Silver Nemesis Part Three

The one where Lady Peinforte threatens to spill the Doctor's beans...

There's a lovely little scene in this episode as the Doctor and Ace trudge through the woods and Ace admits she's "really, really scared". I appreciate the sentiment and intent of the scene, as it shows that Ace feels confident enough to share her true feelings with the Doctor, and in turn the Doctor can show compassion for his young friend. When he realises Ace is afraid, he apologises and offers to let her wait in the TARDIS. In the event, Ace refuses to give in and will not leave her Professor's side.

But something bugs me about the scene. I don't quite buy the fact that it would be this story, this adventure, this particular set of dangers which would scare Ace so much. It's not as if Ace has endured very much in this story so far, she's mostly been wandering around the countryside listening to jazz and blowing up spaceships. I don't understand what's made Ace so scared, especially considering her run-ins with Kane, the Daleks and even the Happiness Patrol presented greater threats. It's a lovely scene, but somehow in the wrong story.

After stealing the bow from under the Cybermen's noses and reawakening the spooky-looking Nemesis statue, the Doctor and Ace take a quick sojourn back to 1638. Ace is full of questions and asks why they're there. "Unfinished business," says the Doctor as he casually plays chess with himself (black's losing). The Doctor doesn't want the scholar's calculations about the Nemesis comet's return to Earth to "fall into the wrong hands". So what's he going to do with them? Ace asks if the person who stole the calculations was the same person who stole the bow from the Crown in 1788. "How should I know, Ace, questions, questions..." the Doctor snaps.

Ace has some very good points though. This scene infers the Doctor needs the "right" person to obtain the calculations, just as the "right" person obtains the bow. At the start of the story we know De Flores has the bow - maybe it was one of the mythical treasures obtained by the Nazis during World War Two - and the mathematician's scrolls are on Karl's desk in South America when he computes the comet's landing. It's a bit fuzzy what writer Kevin Clarke is intending here, but it's suggested the Doctor needs De Flores to obtain the scrolls so that he can bring the bow to Windsor. But how does De Flores know so much about the statue and its powers in the first place? I feel like there's something missing.

Ace also asks who bought validium to Earth, which the Doctor neatly ignores. We know it fell into the meadow in Windsor in 1638, but what was it doing there? As the Doctor said earlier, it should never have left Gallifrey in the first place. Of course, the inference is that the Doctor brought it to Earth, and coupled with the final scene of this episode, it would seem he took it to lure the Cybermen so that he could destroy them, just like he nailed the Daleks. It's all a bit messy, but there's a logic buried in there somewhere.

Fiona Walker gives a wonderful performance as Lady Peinforte slowly coming unravelled, her mind seemingly fractured by thoughts of her supremacy. She has delusions of grandeur, and her megalomaniacal rantings are both amusing and, for her aide Richard, disturbing. He is totally dedicated to his mistress, and to see her coming undone like this visibly distresses him. He's a simple man lost in a complicated world, and Gerard Murphy translates his distress and confusion so well.

There's a lot of padding in this episode though. All the stuff with Lady Peinforte and Richard hitching a lift in an American tourist's limo is completely unnecessary, and rather lame material in a story with supposedly large stakes. Having said that, it's very funny stuff, and Dolores Gray gives wonderful value for money in her turn as Mrs Remington, visiting England to research her family tree. Gray is treated here as a "celebrity cameo", but it falls flat because so few people would know who the heck she was. Gray was a big name in musical theatre - she'd won a Tony Award in 1953, and had since won acclaim in productions of Gypsy and Follies in the West End - but I doubt many of the 5.2m watching would be able to name her. Liza Minnelli, yes! But Dolores Gray? Who?

But as I was saying, the scenes between Mrs Remington, Peinforte and Richard are very amusing, as the American mistakenly believes that Peinforte has researched her family tree, when in reality she was actually there, in the 17th century, and was responsible for poisoning her ancestor! I like the scenes, but they feel very out of place in the story.

Another example of padding are the scenes in which Ace battles the Cybermen at the warehouse. Don't get me wrong, these scenes are exciting and tensely directed by Chris Clough, but it's all unnecessary time-wasting (why would the Cybermen put so much effort and resources into killing one trifling female human?). So much of the episode is treading water before the grand confrontation at the end. It's all great fun though, as Ace cuts down Cyberman after Cyberman with her Jacobean gold coins, running away from the silver giants as they fire their wimpy sparkler guns at her. The face-off on the gantry high in the roof is well staged, with Ace's one coin against three Cybermen. What's always bugged me about this scene is that when the Cyberman falls to its death on the ground below, it lands just feet away from the TARDIS - but the Doctor is oblivious and unconcerned, despite being a matter of feet away himself.

As the big finale comes, so do the baddies. First of all the Cybermen arrive, but the Doctor swiftly dispenses of them by having the rocket jets melt them down (a pretty grisly demise). Then De Flores rocks up and gets frustrated when the statue won't talk to him. "Doesn't she speak?" asks the German. "Not to the likes of you," the Doctor waspishly replies. Then crackpot Lady Peinforte arrives with Richard, followed closely by the Cyber Leader back from the dead, who swiftly shoots the Nazis dead.

It's all quite tit-for-tat, one enemy wiping out the other, but De Flores' demise is long overdue because he's not really had a role to play since part 1. All he's really done is bring the bow from South America to Windsor, that's it. His threat was minimal, and his agency even more so. De Flores was a rubbish villain, played with very little enthusiasm by Anton Diffring, who would pass away five months after Silver Nemesis aired. Diffring did his legacy no favours with this performance.

The final confrontation involves the Doctor, the Cyber Leader and Lady Peinforte, who threatens to reveal the Doctor's secrets if she is not given power over the statue. It's a tense moment, because it was very rare that the classic series addressed the mystery of its main character. Since 1963, the Doctor had been an enigma, and although we found out lots about his planet and people in stories like The War Games and The Deadly Assassin, we never really learnt more about the Doctor himself. Now it seems we might, and the tension's ramped up considerably when Lady Peinforte offers to spill the beans.

The Nemesis statue has told Peinforte the Doctor's secrets, which seems to be something regarding his true identity. "Doctor who?" goads Peinforte, as Sylvester McCoy fixes her with one of those steely glares he's so good at. The Doctor looks visibly rattled, afraid that she'll genuinely reveal something about him he doesn't want people to know. Peinforte asks Ace: "Have you never wondered where he came from, who he is?" When Ace says he's a Time Lord, Peinforte intriguingly shakes her head, intimating that he's either not a Time Lord, or something more (also inferred in a scene sadly cut from Remembrance of the Daleks). Peinforte threatens to tell all about "the Old Time, the Time of Chaos", and things are starting to get juicy...

... "The secrets of the Time Lords mean nothing to us," interrupts the Cyber Leader, and that's it. All done and dusted, the secrets are now irrelevant, and Peinforte's knowledge becomes void. It's intensely disappointing for the viewer after all the promise and build-up. We were on the cusp of finding out something juicy about the Doctor's past, but just because a bunch of cybernetic monsters aren't particularly interested, it's all brushed under the carpet.

It's fascinating how Peinforte's comments dovetail quite well with secrets we've since discovered during the Thirteenth Doctor's era, with suggestions that the Doctor is not a Time Lord, is from somewhere other than Gallifrey perhaps, and references to a time long ago. The whole Timeless Child arc in the Chibnall era may have proven controversial, but you have to admire the fact it does work in the context of what we already know, in stories such as The Brain of Morbius and here in Silver Nemesis.

I'm glad the Cybermen aren't interested in the Doctor's secrets, because neither am I. I want the Doctor to remain mysterious and "other", and although the Timeless Child arc has replaced one set of secrets and mysteries with another, knowing more somehow makes the Doctor less special in my opinion. I prefer it when the Doctor's just a mad (wo)man in a box, tumbling about the universe righting wrongs and fighting evil. I don't really care who the Doctor's mum and dad were, or what his cot looked like.

And so the big finale fizzles out. The Cybermen and the Nazis are dead, the Cyber Leader is killed by Richard, and Lady Peinforte finally flips and becomes one with the statue (ooh, that scream!). The Nemesis flies off into space, destroys the Cyber fleet and reforms, until needed again. Intriguingly, the Doctor says he hopes he won't need the statue again, to which the Nemesis replies: "That is not what you said before." This suggests it's not the first time the Doctor's used the statue's powers. There's also a line about the statue wanting its freedom, which shines a tiny light on why the validium might have left Gallifrey in the first place. It's a living weapon, perhaps stolen from Gallifrey by the Doctor to use as some kind of attack dog to wipe out the Cybermen. Was there a bargain between them that the validium would obey his genocidal aims as long as it could have its freedom?

The final scene set in 1638 sees Richard playing his own unique form of Jacobean jazz while Ace and the Doctor play chess. This has been a running theme throughout Silver Nemesis, a game of chess in Peinforte's study as well as references to chess moves when the Doctor delivers the bow to the crypt. And it won't be the last time we see a chess set in the Seventh Doctor era... 

In the final moments, Ace asks the Doctor who he is, but he merely responds with a finger to his lips, and a knowing look into camera as the titles crash in. There may not have been many secrets revealed in Silver Nemesis, but now we know there are secrets to know, which is a nice way for the programme to move forward. The viewer is being reminded, quite unsubtly, that the Doctor remains a mystery, that he has secrets he will not share, just as it always was. He is Doctor Who.

Silver Nemesis is a hotch-potch of good and bad ideas. It's frustratingly lightweight, but is trying to deal with some important points. The Doctor's secrets, validium, Lady Peinforte and the Nemesis statue are all great hooks to hang a story on, but then you've got dodgy skinheads, a safari park of llamas, a kooky American tourist, a Queen Elizabeth impersonator, and a villainous Nazi who poses about as much threat as a wet candle. It's supposed to be the official 25th anniversary story, but it falters in the shadow of the much more successful Remembrance of the Daleks. The two stories are so similar in some ways, but told at opposite ends of the classic series' lifetime - one takes place in 1963, the other in 1988. There's a nice cyclical thing at work, but Silver Nemesis, for all its action-packed frolics and summery November fun, is too flimsy to mean very much.

First broadcast: December 7th, 1988

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Ace's battle with the Cybermen is directed well.
The Bad: "The secrets of the Time Lords mean nothing to us."
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 5 out of 10)

Ace says "Professor": 34 - "Professor... Doctor... who are you?"

NEXT TIME: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy...

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

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.

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