Okay, so I haven't quite finished my season 5 re-watching but, as it happened, I don't think I've really forgotten much that was needed to "understand" the opening two parter. It might have helped if I'd forgotten basic physics and left my brain at home but sadly I didn't and whilst episode one really was pretty decent, episode two bombed rather spectacularly.
Okay, racing through episode one as I've not got so much to say about it... didn't like the opening silliness. I'm guessing it was there to demonstrate the passing of two hundred years of the Doctor's life but it went just that little bit too far for my liking. Plus whoever painted that portrait of Smith, they must have taken one hell of a bung to make his body look that good. My money was actually on River getting killed so the Doctor trying to regenerate was something of a surprise (though I'm sorry to say I think I cheered for the wrong reasons when it started). However, I guessed the "younger" Doctor turning up before he appeared on screen but, again, cheered when he got deservedly slapped.
Something to keep in mind is that, as we've seen it so far, River and the Doctor *aren't* meeting themselves in strict reversing order. The 1100 year old Doctor meets River before the 900 year old one does so things are a little mixed up at least from time to time.
Another important snippet from episode one is that putting the TARDIS in invisible mode is a huge drain on its resources. Just as well it only has to stay hidden for a few minutes eh?
The Silent in the loo knows all about Amy, so I'm guessing we can assume that telepathy goes along with their hide-and-seek skills and, whereas I think the mask on its face is superb, the hands look really dumb. I can't quite work out what it is, I think it's the fingers look too wobbly being so long, maybe if they'd had more support in them to make it look like they actually had bones in there... I'm not entirely sure what attacks Canton in the cellar either, the astronaut seems to be far too far away (though it also seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air at the start so we'll see what other powers it seems to have as we go through the season) and the Silents surely wouldn't have knocked him out? So if someone could tell me for sure what whacks him? So yes, a good episode one.
Then there's episode two.
I'm not entirely sure how Amy and Rory manage to stay on the run for three months. Sorry but they just don't seem the sort who'd have had all that much practise at it. River, yes... but Amy and Rory not a hope. But anyway, episode two opens three months later and the Doctor has a beard (and not in the Time Crash sense either!). Really don't know why this doesn't work for me, I'm guessing because it indicates that between adventures the Doctor is off shaving somewhere in the TARDIS. Yes, I know we know there was seemingly a shaving mirror back in the days of the secondary console room, yes I know he grew one when aged in The Leisure Hive and yes I know the Master had one on his face as well but the beard (apart from looking a little fake) just doesn't seem "right" for just three months' worth of imprisonment. What's worse is that the Doctor seems to think his prison is being built out of the densest material in the world. A material so dense that quite large blocks of it can be shifted around by two people with ease! And the blocks can seemingly be supported as a roof with no extra supports. Er, no! If this magic material is the densest thing in the world then two people shouldn't in any way, shape or form be able to move it like that and they certainly shouldn't have been able to build a box out of it (with a magic sliding door but that's just a minor niggle).
Once the prison is complete we find that the TARDIS is inside it in invisible mode which really does make you wonder how long it's been there given that episode one went out of its way to point out that invisibility mode was a huge drain on the power! The Doctor then takes the ship back in time to save River who's thrown herself out of a window. Ummmmm, so the Doctor will now quite happily nip back in time to save someone from certain death? Probably just as well he didn't know how to do this for Adric or Katarina or the classic series might have turned out very differently. This isn't just Moffat bashing by the way, ever since the Doctor nipped back into Martha's timeline in "Smith and Jones" to prove a point to her I've been growing very tired of the casual way the Doctor plays about with the time lines and the rescuing of River Song just happens to be the latest in a long line of sequences that really pissed me off. Just you wait till I review A Christmas Carol, I'll REALLY let rip on that one! So yes, the Doctor now sees nothing wrong with popping back a few days/weeks/months to save the falling River Song (who very fortunately guesses that the Doctor will drop her in the pool rather than onto, say, some mattresses). Oh, and with the new look console room with the police box doors, I'm not sure what must have happened to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Canton when they flipped the TARDIS onto its side to get River through the doors.
When Mulder and Scu...sorry, Canton and Pond investigate the orphanage we get introduced to the creepy janitor (I get the feeling we might see him again at the end of the year) and we're told that too much exposure to the mind wipe from the Silents drives you round the bend. Now think back to how many markings Amy and co collected on their bodies whilst they were on the run and also think about how many times each random human probably (allegedly) sees a Silent. Why isn't the whole population completely bonkers by now? Still, the sequence with Amy in the locked room is a sign that Doctor Who can still do creepy when it wants to! And then we get the hatch in the door that disappears once Amy goes in the room and a mysterious woman's voice as she looks in. That'll definitely be picked up, could the room have been a TARDIS in disguise?
We eventually find out that the Silents have been manipulating us pretty much since the dawn of time and that then raises some more questions. Are we so dumb that we couldn't have evolved ourselves and secondly, why did it take the Silents thousands of years to get us to build a space suit? Is the story seriously trying to say that the Silents couldn't push us any faster? After all, the Doctor was terrified of Ace leaving her gheto blaster in the 60s in case it sped things up too much? I guess the Silents aren't as intelligent as they're trying to make out. I also wonder if they change their look depending on human fashion, or if they've always worn a suit and tie. Personally I can't wait to see one in a ruff....
Then we get to the big scene. The bloody awful scene that pretty much shatters my faith in Doctor Who. It's NOT the fact that the Doctor gets humanity to begin mass murdering the Silents (though it's pretty clear he didn't have any sort of backup plan and it looks like it was always going to be this or nothing), we've seen the Doctor desperate before (Vervoids, Warriors of the Deep, Genesis of the Daleks and so on). What I really, deeply and thoroughly object to is the fact that Matt Smith's "Doctor" looks as though he's actually enjoying what he's doing. He came across as completely lacking in remorse or any kind of guilt. He was smiling, he was bounching up and down at the thought. There was no sorrow, no "There should have been another way" moment, this was the Doctor ordering the deaths of thousands of living beings and not giving a damn about what he was doing. To me, thats not Doctor Who, that's not the Doctor, that's some character I'm not sure I want to follow. I certainly now no longer believe that whatever the Doctor does it's done with life as the most important thing.
Follow this up with something of a weird and major plot hole... the Doctor says that half a billion people will see the footage and will continue to see it for thousands of years but the other implication is that neither Amy nor Rory have ever seen it as they show no "pre-programmed" tendancy to kill Silents on sight. Right from the very start of episode one Amy should and Rory should have been desperate to kill the Silent that we saw in the sunlight but no, not a single twitch in the trigger finger is evident. Bit of a cock up there eh.
After the shoot out, River says something along the lines of "I hope my old man didn't see that". Now, given the Doctor was in the room with her, does this (thankfully) mean that River ISN'T the Doctor's wife and that she's married to someone else? I really hope so...
The Impossible Astronaut set things up superbly well. Then along comes The Day of the Moon and really seems to do nothing other that spectacularly mess things up in a desperate attempt to try and look mysterious and set things up for the rest of the year. I'm guessing that we'll be visiting the 60s again at some point and Amy will be responsible for the Silents being underground in their TARDIS-like room, I'm guessing the little girl that River thinks is human will turn out to be a human/TimeLord hybrid that the Silents have made with all their gadgetry and I'm guessing that it'll never be explained how humanity can go about massacring thousands of Silents and no one ever noticing what happens to the bodies. Do they just pile up and no one notices them? Do people trip over them constantly but not know why? It's a badly thought out, completely non-Doctor Who solution that didn't have any place in the episode.
Bring back the Fifth Doctor. He knew there should have been another way, this Eleventh one is just a git.
Showing posts with label badscience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label badscience. Show all posts
Monday, 2 May 2011
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Good Who - Exhibit E
The science is pure baloney.
It has a plot that's rather obviously hacked to pieces and stitched back together.
It's internally inconsistent.
But oh how I do love thee..... "Planet of Giants".
For some reason this story always fascinated me. From the first snatches I read about it in the pages of Doctor Who Monthly (as it was back then) through to the Target novelisation I always absolutely adored this one. Then came that day that every fan faces, the opportunity to see it on bootleg video. The picture wobbled, the sound distorted and there was hiss in every silent moment yet it still lived up to my expectations. I can't think of a single other Who that managed to do that. The VHS came out, almost crystal clear picture quality and superb sound and I still adored the story. 2|Entertain have announced they've got the DVD well underway and I'm sure that when I get it I will love it even more. It's just one of those stories that delights me every time I see it.
I can't quite put my finger on it. It could be the sets, superbly re-created miniatures that almost match the regular size ones. It could be the deadly seriousness that the regulars give the dialogue, doubly important as they're almost single handedly carrying the three episodes. It could be the fantastically English sub plot about insecticide and murder. It could be all of the above and more rolled into one glorious 75 minute package. Whatever it is, when I'm feeling down then this is one of the stories I turn to. By my own criteria I really shouldn't like it but I do. I love it, I adore it, I want to see modern Who try and do a story this simple but with this much charm because I don't think they could do it.
Right, the science is complete nonsense and inconsistent but they do try so hard. They try and make the sounds deep enough to be from giants BUT they do it by slowing the tapes down so that a single gunshot lasts for several seconds. With digital audio it would be so much easier to redo it and get it spot on but I don't care. There's the mystery of just exactly how they've been shrunk down (have they lost mass? if not then how does the plug chain support them? if they have then where has their missing mass gone?) and there's the few major cockups between the worlds (the matchbox is in the crazy paving in the small world but on the grass in the large one) but I really don't care. I sit there watching and I'm completely drawn in to the danger and the plotting. Yes, at the end my brain re-engages and I think "but that's not how it would be!"... then my spirit of fun kicks in and tells my brain to be quiet. I know that if the seed shrinks down in the final scenes then so should the mud on their faces and they should be left spotless. I know that Ian shouldn't need to worry about climbing 30 feet down a plug chain he should be able to just jump down into the sink with no ill effects and I know that all the evidence suggests that they should be doing serious damage to every surface they walk across but it just doesn't seem to matter. It's "Planet of Giants", it's fine, it's allowed.
Episode three does come across as rather hacked around, with good reason of course. I would kill for the DVD of this to magically find the footage to make it a 4 parter again. I'd love more of the telephone exchange sluthery. I want more plugs that jump from sink to work surface. I want more "I'm going to conveniently tell you how to dispose of my body" moments but I know I won't get them. I know I'll get even better picture quality and even better sound. I know it means that the giant cat will more obviously be on film, I know I'll see the grass painted on canvas blow around even more. I know I'll see the joins in the set with crystal clarity but it really won't matter. I'll still be in awe of the giant fly that menaces Barbara. I know I'll still love puzzling over the physics of the plug scene. I know I'll adore the magic self repairing scanner at the end.
"Planet of Giants" is one of those stories that really can't do any wrong in my mind. If anyone really wants I'll happily go into detail of how the science is bad and some of the many possible ways to correct it. I'll happily sit here wishing I had diet breaking quantities of popcorn to treat this like a Sunday morning romp in the style of Flash Gordon and watch as the TARDIS doors swing open in flight, something they've never done before (not since Edge of Destruction anyway). I will sit there wishing I had a giant model ant in my flat being menaced by a creepy looking giant fly. When this story comes out on DVD I will love it to pieces more than I have done my VHS. "Planet of Giants" I salute you, 75 minutes of pure cobblers that I'm so happy survived the purge. Long may you reign as the height of small scale Who.
It has a plot that's rather obviously hacked to pieces and stitched back together.
It's internally inconsistent.
But oh how I do love thee..... "Planet of Giants".
For some reason this story always fascinated me. From the first snatches I read about it in the pages of Doctor Who Monthly (as it was back then) through to the Target novelisation I always absolutely adored this one. Then came that day that every fan faces, the opportunity to see it on bootleg video. The picture wobbled, the sound distorted and there was hiss in every silent moment yet it still lived up to my expectations. I can't think of a single other Who that managed to do that. The VHS came out, almost crystal clear picture quality and superb sound and I still adored the story. 2|Entertain have announced they've got the DVD well underway and I'm sure that when I get it I will love it even more. It's just one of those stories that delights me every time I see it.
I can't quite put my finger on it. It could be the sets, superbly re-created miniatures that almost match the regular size ones. It could be the deadly seriousness that the regulars give the dialogue, doubly important as they're almost single handedly carrying the three episodes. It could be the fantastically English sub plot about insecticide and murder. It could be all of the above and more rolled into one glorious 75 minute package. Whatever it is, when I'm feeling down then this is one of the stories I turn to. By my own criteria I really shouldn't like it but I do. I love it, I adore it, I want to see modern Who try and do a story this simple but with this much charm because I don't think they could do it.
Right, the science is complete nonsense and inconsistent but they do try so hard. They try and make the sounds deep enough to be from giants BUT they do it by slowing the tapes down so that a single gunshot lasts for several seconds. With digital audio it would be so much easier to redo it and get it spot on but I don't care. There's the mystery of just exactly how they've been shrunk down (have they lost mass? if not then how does the plug chain support them? if they have then where has their missing mass gone?) and there's the few major cockups between the worlds (the matchbox is in the crazy paving in the small world but on the grass in the large one) but I really don't care. I sit there watching and I'm completely drawn in to the danger and the plotting. Yes, at the end my brain re-engages and I think "but that's not how it would be!"... then my spirit of fun kicks in and tells my brain to be quiet. I know that if the seed shrinks down in the final scenes then so should the mud on their faces and they should be left spotless. I know that Ian shouldn't need to worry about climbing 30 feet down a plug chain he should be able to just jump down into the sink with no ill effects and I know that all the evidence suggests that they should be doing serious damage to every surface they walk across but it just doesn't seem to matter. It's "Planet of Giants", it's fine, it's allowed.
Episode three does come across as rather hacked around, with good reason of course. I would kill for the DVD of this to magically find the footage to make it a 4 parter again. I'd love more of the telephone exchange sluthery. I want more plugs that jump from sink to work surface. I want more "I'm going to conveniently tell you how to dispose of my body" moments but I know I won't get them. I know I'll get even better picture quality and even better sound. I know it means that the giant cat will more obviously be on film, I know I'll see the grass painted on canvas blow around even more. I know I'll see the joins in the set with crystal clarity but it really won't matter. I'll still be in awe of the giant fly that menaces Barbara. I know I'll still love puzzling over the physics of the plug scene. I know I'll adore the magic self repairing scanner at the end.
"Planet of Giants" is one of those stories that really can't do any wrong in my mind. If anyone really wants I'll happily go into detail of how the science is bad and some of the many possible ways to correct it. I'll happily sit here wishing I had diet breaking quantities of popcorn to treat this like a Sunday morning romp in the style of Flash Gordon and watch as the TARDIS doors swing open in flight, something they've never done before (not since Edge of Destruction anyway). I will sit there wishing I had a giant model ant in my flat being menaced by a creepy looking giant fly. When this story comes out on DVD I will love it to pieces more than I have done my VHS. "Planet of Giants" I salute you, 75 minutes of pure cobblers that I'm so happy survived the purge. Long may you reign as the height of small scale Who.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Attack on the Cybermen 04 - The Wheel in Space
I might have been a bit hasty in my last blog where I said that Tomb should have remained lost forever. I think I should have saved that comment for the next cyber story, The Wheel in Space. Having just put myself through the six episodes (over the course of three days, I just couldn't face it in one sitting) I've come to the conclusion that if you want to have an example of really bad Doctor Who then you should probably select Wheel. On so many levels it's a complete and utter failure. In a rare mood of charity I will perform a partial defence of the story. It's six episodes (always difficult to pull off without using the 4+2 format) and only two of them survive. One of these is episode three (that's the padding episode in a story that's largely padding anyway) and all six episodes seem to have windows with very little dialogue that have lost their impact by being audio only. But even taking this aural aspect into account, the story still sucks.
I could be verbose and highlight just how dull this story is, I could go into great detail about how slow moving and padded it feels or how it could probably have been condensed into a three parter without dropping anything significant but, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to waste my time on that. I could also say how little the Doctor actually does (unlike in Tomb where he's indirectly responsible for all bar one death, in this one he does so little that he's not really responsible for anything) but instead I'll try and focus on the two really REALLY awful things about this story, namely the science and the cybermen. Seriously, it's as though the presence of cybermen instantly drops the plausibility of the science down several powers of ten.
Firstly, we have the return of the cybermats (though sadly not the really cute small ones, just the adult versions). This time around they seem to have picked up the trick of being able to pass through solid objects. It might just be the fact we don't have the footage but I've always understood it that the eggs that they're launched from the Silver Carrier in somehow pass through the hull of the Wheel. There's an associated pressure drop (oh the memories of The Moonbase) but it's not something I've ever really seen picked up on. It's one of those talents that make you think "so why don't the cybermen do this at the end?". The cybermen's return was signalled in the trailer, even if it's not really suggested until episode two which does remove some of the mystery from the story. What wasn't signalled in the trailer was the absolute insanity of their plot. The cybermen ionise a star in the Messier 13 cluster which somehow causes it to go nova. I'm not entirely sure how this works as it's usually gravitational collapse of an absolutely massive star that causes this. To go nova, a star usually burns its way through its hydrogen supply to become a red giant and then burns its helium to the extent that it implodes so violently that the energy released is approximately the same as that released by an entire galaxy (only for a few days mind you). You could almost see that as a valid threat if it weren't for one absolutely tiny problem. The Messier 13 cluster is just over 25,000 (twenty five thousand) light years from the Earth. The whole cluster is barely visible with the naked eye from the earth, so if one star in it goes nova then we'll see a glow in the sky but not much more. Still, somehow the energy from this star that's been forced to go nova diverts a cluster of meteorites into the path of the wheel. If the star going nova explodes with such force that it can effect the path of meteorites 25,000 light years away from it, then I think the wheel has got other issues to worry about along the lines of it getting smashed to pieces itself. Still, not to worry. The cybermen have engineered the Silver Carrier to be 87million miles off course and carrying a handy supply of the fuel rods for the wheel's X-ray laser to replace the rods that the cybermats ate. All this so that two cybermen can be smuggled on board the wheel to repair the laser and then provide a homing signal for the smaller cyberships to... sorry I think at that point my brain completely gave up and went on holiday.
The cybermen, by the way, are now in a three fingered design but with blunted tips which must be hell to try and pick anything up with. They still have their chest units (which glow to kill people in this one) but the purpose of the rather cumbersome devices eludes me (especially as, in Tomb, the cybercontroller didn't wear one). One cyberman is killed off by having his chest unit covered in the spray plastic that Jamie uses to damage the laser. However, the other cybermen are seemingly quite capable of space walking (and, of course, we saw the cybermen on the moon's surface in Moonbase) which suggests that these units aren't there to enable them to breathe. Their exact purpose will be questioned further in future stories.
Where I REALLY object to this story though is that no-one seems to know who the cybermen are, inspire of every kid knowing about them in The Moonbase. We later learn that Zoe's a 21st century girl, so how come everyone knew about them in 2070 but not in this story? It's a kick in the teeth for the cybermen who, so far, only really have the claim to fame that they were Earth's first contact. I still don't find the cybermats particular menacing (even if episode three has one of the weirdest attack scenes ever in Doctor Who's history when they gang up on Kemel) and the "metal plate + transistor = protection" goes completely over my head. Sadly we've got that again in The Invasion so I'll deal with it then.
The Wheel in Space is a total mess and, most offensively, it's a tedious slow mess. This could so easily have been a snappy three parter but no, it's six episode of dull dialogue (where there even is dialogue not long shots of people in corridors) and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. There's no threat of cybertisation and the cybermen are just generic baddies in this with nothing to make them particularly memorable. What's more it presents us with a future where we still record onto tape, giant lava lamps make up essential parts of space wheels and people wear outfits that look like they're made from sleeping bags. Perhaps man kind really shouldn't go into space after all...
I could be verbose and highlight just how dull this story is, I could go into great detail about how slow moving and padded it feels or how it could probably have been condensed into a three parter without dropping anything significant but, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to waste my time on that. I could also say how little the Doctor actually does (unlike in Tomb where he's indirectly responsible for all bar one death, in this one he does so little that he's not really responsible for anything) but instead I'll try and focus on the two really REALLY awful things about this story, namely the science and the cybermen. Seriously, it's as though the presence of cybermen instantly drops the plausibility of the science down several powers of ten.
Firstly, we have the return of the cybermats (though sadly not the really cute small ones, just the adult versions). This time around they seem to have picked up the trick of being able to pass through solid objects. It might just be the fact we don't have the footage but I've always understood it that the eggs that they're launched from the Silver Carrier in somehow pass through the hull of the Wheel. There's an associated pressure drop (oh the memories of The Moonbase) but it's not something I've ever really seen picked up on. It's one of those talents that make you think "so why don't the cybermen do this at the end?". The cybermen's return was signalled in the trailer, even if it's not really suggested until episode two which does remove some of the mystery from the story. What wasn't signalled in the trailer was the absolute insanity of their plot. The cybermen ionise a star in the Messier 13 cluster which somehow causes it to go nova. I'm not entirely sure how this works as it's usually gravitational collapse of an absolutely massive star that causes this. To go nova, a star usually burns its way through its hydrogen supply to become a red giant and then burns its helium to the extent that it implodes so violently that the energy released is approximately the same as that released by an entire galaxy (only for a few days mind you). You could almost see that as a valid threat if it weren't for one absolutely tiny problem. The Messier 13 cluster is just over 25,000 (twenty five thousand) light years from the Earth. The whole cluster is barely visible with the naked eye from the earth, so if one star in it goes nova then we'll see a glow in the sky but not much more. Still, somehow the energy from this star that's been forced to go nova diverts a cluster of meteorites into the path of the wheel. If the star going nova explodes with such force that it can effect the path of meteorites 25,000 light years away from it, then I think the wheel has got other issues to worry about along the lines of it getting smashed to pieces itself. Still, not to worry. The cybermen have engineered the Silver Carrier to be 87million miles off course and carrying a handy supply of the fuel rods for the wheel's X-ray laser to replace the rods that the cybermats ate. All this so that two cybermen can be smuggled on board the wheel to repair the laser and then provide a homing signal for the smaller cyberships to... sorry I think at that point my brain completely gave up and went on holiday.
The cybermen, by the way, are now in a three fingered design but with blunted tips which must be hell to try and pick anything up with. They still have their chest units (which glow to kill people in this one) but the purpose of the rather cumbersome devices eludes me (especially as, in Tomb, the cybercontroller didn't wear one). One cyberman is killed off by having his chest unit covered in the spray plastic that Jamie uses to damage the laser. However, the other cybermen are seemingly quite capable of space walking (and, of course, we saw the cybermen on the moon's surface in Moonbase) which suggests that these units aren't there to enable them to breathe. Their exact purpose will be questioned further in future stories.
Where I REALLY object to this story though is that no-one seems to know who the cybermen are, inspire of every kid knowing about them in The Moonbase. We later learn that Zoe's a 21st century girl, so how come everyone knew about them in 2070 but not in this story? It's a kick in the teeth for the cybermen who, so far, only really have the claim to fame that they were Earth's first contact. I still don't find the cybermats particular menacing (even if episode three has one of the weirdest attack scenes ever in Doctor Who's history when they gang up on Kemel) and the "metal plate + transistor = protection" goes completely over my head. Sadly we've got that again in The Invasion so I'll deal with it then.
The Wheel in Space is a total mess and, most offensively, it's a tedious slow mess. This could so easily have been a snappy three parter but no, it's six episode of dull dialogue (where there even is dialogue not long shots of people in corridors) and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. There's no threat of cybertisation and the cybermen are just generic baddies in this with nothing to make them particularly memorable. What's more it presents us with a future where we still record onto tape, giant lava lamps make up essential parts of space wheels and people wear outfits that look like they're made from sleeping bags. Perhaps man kind really shouldn't go into space after all...
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Attack on the Cybermen 03 - Tomb of the Cybermen
I think I've had my moment of realisation. Sadly it's not the one I'd hoped for. I'd hoped that it would be "Wow, yeah... the cybermen really are great" and that I could post something glowing tonight. However, I've had the next best thing I guess. I know where my dislike of the cybermen has come from. It's not a brilliant thing to realise, because it's probably going to make me stand out even more from fandom with my opinions than I already do.
I don't like the cybermen because of "Tomb of the Cybermen". It's four episodes that should have remained lost forever, soundtrack included.
Right then, more than usual, this post is going to act as therapy for me. It'll probably open up all kinds of other cans of worms but hey, that's the great thing about therapy sessions, you never know what you'll end up hating. Errrrr, so I'm told. At its heart, I'm sure there's a good story here. The cybermen, weakened through lack of resources, set a trap with the intention of luring the greatest minds there, pinching their bodies and slowly rebuilding the cyber race. I'll admit that, simplified down to that level, it's a reasonable idea. The problem comes when you expand it to include the detail of their precise plans and then it REALLY goes pear shaped (not, unlike, the cyber controller). It doesn't help that what we get in this story doesn't really then tie in with Attack of the Cybermen, a story which I'll reach soon enough. Throw in some very dodgy production values (yes, I know, it was the 60s, shoestring budget and all that), a Doctor that doesn't feel overly Doctorish and you end up with a story that let me down on so many levels that it couldn't help but put me off cybermen for a very long time.
I'll happily admit that the first 16 minutes or so of episode one aren't too bad. The production clearly wants to be a feature film, the TARDIS console room even has an echo (which doesn't quite tie in with the visuals as in some shots it still looks very small) and the music sounds vaguely cinematic. The explosion looks semi-decent (though when we get to the studio footage it doesn't really look like a set of doors that's just been blown into accessibility) and, in a nice piece of continuity to The Moonbase, the TARDIS seems to "land" rather than materialise. We've got the stylised cybermen on the walls (which does tie in well with the whole trap aspect of it) and the inside of the main room in the tomb looks... okay, so once we're inside the tomb itself then a certain element of cheapness starts to enter the production. Cheapness I can forgive if the story's half way decent but, sadly, once the plot proper starts up then my ability to watch without wanting to throw something at the screen starts to drop. It's a story based, allegedly, around logic. Yet nothing in it seems in any way, shape or form, logical to me. Maybe it's just the story's attempt to be wrong with authority. All of the dialogue involving the mathematical sequences sounds, to my slightly mathematically inclined ears, as though someone's given the writer a scientific dictionary and told them to just use words at random without bothering to look at what they mean. The first one to make my teeth grind was when we're told that the logic sequences are based around a binary to digital conversion. Given that binary is basically digital logic, yeah... my brain probably should have taken a holiday at that point but instead it stayed to be told all about sequences and logic functions. It really, really should have taken a break.
Then there's the cybermen's plan. They freeze themselves in a huge tomb (which seems to contain less than a dozen of them) and hide the controls to it behind "logic" puzzles. Luckily for us, there's a convenient "reverse" function to pad the plot out. Now, one huge problem that I do have with this (on the science front), is the whole freeze thaw process. Every substance has something called a specific heat capacity. This is the energy that you have to put in to raise the temperature of one kilogram of it by one degree. The cyber tomb is a fairly sizable affair, several levels high and quite a few cells wide and the ice over it looks fairly thick. So there's got to be a good few kilograms of ice covering it up. Throw the lever and, kapow, the ice all melts in seconds. What's more, the floor isn't covered with water all of a sudden (oh how I would have loved to have seen a health and safety risk assessment for that in the 60s) so there is, presumably, extra energy put in to change the water into steam (calculated using a slightly different concept called specific latent heat). Basically, there must be a HUGE power source needed to get all that done in about 5 seconds. Even weirder is that when the system goes into reverse, the ice magically forms over the tombs once more which means that there's probably some sort of water wall that has to pour down over them and a huge heat pump to take the energy away from the water to get it to turn into ice. So, apart from wasting huge amounts of energy on the thawing process, the cybermen also have a recharging room where they can recharge one cyberman at a time. Still, there only seem to be about 9 of them on Telos so it doesn't matter, the queue won't be that long.
Something that is very present in this story is the threat of being turned into a cyberman. You belong to us, you will be like us, we now have a catchphrase. For the time being though, I'm going to hold off on commenting on the threat for one very good reason. I don't actually understand it and want to know more about it. I don't, for one moment, expect I'll learn much about it in future stories but it's a nice idea. All we really know from this story is that it seems a fairly mess-less process to give Toberman a three-fingered cyber-arm instead of his own. Just why this design of cyberman thinks that three fingers is a good idea I'm not too sure. Sadly the costume budget doesn't stretch to much past a silver glove with three pointy fingers but I know that in future stories we learn there's a reason that the cybermen look like normal men in baggy silver suits. Still, a man in a baggy suit is still better than the really rough looking one we see at the end of part one (though, admittedly, part two gives a non-sensical reason for this, just why would a cyber weapon be designed to destroy a cyberman?).
Then there's the cybermat. Forerunner and far superior to the modern series' cyber-shayde, this first appearance of the cybermat raises a huge number of questions that never really get answered in this story. Firstly, why are there two sizes? Is the implication supposed to be that these are organic devices that actually grow and mature? Secondly, why is everyone so frightened of them? I used to have pet rats (I miss them terribly at the moment) and to be honest I was more afraid of Psycho at feeding time than I ever have been of the cybermats. They just look so fragile that one encounter with a cheap Doc Marten knock off and they'd be history. Or, at the very least, you could jump over them. Finally, the Doctor knows about them, another part of this mythology that I'm building up in my mind that the cybermen are "significant". I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a "missing" Hartnell story that features the Doctor's first encounter with silver style cybermen and cybermats, it would explain a lot. (Dear Big Finish....)
Okay, so the cyber plan sucks, the cybermats aren't a plausible threat in this one and they'd be better off as heating engineers than galactic invaders. But there's another reason why I truly dislike this story. With the exception of the poor guy who died trying to open the doors in episode one, every other death in the story is thanks to the presence and actions of the Doctor. He opens the doors into the weapons testing room, he presses the button that opens the hatch to the tomb, he's the idiot who puts the cybercontroller into the revitalisation chamber without a decent plan for not letting him out... Yes, Doctor, you are responsible for a LOT of deaths in this one. You're also seemingly responsible for the magic production of a cloak but that's a minor crime compared to the blood on your hands in these four episodes. You opened the tombs, you caused the deaths. It's your fault.
Finally, some other random things I really don't like about this story:
- the weird gurgling noises the cybermen make in the battle scenes. Wha??? Did they cybertise Bill and Ben?
- Toberman being one of the few instances in Doctor Who where someone being hypnotised doesn't make their acting more wooden
- Victoria, the victorian, selecting a mini skirt
- the cybermen saluting the emergence of the cybercontroller seems a rather emotional response
- the cybercontroller not having a chest unit (yes, it makes him look different, but it leaves you wondering why the rest have them in the first place)
- locking the baddies in the weapons testing room along with the ummm weapons.
When I was younger I remember all the hype about this story. Second to Tenth Planet this was the other holy grail. DWM had comments from the uberfans telling us how wonderful this story was, how it was an absolute classic... then the wretched thing turned up on video. Take one teenage fan, tell him that the world's best Who story has just been found... then show it to him and make him realise that it's a pile of kak, a nonsensical mess of a story with production values that didn't even let it fall into the style-over-substance category. Tomb of the Cybermen, you let me down. And you ruined cybermen for me for the next few decades. I despise you.
I don't like the cybermen because of "Tomb of the Cybermen". It's four episodes that should have remained lost forever, soundtrack included.
Right then, more than usual, this post is going to act as therapy for me. It'll probably open up all kinds of other cans of worms but hey, that's the great thing about therapy sessions, you never know what you'll end up hating. Errrrr, so I'm told. At its heart, I'm sure there's a good story here. The cybermen, weakened through lack of resources, set a trap with the intention of luring the greatest minds there, pinching their bodies and slowly rebuilding the cyber race. I'll admit that, simplified down to that level, it's a reasonable idea. The problem comes when you expand it to include the detail of their precise plans and then it REALLY goes pear shaped (not, unlike, the cyber controller). It doesn't help that what we get in this story doesn't really then tie in with Attack of the Cybermen, a story which I'll reach soon enough. Throw in some very dodgy production values (yes, I know, it was the 60s, shoestring budget and all that), a Doctor that doesn't feel overly Doctorish and you end up with a story that let me down on so many levels that it couldn't help but put me off cybermen for a very long time.
I'll happily admit that the first 16 minutes or so of episode one aren't too bad. The production clearly wants to be a feature film, the TARDIS console room even has an echo (which doesn't quite tie in with the visuals as in some shots it still looks very small) and the music sounds vaguely cinematic. The explosion looks semi-decent (though when we get to the studio footage it doesn't really look like a set of doors that's just been blown into accessibility) and, in a nice piece of continuity to The Moonbase, the TARDIS seems to "land" rather than materialise. We've got the stylised cybermen on the walls (which does tie in well with the whole trap aspect of it) and the inside of the main room in the tomb looks... okay, so once we're inside the tomb itself then a certain element of cheapness starts to enter the production. Cheapness I can forgive if the story's half way decent but, sadly, once the plot proper starts up then my ability to watch without wanting to throw something at the screen starts to drop. It's a story based, allegedly, around logic. Yet nothing in it seems in any way, shape or form, logical to me. Maybe it's just the story's attempt to be wrong with authority. All of the dialogue involving the mathematical sequences sounds, to my slightly mathematically inclined ears, as though someone's given the writer a scientific dictionary and told them to just use words at random without bothering to look at what they mean. The first one to make my teeth grind was when we're told that the logic sequences are based around a binary to digital conversion. Given that binary is basically digital logic, yeah... my brain probably should have taken a holiday at that point but instead it stayed to be told all about sequences and logic functions. It really, really should have taken a break.
Then there's the cybermen's plan. They freeze themselves in a huge tomb (which seems to contain less than a dozen of them) and hide the controls to it behind "logic" puzzles. Luckily for us, there's a convenient "reverse" function to pad the plot out. Now, one huge problem that I do have with this (on the science front), is the whole freeze thaw process. Every substance has something called a specific heat capacity. This is the energy that you have to put in to raise the temperature of one kilogram of it by one degree. The cyber tomb is a fairly sizable affair, several levels high and quite a few cells wide and the ice over it looks fairly thick. So there's got to be a good few kilograms of ice covering it up. Throw the lever and, kapow, the ice all melts in seconds. What's more, the floor isn't covered with water all of a sudden (oh how I would have loved to have seen a health and safety risk assessment for that in the 60s) so there is, presumably, extra energy put in to change the water into steam (calculated using a slightly different concept called specific latent heat). Basically, there must be a HUGE power source needed to get all that done in about 5 seconds. Even weirder is that when the system goes into reverse, the ice magically forms over the tombs once more which means that there's probably some sort of water wall that has to pour down over them and a huge heat pump to take the energy away from the water to get it to turn into ice. So, apart from wasting huge amounts of energy on the thawing process, the cybermen also have a recharging room where they can recharge one cyberman at a time. Still, there only seem to be about 9 of them on Telos so it doesn't matter, the queue won't be that long.
Something that is very present in this story is the threat of being turned into a cyberman. You belong to us, you will be like us, we now have a catchphrase. For the time being though, I'm going to hold off on commenting on the threat for one very good reason. I don't actually understand it and want to know more about it. I don't, for one moment, expect I'll learn much about it in future stories but it's a nice idea. All we really know from this story is that it seems a fairly mess-less process to give Toberman a three-fingered cyber-arm instead of his own. Just why this design of cyberman thinks that three fingers is a good idea I'm not too sure. Sadly the costume budget doesn't stretch to much past a silver glove with three pointy fingers but I know that in future stories we learn there's a reason that the cybermen look like normal men in baggy silver suits. Still, a man in a baggy suit is still better than the really rough looking one we see at the end of part one (though, admittedly, part two gives a non-sensical reason for this, just why would a cyber weapon be designed to destroy a cyberman?).
Then there's the cybermat. Forerunner and far superior to the modern series' cyber-shayde, this first appearance of the cybermat raises a huge number of questions that never really get answered in this story. Firstly, why are there two sizes? Is the implication supposed to be that these are organic devices that actually grow and mature? Secondly, why is everyone so frightened of them? I used to have pet rats (I miss them terribly at the moment) and to be honest I was more afraid of Psycho at feeding time than I ever have been of the cybermats. They just look so fragile that one encounter with a cheap Doc Marten knock off and they'd be history. Or, at the very least, you could jump over them. Finally, the Doctor knows about them, another part of this mythology that I'm building up in my mind that the cybermen are "significant". I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a "missing" Hartnell story that features the Doctor's first encounter with silver style cybermen and cybermats, it would explain a lot. (Dear Big Finish....)
Okay, so the cyber plan sucks, the cybermats aren't a plausible threat in this one and they'd be better off as heating engineers than galactic invaders. But there's another reason why I truly dislike this story. With the exception of the poor guy who died trying to open the doors in episode one, every other death in the story is thanks to the presence and actions of the Doctor. He opens the doors into the weapons testing room, he presses the button that opens the hatch to the tomb, he's the idiot who puts the cybercontroller into the revitalisation chamber without a decent plan for not letting him out... Yes, Doctor, you are responsible for a LOT of deaths in this one. You're also seemingly responsible for the magic production of a cloak but that's a minor crime compared to the blood on your hands in these four episodes. You opened the tombs, you caused the deaths. It's your fault.
Finally, some other random things I really don't like about this story:
- the weird gurgling noises the cybermen make in the battle scenes. Wha??? Did they cybertise Bill and Ben?
- Toberman being one of the few instances in Doctor Who where someone being hypnotised doesn't make their acting more wooden
- Victoria, the victorian, selecting a mini skirt
- the cybermen saluting the emergence of the cybercontroller seems a rather emotional response
- the cybercontroller not having a chest unit (yes, it makes him look different, but it leaves you wondering why the rest have them in the first place)
- locking the baddies in the weapons testing room along with the ummm weapons.
When I was younger I remember all the hype about this story. Second to Tenth Planet this was the other holy grail. DWM had comments from the uberfans telling us how wonderful this story was, how it was an absolute classic... then the wretched thing turned up on video. Take one teenage fan, tell him that the world's best Who story has just been found... then show it to him and make him realise that it's a pile of kak, a nonsensical mess of a story with production values that didn't even let it fall into the style-over-substance category. Tomb of the Cybermen, you let me down. And you ruined cybermen for me for the next few decades. I despise you.
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Attack on the Cybermen 02 - The Moonbase
Okaaaaaaaaaay, it's time for magic tea trays, sound on the moon's surface and a plan so loony that it could only mean it's time for the next cyber story. Whereas in Tenth Planet I could find things to recommend it (the appearance of the cybermen mostly), I might struggle a little on this one.
Episode one opens with one of those moments that will probably end up leading to a blog article all of its own, namely just how on earth does the TARDIS travel? When I was younger (and didn't think so much about these trivial things) I just assumed that it vanished from point A, travelled in the vortex and only re-appeared at point B. However, this and many other stories, suggests that it must regularly stick its nose out of the vortex from time to time to see where it is. This means that it can be caught by the animus, or the Intelligence or, in this one, the gravitron. We then get it seemingly hovering above the moon's surface before nipping back into the vortex and out again to do its materialisation trick on the surface. Which, to me, seems rather a lot of effort but then again I'm sure the Time Lords had a reason for it other than "because it looks good".
My first major problem with this story is the Doctor's lack of knowledge. I'm not talking about his 1888 medical knowledge, it's more his lack of knowledge of the gravitron. Last time we found out that the cybermen were significant in Earth's history (and in this one we're told that every kid knows there were cybermen once) and the Doctor seems to have notes on them in his diary (which would suggest they're important enough for him to have read up on them or he's encountered them off screen as well). The cybermen recognise him from off screen adventures and everything suggests that the Doctor's been in this sort of time period before... yet he doesn't know about the gravitron controlling the weather from the moon. There's a part of me that desperately wants the TARDIS to have a sense of humour function in its telepathic circuits and have it wipe parts of the Doctor's memory every time it lands so that he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen outside and therefore change it deliberately. Anyway, the gravitron controls the Earth's weather from the moon. The story is set in 2070, it seems to be fully up and running (though some bits suggest that it's still relatively new and having teething troubles) but I'd guess that it was probably first mooted at least twenty years previously.
Oh yes, the gravitron itself makes no sense. I'm not disputing the fact that gravity could, somehow be used to control the weather. I'm not disputing the fact that it would be very useful to be able to control the weather. I'm just thinking that putting it on the moon and thus only allowing it to control the weather on the parts of the Earth that are in the direct line of sight from the moon might not have been the best place for it. Thankfully it'll be relocated to the earth in time for the Ice Warriors to play havoc with it in a season or two's time where we can then think about controlling the weather at night.
Back to the plot but keeping with the bad science aspect of the story, the cybermen gain access to the base by cutting a hole in it and walking in. At a real push I can imagine some sort of airlock being set up on the outside of the base and them just about getting in without the base being drained of air... but for some reason I find it very difficult to believe that they managed it without anyone noticing. You would have thought someone would have at least heard it happening or spotted a huge stack of sacks where there hadn't previously been one... Ah well, we're talking about a base populated by people who think it's a good idea to control the earth's weather from the moon is a good idea. They've got it coming to them. They also have exceptionally flimsy looking space suits that look as though they'd tear if you even showed them a jagged boulder on the moon's surface. THIS bit of the story I think is quite reasonable. If man kind has been dumb enough to put the vital weather control centre on the moon and leave it without suitable security other than a dozen or so middle aged scientists then it's going to be an ideal way for the cybermen to take over the world with the minimum of effort. I'm surprised they didn't have to get in line and queue for the right to do it. Where I don't quite get the cyber plot is the seemingly random way they infect people with the sugar. Don't they care who or how many they get? I mean if everyone went on a diet and cut sugar out of their tea then the cyberplan would have been screwed.
In a nice nod to Tenth Planet, Ben (in his temporary role as science boffin) remembers that the cybermen are vulnerable to radiation. However, he (and the others) can't think of a suitable source locally to use against the cybermen. It's a good job then that, say, the cybermen never have to walk across the moon's surface where they're going to be bombarded with radiation almost constantly. Instead Polly suggests a cocktail of solvents which, if the telesnaps are to be believed, don't just dissolve their chest plates but also seems to completely dissolve the cybermen as well. I really hope they're using them in a well ventilated area. Not only do the cybermen not like the cocktails, the Doctor works out that they have a thing about gravity as well, which is why they need "living" humans to work the gravitron controls for them. This is where my lack of understanding about the cybermen starts to kick in. They're terrified of radiation, but can walk across the moon's surface without any problem. They're worried by "gravity" in the gravitron control room yet humans can work in there for 12 hours before the sound levels drive them nuts. They're REALLY easy to dissolve. The list of their weaknesses is really starting to grow now.
Having given up on taking over from the inside, they puncture a hole in the side of the dome. One wind machine in the studio later to artistically blow things around whilst the characters are chatting and trying to find the oxygen masks... the hole gets covered with the world's strongest tea tray. Seriously, it has atmospheric pressure on one side and a total vacuum on the other. That thing should have buckled its way through the hole in an instant rather than staying there (presumably till someone needs to deliver a round of drinks). They're then defeated by being lifted off the moon's surface by the gravitron which strangely leaves the TARDIS in place along with all the rocks and dust...
So the story (once more) sucks.
So what of the cybermen? After all that's the reason I put myself through the four episodes.
No one seems to comment on their re-design. The Doctor clearly expects it (and just which cybermen was careless enough to have a chunk of material ripped out of its trousers anyway? Another sign that they're really pretty pathetic) and even Polly calls them cybermen in spite of them really not looking too much like they did last time we saw them. Was there another cyber story between Power of the Daleks and the Highlanders? It might explain a lot. I have to say that I'm not too impressed with their new look and would have liked a little more comment about just how they survived the destruction of Mondas (other than "they just did"). They're sarcastic (the "Clever, clever, clever" line has baffled me for a long time) but don't know about feelings. Except bemusement when their laser doesn't work. They've started taking over humans with sonic control (controlled from the vacuum of the moon's surface) and yes they look pretty imposing when they march across the moon's surface (good thing they don't need to breathe or anything) but there's no real fear of being cybertised in this story. They're actually pretty generic thug villains this time around.
It's sexist, it's laughable and it's scientific nonsense. In the past I've not found The Moonbase too much of a chore to get through but this time around, actually engaging my brain whilst I watch it... well my brain was hunting for the off switch. How did this crud survive when other, much better episodes, were lost? Oh well, at least the music's good.
Episode one opens with one of those moments that will probably end up leading to a blog article all of its own, namely just how on earth does the TARDIS travel? When I was younger (and didn't think so much about these trivial things) I just assumed that it vanished from point A, travelled in the vortex and only re-appeared at point B. However, this and many other stories, suggests that it must regularly stick its nose out of the vortex from time to time to see where it is. This means that it can be caught by the animus, or the Intelligence or, in this one, the gravitron. We then get it seemingly hovering above the moon's surface before nipping back into the vortex and out again to do its materialisation trick on the surface. Which, to me, seems rather a lot of effort but then again I'm sure the Time Lords had a reason for it other than "because it looks good".
My first major problem with this story is the Doctor's lack of knowledge. I'm not talking about his 1888 medical knowledge, it's more his lack of knowledge of the gravitron. Last time we found out that the cybermen were significant in Earth's history (and in this one we're told that every kid knows there were cybermen once) and the Doctor seems to have notes on them in his diary (which would suggest they're important enough for him to have read up on them or he's encountered them off screen as well). The cybermen recognise him from off screen adventures and everything suggests that the Doctor's been in this sort of time period before... yet he doesn't know about the gravitron controlling the weather from the moon. There's a part of me that desperately wants the TARDIS to have a sense of humour function in its telepathic circuits and have it wipe parts of the Doctor's memory every time it lands so that he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen outside and therefore change it deliberately. Anyway, the gravitron controls the Earth's weather from the moon. The story is set in 2070, it seems to be fully up and running (though some bits suggest that it's still relatively new and having teething troubles) but I'd guess that it was probably first mooted at least twenty years previously.
Oh yes, the gravitron itself makes no sense. I'm not disputing the fact that gravity could, somehow be used to control the weather. I'm not disputing the fact that it would be very useful to be able to control the weather. I'm just thinking that putting it on the moon and thus only allowing it to control the weather on the parts of the Earth that are in the direct line of sight from the moon might not have been the best place for it. Thankfully it'll be relocated to the earth in time for the Ice Warriors to play havoc with it in a season or two's time where we can then think about controlling the weather at night.
Back to the plot but keeping with the bad science aspect of the story, the cybermen gain access to the base by cutting a hole in it and walking in. At a real push I can imagine some sort of airlock being set up on the outside of the base and them just about getting in without the base being drained of air... but for some reason I find it very difficult to believe that they managed it without anyone noticing. You would have thought someone would have at least heard it happening or spotted a huge stack of sacks where there hadn't previously been one... Ah well, we're talking about a base populated by people who think it's a good idea to control the earth's weather from the moon is a good idea. They've got it coming to them. They also have exceptionally flimsy looking space suits that look as though they'd tear if you even showed them a jagged boulder on the moon's surface. THIS bit of the story I think is quite reasonable. If man kind has been dumb enough to put the vital weather control centre on the moon and leave it without suitable security other than a dozen or so middle aged scientists then it's going to be an ideal way for the cybermen to take over the world with the minimum of effort. I'm surprised they didn't have to get in line and queue for the right to do it. Where I don't quite get the cyber plot is the seemingly random way they infect people with the sugar. Don't they care who or how many they get? I mean if everyone went on a diet and cut sugar out of their tea then the cyberplan would have been screwed.
In a nice nod to Tenth Planet, Ben (in his temporary role as science boffin) remembers that the cybermen are vulnerable to radiation. However, he (and the others) can't think of a suitable source locally to use against the cybermen. It's a good job then that, say, the cybermen never have to walk across the moon's surface where they're going to be bombarded with radiation almost constantly. Instead Polly suggests a cocktail of solvents which, if the telesnaps are to be believed, don't just dissolve their chest plates but also seems to completely dissolve the cybermen as well. I really hope they're using them in a well ventilated area. Not only do the cybermen not like the cocktails, the Doctor works out that they have a thing about gravity as well, which is why they need "living" humans to work the gravitron controls for them. This is where my lack of understanding about the cybermen starts to kick in. They're terrified of radiation, but can walk across the moon's surface without any problem. They're worried by "gravity" in the gravitron control room yet humans can work in there for 12 hours before the sound levels drive them nuts. They're REALLY easy to dissolve. The list of their weaknesses is really starting to grow now.
Having given up on taking over from the inside, they puncture a hole in the side of the dome. One wind machine in the studio later to artistically blow things around whilst the characters are chatting and trying to find the oxygen masks... the hole gets covered with the world's strongest tea tray. Seriously, it has atmospheric pressure on one side and a total vacuum on the other. That thing should have buckled its way through the hole in an instant rather than staying there (presumably till someone needs to deliver a round of drinks). They're then defeated by being lifted off the moon's surface by the gravitron which strangely leaves the TARDIS in place along with all the rocks and dust...
So the story (once more) sucks.
So what of the cybermen? After all that's the reason I put myself through the four episodes.
No one seems to comment on their re-design. The Doctor clearly expects it (and just which cybermen was careless enough to have a chunk of material ripped out of its trousers anyway? Another sign that they're really pretty pathetic) and even Polly calls them cybermen in spite of them really not looking too much like they did last time we saw them. Was there another cyber story between Power of the Daleks and the Highlanders? It might explain a lot. I have to say that I'm not too impressed with their new look and would have liked a little more comment about just how they survived the destruction of Mondas (other than "they just did"). They're sarcastic (the "Clever, clever, clever" line has baffled me for a long time) but don't know about feelings. Except bemusement when their laser doesn't work. They've started taking over humans with sonic control (controlled from the vacuum of the moon's surface) and yes they look pretty imposing when they march across the moon's surface (good thing they don't need to breathe or anything) but there's no real fear of being cybertised in this story. They're actually pretty generic thug villains this time around.
It's sexist, it's laughable and it's scientific nonsense. In the past I've not found The Moonbase too much of a chore to get through but this time around, actually engaging my brain whilst I watch it... well my brain was hunting for the off switch. How did this crud survive when other, much better episodes, were lost? Oh well, at least the music's good.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Attack on the Cybermen - 01 - Tenth Planet
My brain is repeatedly telling itself that the reason I've watched Tenth Planet is not because of the story but because I want to understand the popularity of the cybermen. When I had the idea of doing these articles I also told myself that I was to concentrate on the cyber aspects of the story but that's gone out the window with the viewing of the story. So I've revised my plan already and I'm going to allow myself to vent about the stories as well. Just see it as web based therapy. When it comes to Tenth Planet, oh man do I need to vent. There's going to be a tag on these posts that crops up on a regular basis, badscience, and it's fairly likely that the entries on the cybermen will have quite a high percentage of the tags. This story REALLY doesn't make sense on the science front. Planets that move (and either really REALLY quickly or have cloaking devices), planets that suck energy and cybermen that melt when their planet explodes.
All this, and more, from a story written by a scientist.
Okay, in no particular order, here are the things to consider:
Kinetic energy (the energy associated with something due to its motion) is given by multiplying the mass of the object by the square of its velocity (oh yes, then dividing by two but, on the scale of planetary motion that doesn't really seem too vital). The mass of the earth is 6 times ten to the power 24*. For those of you not too acquainted with standard form, that's 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. I'm not typing that out again. Ever. But basically it's a large number. The planet's arrival seems to take everyone by surprise so it can't have been headed towards us very slowly. So we're talking about a large mass multiplied by a pretty big speed squared. (Yes, for future ones I'll type it out in equation form). Basically, it's a LOT of kinetic energy. One of the fundamental laws of the universe is that energy isn't ever destroyed, it's just converted to other forms. So the planet has a LOT of kinetic energy and then parks itself in orbit near us. So that energy had to go somewhere. Mondas is lacking energy (otherwise why would it need to pinch it from us) so it can't be internalised.... so major problem number one is that Mondas seems to magically make energy disappear.
Next up, gravity. If an object has mass (and yes, science thinks there are massless particles out there but, do you know what, I'm not even going there yet) then it creates a gravitational pull. So put two planets near each other, even separated by a few tens of thousands of kilometers, should exert quite a tug on each other. Put it this way, the moon is much smaller than Mondas and it's responsible for the tides. A planet that close to us would probably do more damage to the earth than just cause a few extra news broadcasts. Still, not like it's Gallifrey appearing in the Earth's atmosphere or anything.
Back to energy. Mondas is drawing energy from us, to the extent that it eventually goes bang (an event that doesn't do the earth any harm apparently). This means that there must be quite a drain of energy. Except there don't appear to be any effects on the Earth other than the Doctor collapsing and eventually regenerating. Perhaps he's the only source of energy they raid, in which case it's just as well it was Hartnell that turned up rather than the hyper Tennant. The reality, in my mind, is that there should be a lot of very tired and cold people on the planet.
I'm going to hold back, you'll be pleased to hear, on the radiation in this story. I'm saving that for a whole other article.
So the planet should have boiled itself when it parked in orbit, it should have pulled away the oceans in doing so and then deep frozen the leftovers. On the science front, this story... well, it's really not very good in the slightest. See, I can keep it polite. If I want.
Thinking of my blood pressure and how much damage I do by gritting my teeth, I'll mention a few other things about the story that I really don't like and THEN I'll get onto the cybermen, I promise. Firstly, the Doctor and friends do very little. They pretty much turn up, watch things happen, get captured a bit and then leave. The scientists are concerned about launching the Z bomb as it might turn Mondas supernova, yet it's a weapon the earth never ever mentions again, perhaps they decided it was too risky as it clearly would do more than just wipe out the enemy. The accents are pure pantomime and Cutler's clearly a nutjob who wouldn't have passed the psychoanalysis to get the job. It's amazing how a short rapid vent can get so much out of the system.
Now, for something rare, there are things about Tenth Planet that I really appreciate. So much so, that I wish there hadn't been another cyber story to ruin the legacy. Cybermen are our first contact and deeply significant in Earth's history. Thinking back to other stories there have been so far, the Doctor didn't know about the dalek invasion in the 22nd century which, you would think, would be a fairly major historical note. But before the cybermen even turn up, he knows exactly what's going to happen. I'm betting he even knows that Mondas goes pop. They land all over the world, they're on the International Television News and we're told that there are reports from all over the world. There's no escaping it (unless you're a fan author of the 90s onwards), this is first contact. It's almost confirmed in future stories. The cybermen are also quite "realistic" in that they're clothed in bandages and still have a few humanoid style traits such as opening their mouths to speak. They've had emotions removed for some reason though and I think this is where my lack of understanding comes in. I don't see this as a big advantage. Not entirely sure why, I think it's because I see the need to survive as a vaguely emotional thing. If the cybermen are controlled by "logic" (and I don't actually remember the cybermen being described as beings of pure logic in this one) then I don't really see any logic in the need to keep going. That, to me, is a definite emotional need. Their massive susceptibility to radiation really should have been sorted (and yes, that's definitely in a future post).
From this story, and this story alone, I can see why the cybermen were memorable. But then again I can see why Zarbi were and they never came back (outside of the printed page). My main issue with Tenth Planet is simply that it's a bloody awful story with some utterly abysmal science in it and very little Doctor Who. It's possibly the first Doctor-lite plot. I wonder if it's where a certain RTD got the idea. Anyway, I'll concede that the cybermen ARE impressive in this one. Just a shame they're about the only memorable thing in the story. Well, apart from the obvious of course.
All this, and more, from a story written by a scientist.
Okay, in no particular order, here are the things to consider:
Kinetic energy (the energy associated with something due to its motion) is given by multiplying the mass of the object by the square of its velocity (oh yes, then dividing by two but, on the scale of planetary motion that doesn't really seem too vital). The mass of the earth is 6 times ten to the power 24*. For those of you not too acquainted with standard form, that's 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. I'm not typing that out again. Ever. But basically it's a large number. The planet's arrival seems to take everyone by surprise so it can't have been headed towards us very slowly. So we're talking about a large mass multiplied by a pretty big speed squared. (Yes, for future ones I'll type it out in equation form). Basically, it's a LOT of kinetic energy. One of the fundamental laws of the universe is that energy isn't ever destroyed, it's just converted to other forms. So the planet has a LOT of kinetic energy and then parks itself in orbit near us. So that energy had to go somewhere. Mondas is lacking energy (otherwise why would it need to pinch it from us) so it can't be internalised.... so major problem number one is that Mondas seems to magically make energy disappear.
Next up, gravity. If an object has mass (and yes, science thinks there are massless particles out there but, do you know what, I'm not even going there yet) then it creates a gravitational pull. So put two planets near each other, even separated by a few tens of thousands of kilometers, should exert quite a tug on each other. Put it this way, the moon is much smaller than Mondas and it's responsible for the tides. A planet that close to us would probably do more damage to the earth than just cause a few extra news broadcasts. Still, not like it's Gallifrey appearing in the Earth's atmosphere or anything.
Back to energy. Mondas is drawing energy from us, to the extent that it eventually goes bang (an event that doesn't do the earth any harm apparently). This means that there must be quite a drain of energy. Except there don't appear to be any effects on the Earth other than the Doctor collapsing and eventually regenerating. Perhaps he's the only source of energy they raid, in which case it's just as well it was Hartnell that turned up rather than the hyper Tennant. The reality, in my mind, is that there should be a lot of very tired and cold people on the planet.
I'm going to hold back, you'll be pleased to hear, on the radiation in this story. I'm saving that for a whole other article.
So the planet should have boiled itself when it parked in orbit, it should have pulled away the oceans in doing so and then deep frozen the leftovers. On the science front, this story... well, it's really not very good in the slightest. See, I can keep it polite. If I want.
Thinking of my blood pressure and how much damage I do by gritting my teeth, I'll mention a few other things about the story that I really don't like and THEN I'll get onto the cybermen, I promise. Firstly, the Doctor and friends do very little. They pretty much turn up, watch things happen, get captured a bit and then leave. The scientists are concerned about launching the Z bomb as it might turn Mondas supernova, yet it's a weapon the earth never ever mentions again, perhaps they decided it was too risky as it clearly would do more than just wipe out the enemy. The accents are pure pantomime and Cutler's clearly a nutjob who wouldn't have passed the psychoanalysis to get the job. It's amazing how a short rapid vent can get so much out of the system.
Now, for something rare, there are things about Tenth Planet that I really appreciate. So much so, that I wish there hadn't been another cyber story to ruin the legacy. Cybermen are our first contact and deeply significant in Earth's history. Thinking back to other stories there have been so far, the Doctor didn't know about the dalek invasion in the 22nd century which, you would think, would be a fairly major historical note. But before the cybermen even turn up, he knows exactly what's going to happen. I'm betting he even knows that Mondas goes pop. They land all over the world, they're on the International Television News and we're told that there are reports from all over the world. There's no escaping it (unless you're a fan author of the 90s onwards), this is first contact. It's almost confirmed in future stories. The cybermen are also quite "realistic" in that they're clothed in bandages and still have a few humanoid style traits such as opening their mouths to speak. They've had emotions removed for some reason though and I think this is where my lack of understanding comes in. I don't see this as a big advantage. Not entirely sure why, I think it's because I see the need to survive as a vaguely emotional thing. If the cybermen are controlled by "logic" (and I don't actually remember the cybermen being described as beings of pure logic in this one) then I don't really see any logic in the need to keep going. That, to me, is a definite emotional need. Their massive susceptibility to radiation really should have been sorted (and yes, that's definitely in a future post).
From this story, and this story alone, I can see why the cybermen were memorable. But then again I can see why Zarbi were and they never came back (outside of the printed page). My main issue with Tenth Planet is simply that it's a bloody awful story with some utterly abysmal science in it and very little Doctor Who. It's possibly the first Doctor-lite plot. I wonder if it's where a certain RTD got the idea. Anyway, I'll concede that the cybermen ARE impressive in this one. Just a shame they're about the only memorable thing in the story. Well, apart from the obvious of course.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
The Ark
Sorry, you weren't expecting me to post about Who in any sort of order were you?
This also isn't a review of the DVD, more some random comments on the story. Mostly along the lines of "Well that got written out of continuity pretty damn thoroughly didn't it?"
Oh yes, I'm also not going to claim that these postings are particularly well researched or entirely accurate...
So anyway, having watched the DVD (great restoration) and actually watched it whilst in a vaguely concentrating mood, I've come to the conclusion that at some point this must have been pretty effectively written out of time. It's supposed to be set far into the future (yet not quite so far as Frontios which is at the limits of how far forward the TARDIS is allowed to allegedly go) yet the implication is that humans haven't ever really settled on other planets as they've not found suitable ones. The Earth is about to be destroyed by the Sun going bang (though it's not clear whether this is the change from main sequence to red giant* or some other solar activity) and so humanity has hopped into a spaceship (along with their ever so loveable Monoid chums, on which I'll comment in a bit) and is heading off for Refusis Two. Now, up to this point we hadn't seen loads of other human colonies. The Sensorites had humans trying to land on other planets but that was only the 28th Century and the planets were already inhabited and The Keys of Marinus had shown us planets that could, quite clearly, support human life but we hadn't had an indication of mankind only settling on one other planet. However, in future stories we've got things like the Daleks' Master Plan (where we even have penal colonies), Power of the Daleks (near future colonies on other planets) and Colony in Space where we have colonies. Out in space.
As fond as I am of The Ark, it's only really re-watching it this evening that I've realised it doesn't sit particularly well with the rest of the series in terms of what we know about Earth's future. Then again, very little of the series sits particularly well with the rest of it. Then along came Eccleston and all continuity went out of the window anyway.
Oh yes, the Monoids. I knew I was going to mention something else. One-eyed creatures with a wibbly walk and bad hair. One day I hope there's a Who story set in some distant space lab where mad scientists are trying to make the ultimate life form. All their trial runs get discarded and chucked into the time vortex where they get dropped on random planets, that's pretty much the only way something like the Monoid could have come into existance. You try living and working as a servant with no depth perception. Not to mention a low enough IQ to come up with the concept of a security kitchen.
So there, The Ark, a story that I am genuinely quite fond of but only when viewed outside of the context of the rest of Doctor Who. Sometimes I wish I could switch my brain off for the rest of Doctor Who as well. I'm sure, in coming months, you'll realise that all my brain ever seems to want to do is rip every story to shreds.
This also isn't a review of the DVD, more some random comments on the story. Mostly along the lines of "Well that got written out of continuity pretty damn thoroughly didn't it?"
Oh yes, I'm also not going to claim that these postings are particularly well researched or entirely accurate...
So anyway, having watched the DVD (great restoration) and actually watched it whilst in a vaguely concentrating mood, I've come to the conclusion that at some point this must have been pretty effectively written out of time. It's supposed to be set far into the future (yet not quite so far as Frontios which is at the limits of how far forward the TARDIS is allowed to allegedly go) yet the implication is that humans haven't ever really settled on other planets as they've not found suitable ones. The Earth is about to be destroyed by the Sun going bang (though it's not clear whether this is the change from main sequence to red giant* or some other solar activity) and so humanity has hopped into a spaceship (along with their ever so loveable Monoid chums, on which I'll comment in a bit) and is heading off for Refusis Two. Now, up to this point we hadn't seen loads of other human colonies. The Sensorites had humans trying to land on other planets but that was only the 28th Century and the planets were already inhabited and The Keys of Marinus had shown us planets that could, quite clearly, support human life but we hadn't had an indication of mankind only settling on one other planet. However, in future stories we've got things like the Daleks' Master Plan (where we even have penal colonies), Power of the Daleks (near future colonies on other planets) and Colony in Space where we have colonies. Out in space.
As fond as I am of The Ark, it's only really re-watching it this evening that I've realised it doesn't sit particularly well with the rest of the series in terms of what we know about Earth's future. Then again, very little of the series sits particularly well with the rest of it. Then along came Eccleston and all continuity went out of the window anyway.
Oh yes, the Monoids. I knew I was going to mention something else. One-eyed creatures with a wibbly walk and bad hair. One day I hope there's a Who story set in some distant space lab where mad scientists are trying to make the ultimate life form. All their trial runs get discarded and chucked into the time vortex where they get dropped on random planets, that's pretty much the only way something like the Monoid could have come into existance. You try living and working as a servant with no depth perception. Not to mention a low enough IQ to come up with the concept of a security kitchen.
So there, The Ark, a story that I am genuinely quite fond of but only when viewed outside of the context of the rest of Doctor Who. Sometimes I wish I could switch my brain off for the rest of Doctor Who as well. I'm sure, in coming months, you'll realise that all my brain ever seems to want to do is rip every story to shreds.
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