N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
“The mention of Cybermen fills me with dread. “
Magrik,
Revenge of the Cybermen: Part One
For the third story in a row, the title gives away the main foe, but whereas The Sontaran Experiment and Genesis of the Daleks were excellent stories with appropriate titles (and with Genesis at least not too much of a spoiler as it’s the whole point from the get-go), Revenge of the Cybermen is just naff. Even accepting the Vogans described it as the ‘vengeance of the Cybermen’, not the Cybermen themselves, doesn’t make it any better.
It’s a shame because it has a strong guest cast (William Marlowe, Kevin Stoney, David Collings, for starters) and does have the odd moment of cracking dialogue. It was even shot at a famous location!
(And thanks to my sister going there on a school trip, I have a Wookey Hole bookmark to hold my place in those many Doctor Who books I mentioned in my last post!)
“You’re just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship.”
The Doctor,
Revenge of the Cybermen: Part Three
I can, like Philip Hinchcliffe, even imagine its story forming the basis of a modern Doctor Who story. There’s enough potential in the action, nastiness in the Cyber plague and silliness in the whole planet of gold shennanigans for me quite easily to imagine the Tenth or Eleventh Doctor going all shouty at the Cybermen and then blasting through forty-five minutes of Cyber-plot-foiling potboiling.
It’s just that it all doesn’t really hold together and, frankly, drags. It says something that Michael E. Briant’s anecdotes in The Tin Men And The Witch about the spooky goings-on when researching and shooting at Wookey Hole sound as though they would have made made for a more interesting tale and use of the shooting location.
I’m glad this wasn’t Briant’s final contribution to Doctor Who. Given his amiable and always-insightful contributions to the DVD range, it would have been a shame if his final directorial effort were to be this disappointing.
All-in-all though, Revenge of the Cybermen was the least enjoyable story since The Dominators.
"Old Grandpa people (the Vogans)!"
"When the Doctor needs help opening the door, he says '[I] don't want to lose my arm. I'm rather attached to it. It's so handy.' That's funny!"
"The first two parts are quite different from the rest. (In Parts One and Two, they're trying to stop the virus, in Three and Four they're trying to stop Voga being destroyed by the Cybermen.)"
Son of UT Rating: 6/10
