the start of series 2's season finale, which means we finally see the Doctor meet up with Torchwood, after dropping hints since "Bad Wolf".  This might be slightly more interesting if they hadn't announced the upcoming Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood between series 1 and 2 of Doctor Who, but since they did, it's hard not to be a bit cynical about the whole thing.  (Of course, Torchwood would end up being rather different from what we see under Yvonne Hartman's leadership, but we didn't know that at the time, and that cynical feeling remains.)

But it's interesting to see what "Army of Ghosts" does right.  Somewhat remarkably, we don't waste much time introducing the Doctor and Rose into the main events: once the Doctor's established that the "ghosts" that everyone sees everywhere aren't ghosts at all, but something pushing its way into our world, it's off to Torchwood itself so that the plot can keep moving forward.  And, in a good move, we get a look at a Cyberman quite early on (as it menaces soon-to-be companion actress Freema Agyeman, albeit in a different role here) -- no sudden revelations that it's the Cybermen pushing through.  This does mean that the audience is slightly ahead of the Doctor, but the misdirection regarding the Void Ship ensures that we don't spend a large portion of time just waiting for the Doctor to catch up.  And since Graeme Harper is at the helm again, it's all shot very effectively, so even when it's a lot of exposition (as when Yvonne is explaining things), it never feels like it.

Yvonne Hartman, the Doctor, and Jackie watch as the Cybermen
invade. ("Army of Ghosts") ©BBC

There are some really nice moments here, too: the Doctor's interactions with Jackie are a lot of fun, and his explanation of what happened when the Void Ship entered this dimension, complete with spidering glass, is nifty.  (We also get some wonderful dialogue, as the Doctor sees that the TARDIS is surrounded by troops with guns: "Doctor, they've got guns," Rose warns him.  "And I haven't," the Doctor replies.  "Which makes me the better person, don't you think?  They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine.")  It's also interesting how the Doctor is ostensibly Torchwood's prisoner, but Yvonne would rather use his knowledge than just lock him up.  And hooray!  Mickey's back!  Ooh, and look, a Pyramids of Mars reference (the sarcophagus next to the TARDIS)!  There are lots of lovely little moments like this, which makes the big moments like the Cybermen's invasion more effective, as the goodwill that's already been engendered carries right on through.  And the big reveal at the end, as it turns out to be not Cybermen but Daleks inside the Void Ship, is a really good one.  So far, "Army of Ghosts" has done just about everything right.  The question, however, is whether they can deliver in the next episode, as they have to deal with both Cybermen and Daleks...

January 22: "Fear Her"

The TARDISode shows us a programme called Crime Crackers, investigating missing children in a London close (what Americans would call a cul-de-sac).  Although frankly this looks more like a silly parody than anything of serious intent, which doesn't bode well for the main event...

"Fear Her", for some reason, has become the pariah of 21st-century Who -- the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll listed it at 240 out of 241 -- just ahead of The Twin Dilemma.  It's frankly hard to see why "Fear Her" evokes such vitriol, as the finished episode is barely worth remembering.

The Isolus encounters Chloe Webber. ("Fear Her") ©BBC

It's not perfect, but it's certainly not appalling -- unlike the aforementioned The Twin Dilemma, which really makes you work to find any nuggets of quality, there are quite a few lovely scenes in "Fear Her".  The Doctor sticking his finger in the marmalade is quietly wonderful.  The idea of the Isolus is interesting (even if, perversely, they've given such an intense family organism a name that looks a lot like "isolated"), and we finally unequivocally get the series 1 Rose back -- she's the most likeable she's been since "The Christmas Invasion", and her efforts to carry on where the Doctor left off (after he was snatched away by Chloe/the Isolus) are very well done.  Plus, the off-hand mention of the Doctor being a dad is great (and was presumably a surprise to new viewers -- though it's been established, more or less, since "An Unearthly Child"), and the gag about how the TARDIS materializes the first time is cute (even if they'd already done that joke in Ghost Light).  It's also clear that someone's put some thought into the fact that they're shooting a story set in July 2012 in January 2006, so we get dialogue about how the Isolus's ship is sucking the heat out of everywhere.

But there are still some major problems with "Fear Her".  A couple of them are production-related (such as how Abisola Agbaje isn't quite up to the task of portraying the possessed Chloe Webber (although, notably, she seems a lot more comfortable when she's playing the Isolus-free version)), but primarily the issues are at the scripting level.  Chloe's powers seem to be inconsistent (so when she draws people they're transported into her pictures, but when she draws something imaginary like the scribble creature it appears in real life (and incidentally, the Doctor's trick with the eraser is strange -- try erasing the tip of a pencil and see how far you get) -- and when she draws someone who was alive but is now dead, he appears to live in a halfway point between the two), and both endings (the nightmare dad one and the Doctor/torch one) are quite painful, albeit for different reasons.  The dad one feels awfully saccharine and twee -- essentially the equivalent of just wishing bad things away -- and the torch one tries so hard to force you to cheer that the natural reaction is to gag instead.

However, the underlying concern with "Fear Her" isn't a matter of a bad plot or an inept production.  No, what ultimately sinks it is a general smug sense of "aren't we clever?"  From the opening TARDIS gag to the Doctor lighting the torch, there's a sense in which the episode is repeatedly yelling at the viewers, "Look!  We're doing fun and interesting new things!"  If they were actually doing fun and interesting new things, it might (might) have been okay, but although they occasionally do slip a moment through, there's not really anything worth engaging with in this story.  It's a lot like a bore at a party telling everyone how interesting they are.  And as with the bore, you might find some things here and there in "Fear Her" worthwhile if you stick around, but it might just be better if you walk away.

January 21: "Love & Monsters"

This TARDISode shows something trying to locate the Doctor-hunting group LINDA...

"Love & Monsters" seems to be one of those intensely polarizing stories Doctor Who turns out from time to time -- you either hate it or adore it.  (Other examples of what About Time calls "Marmite stories" -- after the slogan for Marmite, "Love it or hate it" -- include The Web Planet, Ghost Light, and, it seems, "Listen" (based on initial reactions, at least).)  It's certainly an unusual format for the show, being narrated by a guest character who describes the effect the Doctor has had on his life.  As such, it's an "outside looking in" interpretation of the show.

It also happens, I'm told, to be a very accurate portrayal of Doctor Who fandom in the '70s and '80s.

My experience in fandom is rather different from what's shown here, as I'm both a bit too young and from the wrong area -- there weren't many fan groups for kids in late '80s/early '90s Michigan.  My experience as a fan didn't really blossom until the rise of the Internet, but things had changed by that point.  However, the consensus seems to be that "Love & Monsters" -- and LINDA in particular -- is exactly how fan groups were in the '80s: people who were brought together by their love of Doctor Who, but who became friends because of other things.  LINDA develops along exactly the same lines (albeit with the Doctor instead of Doctor Who), and Victor Kennedy is said to be representative of those fans who wanted the others to take the Doctor Who aspect seriously -- when for others that was about the last thing they actually wanted to do.  (Despite how accurately "Love & Monsters" portrays the British fan experience though, Russell T Davies has said he himself was never a member of one of these groups.)

Ursula and Elton. ("Love & Monsters") ©BBC

Now, I can't directly attest to how "Love & Monsters" relates to fandom, but I can tell you how it looks to everyone else.  It's a cool move to show us how the contemporary events of the last couple series have looked to others, and it's rather impressive that Dan Zeff and crew make the recreation of those events look just as good with less time and money as the originals.  But what this episode really hinges on is its main character -- and happily, Marc Warren delivers in spades as Elton Pope.  Elton is endearingly awkward, charming, and generally all-around likeable.  It's quite a burden for a guest star to carry, but Warren pulls it off with ease.  Meanwhile, Peter Kay, as Victor Kennedy/the Abzorbaloff, is on just the right side of creepy, while still being fun -- and the Abzorbaloff is a nice creation, and the tie-in with Blue Peter to make the monster is a really lovely touch.

But what's especially nice about "Love & Monsters" is how it fleshes out the character of Jackie Tyler.  Up to this point, Jackie has been primarily defined in terms of Rose, with little beyond that -- but here, we get to see a more nuanced side to Jackie, as we see that she basically doesn't want to be alone, and that manifests itself in chasing men but also in being fiercely protective of her daughter.  It's really nice to see her interactions with Elton, and it's heartbreaking to see how quickly that turns sour.

It's not perfect (the bit at the end, where the Doctor brings Rose to Elton just so she can chew him out, probably looked funny in an isolated context, but in the scheme of the larger series looks like another incredibly petty move from Rose, making her more and more unlikeable), but "Love & Monsters" succeeds more than just about any other story from this year.  There's no need to make allowances or excuses for this story -- it's a beautiful tale, a love letter to the older fans, and a fascinating perspective on the events we sort of take for granted in the Doctor Who universe.

...yeah, I'm pretty firmly on the "love it" side of things.

January 20: "The Satan Pit"

Not only is today Tom Baker's birthday, but it's also my brother's 30th!  Happy birthday!  I...have no way to tie that into "The Satan Pit", so let's just move on...

The TARDISode for this episode appears to take place between the last TARDISode and the start of "The Impossible Planet", as someone looks through Captain Walker's effects, sees that book burst into flames, and then is found with sigils all over his face.  This might be fine if these events or either of these two characters were ever seen or even mentioned again.

So here's the thing about "The Satan Pit": director James Strong almost gets away with it.  His direction is very dynamic, filling the screen with tons of energy as Ood charge down ventilation shafts and the Sanctuary Base crew start to lose it as the pressure on them builds and builds.  But he also gives us quiet moments; Ida's conversation with the Doctor, as he's dangling inside the pit, is really beautiful -- all subtle and calm.  And his (seeming) last words to the outside universe -- "If they get back in touch...  if you talk to Rose... just tell her...  Tell her...  ...Oh, she knows" -- are far more lovely than they have any real right to be.

But the problem lies in the script.  "The Impossible Planet" builds really well, and the cliffhanger, with the Beast escaping and the Ood turning into killers, is very well judged.  But then "The Satan Pit" just sort of...sits there, working through its running time until it gets to the points it wants to explore, which basically starts with the Doctor dangling in the pit.  Try to imagine this as an old-school four-parter, and then picture part three, and you'll see the problem.  As I said, Strong makes all the ventilation shaft sequences look tense and compelling, but they don't really contribute to the plot, and the way in which the Ood are dealt with by the halfway mark only makes this clear.

The Doctor confronts the Beast. ("The Satan Pit") ©BBC

No, Matt Jones is clearly more interested in exploring the nature of the Doctor's beliefs and faith.  It does come across as strange to long-term fans though, as the Doctor struggles with the idea of something existing "before time" (so presumably from before this universe began) -- even though he had no trouble with the concept in Terminus.¹⁷⁵  (But hey!  Support for my "previous universe" theory in "The Impossible Planet"!)  Even independent of Terminus, though, it's not clear why the idea of a universe before this one would freak him out -- it's treated as if the idea is enough, without any real exploration of it.  Then there's also the problem with the Doctor's theorizing about the Beast having an influence on all the civilized races in the universe -- no problem with this per se, but one of the planets the Doctor mentions is Dæmos, which only serves to point out the conflict between what this story states and what we hear in The Dæmons.  Did the Beast make the Dæmons look (a bit) like himself?  Did he inspire them to go manipulate other races because he was their devil figure?  Or is it just a coincidence?  And finally, there's the minor issue of how the big climax of the story is that Rose isn't a victim, and that he believes in her.  It's a good moment, but we already saw it in The Curse of Fenric, so it's not the huge revelation the script wants it to be.

In fact, there's more than a little of The Curse of Fenric in this story's genes.  Here it's evil from before the dawn of time instead of the dawn of time itself, but the idea is still the same -- and Fenric as a creation was a lot more subtle than a huge growling dude chained up underground.  We still have the Doctor's belief in his companions as a motivator, and we have the evil being manipulating events to bring about its release, but less interesting discussions about faith here than there.  The idea that the Doctor keeps traveling to be proved wrong is nice, but it's less interesting than Reverend Wainwright confronting the loss of his faith in God, or Captain Sorin's faith in the Russian Revolution.  Instead of evil in human form, with all the guile and cunning that entails, we get a giant mindless shouty thing -- which sums up the two different approaches toward the same basic point, really.

Look, this is another series 2 story that just about works on balance.  "The Impossible Planet" is really really good, and a lot of that goodwill translates over to "The Satan Pit".  That, combined with Strong's direction and some good performances (Billie Piper continues to be a lot more likeable here than she has been, even if this seems to be the story that starts to see her actively transform into the Doctor), makes this worth watching.  The main problem is that "The Satan Pit" is a lopsided episode, exploring questions already examined more intriguingly in earlier stories.  To be honest, it's not clear how they could have done better, other than restructuring/rewriting "The Satan Pit" to ramp up more smoothly -- but the minute they decided to include a huge CGI devil, there was no way this was going to be as interesting as "The Impossible Planet" promised.  As I said, it just about works (and it still carries that New Adventures feeling over both episodes, right down to exploring the idea of ancient gods), but it's James Strong's win, not Matt Jones's.







¹⁷⁵ Well, maybe.  One reading of Terminus suggests that Terminus is from this universe, traveled back in time to the beginning of the universe, jettisoned the fuel that caused the Big Bang, and traveled forward in time as a result of the shockwave (thus creating a paradox).  This rather lessens the impact of Gallagher's ideas (admittedly not well-realized on screen) about the original crew of Terminus being like giants who have been long since gone (except for the Garm) by the time mankind finds the place, though.

January 19: "The Impossible Planet"

The TARDISode suggests that someone wanted this impossible planet to be found -- even if the map was found on the other end of the galaxy (although, given it's full of the untranslatable symbols, how did they figure out where the place was?)...

This first episode of the latest two-parter is probably the closest the BBC Wales series has come yet to capturing the spirit of the New Adventures, Virgin's '90s novel series featuring the seventh Doctor which frequently dealt with ancient beings and crazy set-ups.  "The Impossible Planet" has the feel of those books (perhaps not the most surprising thing, given that the author of this, Matt Jones, wrote one of the last NAs, Bad Therapy), with an isolated human base uncovering an ancient force that's gathering its strength.  (It's also rather like a Tom Baker story, but as there's no story or legend being overtly remade, it's not as clear-cut a connection as you might think.)  But while there are lots of hints as to what's going on, we don't really get anything too explicit here; sure, the Ood at the end refer to the Beast as Abaddon, Satan, and Lucifer, but that's not really proof (after all, the Doctor suggests in The Dæmons that it was the titular beings that led to the idea of the "Horned Beast").

But what this episode does really well is create an atmosphere of solitude and tension; the conditions of the planet are such that help isn't coming¹⁷³, and even the Doctor and Rose are isolated when the part of the base that the TARDIS is parked in disappears down into the depths of the planet.  This means that, as things start to go to hell (sorry), there's no escape for any of them; they have to deal with the events head-on.

They do a really good job of making things feel more dangerous with their throwaway lines.  The way the Ood matter-of-factly say things like, "The Beast and his Armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God," is nicely done, and the whole sequence with Toby and the voice in his quarters is suitably creepy -- and the sight of all the sigils on Toby's hands and face are extremely effective.  (Although the fact that they've cast Gabriel Woolf -- who, you might, recall, was Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars -- as the voice of the Beast looks like a deliberate effort to make long-term fans think something different is coming in the second part from what we actually get.)  The death of Scooti is really distressing, and the discovery of her body, framed against the black hole, is a memorable moment.  (Though as long as we're here, let's note that the black hole shown isn't a very accurate depiction of the genuine object; supposedly they looked into doing a scientifically accurate rendition but decided it wasn't as visually interesting.  Wait, really?  That suggests they were doing it wrong...)

And one of the nicer moments in this episode is the Doctor contemplating life without the TARDIS, having to settle down and do normal things.  It's a quiet interlude, and Rose's awkward fumbling as she tries to suggest living with the Doctor is rather sweet; happily, in fact, "The Impossible Planet"'s characterization of Rose is a lot closer to series 1's than what we've been getting -- other than some painfully forced laughter right at the beginning (oh, and the moment when the Doctor realizes the TARDIS is gone where the script makes her distressingly thick -- but that looks like it's been included for any viewers who haven't cottoned on to the problem, rather than as a character point for Rose), this is a much more pleasant and sympathetic Rose.  And while Rose is doing a lot better, the Doctor is also firing on all cylinders -- he's clever at the right moments, worried when he should be¹⁷⁴, and somber when the story needs him to be.  Even his hug of Zach and his little speech about humans (which by all rights should have been an excruciating moment) is passable.

Danny watches as a guard is killed by a possessed Ood. ("The
Impossible Planet") ©BBC

Meanwhile we get a great new alien design in the form of the Ood -- the tentacles hanging from the mouth area are creepy without being terrifying, and the eyes rotated so that they're at a diagonal to the rest of the face is a cool move.  The overall effect is rather pleasing -- alien but not threatening.  Making them a slave race is also rather distressing -- despite any protestations from the Ood themselves -- and this firmly puts us on Rose's side, as well as making them feel unthreatening.  But that makes their possession by the Beast, as they become the Legion of the Beast (complete with red eyes), all the more scary, as these rather benign creatures start killing people, all while they're apparently mentally screaming.  It's a really effective moment.  The only real downside is that they're still slaves -- just to the Beast, rather than humanity.  (To be fair, this aspect will be addressed in series 4, in Planet of the Ood.)

There are other minor problems here and there.  There seems to be some artifacts from earlier drafts that lead to strange moments (most notably, Ida scoffing at the idea that the planet they're on has a name -- "Don't be stupid.  It hasn't got a name.  How could it have a name?" -- and then a few minutes later stating that "in the scriptures of the Veltino, this planet is called Krop Tor"), and while the orange spacesuits look neat, putting lights inside the helmet like that seems really impractical.  Oh, and it's all well and good grabbing public domain files for your sound effects, but maybe don't pick one intimately connected with the sound of a door opening in the one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time (Doom, if you need to be told).

But ultimately "The Impossible Planet" is a huge success -- we get a nice slice of terrifying Who, done through suggestion and the development of tension rather than cheap shock moments.  If they can deliver in the next episode, this story might go down as one of the best ever.







¹⁷³ Something to note is that no one ever mentions relativity effects, which would probably make help largely useless anyway; possibly this is handled by the gravity funnel that let them get to the planet in the first place, but then that gravity funnel seems to collapse at the end of the episode.  But then, if relativity was a factor, wouldn't it be pointless trying to get the power source from the center of the place?  By the time they were successful the rest of the universe would have long since passed them by, presumably rendering the attempt irrelevant.
¹⁷⁴ Namely, at the language so ancient that the TARDIS can't translate it.  But what does that actually mean?  Presumably the written translation function works by the TARDIS scanning the brains of the people in the area (via that telepathic field), working out how their written language works, and then giving that information to the Doctor (and any other relevant people).  So if the TARDIS can't translate it, that must mean it's never encountered any other speakers of that language.  Of course, given the size of the universe and everyone in it, this perhaps isn't the most surprising thing ever.  Nevertheless, the Doctor treats this as an impossible event, which suggests that this race had already come and gone before the Time Lords came about -- and that they either made no impact on the universe (despite their advanced technology, and the fact that one of their books made it across the galaxy (as seen in the TARDISode)) or they deliberately shielded themselves from the Time Lords (or that the Time Lords never ventured back to the beginning of time, but this seems unlikely); either way, the Time Lords (and, by extension, any TARDISes) never encountered these people.  Odd no matter how you look at it.
     (There's a possible get-out clause: if we assume that this civilization is actually from the universe before our current one -- which seems to have been established as a real thing (in internal continuity terms) in Terminus -- and that they never made it to this universe (perhaps their dying act before our Big Bang was to ensure that the Beast would be imprisoned), this might explain the stuff about the language being unknown by the TARDIS.  This theory comes with its own set of problems, though.  (Such as, for starters, how did the Beast and the planet survive the Big Bang, and why (jumping ahead here) is the Beast found in the legends of so many races?))

January 18: "The Idiot's Lantern"

The TARDISode for this story is a little unusual; normally these are set before the events we see in the story, but this one seems to be set during the title sequence -- between the cold open and the start of the rest of the episode, as we see Tommy's gran get her face sucked off after the Connollys' television is delivered.

Rose becomes the latest victim of the Wire. ("The Idiot's
Lantern") ©BBC

The actual episode is a bit of an odd beast.  There are moments it does really well and moments that fall flat, and it never quite strikes the right balance between these two things.  It might be worth noting that the episode starts to hit its stride once Rose has become a victim of the Wire, but that perhaps has less to do with Rose and more to do with the structure of the story.

That said, the bits with the Doctor and Rose in the Connollys' house don't come off the way Mark Gatiss presumably intended them to.  Eddie Connolly is a bit of a bully, certainly, but it hardly seems like the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him harder.  The Doctor's response to Eddie's attempts to gain control ("And I'm not LISTENING!!!") feels a bit forced, but Rose's crack about the Union Jack versus the Union Flag feels incredibly mean-spirited (and also isn't actually true).  If this had been an isolated incident they might have gotten away with it -- certainly the rest of Rose's behavior (other than the bit about the Union Flag being upside down) is reasonably sympathetic -- but coming after a long string of other questionable character decisions, it just increases the sense of distaste toward Rose's character.  It becomes so noticeable, in fact, that viewers at the time were wondering if they were setting Rose (and the Doctor, to an extent) up for a fall, so insufferable was their behavior becoming.  Alas, it seems to be more a matter of poor script editing across stories than a concerted effort to give them hubris that they'll pay for; no one appears to have considered the cumulative effect of these more negative aspects.

Once the plot gets going, though, things improve.  There are some lovely moments (everyone mentions it, but the part where the Doctor, when asked to tell the police everything he knows, starts with "I know you can't wrap your hand around your elbow and make your fingers meet," and then while DI Bishop is yelling at him the officer behind him is trying to see if the Doctor's right, is a moment of understated joy), and the Doctor is in full righteous mode (even if it seems to be the fact that Rose was affected and then left on the street that ends up being the final straw), challenging the Wire.  The Wire herself is a reasonable villain, travelling along electromagnetic signals and trying to absorb the electrical impulses of the brain (though it's never clear why those signals are preferable to any other electrical signals -- nor why this causes people's faces to disappear), but her cries of "Hungry!" are awfully reminiscent of Paradise Towers (and if you think Mark Gatiss didn't know this you haven't been paying attention).  Still, she provides an interesting villain, and the method of dealing with her is rather clever.  The ending's a bit odd, though; we're supposed to be pleased that Mrs. Connolly has finally gotten rid of the bully in her life, in the form of her over-bearing husband, but then we get a speech from Rose about how families are super-important and Tommy should go to his dad -- even though Eddie is a bully and had earlier jokingly talked about beating the "mummy's boy" out of Tommy (and if you take seriously the subtext that Tommy's gay, this becomes even more worrying -- but as I noted under "The Unquiet Dead", subtexts tend to pass Gatiss by).  It's a bit of a duff note for an ending, and certainly not the one the production team intended.

And then there's the matter of the direction.  Euros Lyn is using an awful lot of low angle shots and skewed shots, trying to convey a sense of things being off-kilter -- but he takes it too far, and once you notice it it's hard to unnotice it, and you find yourself wondering if someone's just neglected to make sure the camera's level.  It's a nice idea, but it's ultimately distracting.  This is a shame, because there are lots of other good shots (such as the climb up the transmitter tower) that do a good job of conveying the action in interesting ways -- but that tilted camera overwhelms everything.

But ultimately "The Idiot's Lantern" isn't a terribly successful episode.  I confess that I have a bit of a soft spot for it, but it's not hard to see why others wouldn't care for it.  I rather like the plot with the Wire, and there are a number of good moments scattered throughout -- but if you're not impressed by the Wire, you might find this all rather tiresome.  It has a few nice moments, but it's not the triumph it could have been.

January 17: "The Age of Steel"

This week's TARDISode:
     All around the woooorrrrld
     Gotta spread the woooorrrrd
     Tell 'em what you've hearrrd
     You're gonna be a Cyberman
 
The main problem with "The Age of Steel" (for me, at least) is that it's really hard to get worked up about the fate of people in a parallel universe.  I'm really not sure why; it's not like Doctor Who is normally a documentary or something, but nevertheless the fact that what we're witnessing doesn't affect "our" universe makes it hard to get really invested in events.  (And unlike, say, Inferno, we're not witnessing a cataclysmic disaster that leads to a breakdown in everything or directly comparing it to "our" world (which is what made that story worthwhile), but rather are simply seeing the sort of event that happens roughly once a year nowadays in the regular Doctor Who universe anyway.)  So even though we see Ricky killed by the Cybermen, it's hard to feel genuinely upset about it because Mickey is standing right there -- and as he was the only one present alongside his double, it felt more like bookkeeping than anything else.  Meanwhile, Jackie's conversion into a Cyberman is presented in a way that looks like we're supposed to be horrifically upset by this, but as it's not "our" Jackie it's hard to muster up the energy to care as much as it seems we're supposed to.

But where this episode (and really, this story) succeeds is in Graeme Harper's direction, which he makes impressively dynamic.  The scene of the Doctor and Mrs. Moore walking through the Cybermen-infested cooling tunnels is really well done, and manages to be tense and suspenseful without seeming too much like the crew of the Enterprise walking through a Borg ship on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And Mrs. Moore's death actually is genuinely upsetting; she's been one of the best things about this episode, and to see her killed in such a shocking moment has a major impact on the viewer.  (Although how did that Cyberman come up behind her without anyone hearing it stomping?)  And the part right before, where the emotion inhibitor in the Cyberman is deactivated and we get a sense of who the Cyberman used to be, is really good -- it explores the idea of the dehumanization of the Cyber-conversion process in a way we haven't seen before, and the thought that the Cybermen have removed all their emotions not because emotions are "weak" (even though Lumic seems to be suggesting that later) but because it's the only way to stop them from going insane is a fascinating one, and it's a scene enhanced by Harper's direction, with a close-up on the Cyberman's face as "she" wonders what's going on.

Mickey says goodbye to the Doctor as Jake and Rose look on.
("The Age of Steel") ©BBC

But it's still hard to shake the idea, after everything is over, that we're meant to care a lot more than we actually do.  The moments that involve the regulars work way better than most of the ones that don't; we're cheering when Mickey saves the day by tricking the robot Cyberman into smashing the transmitter controls, and when he works out what the Doctor is telling him to put the Cybermen out of action for good.  As such it's genuinely sad to see him go at the end of the episode; Mickey has become the audience identification figure, and he's had a larger and more complete character journey than Rose has -- compare his first appearance in "Rose" to how he is here, and it's clear how much he's grown.  It's genuinely sad to see him go, even when you know he'll be back later.

However, ultimately "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" is a story that doesn't quite work.  As a straightforward action tale it does a good job; there's enough action here to keep you happy, enhanced (once again) by Harper's direction, and it's probably a good move to have a simplified Cyberman history.  (Although subsequent tales are going to make things even more complicated than they ever were before.)  But you get the feeling that this two-parter wants to be more than that; it wants to examine some familiar characters in a new light and see what comes out.  But no one's different enough for this to work: Ricky is probably the furthest away from his counterpart, but that just makes him angry all the time.  Pete Tyler is still a good man and Jackie is a bit more snobbish, but it's hardly a reach for her character.  What it comes down to is that they don't give us enough of a reason to care about the fate of Pete's World, and so we're distanced from the events we see on screen; it's not affecting "our" Earth, so why should we care?  It's a question that "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" struggles, and ultimately fails, to answer.