WATCH ALONG | CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO | 12x20 | Revenge of the Cybermen: Part 4
Added 2025-03-12 09:52:04 +0000 UTCA Few Notes:
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*****
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Comments
I suspect the reason Magrik (Vorus's assistant) is always coughing is partly to give the character a distinctive mannerism (useful in a story where you have a large number of barely-mobile latex faces spending a lot of time spouting plot at each other), but mainly because it distracts you from recognising his voice. He's played by Michael Wisher, who's just spent six episodes being Davros in "Genesis of the Daleks". Season 12 was planned to be the standard 26 episodes in length; this story would have led into a six-part version of what became "Terror of the Zygons". However, BBC management decided to advance the start date for Season 13 by four months because of the advent of a new science fiction series ("Space: 1999") on the rival ITV channel. Rather than allow it time to build an audience unchallenged, they wanted to pitch Doctor Who directly against it. So Season 12 was cut off after just 20 episodes, and the Zygon script was restructured as a four-parter to open Season 13.
Steven Cooper
2025-03-12 13:25:49 +0000 UTCRevenge of the Cybermen is a complete mess of a story and one of the biggest reasons is because of what it does with the Cybermen. I think the moment that sums it up best is when the Doctor just nonchalantly blurts out that it's the Cybermen they're dealing with. I understand Cybermen being in the story is spoiled by the title, but they still should've built it up a bit more and presented them as a big deal, it's their first story in 7 years! The way the Doctor works out that it's the Cybermen doesn't work either and is really stupid. Supposedly the Cybermen have an aversion to gold and died out after attacking Voga, the planet of gold, at the end of the "Cyber wars". The issue is that the Cybermen's weakness being gold has never been mentioned before, so what should be a lightbulb moment for both us and the Doctor feels really weird and unnatural instead. I also really hate the Cybermen's new voices. Gone are the mechanical, emotionless voices of the 60s, to be replaced by... normal human voices that are way too emotional. it's not even the voices though, the Doctor goads the Cyber leader into making mistakes several times in this story, but that shouldn't work on a Cyberman because they have no emotions. The Doctor takes every opportunity to take the piss out of the Cybermen, but this really undermines their threat. If the Doctor isn't scared of them or taking them seriously, why should we? There's no tension. They really should've just created an entirely new monster for this story because from their aversion to gold (which is a really lame weakness), their overly emotional voices and shoddy characterisation that forgets these are supposed to be emotionless cyborgs, the Cybermen in this story don't feel like Cybermen in any way. The plot itself is really weak and full of holes too. The Cybermen want to destroy Voga for obvious reasons, but why do they need an agent to kill people on the beacon? Why is that necessary for them to be able to take it over? Why not just attack the beacon and force a group of humans to go down to the planet to blow it up? That still doesn't work though because why can't the Cybermen just fire a bunch of missiles at Voga to destroy it? I mean, it's a planet made of gold, one of the softest metals, surely it's within their capabilities to do so? Also, their plan to kill off most of the crew on the beacon is really shortsighted as well. If something went wrong, they wouldn't have anyone else to send to Voga. To make matters worse, their agent is actually a double agent working for the Vogans, which makes no sense because why is he killing so many people for the Cybermen then? If he is working for the Vogans and setting up a trap for the Cybermen, why do the Vogans seem so ill prepared and why are their weapons so ineffective? They're literally on a planet made of gold, why aren't they firing bullets made of gold at the Cybermen? Also, if gold is so detrimental to Cybermen, how can they be roaming around Voga, the planet of gold, so easily? Shouldn't their systems start to malfunction as soon as they land? Also, when Sarah Jane decides to go back to the beacon to find the Doctor, Kellman should stop her because he knows the Doctor isn't there anymore and is down on the planet with them. Especially if he's so worried that Sarah Jane could say the wrong thing and cause the Cybermen to explode their bombs. It's a huge shame because season 12 as a whole is really good with two stone cold classics (The Ark in space and Genesis of the Daleks) and two solid stories (Robot and The Sontaran Experiment), but Revenge of the Cybermen ends it on a real low note. It's a boring, badly paced story with poor and uninteresting characterisations for almost all the characters. Inconsistent character motivations and plot holes galore. It's especially unfortunate because Revenge wasn't meant to be the final story of this season. The first story of the next season, Terror of the Zygons, was actually meant to finish off this season, but was held off for season 13 because the BBC wanted to start airing Doctor Who towards the end of the year instead of the beginning as had become the norm. As a result, there's only 3 months between the last episode of this season and the first episode of the next (if only that were possible these days….), so they felt they had to hold Terror of the Zygons back to give the production team some leeway as they prepared for the quick turnover and put stories together for the next season. It's a real shame because Terror of the Zygons is another classic and would've ended the season in a much better way.
Azmat Mahmood
2025-03-12 11:20:08 +0000 UTC
