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