THE PLOT
The Time Ring returns the Doctor, Harry, and Sarah Jane to Station Nerva. But they arrive centuries early, in the time before the solar flares, when the station is being used as a beacon to aid in space travel. This particular beacon has been set up around Voga, an apparent asteroid drawn into Jupiter's orbit to become a new satellite for the giant planet, and a potential hazard to space navigation. But all is not well on the beacon. The station has been ravaged by plague, with only a handful of its original staff still alive.
The Doctor suspects that this is no simple space plague. When a metallic worm is caught injecting Sarah Jane with poison, his worst fears are confirmed. The worm is a Cybermat. The Cybermen are on their way, with a fiendish plot to destroy Voga before moving on to conquer the galaxy!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Tom's first truly manic performance (even Robot was fairly settled, with most of the overt goofiness confined to the first episode). I more than half-suspect Tom, now comfortable in the role, recognized this as a weak script and decided to have some fun playing against as many lines as possible. Since it's the first time he really runs with his more manic tendencies, it works. There are some classic Tom bits here. Grinning after being manhandled by the Cybermen, letting loose with a stream of technobabble and then translating that he and Sarah Jane are "heading toward the biggest bang in history," or cheerfully wondering, "Who's the homicidal maniac?" after Kellman insistst that he, Sarah, and Harry should be killed at once.
Tom's best moment comes in Episode Two. Kellman has been all but exposed as a traitor, but he is still protesting his innocence and the station's captain is not yet quite 100% convinced. Until the Doctor hastens the questioning by using a reprogrammed Cybermat to threaten him. He observes that after it strikes, Kellman will have about 10 seconds to give the needed information if he wants to live. It's a standard enough scene, really. Pertwee would have played this scene dead straight, utterly serious and imperious in facing down Kellman, and he would have been suitably compelling doing so. But Tom turns this scene just the right degree askew to make it something memorable, grinning manically as he threatens Kellman. Tom's already shown his abilities to summon furious intensity. But here he goes in the opposite direction, grinning manically and almost reveling in the game of threatening Kellman. It's very effective, and just the tiniest bit disquieting how much he seems to be enjoying himself.
Sarah Jane Smith: She gets thrust into the role of "damsel-in-distress" fairly early on, when she's poisoned by the Cybermat. She then plays companion to Harry, who very much takes the lead on Voga. Finally, she thrusts herself right back into peril by going back to the Beacon in Episode Four, in order to be rescued by the Doctor again. It is fun to see the rapport she and Tom have developed by this stage. Their interplay on the Beacon in Episode Four is positively buoyant, each seeming to feed off the other's energy.
Harry Sullivan: "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" Not an entirely fair summation of the character at any point, and far from a fair one here. Harry does become the inexplicable butt of the Doctor's ire in this serial, however. As early as Episode One, he's earning glares from the Doctor for little real reason (the sliding door bit), at which point even Harry seems to start getting a touch fed up ("What have I done now?").
All of which distracts from what a strong story this is for Harry. Not only does he help to save Sarah Jane by helping her to transmat from the Beacon to Voga, but he takes the lead on Voga. He notes the significance of the gold shackles, engineering an escape for himself and Sarah Jane. When the Cybermen arrive on Voga too early for Vorus' trap to succeed, Harry is the one who determines that there must be a way to delay the Cyber bombs from being planted. His only substantial misstep is sending Sarah Jane back to the Beacon, but that isn't so much idiocy as simply acting on incomplete information.
The Cybermen: This story marks the Cybermen's return after a five year absence. It was a return producer Philip Hinchcliffe seemed less than enthusiastic about, apparently having been lumbered with them by the outgoing production team. The Cyberman design here is a definite backward step from their Invasion design, but it is at least serviceable. What jars is how emotional these Cybermen are. The Cyberleader gloats in some scenes, and briefly gives the Doctor the upper hand at one point in Episode Three when he throws a temper tantrum, literally tossing the Doctor at one of the Cyber bombs. The Cyber plan to destroy Voga is needlessly complicated, with their backup plan - stuffing the beacon with explosives and aiming it at the planet - both simpler and far more likely to actually succeed! Worst is that this serial seems to fundamentally misunderstand the Cybermen, turning them into bipedal Daleks, rather than using that which made the Cybermen unique in the first place: the desire to convert others to be like them. All told, it's not hard to see why it was 8 years before the next Cyber story. It's just a shame that, when they did return later, the Revenge Cybermen seemed to be the template, rather than the more effective 1960's versions.
THOUGHTS
Revenge of the Cybermen is in many ways a quintessential Doctor Who story. It's rather cheap-looking, with uneven guest performances and plot-holes galore. It's incredible nonsense, a mishmash of barely-connected elements in service of a thin and derivative plot. By no reasonable critical standpoint could it be labeled "good."
It is also a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
For all of Revenge's many faults, it is never boring. The story just keeps piling on incidents and set pieces. You may be aware that Kellman's double-agent shenanigans don't actually seem to make much sense. You certainly may notice that Vorus' grand plan (basically, to fire off a big rocket) seems less than brilliantly thought out, and depends for any lasting effectiveness on believing that there are only four Cybermen left in the galaxy. Certainly, it may occur to you that the serial cannot decide whether Voga is a small asteroid or a full planet. Or why, given the Cybermen's weakness for gold, the Vogans don't just set up wind machines to blow storms of gold dust at them to clog their chest units, instead of continuing to fire off bullets which do, um, nothing? That's not even mentioning that, just as Vorus seems to assume that the handful of Cybermen attacking Voga are all the Cybermen in the galaxy, the Cybermen seem equally certain that there is no gold in the galaxy other than what is on Voga. It's all ludicrous, sub-Buck Rogers nonsense...
...But it just keeps moving along, with so much that is either fun or at least endearingly idiotic that it's virtually impossible not to enjoy it. The scenes of the dead bodies splayed across the corridors of the Beacon are actually quite effective. The Doctor's investigation of Kellman, leading to an enjoyable set piece in which he avoids Kellman's electrified floor. Sarah Jane and Harry, dodging Vorus' troops on Voga. The Cybermen, landing on the Beacon. The Cybermen, attacking Voga in force (a force of two, but still). Cave ins and bombs and not one but two countdowns to Doomsday. And then, when it's all over, the Doctor still has to avoid a massive collision in what looks like a primitive version of a Disneyland ride.
Is Revenge of the Cybermen one of Doctor Who's great achievements? Of course not. But perhaps more than any other serial I've yet reviewed, it really captures one of the program's essential appeals as an entertainment. There are many, many Who serials from all eras of the show that are not actually terribly good as either science fiction or as drama, but that nevertheless are a great deal of fun just to watch. Revenge of the Cybermen is about as dumb as a 2-month old beagle. But it's fun. And there's honestly many an occasion when I'd prefer watching Revenge's amiable idiocy over the grittier drama of Genesis.
Rating: 7/10. On the border between a "6" and a "7," but the fun factor wins out here.
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