Upgrade Incomplete

Last night’s episode of Doctor Who featured the much hyped return of the Cybermen. Saying something was much hyped in relation to Doctor Who used to imply that an aspect of the episode hadn’t been seen for a while (in addition to the more traditional meaning that the production crew were shooting their mouths off, of course). That’s certainly not the case here. The Cybermen have appeared in every one of Matt Smith’s seasons so far, and before he took over they’d been the co-stars of David Tennant’s penultimate Christmas Special.

This was not a big return. It was an annual appearance.

Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily. Russell T Davies had the Daleks appear at least once during all but one of the five years of his producership, and only one of those stories was bad. Doctor Who alien races can keep coming back frequently if there’s something interesting for them to do.

Was there something new for the Cybermen to do in Nightmare in Silver? What do you think?

You’ve probably heard the story of how Neil Gaiman came to write this episode. In case you haven’t it goes something like this: Steven Moffat, delighted with how well The Doctor’s Wife had turned last season (although it feels like it aired a lot longer ago than that), sent Gaiman an email asking him if he’d like to make the Cybermen scary again. Gaiman, presumably feeling that scares were well within his field of expertise, jumped at the chance.

The offer of a decent payday probably didn’t hurt either.

At first the episode actually worked. Yeah, the kids were pretty annoying, but they could have been far worse. The old Cyberman that played chess was, while typically Gaiman-esque, a nice visual and sufficiently quirky for the setting of an abandoned funfair. Speaking of which, the funfair backdrop was quite a nice idea. It’s surprising that it took New Who eight years to get round to it. Ditto the fake moon landing set. That was another striking image. Pity nothing really came of it.

The first fifteen minutes or so were fine. There was nothing that made me think that Gaiman had produced the greatest episode ever (or even the greatest Cybermen episode ever) but it was good. He was building up an intriguing world and a satisfying sense of spooky mystery.

It all went wrong the moment Matt Smith got infected with a Cyber-virus (or something) and had to start doing the playground level nonsense of playing a goodie and a baddie sharing a body. If that wasn’t bad enough (and it was) Smith did a really bad job of it. The Crimson Horror gave us his woeful Red Skin Acting. This was worse.

From there the plot lurched from one piece of stupidity to another. The kids were reduced to standing around doing nothing (which made me wonder why they’d been written into proceedings in the first place) alongside Jason Watkins (who’s been rather enjoyable up until then). Clara started getting bolshy with Tamzin Outhwaite about who was in charge. The Cybermen flip-flopped between being a massive CG army and a single extra standing in a bit of water. And the Cybermen’s leader agreed to put his entire scheme on the line in a game of chess. Eventually the chess game turned out not to matter anyway, rendering it an even more silly inclusion.

In hindsight this was the problem with The Doctor’s Wife. Gaiman can build up very intriguing worlds within the Doctor Who bubble and set up a plot that has bags of potential but can’t quite seem to deliver a satisfying second or third act. Things just go limp and drift aimlessly once he has to start revealing things and introducing peril.

What of the episode’s stars, those newly designed Cybermen? Well, they looked good. And they were written to be more intelligent than the Cybermen have been in quite a while. Those were positives. But there were negatives too. The detached hand (unlike the rather enjoyed detached head) came across as ridiculous, as did the teleport-running. The less said about their Robocop walk the better. Although in fairness the stomping of the RTD Era Cybermen wasn’t that good either.

That they can still be defeated by gold made me want to facepalm. I’m sure Moffat and Gaiman were high-fiving each other over such a great reference but to anyone unaware of this particular Cybermen attribute it probably made no sense. Anyone who was aware of the weakness going in probably wished it could be dropped.

Their new big attribute, upgrading themselves on the spot, was a nice idea. It goes a long way to making them a far more imposing but it also led to anti-climactic scenes like them striding into some water only to slur out that they were upgrading as we were treated to shots of Clara and her “army” beaming with pride before looking crestfallen.

Probably best not to ask why they couldn’t just upgrade around their weakness to gold though. The show’s logic is fragile enough as it is.

The real trouble with the episode is that the Cybermen just aren’t a terribly good enemy, especially when used as often as they have been. It goes back to them being designed as the replacements for the Daleks when it looked like Terry Nation was going to crack America (spoiler: it didn’t happen). They aren’t a bad idea (future humans who have become machine-like and removed emotions because they make you “weak”) but the trouble is that people just don’t know how to write them to make them interesting.

Are they to be written as communists, everyone becoming equal? Should they be used to comment on humanity’s current obsession with new technology and a never-ending stream of upgrades? Should they be fetishized and presented as unstoppable killer robots? Are they Doctor Who’s answer to the Borg? That there’s not a coherent vision for them means that we’re doomed to get reinventions like this one every few years, and that newly introduced aspects will obviously be ignored by later writers. Which will only contribute further to their fragmented image, of course.

It could have been worse, of course. We could have had Philip Segal’s Cybs.

I’d like to know why Moffat didn’t keep the reinvention of the Cybermen for himself. Years ago, around the time it was first announced he was taking over and large swathes of fans were treating it as the Second Coming, I remember him being asked in an interview (probably in DWM but frustratingly I can’t find any trace of it there) if he’d had any ideas under RTD that hadn’t worked out. His reply was that he’d had several that had had to go unmade for budgetary reasons or because Big Russ had plans for the same things.

One of the plots Moffat mentioned was a Cybermen story. He said it would have been his definitive take on them and would have cast them in a new light.

Given that he seemed to give Gaiman free rein to do whatever he wanted it would appear that Moff’s own Cybermen story has been dropped. Or postponed. Perhaps he’s holding off on it for his final regular contribution to the series or Matt Smith’s regeneration, assuming that’s not a “surprise” next week (which I doubt it will be).

On a final note regarding Nightmare in Silver I’d like to address the trailer. Given Moffat has stated numerous times over the years that he dislikes the next time trailers giving away plot points I find it odd that Richard E Grant was shown menacing the Doctor ahead of next week’s show. Perhaps a disgruntled former exec producer let that one slip through.