Earthshock Part Four

The one where Adric dies...

Peter Grimwade was such a good director. Maybe he wasn't so great with his cast (according to reports from actors), but he knew how to shoot a scene, or set up a shot, to get the best visual impact. It feels like there are lots of Cybermen in Earthshock thanks to his clever camera angles and how he blocks out the scenes. You have Cybermen in the background and foreground, you have others moving past and through scenes, giving the impression of number and might. The Cybermen haven't seemed this numerous since the Troughton era.

Another triumph of this story is Malcolm Clarke's powerful incidental score. He has a beautifully weird underscore, a kind of glassy soundscape which reminds me very much of Jacques Lasry and Francois Baschet's Les Structures Sonores, used as library music in 1965's The Web Planet. Clarke also uses squelchy synths when the Cybermen are on the move, and all of this combined makes the episode feel tense and dangerous. And writer Eric Saward's narrative compounds this danger: the viewer's never quite sure what's going to happen next.

Earthshock Part Three

The one where the Cybermen massacre the freighter's crew...

Bernard Lloyd-Jones's set design for the freighter bridge is really impressive. It's big and chunky, with plenty of space for the characters to move around in, and the dressing of the control panels is satisfyingly busy and realistic. Lots of switches, buttons and dials for the actors to play with. It looks lived in, worked in, used.

Captain Briggs continues to have a chip on her shoulder when it comes to Ringway, and perhaps men in particular. She really does not like Ringway, mocking the way he says "apprehended" instead of "caught" (a bit much coming from Eric Saward, the prince of purple prose), and later on she's very reluctant to take anything the Doctor or Adric say seriously. She will listen to her female first officer though.

Earthshock Part Two

The one where we meet a space freighter captain played by Beryl Reid...

Pretty much every time the Cybermen appeared, they had a different look. This is their seventh Doctor Who story, and their seventh different look. It works in the sense the Cybermen would always be trying to update and upgrade themselves, and their latest look brings the tin soldiers straight into the 1980s with their silver flight suits and power-fists. It's a chunkier, more durable design which would stand the Cybermen in good stead for the rest of the classic series. I particularly like the transparent mouthpiece, through which we can see a silvered human jaw speaking within. This reminds us that we're dealing with cybernetic humans, part-man and part-machine. These are the least robotic Cybermen since their debut in The Tenth Planet.

Their voices are different too, much less robotic than in the 1960s when sometimes their modulated dialogue was hard to make out. In 1975's Revenge of the Cybermen, actor Christopher Robbie debuted the deep, resonant, masculine voice, but here David Banks adds more intonation, and essentially makes the Cyberleader more emotional in his speech patterns. I like this too, I think it makes sense to demonstrate a balance between the human and the cybernetic elements of these monsters. It's a human-like voice, but one almost - but not quite - consumed by the cold, calculated logic of cybernetic conversion.

Earthshock Part One

The one where an old enemy makes a surprise return...

The year is 2526, but some things don't change. They still have quarries in the 26th century, and this is where we find Lieutenant Scott and his band of refreshingly mixed-sex troopers as they investigate a case of missing palaeontologists (and geologists). A band of ologists searching for fossils in a newly discovered cave system were attacked, and presumably killed, with just one - Professor Kyle - escaping to tell the tale. Scott remains suspicious.

There's almost five minutes spent with these guest characters, and it's directed with urgency and pace by Peter Grimwade, one of Doctor Who's best in years. It's particularly pleasing to see so many female actors in the military roles, including Suzi Arden's Snyder, Anne Clements' Baines, and Scott's deputy, Ann Holloway's Sergeant Mitchell. This is the 26th century after all, and it's great to see some forward-thinking and equality in the casting (in fact, eight of this story's 18 credited actors are female, which is pretty marvellous).