Time is Relative - Season 12: Revenge of the Cybermen

Well good evening. How thrilling to see you.

You join me on my romp through 1970s Doctor Who, and you're just in time for an exciting adventure with the Cybermen.

Don't worry if you don't know anything about the show. My fidelity to accuracy is not strong. If anything, you'll know less at the end that you did at the beginning.



Revenge of the Cybermen

This week, Sarah Jane finds herself on a space station, surrounded by many, many dead guys. She looks worried that someone is going to come along and say "Hey Sarah, why have you murdered all the guys?"

That seems unlikely. She can say some hurtful things, but she's no killer. She's probably just wondering how to keep Doctor Who away from them. She knows he'll instantly start peering at them close up and scratching bits of their skin off to put in bottles, and then showing the bottles to their loved ones while going "Aaaahhhhhhh?!"

Meanwhile, in a different bit of space, some Cybermen are hanging out in their ship.

It's a very poor ship, if the truth be told. Look at the walls. It's like a student house. And I think the sitting-down Cybermen know it. Their faces may be blank, but there's an unmistakable sense of ennui to their demeanour. "This is worse than rubbish," they're thinking. 

The standing-up Cyberman is trying to enthuse them, though, isn't he? "Come on, lads!" he's saying. "Don't worry about the fact that our flight deck is like a nightmare about a toilet. Soon we'll get to kill a load of humans. That'll be fun. Won't it? Eh? Killing? Ooh, they'll be dead. And we'll be like, Yeah!"

Also in this story we have these guys. They are called Vogans, and their planet is made of gold!

Here, a bunch of insurgents are having some kind of revolution. I can't remember why. I think we're meant to care about their politics, but they all look a bit too adorable for the viewer to think anything other than, "Aww! Look at their weird little faces!"

Here, for example, I think they're having a moment of high drama. But it's impossible to be thrilled, because they look like a bunch of Oompa Loompas who've formed a Glam Rock group.

On the space station, Sarah gets jumped on by this metal Cyber-Snake thing. She's clearly repulsed by the whole idea, and is pulling a face like a drunk is trying to kiss her at New Years.

I think it's meant to be a secret Cyberman Infiltration Snake Thing. But it's really huge, isn't it? How did that sneak anywhere? Maybe it's not trying to attack Sarah. Maybe it just needs someone to listen. "They expect me to sneak around the station. But look at me! I'm massive. And shiny! No-one understands how difficult my life is!"

Doctor Who, meanwhile, has been wandering round the space station, trying to work out why so many people are dead. His attention span is notoriously short, though, and he's constantly being distracted by new things.

What will he do next? Investigate the interesting noise he just heard? Try to cut his own hair? Suddenly wander off in search of biscuits?  It's anyone's guess.

To everyone's delight, the Cybermen finally turn up.

In the old days this would have been a scary and exciting moment. Here, it is just rather pleasant, like a visit from some mad old relatives. The Cyber Leader is making calming hand gestures, as if to say, "Don't worry, we're not staying long, we just needed to get out of our awful spaceship for fifteen minutes."

The one behind is having some trouble, isn't he? He looks very much like he's trying to navigate a difficult series of obstacles, but... there's nothing there. Is there? Maybe he's been sitting down for too long and his legs went dead? Or he's simply overcome with joy because the wall behind him is a colour other than Dreary Toilet Spaceship Grey. 

Alas, the Cybermen are easily antagonised, and it's not long before there's something of a ruckus. 

The Leader starts jabbing repeatedly at a button which makes multi-coloured fire shoot from his forehead. His companion on the left, meanwhile, is giving the humans a mad-hard stare, daring them to comment on his leader's flamboyant methods of attack.

The one on the right just looks deeply embarrassed. "Every time!" he seems to be thinking. 

Eventually the Cybermen agree to stop murdering everyone if Doctor Who takes them down to Voga and helps them blow it up with bombs. 

Doctor Who has one of the bombs strapped to him, I think, but he doesn't really seem to mind. He's probably not properly paying attention, and it's possible he hasn't even registered that the story has started. 

They haven't even teleported down yet, but already the Cybermen is wearing the heavy shouldered slump of someone realising he has to put up with Doctor Who being weird and abstract for the rest of the afternoon.

This is the last photo I took of this story, which suggests that the climax was less than thrilling. If memory serves the bombs don't work, and so the Cybermen start madly improvising, with ever diminishing levels of success, until they just explode or collapse into tears or something. 

These Cybermen look pretty good, though, don't they? I like to think that, once they were away from their lavatory themed spaceship and idiot Leader, they looked at the world with fresh eyes and realised that there was a different life. A better life. Together.

If you enjoyed that, and there's no saying you didn't, maybe you'd also enjoy Doctor Who's previous adventure: Genesis of the Daleks.

Or you could look forward in time, and thrill to the next story: Terror of the Zygons.