One of Doctor Who's key strengths is its intergenerational audience: today's grandparents were the kids who watched Hartnell and Troughton, and today's kids are the grandparents of the future who will sit down with their grandchildren and watch the adventures of the Twenty-Second Doctor. The whole thing knits together, forwards and backwards, and yes, teenagers can seem a bit stroppy, but that's just how they communicate! Angie, forced to spend her formative years in the period that future generations will refer to as the Great Snark, is doing pretty well I think.
And come on, we have Cybermen to obsess about! Gaiman's brief was, apparently, to make them scary again and I think we have to call this a partial success. The Cybermen are redefined and redesigned and there are some nice touches - but do we end up with a coherent idea of what the Cybermen are these days? Their reputation seems to have undergone the most radical adjustment. The Cybermen are now an unstoppable force - whole galaxies have been destroyed just to contain their menace. Their most recent catchphrase "Upgrade!" has become a battlefield mantra, and individual units can now download physical improvements in seconds in response to perceived deficiencies on the ground (we see them develop resistance to high electrical voltages and to anti-Cybermen guns), although the inference is that this can only happen when a Cyber-Planner is active and networked.
Other new features include heads that can twist backwards, or be removed entirely in order to be used as lures or distractions. Then there detachable hands that can operate independently, and a super-speed mode. In other words, these guys have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves for stealth, sneaking and infiltration. Which is good. I like that. Let's have more sneaking, creeping, and hiding in shadows from the Cybermen. But does it make sense? These new models are relentless, practically invulnerable, and there are millions of them - why would they ever need to sneak around? That's a tactic employed by fragile units, ones that are outnumbered or who lack armour and need to manufacture an advantage through mobility or cunning. These Cybermen are anthropomorphic tanks, they have no anxiety about casualties, and they can eliminate any weakness from their bodies instantly. They could just walk forwards, five abreast (and at normal speed), and never be defeated.
I think the Cybermen can either be invulnerable or spooky. They can't be both, and I think one is much more interesting than the other.
The Cybermites are good, and certainly an excellent upgrade to the clunky old Cybermats. The defunct Cyberman converted into a Silver Turk and playing chess is a wonderful image, but the key thing here, as with the reinvention in Dalek, is to humiliate the Cybermen before they can impress. Some aspects of this new paradigm are just plain bad though: what is that ridiculous shrug-of-the-shoulders walk they have? They look like they're playing at choo-choo trains!
So these Cybermen look great, but they've been rendered a bit dull; not only do we hardly get a whiff of their trademark body horror (their esprit de corps you might say), but they don't really say anything either. They maintain an imposing physical threat, but they've lost their psychological menace. Possibly because their brains are being used by the Cyber-Planner, and he doesn't shut up at all.
This is a really strong element in this episode, mainly thanks to the incredible effort Matt Smith has put into delivering both sides of a ginormous battle of wits. The duel between the Doctor and the Cyber-Planner is very satisfying, full of subterfuge, feints and clever touches: the Golden Ticket, the Doctor's voices, writing a note for Clara while the other half of the brain has control of the mouth, and more besides. Presumably, the reason why the Cyber-Planner exhibits all sorts of emotions is something to do with the Doctor's brain being involved?
Elsewhere Clara turns out, rather surprisingly, to be an extremely effective commanding officer, Jason Watkin's Webley is another of those nicely grubby characters ("Uniforms give me the heebie-jeebies."), and Warwick Davies prevents Emperor Porridge from turning into a spoiled dilettante. It's a lovely performance: a ruler, supposedly distant and aloof, who can't stop himself worrying about the consequences of his decisions. He could come across as irresponsible, but he's actually all heart. Thanks to these characters and odd little side-references they make, we get a real sense from this episode of a wider universe and a future human empire.
I enjoyed it a lot, particularly Smith's dual role, and it's certainly a good episode. But, for whatever reason, we still haven't worked out what to do with the Cybermen...
NEXT TIME...
No comments:
Post a Comment