Revenge of the Cybermen Part One

The one where our heroes return to Nerva, but find that much has changed...

Season 12 just continues to give. First you have a new Doctor and companion, then a magnificent giant robot, followed by a new species of monster in the Wirrn. Then there's a trio of stories that brings back classic monsters: the Sontarans, the Daleks and now... the Cybermen! This is the first proper Cyber-story since The Invasion finished in December 1968, and is also the first time we'll see them properly in colour. Exciting!

The Time Ring zips the Doctor, Sarah and Harry back to Nerva, but I have to admit I'm just as puzzled as Harry as to why they have gone back in time thousands of years before the point from which they left. It's a pretty rubbish Time Ring if it can't even get you to the time you need to be. The Doctor gives some garbled explanation that the TARDIS is drifting backwards in time to meet them, and doesn't seem at all put out by this. To be honest, it makes little sense, but I do appreciate the fact there is a kind of season arc going on here, linking The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment and Revenge of the Cybermen (with a pretty monumental interlude in the form of Genesis of the Daleks!).

Nerva seems deserted, just as it was when they last arrived there. But it also looks subtly different: the technology and instrumentation seem different, and the corridors have solid midsections where before they were transparent. There's a suspiciously familiar circular wall design too, which makes it look like they're in a TARDIS every now and then (specifically, the Master's in the 1980s).

When a door slides open, the body of a 1970s porn star falls through. He's been dead for weeks, according to Dr Sullivan, but with little putrefaction (because this is kids' telly, folks!). They soon discover a whole carpet of other bodies in the corridors of Nerva, represented by poorly disguised mannequins (unless they're deactivated Autons!). It seems Nerva is now (or then) a space beacon, helping to service and guide space freighters on their journey through the solar system. But Nerva has been ravaged by a deadly plague which has wiped out the vast majority of the crew, and it's been placed in quarantine. This is Day 79.

It's pretty cold of the Earth authorities to just abandon the crew of Nerva, leaving them to rot until the last man collapses and dies. And Commander Stevenson and his not-so-merry band seem happily resigned to this fate, preferring to die quietly rather than spread the plague back to Earth. But the fact Earth hasn't sent any medical aid at all is shocking.

A glimpse of something long, thin and silvery sliding around the corpses gives a clue as to what might be causing the plague, but we're not given long to think this over before we find ourselves on location in some real caves (not fibreglass ones, yay!) where a little goblin with long white hair is trying to contact Nerva. He's murdered by two more gun-toting goblins, and then we get to meet a whole new race of aliens. These chaps, the Vogans, aren't up to recent monster design standards. Their faces look like the sculpted masks that they are, and lack the flexibility of something like Davros or the Draconians. One of the Vogans seems to have a terrible cold too, which you can either take to be terribly amusing in a Douglas Adams kind of way, or terribly silly, in a Doctor Who kind of way.

Vogan Vorus casually makes mention of the Cybermen in conversation, which is a pretty poor way to reintroduce the big monsters after six-and-a-half years' absence. Worse still is the actual moment that the Cybermen are physically revealed. It happens 19 minutes in, not as a cliffhanger, which would surely have been better. And they don't do anything. The Cyberleader (I can tell he's the boss because he has black ear muffs) stands giving some form of Nazi salute, while two Cybermen sit at a control panel and pull a lever. That's it. They don't speak, they don't do anything of any import at all. It looks really weird seeing the Cybermen sitting down too, with hands resting on their thighs. I know we've seen them sit before (The Wheel in Space), but it just seems so normal and human. They're machine creatures, with cybernetic limbs. They don't need chairs.

Seeing the Cybermen in colour is underwhelming too, because they're silver and black, so might as well be in monochrome anyway!

After inveigling his way rather too easily into the trust of Commander Stevenson, the Doctor begins to investigate the plague and the mass death it has caused, while Harry gets to do something conducive to his character as a medical officer. Sarah - who gains the trust of Lester rather too quickly when he hands her his gun - gets little to do except watch telly and read Starworld magazine.

The Doctor takes very little time in working out that the Cybermen are in this story, simply by hearing the word Voga, "the planet of gold". He seems to know Voga from its war with the Cyber-race, even though it was only renamed Voga by Professor Kellman after it appeared in the solar system 50 years previously. Before that it was apparently named Neo-Phobos, so shouldn't the Doctor know it as that, rather than Voga? If it only got called Voga by Kellman, why do the Vogans call their own planet Voga? And why are they called Vogans, and not Neo-Phobosians or something just as clunky? If the Doctor knows Voga by that name, then surely he knows who Professor Kellman is?

Is it me, or is it all a bit confused?

The Doctor breaks into Kellman's quarters and very quickly finds all of the secret equipment he's hiding in his bottom drawer, and in the back of his hair brush (the radio in a hair brush harks back to the 1960s TV series Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan, who actually looks quite a bit like Jeremy Wilkin here). The Doctor also finds a bag of gold pellets that look like Sugar Puffs, but has to swiftly hide under the bed when Kellman returns. The wily professor spies his intruder however, and leaves a trap for him in the form of an electrified floor and a cloud of asphyxiating gas. I'm not sure why Kellman has all of these death traps at his disposal, or how he plans to get back into his room afterwards, but it's fun seeing Tom Baker swing across the room on a wardrobe door!

The cliffhanger is not a "shocking" reveal of the Cybermen, but an attack on Sarah by what I assume is supposed to be a Cybermat but which actually looks like a bit of drainpipe. The prop is so poorly designed that it doesn't resemble the traditional Cybermats at all, but neither does it resemble anything else. Maybe a maggot or a centipede, but it still looks like a really rubbish prop which the actors have to hold to their necks and pretend to push away.

All in all, this episode is a pretty poor affair. It somehow feels flat, despite boasting Roger Murray-Leach's striking set design. The "return" of the Cybermen is ruined by a pointless scene - lasting less than 10 seconds - in which they do nothing at all, and the design of the Cybermats takes any inkling of threat they used to have and throws it in the bin. The Vogans are introduced in a couple of scenes which barely connect to the main narrative at all. None of the guest cast makes much of an impression either, except perhaps Jeremy Wilkin as the cunning Kellman, who's obviously up to no good.

After a run of strong episodes in Season 12, this is already starting to feel like a disappointment.

First broadcast: April 19th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I like the reuse of the Nerva set, providing a nice thematic arc for the season.
The Bad: The reintroduction of the Cybermen is bungled, and it's also hard to forgive that carpet of shop window dummies.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/revenge-of-cybermen.html

Revenge of the Cybermen is available on BBC DVD (alongside Silver Nemesis). Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Revenge-Cybermen-Nemesis/dp/B003QP2TPA