And so it comes to this... the final, original run cybermen story. Eight tales behind them to learn mistakes from, three episodes in which to have a tightly paced, intricately plotted adventure that restores the cybermen to the status of classic that fandom thinks they deserve. Well I can dream can't I? Silver Nemesis is, as transmitted, one of the worst stories of the original run. In its extended, VHS form, it's one of the worst stories of the original run only slightly longer. Which is a shame as, at its heart, there's a simple and elegant narrative trying to get out.
The first half of the first episode is fairly respectable. Jumping around between time zones (something the TV series never really seemed to try and do) it's quite fun trying to work out just how all the strands are going to come together. Lady Peinforte comes across as nicely ruthless, the Nazis come across as Nazis and the Doctor's enjoying jazz in shirt sleeves in November (oh for a heatwave like that, maybe we've just joined them after an adventure where an experimental weather control device warmed everything up and... nah, can't let myself get too imaginative :) ). Ace's new tape deck is certainly an "interesting" idea and in no way is it an obvious way to avoid having to use the interior of the TARDIS. Not at all. There's a fez (mercifully briefly) and time travel with magic, maths and disco lights. To be honest, had they kept it as this then the story might have been salvageable, even with the weird stuff involving the royal guards (that makes no sense because the punchline bits were edited out of transmission). But no, they had to bring the cybermen in as the cliffhanger to episode one. Bright, glistening, silver effect cybermen. Hello cybermen, goodbye continuity.
It's 1988, two years after the events of Tenth Planet and an unspecified but slightly longer amount of time since Invasion. The futuristic cybermen are from the errrr future. There's no real indication of where these cybermen are from, where the massive cyberfleet has appeared from (is it supposed to be some sort of evacuation fleet from Mondas, in which case why aren't we getting the original cybermen design) or if these are cybermen who have somehow come back from the future to warn the Attack cybermen that their plan isn't going to work and thus erase the events of Attack from the timeline rather than the events of Tenth Planet. They're NOT defeated by bullets (so they're not the same design as Attack who didn't do so well up against pistols and lead piping) but they're the most reactive cybermen to gold we've ever seen. The Revenge cybermen and the Earthshock cybermen groaned, vomited a bit and then collapsed to the ground whereas these cybermen explode in showers of sparks. Weirdly the gold seems to penetrate them even when it's just a coin from a catapult yet bullets bounce off them which suggests that it's no longer a "it's clogging up my breathing apparatus and I'm suffocating" thing, more a... nope, can't actually think what it is! Anyway, the cybermen are seriously susceptible to gold and, at the end, jets of flame.
Episode two is also the start of the very obvious padding bits. In this one it's the skinheads, in part three it's an American tourist. Edit those two chunks out and you might go some way to making this a vaguely watchable 50 minute story. Did no one sit down and look at this and go "this really doesn't need to be in there, why don't we put some actual plot in instead"? Clearly not. Did anyone look at the actions of the cybermen and think "is this how cybermen behave normally?", again seemingly not. We have cybermen speaking out of turn, being told off by the cyberleader (who's clearly a bit fed up about it which would suggest emotion) and, more importantly, there's the distinct impression that the cybermen are now, once more, individuals. They out logic each other, they don't all seem to have the same programming. Gone are the ideas of cyberplanners and carefully thought out schemes with backup plans. Here it feels as though the cybermen are flying by the seat of their flight suit pants. Episode three also has them completely reduced to being so incompetent they can't shoot Ace when she's standing still (yet she can get them with a catapult first go!) and it's a sorry end for the cyber army. Conned by the same trick that Davros fell for just a month or two previously.
Someone should have taken this script to one side and simply crossed out the word cybermen, substituting it with some generic villain. The sontarans could have been good, admittedly Ace would have had to have been a VERY good shot with the coins to get their probic vents but I'm sure something could have been concocted. At least they'd have a vague way of knowing about the Time Lord weapon having actually been on Gallifrey at one point. Or take out the aliens altogether, leave it as a triangle of Doctor, Nazi and mad woman. Instead, everything that we've learned about the cybermen is pretty much thrown out of the window and their presence is explained simply as "It's the silver anniversary story, the cybermen are silver..." 22 years of mythos down the pan. Still, credit where credit is due, the story DOES try and relaunch some of the mystery about the Doctor. Given how much everyone in the universe seems to know about him and his people (as witnessed in Attack of the Cybermen) it's a much needed hint of things to come. As is the ongoing chessgame in the story. Silver Nemesis could have been the best thing to happen to Doctor Who in a very long time. Instead we got an ill conceived mess which, if I had my way, would meet the same fate as such a large proportion of cyber episodes. Someone pass me a match, there might still be time.
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