Revenge of the Cybermen

Revenge Of The Cybermen is a story that fandom just can’t seem to make its mind up about. People slate it to the high heavens, but it has enough supporters to keep it from the depths of turkeydom wherein lurks The Twin Dilemma and suchlike. Coming after the programme’s definitive episode (not best, mind) it’s bound to come across as a bit of a comedown, but I wouldn’t say it was terrible. In fact, the only thing in it really worthy of sustained criticism is the portrayal of the Cybermen themselves.

For one thing, the special effects are generally very good and miles better than those of The Ark In Space; I know everything was fine with Ark in part four once it shifted to film-recorded models, but there was a load of rubbish to put up with before that. Here it’s 16mm all the way and it looks really good. However, the studio scenes are considerably less atmospheric, possibly because of the different director or possibly because the thought of a space station acting as a giant refrigeration unit for the lat survivors of humanity is a slightly more enigmatic than a space station warning ships about flying into a tiny moon that’s been around for half a century anyway. However, the scenes set in the main corridor are amazingly spooky with dead bodies lying scattered disregarded - although the stars outside are behaving rather oddly, swinging around and winking on and off.

I wouldn’t say any of the acting is particularly bad in this story, although Ronald Leigh-Hunt seems to be capable of nothing more than cloning the role he played in The Seeds Of Death. William Marlowe is likeable as Lester and Jeremy Wilkin is suitably (initially, anyway) smarmy and evil as the ostensible villain. However, as is a problem with a lot of stories, the writing of the opening scenes seems forced and a bit artificial and the exposition between Kellman and Warner is very simplistic.

There is some slapstick on display with the Doctor’s arm trapped in the door, but the scene is rescued for me by Tom Baker’s sullen glaring. After this we head down to the planet’s surface and meet the locals: Michael Wisher is wasted a bit in a minor role (then again he had just done a major role that would see him remembered forever so I’ll not be churlish), but Kevin Stoney and particularly David Collings perform wonderfully. Collings is especially good as Vorus when you think how different his other roles were, as the genial Poul in The Robots Of Death and of course the melancholy Mawdryn. However, while Kellman’s status as double agent turned triple agent is interesting and clever the twist is undermined by the Vogans mentioning their agent and the presence of gold in Kellman’s quarters, which could clue in an attentive viewer. On the subject of gold this story is of course the beginning of the end of the Cybermen’s credibility; even though they’d been given one weakness per story up to now none had been as utterly stupid as this – and which one did they stick with? Right. At least here a bit of thought has gone into how it works – it has to be gold dust ground into the chest unit, easier said than done – whereas by Silver Nemesis we were seeing truly appalling scenes with gold coins being pinged off their helmets with a catapult. We only get a few bits of silliness such as gold affecting radars, although since this isn’t a great leap from being underground affecting radars it’s not a big problem.

The Cybermat, however, is utterly pathetic and while I might be able to forgive the whole hold-it-to-your-neck-and-pretend-it’s-attacking-you routine once to see it done I think four times is asking a lot of the audience. This leads to a naffer-than-naff first cliffhanger. The lines on the face, a mark of the Cyberman virus, show how derivative of each other the Gerry Davis-written Cybermen stories were, but I suppose you can’t fault the continuity. However, the audience is expected to believe that nobody at all noticed the snakebite effects, or the scratched metal, or anything – now that I think about it Davis’s stories contain gaping plot holes actually quite often. Kellman communicating with the Cybermen through Morse Code is seriously stretching it and is the wrong kind of amusing, but the model work of the Cyberman ship is excellent and the score (featuring contributions from Peter Howell, one of the better composers of the 1980s) is wonderful.

Sarah’s infection is a good dramatic sequence simply through the intense performances of all the cast, foremost of course being Elisabeth Sladen. They beam down to Voga leading to some excellent location work at Wookey Hole caves (I visited them as a child, and was bloomin’ scared). The scenes with Harry and Sarah together show the rapport between Sladen and Ian Marter, and how underrated Harry was as a companion.

The Doctor states that Voga is “hated and feared” by the Cybermen, so scratch my earlier comment about faultless continuity. However, the scene where the Doctor threatens Kellman with a Cybermat is amazingly cool as are the (Robert Holmes-penned) politics of Voga, even if the latter does smack of padding.

Really now, the Cybermen are no worse than they were in the 1980s. Christopher Robbie is supposed to have some sort of accent but I can’t hear it, and while some of their dialogue does come across as somewhat emotional, there’s always the “he [the Doctor] must suffer for our past defeats” line from Earthshock. Robbie struts around hand-on-hips; David Banks shakes his fists and rants like a lunatic. It’s all the same really.

Sarah refusing to let Harry introduce her is a nicely subtle example of her feminism (the words “subtle” and “feminist” so rarely appear in a sentence together without a prefix of “un”), and is far superior characterisation to her “if you think I’m the sort of girl who makes the coffee…” jive when she first appeared in The Time Warrior.

The studio sets of Voga are pretty poor, and let down even further by a ridiculous photographed backdrop (it’s not even in focus for crying out loud), but when we get the genuine location filming there is more very good material and the silent Cyber-drones do look effective in them.

However, here’s where it starts to get really B-movie, with Sarah learning of plot developments by eavesdropping on the monsters. With this, and talk of climbing through cross-shafts to intercept bombs, it’s all getting a bit Dalek Invasion Of Earth. That story wasn’t bad, but such simplistic plot elements barely work once let alone twice.

The rock fall is a mixture of the good (location) and bad (studio). It makes an appropriate death for Kellman – how do you kill someone who has to die to justify the narrative but who kind of is and kind of isn’t a villain? Answer: natural causes, although here that means getting whacked by a piece of painted polystyrene. And since we see the Doctor take a couple in the gut himself, how come he gets off without a scratch? The cliffhanger is still quite fun though.

The attack on the Cybermen with gold is quite well directed and edited, and Lester’s death is poignant and noble: the story’s mortality rate of 70%, while high, is totally appropriate to the story. Back on Nerva however the silliness is increasing exponentially with a plan to crash the station into Voga. That said, it isn’t bad silliness and it’s a great laugh. While the stock footage of Saturn V launching is just plain lazy, it is a fun scene where the rocket is redirected away from the station (in the nick of time, no less). The destruction of the Cyberman ship is a good special effect even though the debris has a definite downward vibe to it; I’d have hung the model upside-down myself and shot it that way. “The biggest bang in history” could have come from Douglas Adams although he probably would have realised how it could be interpreted; however, stupid as it is, I could watch that rolling-drum effect of Voga on the scanner all day. Call me mad, but I love the effects in this story.

And with that, it’s over. Answering an emergency call from the Brigadier is a good way of keeping tension over the season break, but the “space-time telegraph” is whimsy worthy of Russell T. Davies. Still, it’s nice to see the TARDIS again for the first time since The Ark In Space.

Revenge Of The Cybermen is a deeply silly story that is still a long way from being a true dud, possibly because Robert Holmes’s witty script-editing prevents it from being too serious for its naff moments to be forgiven, like Warriors Of The Deep. Season 12 is a short season with two classic stories; even a hit rate like that doesn’t mean that basic fun like this is bad.