#5 (12.17 - 12.20): Revenge of the Cybermen

The Cyberleader (Christopher Robbie) threatens the Doctor.

4 episodes. Written by: Gerry Davis, Robert Holmes (uncredited). Directed by: Michael E. Briant.  Produced by: Philip Hinchcliffe.


THE PLOT

The Time Ring returns the Doctor, Harry, and Sarah Jane to Station Nerva. They arrive centuries early, however, in the time before the solar flares, when the station is being used as a beacon to aid in space travel.

Nerva Beacon has been set up around Voga, a seemingly uninhabited asteroid that has been drawn into Jupiter's orbit to become a new satellite, creating a hazard to space navigation. All is not well. The station has been ravaged by plague, with only a handful of its original staff still alive.

The Doctor suspects that this is no natural disease - and when a metallic worm is caught attacking Sarah Jane, his fears are confirmed. The worm is a Cybermat, injecting the "plague" into its victims. The Cybermen are on their way. Their target: Voga, which is anything but uninhabited, and whose plentiful gold marks them as a threat to the Cybermen!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Tom Baker is noticeably more manic here than in most of the stories of this season (Robot excepted). I half-suspect that the actor, now comfortable in the role, recognized this as a weak script and decided to compensate by playing against as many lines as possible. Earlier stories already introduced his tendency to grin while making grave pronouncements. In this story, he does that several times, drawing out words a beat or two past their natural endpoint. This is not a complaint, as Baker's quirks make this vastly more watchable than it might have been otherwise.

His best moment comes in Episode Two. Shady Professor Kellman (Jeremy Wilkin) has been exposed as a traitor, but he is still protesting his innocence. The Doctor responds by using one of Kellman's items, which turns out to be a control device for the Cybermats, to threaten him.  He observes that after the metallic creature strikes, Kellman will have about 10 seconds to give the needed information if he wants to live. It's a standard enough scene, but Baker turns it just enough askew to make it memorable, grinning maniacally and seemingly reveling in the game of threatening the traitor. It's effective, and just the tiniest bit disquieting, just how much he seems to be enjoying himself.

Sarah Jane Smith: She gets thrust into the role of "damsel-in-distress" 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... just so that the Doctor will have to rescue her all over again. Though it's not a great story for Sarah, it is fun to watch the rapport that's developed between Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker. Their interplay is positively buoyant, each seeming to feed off the other's energy.

Harry Sullivan: "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" Not really a fair summation of the character at any point, but he does spend this story as the inexplicable butt of the Doctor's ire. As early as Episode One, he's earning glares for little real reason (such as when the Doctor is dragged by a sliding door), and he even he seems to get a little fed up, asking, "What have I done now?"

This distracts from Revenge of the Cybermen being quite a strong story for Harry.  He helps to save Sarah after she's attacked. Then he takes the lead on Voga. He observes the significance of the gold shackles, engineering an escape. When the Cybermen arrive on Voga and send their prisoners to the core of the asteroid with Cyber bombs attached to them, he determines that there must be a way to delay the Cyber bombs from being planted. His only substantial misstep is sending Sarah back to the Beacon, but that isn't so much idiocy as simply acting on incomplete information.

The Cybermen: This story marks their return after a five-year absence. Though the submission was by their creator, Gerry Davis, his scripts were heavily rewritten - and with regard to the Cybermen themselves, not for the better. The Cyberleader (Christopher Robbie) has a booming voice rather than the mechanical drone of previous stories, and he spends a lot of time gloating. He gives the Doctor the upper hand at one point by throwing a temper tantrum, literally tossing the Doctor at one of the Cyber bombs. The plan to destroy Voga is needlessly complicated; their backup plan seems both simpler and more likely to actually succeed! 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 a mishmash of barely-connected elements in service of a thin and derivative plot. Kellman's double-agent shenanigans make very little sense. The Vogans' plan depends entirely on there being only four Cybermen left in existence. The story can't seem to keep straight whether Voga is an asteroid or a planet. It's all ludicrous, sub-Buck Rogers nonsense, that by no reasonable critical standard could be labeled as "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 keeps piling on incidents and set pieces, moving along with enough sheer verve that I find it impossible not to enjoy it. The Doctor's investigation of Kellman early in the story leads to an amusing set piece in which he avoids a trap involving an electrified floor ("the floor is lava"). Sarah Jane and Harry dodge Vogan troops, then a few minutes later join forces with them. The Cybermen attack Voga with a relentless force of... um, two. There are cave-ins and bombs and two countdowns to Doomsday. 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.


OVERALL:

It's a silly, ramshackle serial... but it also captures one of the enduring appeals of Doctor Who: even its weaker stories are often quite a lot of fun to watch. Revenge of the Cybermen is about as dumb as a 2-month-old beagle. It's not a patch on Genesis of the Daleks. But there are many times that I'd opt not for the gritty drama of Genesis, but for the amiable idiocy of this.


Rating: 6/10.

Alternate Version: Return of the Cybermen (not yet reviewed)

Previous Story: Genesis of the Daleks
Next Story: Terror of the Zygons

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

#4 (12.11 - 12.16): Genesis of the Daleks

The Doctor confronts Davros (Michael Wisher),
the evil genius who created the Daleks!

6 episodes. Written by: Terry Nation. Directed by: David Maloney.  Produced by: Philip Hinchcliffe.


THE PLOT

While transmatting back to Nerva, the Doctor and his companions are intercepted by the Time Lords. They have taken him to Skaro, to a time before the Daleks' development, in order to either avert the Daleks' creation or affect their evolution to make them less aggressive.

However, they have dropped the Doctor in the midst of a brutal, generations-long war between the Daleks' ancestors, the Kaleds, and their enemies, the Thals. The Kaleds are brutal, militaristic fascists whose society has become dominated by Davros (Michael Wisher), the scientist whose experiments seem to be only tangentially related to the actual war. The Thals are little better, hostile and suspicious, with no qualms about literally working prisoners to death. Separated and scattered between the great, domed cities, the time travelers will need all their wits and luck just to survive.

And that's before Davros unveils his greatest achievement - the subject of the Doctor's mission: The Daleks themselves...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Tom Baker was an engaging presence in his earliest stories, but Genesis adds an extra layer: a seriousness of purpose that we only really saw hinted at in The Ark in Space. The humor is still there, as when he distracts two guards by introducing himself as a spy, but it's a light veneer. He is disgusted by what he sees on Skaro long before he sees Davros's first Dalek, and there are moments in which this most dominant of Doctors becomes still, heavy with despair when it seems all is lost.

His best remembered scene is the "do I have the right" speech. Its fame is justified, Baker superb as the Doctor agonizes over whether killing the Daleks would truly be the right thing to do. Discussions of the moment, however, often miss that the Doctor doesn't refuse to destroy them. His decision is interrupted when he's told that Davros has agreed to introduce compassion into the Daleks' make-up. It's a ruse - but it's one that he is grateful to believe, is desperate to believe - precisely because had he not been given hope, he almost certainly have done it.

Sarah Jane Smith: Separated from the Doctor and Harry, and captured by the Thals, she once again takes on the Doctor role, organizing the prisoners into an escape attempt. The attempt fails, but it comes reasonably close to success and gives the doomed prisoners a last, fragile hope. After that, she recedes into the background, but she does act as the voice of pragmatism when the Doctor is mulling the moral dilemma of committing Dalek genocide.

Harry Sullivan: This serial provides Harry with a number of good moments. He takes decisive action early on, rescuing the Doctor from a land mine. When the Doctor's Time Ring is confiscated, he keeps the Doctor from protesting, pointing out that it would be bad for the Kaleds to realize how crucial the bracelet is. I can't help but lament his short tenure as a regular, given that Ian Marter's laid-back presence makes a natural foil for Tom Baker's dominance.

Davros: I'd have to agree with fan consensus that Davros's debut remains his best television appearance. Long before the phrase, "God of the Daleks," was ever uttered in a television episode, Wisher's Davros is basically that. He has created them in his own image, gliding along in casings that look exactly like the life support/travel unit that sustains him. He has purged his Daleks of pity and compassion, just as those same emotions were burned away from him. He is a Dalek in all but name.

He is also a highly formidable opponent. It is worth noting that the regulars never actually defeat Davros. The Doctor is left to flee for his life, while the only justice Davros meets is a poetic one - doomed by his own insistence on barring compassion from the Daleks. The scenes between Davros and the Doctor are uniformly excellent, with Davros's musing about using a virus that would destroy all life being a particular highlight. Wisher is compelling, as hypnotic in his quiet moments as during his rants. Tom Baker is outstanding in this story - but Wisher is even better.

Nyder: Peter Miles delivers his best-ever Who performance as Nyder, the Kaled security chief. Miles' facial features are well-suited to his role. Dressed entirely in black, Nyder lurks in the background, watching hawk-like. In Episode Four, he briefly pretends to be betraying Davros to gain information from a dissenting scientist. Miles makes it plausible that the scientist believes Nyder, softening his tones and speaking urgently. On first viewing, I was fooled. Abruptly, his voice hardens and sharpens, allowing the chilling realization to sink in for both scientist and viewer. It's a fine performance in a fine part. It's a testament to this story that this secondary villain is more memorable than most other serials' primary antagonists.


THOUGHTS

Genesis of the Daleks is rightly regarded as one of the series' all-time classics. Even as a child, watching each story with no knowledge whatever of a given serial's reputation, I recognized that there was an extra dimension here that hadn't existed in the previous three stories. That's not to say it's flawless: Like most six parters, there's padding, and detractors within Who fandom take great pleasure in pointing out that and "B" movie silliness such as giant clam monsters.

I used to sympathize with this viewpoint, simply because the faults are real. A good chunk of Part 1 is devoted to a narratively pointless capture/escape/recapture. So many trips are made between the Thal and Kaled Domes that I started to wonder if someone had installed a tram line, and those domes appear to be ludicrously close together for a war that's ravaged an entire planet. But successive rewatches have made me realize that I don't care about these issues. The bits of silliness exist, but they never threaten to disrupt the overall sense of an inevitable, unfolding tragedy.

I'd also note that much of the so-called "padding" is rather good drama. Sarah Jane's escape attempt doesn't actually advance the story.  But it provides not only a memorable Episode Two cliffhanger, but quite a good sequence in general, ending with a memorably sadistic bit in which a Thal guard dangles her over a chasm. Could you lop it out of the story without hurting anything? Of course. But doing so would not improve the story; it would instead just make it "smaller." Could you tell the story of Genesis of the Daleks in four episodes? Of course you could. The 90-minute repeat version of it proves that. However, though it's tighter paced, I don't find the 90-minute version to be an improvement in dramatic terms.

David Maloney's direction is exceptional. The serial begins with a striking visual image, gas masked soldiers being gunned down, then disappearing into the mist, before the Doctor is revealed within that same mist. The serial is lit more effectively than any other story this season, with a good mix of lighting effects for the different settings. This is a serial that, in places, looks like a feature film. Rarely has Who brought a setting to life this vividly, which is all the more impressive when you consider how relatively few in number the sets actually are: a bit of corridor, a few rooms, a cave set, and a trench.


THE DALEKS

This story's treatment of the Daleks is effective. In the first three episodes, we barely see them. Davros is the villain, Nyder his henchman, and the Daleks are used as weapons (an interesting parallel with their use in The Power of the Daleks). In the second half, they are unleashed more and more, until at last they emerge as a force unto themselves.

The two forces forming a person's identity are nature and nurture, and both are made to play a part in the Daleks' development. Davros has carefully expunged compassion and pity from his creations. We see, in the Dalek's first speaking scene, that it recognizes aliens and desires to exterminate them. It shows no such desire to exterminate the Kaleds, however, recognizing them as "conforming."

Here's where nurture might come into play. Davros uses the Daleks against any of his own people who dissent, until the Daleks grow accustomed to killing Kaleds. By the end, it likely seems only natural to turn on the remaining half. From the Daleks' perspective, the Kaleds loyal to Davros are exactly the same as the Kaleds they've been ordered to destroy. If the term "enemy" includes Kaled dissenters, then it includes all Kaleds - who are not, after all, Daleks. Davros created the Daleks in his own twisted image, and he succeeds all too well.


OVERALL

Genesis of the Daleks offers some of the series' all-time great moments. It also boasts polished, almost cinematic direction by David Maloney, who was to '70s Who what Douglas Camfield had been to '60s Who. A few nit-picks about padding and giant clams aren't remotely enough to interfere with the Fourth Doctor's first genuine masterpiece, a 6-parter that remains one of Doctor Who's highlights.


Rating: 10/10.

Alternate Version: Daleks! Genesis of Terror

Previous Story: The Sontaran Experiment
Next Story: Revenge of the Cybermen

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads