Ah, the Cybermen. Have any other Doctor Who villain been done so well and yet so badly? Often within the same story (cough cough Moffat). As those of you who have seen it know, this story falls into the latter category. But The A-Z of Classic Who is not here to tell you the obvious, it's here to find out why. Because I'm lovely like that.
Problem number one is that at this point in his life cycle, the Sixth Doctor is a complete and utter twat. This is not Colin Baker's fault, as the audios and even his later TV stories aptly demonstrate, but he's kind of insufferable throughout most of Part 1 and only really gets better until a significant way into Part 2. It's the icing on the cake of what's wrong, but your main character being so thoroughly unlikeable (being a complete arse to Peri, being perfectly happy killing a policeman, etc.) does not help.
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| "For the last time Peri, I'm not telling you where the drugs stash is - now piss off!" |
Problem number two is the inane writing. The fact that nobody is really sure who actually wrote the damn story should tell you all you need to know (the pseudonym 'Paula Moore' being used on screen). One thing is for sure - whether it was Paula Woolsey, Eric Saward or the Abzorbaloff himself, Ian Levine - the story is pretty poor. It's dull, plodding, confused, the sub-stories at points had no connection at all to each other, the focus shifts wildly from Part 1 to Part 2 and the two parts are connected exceptionally loosely, most of the characters are obvious Cyber-fodder from the beginning, a number of plot elements are totally irrelevant, and of course, the whole thing is very continuity heavy for black and white stories that had aired 20 years previously, many episodes of which were missing and that even the most hardcore fans probably didn't remember too well pre-internet.
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| "It's very simple really, Doctor. We've stolen a timeship from these random guys, which means we can go back and stop Mondas being destroyed, but first we have to set up base in the London sewers for some reason, get double crossed by a guy working for these aliens on our adoptive home planet, who we want to wipe out in a separate but related plot, but suddenly we need the Doctor and the TARDIS for some reason, and also the random guys are trying to get their timeship back, and also you've been sent here by the Time Lords. What's so complex about that?" |
Problem number three is probably the most notorious, and that is the gratuitous violence littered throughout the story. In Part 1 it's slightly more restrained than Part 2, but even then you have Cybermen ruthlessly murdering gangsters straight out of an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Peri turning a gun on TWO policemen and the Doctor beating up another one (off-screen). In Part 2, you have a Cryon (the indigenous species of Telos) being boiled to death as they can't live above zero degrees, Lytton being tortured by having his hands graphically crushed, pretty much every other supporting character being gunned down by the Cybermen and the Doctor capping it all off with a shooting spree straight out of an eighties action movie.
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| EAT LEAD CYBITCH |
This of course gave Michael Grade ammunition to push for the show's cancellation, and honestly can you blame him?
Well, yes, yes you can, you can blame him for anything, but it doesn't make this less shocking for a Saturday teatime show. Even NuWho at it's most senseless avoids anything like this.
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| PC Plod had found a suspect in the drug smuggling ring he had been looking for. |
That's not too say it's all bad - Maurice Colbourne turns in a great performance as Lytton, the Sixth Doctor finally sees a bit of character growth late into Part 2, and it's generally shot and edited well. It's hardly the most painful watch in the show's history as well - it's very far from good but there's nothing that makes you want to turn off. Maybe I'm damning the story with faint praise here, but the very worst of Who (classic and Nu) can be just flat out unpleasant to watch at times - it never goes quite that far, although if you're a bit squeamish the hand crushing scene might qualify.
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| Lytton was beginning to have one or two regrets about how things had gone. |
So overall, Attack of the Cybermen is below average without a doubt - the story is an utter and complete mess and the violence gets too much without a doubt - I'm not bothered by it, but I'm living 30 years later in an age where I'm completely desensitised to that sort of thing - I get why someone would be. There's positives and it never becomes unwatchably bad, but this isn't very good.
Final Score: 3/10. Good performance from Colbourne and it is nice to look at some of the time, but the writing is really poor, the characters are mostly lifeless and it is really hard to get past how much of a twat the Sixth Doctor was during his early stories. Not very good. Not really worth rewatching.
Next Episode: H̶i̶t̶ ̶B̶B̶C̶ ̶T̶V̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶'̶M̶e̶r̶l̶i̶n̶'̶ Battlefield
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