The Eleventh Hour - A Review

Dear Santa...
...a review of The Eleventh Hour. WARNING - one very bad word, and thpoilers.



"Remember what I told you when you were seven..."


The Eleventh Hour, apart from anything else, is a showcase of brilliant moments in which Matt Smith becomes the Doctor. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when it happens; I just know it's somewhere between him landing in Amelia Pond's back garden in that ancient, brand new, impossibly blue box and him standing on the roof of a hospital telling the Atraxi to 'Basically, run.' He becomes that old/young, awkward/over confident man we have been waiting for all this time. Fourteen years, in fact, since some of us (ahem....) fell in love with the eighth Doctor and had him snatched away before he was even fully born. Or at the very least four months, since David Tennant said he didn't want to go. Or two years, since the last proper series of Doctor who. Or just since we were seven.  


"Like a name in a fairytale..."

I have seen the Eleventh Hour 5 times (at the time of writing) and still it manages to captivate me every time. It, and the new Doctor, and even his companion, are a barrel of contradictions. The series seems a little more mature and yet filled with childlike magic, triumphant yet humble, fun and heartbreaking at the same time. The Doctor is at once an old man and a young boy, a genius and an idiot, kind and intolerant, ugly and beautiful (seriously, how does he do that? One second I'm like 'ooh, yes' and the next I'm like 'Ew, no. He's got a head shaped like a wotsit (yes, a wotsit)'). He's a history teacher trapped inside the body of a schoolboy. Even Amy is a child pretending to be grown up. 
So far (for me, anyway) this season of Doctor Who has proved infinitely rewatchable and shows you something new each time. Some people have complained this has been a largely 'tell, not show' series but I disagree. The Van Gogh story came over so well because we can see how good a painter Van Gogh was instead of being told how wonderful Agatha Christie was without giving us any evidence to back it up with. And this series has made me cry (twice; during Vincent and the Doctor, and the end of the Big Bang, which made me cry and punch the air in triumph at the same time), not because I felt obliged to, but because I was genuinely moved.  
I think I like the Eleventh Hour so much because I went in with such low expectations and was totally blown away by how good it was.
The pre credits scene, in which the Doctor hangs from the free falling TARDIS and narrowly avoids having his brand new manhood amputated by Big Ben, seems strangely disjointed from the rest of the story. It's a sequence which I now believe to be one of Steven Moffat's ironic final nods to the Rusty Davies era (and this episode is peppered with them. I'm not sure if it is a final salute to the man who, for all his faults, brought Doctor Who back home, or a piss take). 
After this, the episode starts with a little girl sitting in her bedroom praying to Santa for someone to come and fix the crack in her wall, and lo and behold, here he is. It takes him a while, but he fixes it.  
I start to love this new Doctor when he walks into a tree. 
"Are you alright?" 
"Early days... steering's a bit off..."
I love him even more when he starts spitting food all over little Amelia's kitchen: 
"Give me yogurt. I love yogurt" (eats yogurt). "What's this?" 
"Yogurt."
"It's fucking disgusting."
It's a lovely ice breaker, and allows us to meet the Doctor and Amelia Pond properly in relatively safe, comforting surroundings eating fish custard and ice cream. They discover the Doctor's first meal together (I really want to try 'fish custard' now. Although I feel a bit cheated as apparently Matt Smith didn't actually eat fish fingers but a sort of coconut slice thing dipped in custard*), and the Doctor shares Amelia's fear over the crack in her wall. Like no other Doctor/Companion pairing ever, they are both children when they meet. 
The Doctor certainly seems 'newborn' to start with: he uses his new limbs awkwardly, and is surprised at the very world he finds himself in - just look at his reaction when he tips the water out of Amelia's drinking glass. 
Just one thing; why does Amy's house have two flights of stairs when it is a two storey building... and how come the Doctor doesn't notice? Or does he?

"Twelve years and four psychiatrists..." 

I know Caitlyn Blackwood is Karen Gillan's cousin, but my God, the resemblence betwen them is eerie, even more so when Caitlyn returns later in the series a few months older and with longer hair. As another aside, I think I know why a few people have had trouble empathising with/liking Amy Pond. Little Amelia is adorable. She's the first character we meet in the Eleventh Hour and we like her even before the Doctor crash lands in her garden. Amelia is such a sweet, lonely, quirky little girl - in the first scene we see her praying to Santa, she's scared of nothing except a crack in her bedroom wall, and packs her teddy bear before she runs off with the Doctor. And then suddenly she's this grown up, scowly girl in a short skirt. In addition she has an adorable boyfriend whom she treats almost like he doesn't exist, and she's a kissagram = every parents worst nightmare. Even the Doctor is stunned. 
"You were a little girl five minutes ago!" 
"You're worse than my aunt."
"I'm the Doctor. I'm worse than everybody's aunt." 
Come to think of it, I think that line was the moment I thought 'Hello Doctor'. But then this entire episode is an exercise in 'Hello, Doctor'. 
That sentence also sets the tone for the Doctor's relationship with Amy. To the Doctor, she will always be a little girl - he calls her 'Amelia' in Victory of the Daleks, in the same tone a parent might use to snap at a child. He also has a habit of kissing her on the forehead, and he's absolutely horrified when she tries to make a move on him. The way he comforts her in Vincent and the Doctor is like a father comforting his daughter - "Life is a pile of good things and bad things, and the good things don't always cancel out the bad, but vice versa, the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them less important." (perhaps the best quote in the entire series, ever, except possibly the Doctor's speech to Susan at the end of the Dalek Invasion of Earth)
I do like the older Amy, but I would love little Amelia to have one proper adventure, just once. 

"Just trust me for 20 minutes..."

The scene where the Doctor asks Amy to trust him is another beautiful character moment, this time between him and grown up Amy. I get the feeling he is also asking the entire audience to give him 20 minutes in which to prove he is the Doctor.  
But what is with the blue light that flashes over the Doctor and Amy in this scene? It might be there to add poignancy to the moment, but I find it annoying. Or is it something else? Because you learn that when watching a Stpehen Moffat episode, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Or it is as simple as it seems, but with a twist that not so much a twist as wrenching the simple right out of its socket and giving it a Chinese burn until it squeals. 
As the story starts to roll on its own momentum, the Doctor employs several RTD style tactics to set up a trap for Prisoner Zero. A borrowed laptop, the number '0' transmitted across the world via Facebook and Bebo as a message for the Atraxi, texting instructions for Amy to 'DUCK!', although, to be fair, that one harkens back to 'Blink' and Sally Sparrow finding a 40 year old message on a wall telling her to do just that. 
I read in another review (probably at Behind the Sofa) that Steven Moffat ironically laid the RTD era to rest using his predecessor's own methods, resetting the clock back to zero and literally rewriting the last five years of time, chips, and Rose Tyler.    
It's true that the story rattles along almost like Smith and Jones or Rose for the first 40 odd minutes, a light companion focused story in which we meet a cross section of the future companion's friends and significant others, as well as get a feel for the new Doctor, with a few comedic turns thrown in to keep people interested. And then suddenly, when the clock changes from 11:50 to 0:00, everything changes, just a little bit. It's a subtle change of pace, but it is there, and it is Steven Moffat saying, "This is my show now, Russell. Mitts off." 


"A perfect impersonation of yourself..."

"And we're off..." says the Doctor, before he explains the wonderous trick he has played on Prisoner Zero, in leading the Atraxi to the hospital where their prisoner is. Not only that, but he has a phone full of pictures of the accused that he can show to the Atraxi. He's done it, saved the world in 20 minutes, proved that he is the Doctor. And to do it with such extraordinary style and knobs on is a bonus. "Who da man!?" is one bit of self congratulary nonsense that I will allow. 
But Prisoner Zero has another card up its sleeve. When it decides to turn on Amy, we realise that things are going to be a little different from here on in. No Sonic Screwdrivers, no fancy gadgets, just the Doctor talking to Amy from within her dream, manipulating her thoughts to get her to dream about Prisoner Zero in its true form. Brilliant. 
This scene also introduces one of the big themes of the series - the impact that dreams/the human mind have upon reality, and the power of words and their superiority over weapons. This theme recurs time and time again throughout the series: 

Amy asking Professor Bracewell about his first love stops him from detonating. 

Amy links the Doctor and the Star Whale in her mind, and this enables her to save it.

The phrase River uses in 'The Time of Angels' - "When our dreams no longer need us, the time will be upon us, the time of angels".

Amy's Choice. Nuff said. 

The way we see some scenes through Van Gogh's eyes in Vincent and the Doctor. 

The Doctor using Craig's contentment to destroy the ship in his attic in the Lodger, after it has sucked out its victims dreams of escape and freedom.

Amy's memories being used to trick the Doctor into visiting Stonehenge. 

And the obvious one in the Big Bang, the seed planted in the head of little Amelia Pond when she was seven, ready to bloom on her wedding day and bring the Doctor back from the brink of unreality. 

Oddly, the three episodes which don't fit in this theme are the weakest of the series - Vampires of Venice, and the Silurian two parter. 
At the end of all this, the Doctor emerges fully fledged and victorious, having used only a mobile phone, his own genius, and a little's girl's dreams. 
I love the phonecall where the Doctor tells the Atraxi to get "back 'ere. NOW." It echoes Rusty again, but I don't care.


"You've summoned the aliens back again. Aliens of death. And now you're taking your clothes off..." 

Rory is fantastic from the word go. He is both similar to the Doctor and yet the perfect antidote - he's bumbling, understatedly intelligent, curious, utterly devoted to Amy despite the way she treats him, and all he wants is a safe, comfortable life with the girl he loves. He doesn't want adventure, but he'll take it, if it means he gets to be with Amy. There is something about him right from the start - he isn't just the companion's boyfriend, he is a companion in his own right. In light of what happened in the finale, perhaps there really is more to Rory than meets the eye. Especially as his nurses badge says he qualified in 1990, when reason says he would have been about four. But you don't want to listen to reason, any more than you want to grow up. 


"I've put a lot of work into it..." 

What is so important about the phrase 'Twenty minutes'? The Doctor asks Amy to trust him for 20 minutes in this episode, Amy loses 20 minutes of her memory in The Beast Below, and the Doctor says 20 minutes until the Pandorica opens at one point in that episode. In the same episode, he then waxes lyrical about a life form that has a 20 minute life span, even saying afterwards that there was no point to him mentioning it. And 20 minutes after the Doctor begs Amy to trust him, Matt Smith bursts through the image of Tennant's face and stands proudly in front of the Atraxi in his new outfit. The message could not be more clear. "I'm the Doctor. Basically, run." And they do. 
I don't tend to like those "I'm the Doctor. Don't mess with me." scenes, except the one in the Pandorica Opens, and this one was definitely a bit OTT. Yes, we can all see Matt Smith is the Doctor. Shut up about it now. However, I do like that the Atraxi never once takes its eye off the Doctor until it is safely out of reach as it flees. 
 

"I am definitely a mad man in a box..."

As a final note, am I the only person who actually likes the new theme tune and title sequence? 
As a final final note, I have another unanswered question. when we flash back to little Amelia sitting in her garden waiting for the Doctor, she hears the sound of the TARDIS and looks up, smiling. And yet, a second later we see grown up Amy waking up, two years after Prisoner Zero and fourteen years since fish custard. What happened? Either the little version of Amy really hears the TARDIS and is whisked off for an adventure with her magic Doctor, or grown up Amy was having a dream about her hero when her dream was interrupted by the sound of the real TARDIS. Perhaps the Doctor didn't go to the Moon at all after he left Amy and Rory to try out his new TARDIS. But if he did pick up little Amelia for one adventure, why doesn't grown up Amy remember it? I think I'll pass this one over to the hard core theorists, before my head explodes. The same theorists who realised there were two Doctors running about on board the Byzantium. 
By the way, I started out not liking the new TARDIS design - On the first glance, you half expect everlasting gobstoppers to start popping out of the time rotor, or at the very least Johnny Depp in a mad hat and wig, but it has slowly grown on me. It's a TARDIS of dreams and ideas and connections, not just 'knobs that do stuff'. The typewriter, the glass dildo thing, the hot and cold taps, the weird thing that looks like a 'jack' (you remember that game...), and the gramophone. I'm only surprised it isn't steam powered. 


"Thank you, Santa." 

Thank you for Karen Gillan, and Caitlyn Blackwood and Steven Moffat. But especially thank you for Matt Smith. I take back all the horrible things I said about him. He's wonderful. He may be only 5 years older than me, but what does age matter to a man who can cure you of being grown up? 


"What did you tell me when I was seven?"

"That's not the point. You have to remember it." 




*Having now tried fish custard, I can honestly say that it is entirely and utterly wrong, and you should definitely try it.

And yippee doodle, I got through the entire review without using the phrase 'Amy's crack'... 

By Rose Ghost

A Burning House (an Eleventh Doctor short story)

The Doctor frowned down at the young, bearded man sat in the wooden chair. Steven Taylor - a space pilot that the TARDIS crew had met inside the towering Mechanoid city, just before the climactic battle between the Mechanoids and the Daleks. A battle that ended in the flaming destruction of the city, from which the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki had barely escaped via climbing down a mile long abandoned cable on the city roof that led to the ground below. They had expected Steven to accompany them in their escape, but he had returned to the city for his mascot, a panda bear toy that had kept him sane during his years of imprisonment, and whilst Ian tried to stop him, he had been beaten back by smoke. Ian had been the last to descend the cable from the city, hoping Steven would follow, but just as he had reached the ground the cable had burned away. The four travellers had given Steven up for lost.

Yet now Steven was here, claiming to have climbed down that same cable. The Doctor knew this was untrue, but he detected no malice in the younger man’s attitude. He undoubtedly could not remember exactly how he had escaped the city and was filling in these gaps in his memory with ideas of what most likely happened. The same was surely true of his claim that he had managed to simply push open the TARDIS doors, while the Doctor and Vicki were saying their goodbyes to Ian and Barbara inside the Dalek time machine. The Doctor knew for definite the TARDIS doors had been locked.

Despite the fact that he was giving young Taylor the benefit of the doubt, there were still unanswered questions about him. How had he really escaped the burning city? How had he got aboard the locked Ship?

The Doctor mused on these puzzles after sending Vicki off to help Steven get cleaned up. He would find the answers, eventually.

***

“Oh, you sexy thing!”The Doctor pushed through the doorway of the TARDIS, letting the Police Box doors swing shut behind him. He ran across the new floor, bounded up the new steps and surveyed the new console with relish.

Regeneration. Man and machine. A new Doctor and a new TARDIS, working together in harmony. Oh, it didn’t get better than this!

His fingers flew across the new controls, feeling their way instinctively to where they needed to be. Then he paused.

What about Amy? She had waited, little Amelia Pond, she had waited a long twelve years for him to return from his five minute ‘hop’ into the future to stabilise the TARDIS. She deserved her first flight.

But not yet, he reasoned. Need to run things in a bit, make the process less bumpy, less scary for the unseasoned time traveller. Quick test flight should do it, Moon and back, easy.

Fingers flying again, the Doctor set the TARDIS in motion, little knowing that Amy Pond was standing outside, watching him leave her behind for the second time in her life.

***

Smoke. Thick, grey, dense smoke. The fires were raging throughout the Mechanoid city, but Steven Taylor had passed up his chance to leave, his first chance in two years, because of Hi-Fi.

Hi-Fi was his mascot, a small panda toy given to him by his maternal grandmother when he was six. Everyone else had given him spaceship toys for his birthday, because his obsession was already making itself known to his family. But Granny Drake had always been different, an independent thinker, and that’s why he had loved her most out of everyone in the family, beside his parents. So it was that Hi-Fi had accompanied him all through regular school, pilot training and even onto missions. He and the bear were inseparable.

So he couldn’t just leave it behind to escape down the cable with the others. He would find Hi-Fi and join them, follow them down and escape this cursed planet forever.

He spotted the bear at last, near the door to the sleeping quarters. Tucking the little fellow into his jacket, he turned back to the steps leading to the roof, but a blast of smoke caught him right in the face and he fell to his knees, coughing.

The smoke was getting thicker as the flames came closer. Steven’s head started to spin. He tried to push up from his knees but fell back to the floor, unconscious.

His last sensory moment before blackness swallowed him was the sound of trumpeting elephants…

***

The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches and pulling levers. The grating roar of the TARDIS landing slowly died back as the time rotor ceased its rhythmic rise and fall.

Just a quick peek through the doors and off again, he decided as he extended the air shield a couple of feet beyond so he could actually step onto the Moon’s surface.

His first thought was that this wasn’t the Moon. Unless it was a smoke filled room in a base upon the Moon. A smoke filled room with, as his eyes adjusted to the haze, a body laid on the floor a few feet away.

With no thought for his own safety, as ever, the Doctor plunged out into the smoke and knelt down beside what he could now see was a man. He turned the figure over, to look for a pulse, and gasped. Then coughed as his gasp swallowed smoke-filled air.

Head swimming now, he staggered to his feet and got his hands under the armpits of the man. Even though the TARDIS was just feet away, it seemed like it took forever for him to walk backwards through the air shield with his burden and collapse to the floor, coughing.

But there was no time to waste in recovery. Through the murk beyond the still open TARDIS doors, he heard a familiar battle cry.

“Seek-Locate-Exterminate!”

Slamming the doors shut, he ran back up the steps to the console. He had to wipe his streaming eyes twice on the back of his jacket sleeve as he carefully set the controls for a short hop.

The TARDIS dematerialised, just as a Dalek entered the room, gave a cursory glance around with its eye-stalk, and then was instantly crushed under the weight of the collapsing roof.

***

For the second time in two days, a blue, seemingly wooden box appeared out of thin air in the jungles of Mechanus. The pilot, the same man despite looking many years younger and in fact being many years older, peered out cautiously.

Yes, this would do. Far enough away from his earlier TARDIS and the Dalek time machine, which he would probably be arguing about with Ian and Barbara right now. The Doctor smiled, lost in memory for a moment.

A faint groan from behind him brought the Time Lord back to the present. Steven was starting to stir. The Doctor had given the pilot an injection to overcome his smoke inhalation and it was now time to set him back onto the path of his destiny.

It didn’t take long to drag Steven a little way into the jungle, close to one of the city’s massive ‘legs’, and facing the right way that when he got up, he would head towards the TARDIS. The other, earlier TARDIS.

The Doctor was going to leave him there, and let history happen as planned, but something was nagging away at the back of his mind. Something troubled him still, some vague memory of this time that didn’t quite fit.

So it was that he watched Steven stir from behind a tree. The young man got shakily to his feet and stumbled off in the right direction, attracting the attention of some of Mechanus’ carnivorous plant life, which he managed to fend off.

The Doctor followed, slowly and carefully, as Steven found the clearing where the other TARDIS had landed, the Dalek time craft beside it. There was nobody about. Good, the other, earlier Doctor, along with Ian, Barbara and Vicki, would still be inside the Dalek craft.

Steven struggled over to the TARDIS, his strength obviously failing. He pushed against the door, but it was locked. Slowly, he slid down the fake wooden exterior, unconscious once more.

That was it! The Doctor remembered now, the question that had nagged in his memory, the thought from so long ago. He had solved the puzzle of how Steven escaped the burning Mechanoid city, when the cable he claimed to have climbed down had burned away before he could use it. But the other mystery, the locked box puzzle, was here for him to solve also.

Aware he could be spotted by his earlier self at any moment, the Doctor rushed across the clearing, his own TARDIS key in hand. It fitted the lock perfectly, turned with ease and the door creaked ajar. Picking Steven up once more, the Doctor slapped his face lightly. As the pilot began to come round again, the Time Lord propped him carefully against the edge of the TARDIS and retreated.

Just as planned, Steven’s eyes opened. He felt forwards with his hand, brushed the door open and staggered forwards across the threshold, pushing the door shut behind him by reflex.

Another dash across the clearing and the Doctor locked the door behind the pilot. He had just made it back to cover when he heard raised voices.

A smile creased his young/old face as he watched his earlier self emerge from the Dalek time machine, shouting and blustering with rage while Ian and Barbara tried to persuade him to let them try to get home in the craft. How young he was back then, trying to act all gruff and pompous, because he thought that was what people expected when they saw his elderly seeming exterior.

Shaking his head at the callow youth still arguing with his companions, the Doctor headed back to his own TARDIS. He needed to rectify the lateral balance cones, then try again for the Moon. Then back to Earth to give Amy her much delayed trip in a time machine.

Mark Simpson

Revenge Of The Cybermen

The hardest things to review in life are not, as Ness Bishop once suggested, the things you like the most, but the things which you have to justify your affection for and you know that, given enough space to do so, as I have been given here, you won’t be able to.

Revenge Of The Cybermen is one such thing. Like Time And The Rani and Trial Of A Time Lord, I know it is duff, but I can’t help loving it nevertheless. Revenge is like some cousin coming to a party where you know they’ll start their embarrassing routine on the dance floor well before nine, but you still want them to come.

Let’s get one thing out into the open. I like the Cybermen a lot. In fact, I would go so far as to say I love them, but that would bring strange mental images accompanied by the sounds of ‘Excellent!’ and ‘The biggest bang in history,’ so we’ll just leave it there. In contrast to my fondness for other alien beasties in Doctor Who, my appreciation for the Cybermen comes not from the actual stories they played a part in, but from what they represent. I still remember that cold winter evening when I first made acquaintance with the Cybermen, in the novel Doctor Who And The Cybermen, based on the Pat Troughton serial The Moonbase. They are terrifying to me because, unlike the Daleks and the Master and the Kandyman, they represent what we could become, albeit in a very science fictionalised sense. More and more people today are gaining artificial limbs and organs, and Kit Pedlar, back in the original Tenth Planet scripts, asked a question, a very important question, when does someone like that stop becoming human? And, like the Borg (which TNG nicked the idea for from the Cybermen) they don’t particularly want to kill you, they will if it serves their purpose, but more often then not, they will turn you into one of their own. Their motives are never really domination, just survival.

So it’s good that I like the Cybermen for the ideal behind them, rather than their stories, because there’s only four out of nine (or ten if you include The Five Doctors) Cyber-stories that I actually like by virtue of their being good. And I’m very sorry to say that Revenge Of The Cybermen isn’t one of them. I so wanted Revenge to be good. Cybermen. Tom Baker. Sarah Jane in combat pants. It is the perfect recipe. The best Doctor/Companion team up against the best monster. And before I go on, I would just like to point out that I am completely in love with Sarah Jane Smith, so excuse all references to her combat pants and any other item of her clothing.

Unfortunately, that recipe is marred by the writing. It is one of those rare occasions when the writing of the story is the reason for its downfall, rather than bad sets and dodgy SFX. I’m sure Gerry Davis is a nice bloke, and two of the Cybermen stories I do like were written by him. But Revenge could have been so much better.

How, for instance, do the Cybermen manage to walk around on Voga? There’s tons of gold lying around. And for that matter, how can gold disable a Cyberman (or by the time of Silver Nemesis a mere suggestion of gold knocks them down dead)? Baker, in this story, makes some codswollop remark about it being the ideal non-conductive (or was that conductive?) metal. And in Earthshock, Davison says that it clogs up their breathing apparatus(?). Please, Gerry, the Cybermen already have enough weaknesses without introducing another. You feel as if the gold angle was a leftover from the original outline of the plot, which involved a casino. It’s fair enough that there should be a small planet which a very large gold content. I remember reading some scientific speculation that the core of the planet Jupiter was one big diamond, so anything’s possible. Except the Cybermen being vulnerable to gold of course.

And while the gold might be an important angle in this story, as I mentioned earlier, by the time of Silver Nemesis, it has become ridiculous. You can almost imagine Sylvester McCoy producing a piece of pyrite and waving it at the Cyberleader, who then runs away, abandoning his plans to turn Earth into his new Cyber army.

The other main problem with the story is its characterisation. After Genesis Of The Daleks, which is highly praised (even by me) for its characters, Revenge returns to thinking ‘Dr Who is a kids show, therefore they won’t mind if we just stick a character in and have him do stuff.’ We never really get a true sense of all the potential political intrigue on Voga. And why does Kellman work with the Vogans? The crippling fault I believe though, is the actual story. Given Davis’ seeming belief of Doctor Who as a kiddie show, the plot itself is quite complex.

However, the plus points of the story are very strong. The first is the design. I like the new Cybermen, with their head-mounted guns. It makes so much more sense than them carrying around guns. Unless of course you want a cocky Australian or a unstable Doctor to shoot things, of course. The location shooting at Wookey Hole is also very good, but brought into sad contrast with the caves shot in studio. Wookey Hole sounds like its real, you get lovely echoes and everything, and the studio sounds like, well, a studio. Reusing the main set from this seasons best story, The Ark In Space, was a nice idea, especially given the seasons overarching loose plotline. It saved money and the fact that the Ark design itself wasn’t too bad to start with can only help.

The story however has been, to some extent, in light of The Deadly Assassin and almost every Gallifrey story after that, is the sight of the Seal Of Rassilon splattered all over Voga. Whether it’s reappearance in The Deadly Assassin was proof that the Time Lords interfered in the Cyberwars, or just of a lazy designer, we’ll probably never know, but I, being the obsessive fanboy I am, tend to prefer the former while in my heart knowing it’s the latter.

         Revenge Of The Cybermen brought to a close, after only twenty episodes, Season 12 of Doctor Who, the shortest season so far. Despite my fondness for it, Revenge does leave a bitter taste in the mouth, and one, given Zygons’ relocation to the start of Season 13, where Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes would begin to make their mark on the show proper, that would have lasted a very long time.
Mark Ritchie

The Endgame Of Rassilon

Recently I met up with a fellow fan down the pub, and since my friend shares similar views to me about where Doctor Who went wrong, inevitably we ended up discussing where ideally the classic series should have ended before it got really bad.

I nominated Horns of Nimon- ending the show on a masquerade party knees-up and the Doctor and Romana flying off into the Skonnon sunset for centuries more adventures together. All whilst the Master’s still decaying on his last life and the Dalek-Movellan stalemate is ensuring universal peace. Perfect, but unrealistic. The show wouldn't have ended whilst it was getting such massive ratings.

A realistic ending would be Logopolis where Tom Baker departed to dismal ratings. With its themes of death and rebirth, a panoramic view of the dying universe, and the Fourth Doctor’s dying words “It’s the end but the moment has been prepared for” it’d be perfect, and also open-ended enough to inspire a new novels range continuation, probably beginning with a novelisation of Castrovalva. Ideally a novels range with meticulous, coherent writing, no reliance on cheap spectacle or characters committing nonsensical actions out of the blue, and free of JNT’s creative interference and ban on past Who writers. An 80’s Doctor Who that’d be rewarding and therapeutic to follow rather than spirit-crushing.

However, my friend’s choice was The Five Doctors, and the more I think about it, the more ideal an end-point it seems. A retrospective story where past and present intersects, as every incarnation of the Doctor throughout the show’s history is brought together, and must battle old monsters and enemies on their quest to discover ancient Gallifreyan secrets. Then when their quest is done, the current Doctor makes his farewells with his old friends and earlier selves, and then the Time Lords reward him with an offer of the presidency. In response he flees in the Tardis and goes on the run from his people, and as he reminisces “Why not? After all that’s how it all started”, thus ending the show on a nicely ‘full circle’ note.

One possible drawback is that Davison's era would be without a Dalek story, and it’d be a shame if the Daleks missed out on the show’s more tactile, dynamic 80’s visual make-over. But what if Resurrection of the Daleks happened in Season 20 as originally planned, and wasn't held back a year, and thus came before The Five Doctors?

I’m no fan of Resurrection of the Daleks- part of me would gladly lose it. Like much of 80’s Who, I find it incoherent, gratuitously violent, charmless and so desperate to be downbeat it has to reduce the Doctor to a shadow of himself. However it does the job as an apocalyptic ‘final end’ Dalek story. It coaxes one of Peter Davison's strongest performances as the Doctor, and its uncompromising bleakness, fan-service and appetite for destruction makes it almost comfort food viewing if you’re feeling down. Better still it would originally have been directed by Peter Grimwade who’d undoubtedly have delivered the same solid visual flair he did in Earthshock. Also it was originally intended as Kamelion’s departure story. Apparently he was meant to take on Stien’s role in the sory and sacrifice himself to destroy the Daleks, which would explain Kamelion’s absence in The Five Doctors.

Actually no, the Dalek cameo in The Five Doctors would be satisfying enough, whilst preserving the Daleks' mystique.

One issue I have with The Five Doctors is the Master escaping justice again. My friend however argued for its poetry, of both the Doctor and Master being free and roaming the cosmos, on the run from their own people, destined to cross paths again. It’s a welcome tradition that the Master always escapes- in The Sea Devils it was practically a ‘punch the air’ moment. But I feel it's inappropriate after his atrocities in Logopolis for him to get away unpunished. Logopolis is a problematic story because the Master had never gone that far before, and it sat uncomfortably with the cosiness of the Doctor-Master rivalry ever since. If the Master really is that dangerous to the universe, shouldn’t the Doctor destroy him once and for all? Well no, because the Doctor’s the hero of a family show. The best way out of this conundrum would be leaving the Master trapped forever in Castrovalva where he can’t hurt anyone. But they wanted to milk the arch villain for all his worth, resulting in diminishing returns that turned him into a joke.

Maybe ending on The Five Doctors is the best compromise. It restores the Master’s dignity and his malignant sting in his tail- particularly when he tricks the Cybermen to their deaths. Also Rassilon foretells that there’ll be a reckoning and the Master will face retribution soon. Maybe this final reckoning between the Doctor and Master is best left to our imaginations (or the novels) since it would only be a disappointment onscreen.

So with the Master’s future foretold, he must go free because causality demands it, much like how in Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor couldn’t destroy the Daleks because he knew they had an important part to play in the future. The Five Doctors shares much in common with Genesis of the Daleks. They’re both stories where the Time Lords send the Doctor on a quest into a savage environment that represents a microcosm of the conflict-based universe and all its evil, fear, death and corruption. But as the Doctor traverses many perils and dangers and finds various allies along the way, he comes to realise his true quest isn’t to do the Time Lords’ bidding or make the world’s problems go away, but to discover self-knowledge and peace of mind in a chaotic universe. It’s about the Doctor turning away from a moment of godhood and instead simply letting the natural order of things remain, because evil and conflict will always exist, but as the Doctor asserts there will always be goodness, courage and nobility as universal truths too, and so long as brave, heroic people are around to stand together in unity and resistance, there will always be hope and that essential balance of light and dark forces. Infact maybe even evil has its place.

The Five Doctors isn’t about saving the universe, it’s about the rich life the Doctor has led, the friends he’s made, the wisdom he’s acquired, and how that marks him apart from the rest of his stuffy people. By contrast the Master’s life seems quite sad, lonely and friendless. He’s a failure, and the only allies he’s ever known were always as treacherous as him. So the Master may be free to threaten the universe again, but the Doctor will always be there to beat him. So long as the Doctor remains the hero he is, there will always be hope.

"A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about."

Hence why The Five Doctors should have ended the series, because afterwards followed numerous character assassinations of the Doctor that completely destroyed his credibility as a hero, beginning with Warriors of the Deep where the Doctor places the Silurians’ lives over the lives of the humans they’re massacring, even when one human woman takes a bullet to protect him. The once strong-willed, free-spirited, instinctively pragmatic Doctor becomes reduced to an insensible puppet. The Five Doctors- Terrance Dicks’ final TV story- was sadly the last time the Doctor was truly in character. Infact I think today there’s pitifully few Who writers who truly understand the Doctor’s character as well as Terrance Dicks does. The majority of New Who is testament to that, with the characters of modern Doctors seemingly based more on obnoxious, arrogant, narcissistic superfans. It’s only been Matt Smith who really feels like the old Doctor to me, but even he often lacks the old Doctor’s chivalry and protectiveness towards his companion, as though they’re pushing the asexual disinterest aspect too far.

Sadly today it’s fashionable for fandom to dismiss Terrance Dicks as out-dated and old-hat whilst hysterically praising and brownnosing Russell T. Davies for his success, typical of fandom’s jobsworth mentality (probably instilled by 80’s stories like Time-Flight that resembled soulless workplace orientation videos). Fandom today seems plagued by a cultish dissociative thinking that the show’s ratings and popularity automatically overrules fan opinion, and how it took a deified genius to ‘achieve the impossible’ by making Doctor Who accessible to the masses.

Nonsense! Terrance Dicks did that all the time. Terrance’s stories at their best weren’t just up to date, they were timeless. For a ten-part story The War Games is still today a very fast-paced piece of television with a hard-hitting emotional ending that rivals Doomsday. Likewise Horror of Fang Rock features full-blooded characterisation on par with New Who. Infact I’d rank Horror of Fang Rock equally on par with Blink for quality writing, ingenious plotting and genuine horror, and for a ‘serious’ story it’s actually far funnier and wittier than Unicorn and the Wasp. More importantly a first time viewer doesn’t need to know any Sontaran-Rutan war backstory in order to understand and enjoy Horror of Fang Rock and in-fact the story conveys space battlefleets and galactic empires through spoken word alone, without needing any CGI spectacle. You could also easily show Brain of Morbius to a first time viewer. Terrance Dicks always made his stories well crafted, timelessly accessible and self-sustained. I'd venture that if Terrance’s Seven Keys to Doomsday stageplay was adapted for television and used as the New Series’ pilot episode, it would've been every bit the mainstream success it was, and far more adventurous, exciting and warm-hearted.

Even The Five Doctors is well crafted enough to include all its fan-pleasing elements whilst still working as a self-sustained standalone that could appeal to viewers who’d never seen the show before. Infact it’s often the first story a beginner fan will turn to, rivalling Genesis of the Daleks for highest Classic Who DVD sales. All the recurring characters and enemies are well defined enough for first time viewers to instantly ‘get’ and the story wisely gives greatest prominence to more simple, self-explanatory enemies like the Master and Cybermen.

The show’s 20 year history is made simple and easy to grasp, and even the concept of these various different Doctors all being metaphysically the same man is instantly established when each past Doctor gets abducted, giving the current Doctor severe chest pains, emphasising their existential link- this is even bookended when the Doctors combine their mental powers to break Borusa’s hold on the Fifth incarnation. Infact the idea of four different figures representing the same man playing the game of Rassilon from different approach points really suits the live action roleplaying game feel of the story, of one player manipulating numerous figures. This was a time when roleplaying culture was really taking off (see also Enlightenment and Curse of Fenric). Even Borusa’s model of the Death Zone and various Doctor figures compliments this atmosphere, and I think that’s why the story’s so accessible.

It’s ironic that Terrance Dicks is regarded as out-dated now, when The Five Doctors and Brain of Morbius were crucially about the importance of each new generation breaking with the traditional old guard- harking back to Doctor Who’s countercultural beginnings. They’re both stories about how every civilisation has its dark ages and why immortality would be a curse because if the rulers of a civilisation lived forever, there’d be no change or progress and we’d never have escaped those dark ages. Borusa isn’t an evil megalomaniac, he’s simply a well meaning old ruler who’s set in his ways and fears change and his mortality and who can’t let go of his power because he doesn’t trust anyone else to rule Gallifrey. He even seems genuinely remorseful about the Castellan’s death, but he can’t turn back now.

New Who could learn from the days when corrupt Time Lords had proper, understandable motives, rather than just wanting to destroy the universe for the sake of it, and when Sarah Jane was still the steely, independent woman she always was, happily getting on with her life, not spending thirty years pining over the Doctor. So as well as being a perfect end point, The Five Doctors would be a perfect template for any revival of the show.

Would the revival still have happened though? I once thought that if the show had ended sooner, it would have come back sooner. But it’s not that simple. If the show ended my way on Tom Baker, then it’d be difficult to do a revival without him, because he’d be seen as the irreplaceable heart of the show. Also without the Doctors after Tom Baker who were actually willing to return to the role, Big Finish would never have happened, so we’d have lost a lot of fantastic audio Doctor Who, and I believe it was partly down to Big Finish’s success in sales that the BBC were persuaded to bring the show back. A year ago I’d have happily lost the New Series, but now the show's really improving under Moffat’s producership I’d really hate to lose outstanding stories like Victory of the Daleks, Time of Angels and Amy’s Choice (although I’d gladly erase Chibnall’s Silurian two-parter).

Ending the show on The Five Doctors might increase the chances of the revival happening. With Peter Davison having two solid years to establish himself as the Doctor, coupled with a multi-Doctor story which Tom Baker was mostly absent from, it’d be clear that the show had outgrown Tom Baker’s shadow. The Five Doctors also did well in the States (lets say the BBC had ended the show there in order to sell the rights to America), which would have sowed the seeds for the American TV Movie in some form. After all the TV Movie kept the flame alive and it got the general public talking fondly again about the classic show’s charms that the TV Movie somehow lacked.

There'd probably be a novels range continuation very similar to the Eighth Doctor Adventures, probably drawing heaviest inspiration from State of Decay and Enlightenment. Tegan, Turlough and especially Kamelion could make interesting short-term book companions, but they could eventually be written out and replaced with new companions easily, unlike Ace who became inseparable from the Seventh Doctor. After all, Tegan and Turlough had frequently requested to be returned home onscreen, and they were absent from the Fifth Doctor comic strips. The Fifth Doctor, having witnessed his first incarnation's devious tricking of Borusa, could even be developed into the ruthless, cosmic chess-master Doctor of the novels, proving wrong the naysayers who dismissed Davison as uselessly weak(rather than Season 21 proving those naysayers right).

Whilst the novels range would be safe, the audios are a different matter. Big Finish had its origins in the Audio Visuals fan group in the mid-80’s, where Gary Russell and Nicholas Briggs started doing their own unlicensed audio Doctor Who adventures. However if the show ended in 1983 and the BBC got proprietorial about the copyright back then, the Audio Visuals group might have only gotten away with just their first few releases, at best. But would Big Finish have lasted even if they did happen? Spin-offs like Sarah Jane Smith, Dalek Empire, Gallifrey and Unbound would remain possible (as would Bernice Summerfield if Paul Cornell had still written Love and War), but the backbone of the range would be the main Doctor Who audios, so you’d only have Peter Davison’s Doctor and possibly the TV Movie Doctor too. With Janet Fielding refusing to reprise Tegan’s role, that'd leave an unfillable gap after The Five Doctors, leaving only the option of doing Fifth Doctor-Nyssa audios, and possibly adventures set after the TV Movie. It’d be nice to think audios like Spare Parts, Creatures of Beauty, Time-Reef and Plague of the Daleks would still fit in the canon, but it’s uncertain Big Finish would last that long. Big Finish’s main selling point was its variety. But there’d be very little here to interest fans who didn’t like the Fifth Doctor and regarded the TV Movie Doctor suspiciously. Infact given how the McGann range chased away many loyal listeners when it got bogged down with the Zagreus and Divergent Universe business, if Peter Davison was the only other audio Doctor, that probably would have killed Big Finish for good.

Now here many fans would say Caves of Androzani is the best end-point for being a tour de force high water mark, and a poignant end of an era story (well it’s poignant until Colin Baker’s first lines kill the mood), and it comes right after the Master's ‘death’ and the Daleks becoming an endangered species. Plus it would allow Big Finish to do Sixth Doctor and Peri stories, and audios featuring Terry Molloy’s Davros.

However I believe Caves of Androzani would be too bleak an end-point, and not really how the show should be remembered. It needed a reassuring follow-up. If the show ended there, you'd end with the Doctor still reduced to less than half the hero he is, without the grand redemptive comeback of Remembrance of the Daleks. Even Logopolis would be a more hopeful ending.

Maybe it’d be better if the cancellation crisis and hiatus happened on The Five Doctors, so the show would continue for a while afterwards, but Warriors of the Deep and Twin Dilemma would be thankfully lost forever. Unfortunately this might mean the show ending two years sooner on the indignity of Dragonfire.

Many fans probably wonder how I could ever want the show to end sooner. If the last five years’ hysterical praise of New Who have proved anything, it’s that most fans would always prefer bad Doctor Who to no Doctor Who at all. So if I don’t like what followed The Five Doctors, why can’t I just be happy with the show up to that point, enjoy those years and accept that what came after has fans of its own? Well that’s because unfortunately what came after was so destructively bad, it even erodes my enjoyment of the show’s better years. The disgracing of the Doctor in the 80’s even has a retroactively tarnishing effect on the character’s history. Enough bad work can form a critical mass as corrosive as any other, reducing the show’s achievements to nothing. If the show ended with The Five Doctors, that wouldn’t have happened.

Beyond awful scripts and wrongheaded production decisions, I think what really went wrong is the show simply stopped believing in itself. Doctor Who wasn’t about hard science and its logic rarely bore close scrutiny, but it articulated an idealistic time where anything seemed possible. Whether it’s the Doctor and Harry easily infiltrating the Thal dome in Genesis of the Daleks, or the Doctor and Romana breaking free from Meglos’s time loop by re-enacting their repeating moments, a pinch of make-believe whimsy made those implausible moments work, and they made the show’s universe seem stranger and more hopeful.

But cynicism set in. Maybe times had gotten mean as the modern outlook became more simple-minded and contemptuous, particularly in TV and cinema. Sci-fi worlds of wonder and whimsy didn’t work anymore unless you had the budget to show them, like Star Wars did. Doctor Who didn’t have that budget, but neither did it have faith anymore. The show certainly lost faith in the Doctor and became severely morally confused. It felt defeated. The show tried to make a point by becoming more outrageous, pretentious and forced, trying to prove itself worthy. It tried reasserting believability and ‘realness’ with continuity references, visceral gore and making the Doctor more melodramatic, confrontational, and angry (like New Who). JNT's obsessive attempts to ‘re-define’ the show gradually turned the Doctor himself into an unstable, obtusely negligent, self-defeating control freak. Worse still, the show tried to believe in something by tapping into fandom’s more detrimentally cultish thinking. It never got more cultish than Warriors of the Deep force-feeding the viewer with a twisted, humanity-hating, self-destructive pacifist philosophy at odds with all cognitive reasoning. A pointlessly depressing, mean-spirited parade of suicidal stupidity, where any character who suggests doing the sensible thing is demonised for it.

New Who seems so ratings conscious and audience aware that it seems to consistently cease believing its own fiction. Each season finale has ended with a pixie dust resolution, which proves

that even whimsy needs to be disciplined and reigned in, otherwise it ceases to mean anything, as indeed does the show.

The problem is the insincerity of New Who’s whimsy. It doesn’t seem to treat any of its own fiction as real. All the spectacle, tear-jerking and forced comedy are just artificial contrivances to keep viewers watching. It seems so desperate to pander to what’s hip that it lacks the identity of Doctor Who. With the show feeling that limited, insular and distrusting of its audience, I just can’t believe in the show’s possibilities or magic. A once invitingly wondrous show that compelled our investment, getting us to maintain the spell from our own end, has now become so cynical and so much part of today’s trashy, nasty zeitgeist that it’s almost inapproachable. Particularly the way stories like Aliens of London and The Runaway Bride depict humanity as hopelessly stupid and in inferiority to the Doctor.

I can’t help think if the show ended on The Five Doctors with its faith and magic still intact, on a note of celebration rather than disgrace, then it might have come back prouder, sure of its place on TV and far less desperate. Ultimately it was the faith and willpower of fans that brought the show back, coupled with TV’s current nostalgia phase, and that'd remain the case if the show ended on The Five Doctors.

However, if The Five Doctors was the last story, then fandom would probably try to make it impossible to enjoy by constantly harping on about how it only got 7 million viewers and got the show cancelled because its continuity references ‘alienated’ casual viewers. We’d still be told to imagine how non-fans would see the story, and how enjoying its fan pleasing elements was something to be ashamed of. Thus reinforcing fandom’s internalised snobbery, pecking orders and fans’ pathological tendency to parodically ape and adopt our mainstream culture's simple-minded, contemptuous worldview. Fandom would still have a cold, jobsworth mentality that's based around ratings, demographics, archetypal mindsets and consumer resistance, and basically viewing people as statistics rather than individuals, and viewing other fans as inferior and unworthy of speaking critically of the successful. That’s why I’d liked the idea of the show ending with Horns of Nimon because it villainises those fans so well.

But the inviting, warm nostalgia of The Five Doctors couldn’t be further removed from the cold-hearted cultish stories that followed. It’s a tribute to the show’s long legacy with something for every fan, blending 80’s fan-pleasing continuity with the Williams era’s ethos of never taking the show or life too seriously. It even vindicates the unmade stories. Pertwee's Doctor gets one last confrontation with the Master, and even Shada's sort-of canonised (although why didn’t they use the footage of the Fourth Doctor being chased on bicycle by Skagra’s sphere?)

If you were to select some Doctor Who stories to go in a time capsule for future generations to discover, then The Five Doctors would be as mandatory a choice as Genesis of the Daleks. It’s a truly essential, indispensible story, and it was Doctor Who’s last respectable note, before Warriors of the Deep and Twin Dilemma made the series impossible to respect.

Perhaps The Five Doctors was the show's natural end-point, and afterwards the series could only regress and decline. The only better ending I can think of is Parting of the Ways, where for once New Who depicts humanity's strength, with ordinary people joining the Doctor's final stand against the last of the Daleks. And funnily enough, it was all downhill from there too.

Thomas Cookson

From Beyond The Grave

It seems fitting that the first review I write for several years (since 2007, I think) should be for a story that is almost my all time favourite Doctor Who story ever, right from when I first saw it (aged 7 or 8?). It also happens to be one of new Doctor Who Matt Smith's favourite stories. So I'm not biased in any way.

The first death in Tomb of the Cybermen occurs at around 5 minutes into the story, and after this, the killings continue at a rate of roughly 1 every 10/15 minutes. Good innings.

The format is traditional; the Doctor and co gatecrash an expedition of curious explorers/arceologists intent on discovering the secrets of a long dead civilisation. It's funny right from the start, with the Doctor and Jamie bouncing off one another quite happily and joking with Victoria to make her feel welcome (the character must have been very intimidated, so the Doctor/Jamies's gentle joking with her is quite sweet). The crew of the expedition bicker like a group of school children let loose at the annual trip to Alton Towers.

I'm going to take this opportunity to make my feelings about the Cybermen known. I love the old style Cybers, their weird half human sing song voices, the way they look like they've been cobbled together out of tin foil and bits of old vacuum cleaner. I have to admit I've never really liked any Cyberman story after this one, although one of the Colin Baker ones was ok. I think it's the one that involves the TARDIS turning itself into an organ (no, not that kind of organ...). I absolutely can't stand the new series Cybermen. Cybermen should look like human beings that have been stripped of everything that makes them human, and yet are still pitifully, painfully recognisibly humanoid. They should not look like giant silver robot men.

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, my final mention of the post 2005 series (hopefully). Watching a Patrick Troughton story while in the middle of Matt Smith's first series really brings home how heavily young Smiffy has borrowed from the second Doctor in creating the character of his own Doctor, with a little of Tom Baker's wide eyed looniness thrown in.

Once the chracters get into the building and split off into various rooms, the building becomes a sort of funhouse of death, what with the target practise machine and the dreaded Cybermats. Bless.... every snot nosed nine year old will want one.

I love Patrick Troughton's 'Bumper book of alien menaces' which makes an appearance when Victoria asks him what a Cybermat is. It's a strangely tender moment between the two characters, out of the rest of the action, and you can almost see Matt Smith's Doctor recreating the scene with his new friend Miss Pond. Oh, sorry, I said I wasn't going to mention the 'new' series agan, didn't I? Never mind. Another lovely moment between the Doctor and Victoria comes later in the story when the other characters are sleeping, and the Doctor talks about his family and how he barely remembers them, while Victoria still feels the new pain of her father's death.

I just love Jamie's reaction when Victoria says she'd rather stay with the Doctor than go back to the TARDIS. Poor sod, if only he knew how longer he would be stuck with the Doctor, clearing up his mess. That sigh is priceless. In my opinion Jamie MCrimmon is one of the best companions ever. My next review is going to be for an early Sarah Jane Smith story. Uncle Steve... can Jamie can have his own spin off series please?

I've never been able to work out Kaftan's motives. Is she having an affair with Kleig or what? Perhaps he's just offering her lots of money to help him. She's so much a pantomime villian you half expect her to turn into Yo Sammity Sam halfway through the story. "Vhere's that pesky Roadvunner gone, ya?" (ok, I'm of German stock (and French). I can take the piss if I want to... if indeed Kaftan/Kleig are German?) Kleig is ok, he's just mad, but Kaftan confuses me.

The sight of the frozen tomb is beautiful, especially with that eerie music playing over it. The music is kind of creeping me put so far. It's sparse and sinister, and tinkly, the kind of music that says 'something bad is going to happen... or is it? Oh hang on, yes it is. Oh dear'. It's somewhat akin to the Salad Fingers franchise. No wonder Viner keeps gibbering. The bit where the Cybermen start thawing out and moving about in their little cubicles always gives me the creeps. Oh dear, Viner's just been shot. Probably for the best. He'd probably have had a brain embolism when he saw the Cybers popping out of their cling film covered cages. As an aside, how come Victoria is such a good shot and manages to hit the Cybermat on the first go? She's a well brought up, upper class Victorian girl. Who the hell taught her to shoot like that?

Quotable quote that never was:

"I am Eric Kleig. I am your ressurector. Now you will help us."

"Not til I've had a cup of coffee I'm bloody not. You try crouching in a little airless cupboard for thousands of years. You'd have a stonking great headache too, you little oik. Get me a bloody coffee NOW! And I want a Garibaldi." (yes, I know. I've been watching way too much Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes. Mind you, I looked up Garibaldies and they sound revolting.) 

Speaking of heads, what is with the Cyberleaders head? Does he just have a bigger brain than the others? Or is it a crown of some sort? Whatever it is, it makes him look faintly ridiculous. Perhaps someone should give the Cyberleader some singing lessons and a pink feather boa. Then he can sing Gloria Gaynor properly.

Poor old Jamie's knees must be getting a wee bit nippy in that kilt. Perhaps he shoud have worn tights, like Amy. 

Toberman's is a tale that is beautifully tragic. The way he turns on the Cybermen at the end and gives his life for his shipmates even though they never treated him like one of them is a million times better than the Yvonne Hartman cyberthing turning on the Cybermen in Doomsday, and crying, of all things. No way would they have been able to portray a black man as a servile simpleton nowadays. But then I'm part of the last generaion that has not had political correctness rammed down their throats from the age of 3.

Anyway, before I get arrested by Gordon Brown's ghost, back to the subject. Onto episode 4 now, and someone else has just copped it. Nearly. I'm really not sure about the rather obvious mind meld between the Cyberleader and Toberman. I think we would have got the same message without the stupid wavy lines flitting across the screen. I find the 'special effects' have ruined this story a bit, consisting as they do of the aforementioned flickering lines, that have obviously been added using string or lines drawn on the finished film. I know, I'm starting to nitpick now I've got over all my squeeing and gushing about how great this story is. What til I set myself loose on the Eleventh Hour, or heaven forbid a series overview of the 2010 series...

Why on Earth does the Cyberleader trust the Doctor to help him? I know he doesn't have emotions and he's not exactly himself when the Doctor tricks him into the recharging machine, but still... and doesn't the Doctor realise how majorly pissed off the guy is going to be when he gets out of the machine and finds Jamie has been practising on him for his boy scouts knotwork badge?

Quotable quote that never was:

"You will remain still"

"Right, yes, of course. I'll just stand here, shall I, while you crush my neck beneath your bare hands? Marvellous."

Time for the awards now:

Kaftan = Best death ever. I'm only surprised they didn't put out gym mats for her to fall on so she could make herself a bit more comfortable.

Best put down: "That's alright Captain. It's nice that we have your superior strength to fall back on, should we need it."

Yes, go Victoria! I am so going to use that one on a night out.

Speaking of awards, as I write the first draft of this, on the backs of old job application letters, it appears that Simon Cowell has just won the Outstanding Contribution award at the BATFAs and they are showing a montage of his finest moments. It's just a shame Leona Lewis isn't one of them...)

Oh, delightful. We've reached the point of the story when the Cybermen start dying and that nasty yellow custardy foam starts oozing out of them. Anyone for a fish finger?

"When I say run, run."

Poor Cyberleader. I almost felt sorry for him when the Doctor and Jamie gave him the slip. He looks like the lumbering overweight child who always spends ages as 'it' in games of tag.

Following the usual format, only two of the original intrepid explorers survive the expedition. Presumably this means they won't run out of White Zinfandel on the journey home.

"That really is the end of the Cybermen, isn't it, Doctor?"

No. You know that from the closing montage of the escaped Cybermat, Toberman's prone body lying in the sand, and the final close up of the image of a cyberman on the front of the building. In my opinion, this story marks the last 'proper' Cyberman story, but it is by no means the last we will see of the buggers.

By Rose Ghost