I really thought that, by this story, we'd had more cybermen tales in the series. However, given that this one lifts and borrows from most of the others it just makes it feel as though we've had twice as many. With so many things pinched and reworked from other stories, it's no wonder that this one feels a right mess.
Okay, the cyber plan is "simple". Go back in time (using stolen time technology) and stop Mondas being destroyed by making Haley's comet slam into the Earth. The Doctor recognises this as catastrophic. Peri sees this as a pretty bad move. The cryons (oh so tempting to add an extra "a" into that word) aren't too sure it's a wise move... yet the cybermen don't seem to have a problem with a paradoxical change to the web of time on a cataclysmic scale. However as they also seem to know a great deal about the time lords, piloting the TARDIS and other odds and ends about which they were previously clueless, the first question has to be "where did they get their knowledge?" The precise dating of this story (well, the Telos sections anyway) are a little hard to place. They seem to be the same design as the Earthshock cybermen (even though the controller should be the Tomb design) but not quite the Revenge design. I'm wondering if there are off camera adventures involving the cybermen in which they pick up all their 80s knowledge of all things "time". Speaking of off camera knowledge, given the Doctor barely met Lytton in "Resurrection of the Daleks", just how is he so familiar with him here? So yes, the plan's a bit of a suicidal one that only the cybermen think is a good one. We won't be chalking it up to a mastery of logic and lacking in emotions (check out the two cybermen who run from the explosion at the very end by the way, they're DEFINITELY showing emotion... and campness).
Right then, which bits have we had pinched wholesale?
Tenth Planet - the Mondas "plot"
Moonbase - actually nothing specific seems to have been stolen from this one
Tomb - well it's set in Cyber tombs BUT they're clearly not the same ones from Tomb of the Cybermen and they seem to be serving a different purpose. However, they're clearly referred to as the tombs so we have to assume that the production team intended it to be a reference (hence the controller)
Wheel - the stupidly insane plot's a tribute to Wheel in Space's masterpiece of bad science
Invasion - the sewers and the ship on the dark side of the moon
Revenge - the double dealing traitor and the race that's supposed to have died out
Earthshock - well most of this story was pinched from earlier ones anyway...
The main problem is I spent most of episode one waiting for things to start. It felt as though it was the plot of a 25 minute opening episode stretched out to 45 with the aid of running around corridors (sorry, streets this time and sewers), gratuitous shots of cybermen being destroyed (this story presents them at their weakest with a new method of killing them turning up nearly every ten minutes in episode one!) and Peri jiggling. There were a few nice lines ("You said you came from Fulham") and one of my favourite pieces of music being used as the incidental music (no, not the Steptoe theme) but all in all the first 45 minutes just left me thinking "this is an utter mess of continuity errors". The errors are right through the first episode up to the closing seconds where the console room doors magically close themselves instantly (Peri goes to close them, the lever explodes, the cybermen march in and then suddenly they're closed). With the Mondas plot kicking in in part two things just get worse and worse... By the end of the second episode I'd reached the point of wanting it to be over just to stop the assault on my mind. Too many things coming from the screen that didn't make sense (along with the disappointment of seeing how badly dated all the circuitry behind the roundels in the TARDIS looks) and too many heart sinking moments as the cybermen get dispatched with so many conventional weapons. Yes, they've never been indestructible but when it gets reduced to a solid thwack with a piece of pipe you know things have gone too far.
Attack of the Cybermen highlights the problems that the series was having in the 80s. Thankfully most of Colin's other stories rise massively above this one but as a season opener, as a cyber story and as an attempt at a continuity fest it fails on almost every level. As a needlessly violent way to put flashes and bangs on the screen though....
Showing posts with label cybermen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cybermen. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Attack on the Cybermen 07 - Earthshock
Too much Who is bad for you. At least that's what I'm starting to think about the cyber stories. Watching them in a row really doesn't seem to be doing them many favours. However, this could just be these particular stories as, if I think about it for a bit, the dalek ones have a lot more variety (but no, I'm not doing the dalek ones after these, that would just be masochism in the extreme). Tonight's viewing was Earthshock and boy does this story make me schizophrenic. There are times when I've enjoyed watching it (such as on the recent twitter based view-a-long) but tonight it wasn't fun. Partially because it's so damn repetitive (more of which to come), partially because in the "larger picture" it doesn't work and mostly because it's pretty crap.
Of course, the one off shock of the episode one cliffhanger can't ever be repeated (without lethal doses of alcohol anyway) so a lot of the viewing is done in the knowledge that the cybermen are turning up. I did try and put this out of my mind though, honest! However, in doing so episode one became something of a cliche ridden drag. People start getting killed, Doctor and co turn up and are accused. Doctor charms his way out of it, real monster turns up, sting into theme. In the 24 and a bit minutes we've got clunky looking technology (even by 1980s standards some of the gear looks old fashioned), the obligatory soap opera TARDIS scenes (actually they're not too bad here but they do add to the rather padded feel of the story), cave sets less realistic than those in The Silurians (and by trying to explain away the whole lighting issue they just draw attention to it and make their explanation seem even more implausible than it might have been) and lots of sniggering like a schoolboy from me at all the talk of "going down" in the opening sequences. The music's lovely though and people do seem to be taking it deadly seriously. Sadly, once the cybermen turned up, I couldn't join them in doing so.
Having only watched Revenge of the Cybermen the other night it's very difficult not to spot the parallels plot wise. Bomb in a convenient cave system that the Doctor manages to diffuse so the cybermen turn to plan B which is to turn a space ship into a giant flying bomb to blow it up instead. The problem being, Revenge did it better in my mind. In Revenge there was the charm of the double agent, a vaguely realistic scenario where a geologist went down to Voga to map it out and presumably started the discussions and planning. Here there seems to be an absolutely huge plot gone on in the background that my mind can't quite fill in. So, the Earth's on red alert so the cybermen went down to the planet to blow it up. Presumably though they must have done it before it was put on red alert so how far in advance was the gathering announced and how quickly did the cybermen act? More importantly, how did they then also put together plan B which involved finding a freighter with a bribeable crew member and getting it to pick up 15,000 shrink wrapped cybermen. Unless, of course, plan B was the original Plan A and then the bomb thing just occurred to them when they found out about the conference? Though if it was only done when they found out about the conference, how did they get down there to plant the bomb in the first place? The Doctor sort of asks these questions in episode two but they're never actually really answered...
Actually, a quick side comment about the androids... why are they different heights? Do you think the cybermen ordered a tall one and a shorter one, or was the shorter one cheaper as it had a manufacturing defect?
My next issue is the sudden knowledge the cybermen have about the Doctor, the TARDIS and the time lords. They seem to know EVERYTHING. They saw the TARDIS briefly in Tenth Planet but seemed to make no comment about it. In the Moonbase they might have seen it on the surface of the moon but at no point did they go "Oi, you've got a time lord in there". They never left their Tomb, it was invisible in Invasion mostly (even though there was the random missile fired from the dark side of the moon) and absent in Revenge. Did they get up to serious investigation whilst the rest of us slept through The Wheel in Space? Mind you, they have the advantage that they have all the adventures somehow recorded to be played back on their viewing screen. And how convenient that they started with a first Doctor clip, then showed the second when, chronologically, they would have recorded Patrick Troughton first of all.... The clunkiness of the technology continues through the story as well, with the cyberbomb having a convenient set of seven segment displays to indicate a timer and a big red button for them to push to detonate the device. I can, in part, understand why there's a padded leather chair on the freighter but are moon boots really the most practical footwear for a cyberman?
Side note number two: The cybermen see the TARDIS dematerialise and are able to track it through space through to the freighter where it rematerialises... have we got space flight TARDIS again?
Once the "action" reaches the freighter things start to become painfully padded and confused. We get lots of corridor action (along with TARDIS based padding scenes for Nyssa) and talk of the "anti-cybermen" gathering which is vitally important.... even though no one seems to actually recognise the cybermen when they see them or when the Doctor names them. Then there's the fortunate sci-fi convention that even if something's from another universe it's exactly the same as though it was from ours, in this case the gold edge to Adric's badge. In case you didn't remember 7 years back, we get the reminder that the gold effectively suffocates them. Followed by the Doctor dismissing the suggestion to pump the air out of the hold because the cybermen don't need air. Right. Okay.
Episode four seems to want to break the record for the most stupidities in one story. We've got magic time travel that has no ill effects for anyone or anything. Yup, just attach an alien device to your navigational computer and suddenly you can time travel (something that the ultra advanced cybermen don't seem to realise). There's the sci-fi convention that if you travel back in time then the Earth is conveniently exactly where it was when you started your journey (rather than being millions of light years away), you've got the nearly destroyed cyberman who just makes it to the bridge in time to blow up the computer and then expire. The ship develops mood lighting just in time for Adric's death and the cyberleader also seems to know the details of how to fly the TARDIS.
The worst thing about Earthshock, other than being a retread of Revenge of the Cybermen without the funness, is that the cybermen aren't really cybermen. There's no threat of conversion, there's no spare part nature to them, they're a bunch of "more than robots" who come across as silvery thugs who try and hide the fact they do really have emotions by passing them off as scientific research. It's a mess of a story that really doesn't deserve any sort of "classic" status. Oh well. At least when I did it as the tweetview I was doing it with others so had lots to distract me from its crapness. On a concentrated viewing.... ho hum.
Of course, the one off shock of the episode one cliffhanger can't ever be repeated (without lethal doses of alcohol anyway) so a lot of the viewing is done in the knowledge that the cybermen are turning up. I did try and put this out of my mind though, honest! However, in doing so episode one became something of a cliche ridden drag. People start getting killed, Doctor and co turn up and are accused. Doctor charms his way out of it, real monster turns up, sting into theme. In the 24 and a bit minutes we've got clunky looking technology (even by 1980s standards some of the gear looks old fashioned), the obligatory soap opera TARDIS scenes (actually they're not too bad here but they do add to the rather padded feel of the story), cave sets less realistic than those in The Silurians (and by trying to explain away the whole lighting issue they just draw attention to it and make their explanation seem even more implausible than it might have been) and lots of sniggering like a schoolboy from me at all the talk of "going down" in the opening sequences. The music's lovely though and people do seem to be taking it deadly seriously. Sadly, once the cybermen turned up, I couldn't join them in doing so.
Having only watched Revenge of the Cybermen the other night it's very difficult not to spot the parallels plot wise. Bomb in a convenient cave system that the Doctor manages to diffuse so the cybermen turn to plan B which is to turn a space ship into a giant flying bomb to blow it up instead. The problem being, Revenge did it better in my mind. In Revenge there was the charm of the double agent, a vaguely realistic scenario where a geologist went down to Voga to map it out and presumably started the discussions and planning. Here there seems to be an absolutely huge plot gone on in the background that my mind can't quite fill in. So, the Earth's on red alert so the cybermen went down to the planet to blow it up. Presumably though they must have done it before it was put on red alert so how far in advance was the gathering announced and how quickly did the cybermen act? More importantly, how did they then also put together plan B which involved finding a freighter with a bribeable crew member and getting it to pick up 15,000 shrink wrapped cybermen. Unless, of course, plan B was the original Plan A and then the bomb thing just occurred to them when they found out about the conference? Though if it was only done when they found out about the conference, how did they get down there to plant the bomb in the first place? The Doctor sort of asks these questions in episode two but they're never actually really answered...
Actually, a quick side comment about the androids... why are they different heights? Do you think the cybermen ordered a tall one and a shorter one, or was the shorter one cheaper as it had a manufacturing defect?
My next issue is the sudden knowledge the cybermen have about the Doctor, the TARDIS and the time lords. They seem to know EVERYTHING. They saw the TARDIS briefly in Tenth Planet but seemed to make no comment about it. In the Moonbase they might have seen it on the surface of the moon but at no point did they go "Oi, you've got a time lord in there". They never left their Tomb, it was invisible in Invasion mostly (even though there was the random missile fired from the dark side of the moon) and absent in Revenge. Did they get up to serious investigation whilst the rest of us slept through The Wheel in Space? Mind you, they have the advantage that they have all the adventures somehow recorded to be played back on their viewing screen. And how convenient that they started with a first Doctor clip, then showed the second when, chronologically, they would have recorded Patrick Troughton first of all.... The clunkiness of the technology continues through the story as well, with the cyberbomb having a convenient set of seven segment displays to indicate a timer and a big red button for them to push to detonate the device. I can, in part, understand why there's a padded leather chair on the freighter but are moon boots really the most practical footwear for a cyberman?
Side note number two: The cybermen see the TARDIS dematerialise and are able to track it through space through to the freighter where it rematerialises... have we got space flight TARDIS again?
Once the "action" reaches the freighter things start to become painfully padded and confused. We get lots of corridor action (along with TARDIS based padding scenes for Nyssa) and talk of the "anti-cybermen" gathering which is vitally important.... even though no one seems to actually recognise the cybermen when they see them or when the Doctor names them. Then there's the fortunate sci-fi convention that even if something's from another universe it's exactly the same as though it was from ours, in this case the gold edge to Adric's badge. In case you didn't remember 7 years back, we get the reminder that the gold effectively suffocates them. Followed by the Doctor dismissing the suggestion to pump the air out of the hold because the cybermen don't need air. Right. Okay.
Episode four seems to want to break the record for the most stupidities in one story. We've got magic time travel that has no ill effects for anyone or anything. Yup, just attach an alien device to your navigational computer and suddenly you can time travel (something that the ultra advanced cybermen don't seem to realise). There's the sci-fi convention that if you travel back in time then the Earth is conveniently exactly where it was when you started your journey (rather than being millions of light years away), you've got the nearly destroyed cyberman who just makes it to the bridge in time to blow up the computer and then expire. The ship develops mood lighting just in time for Adric's death and the cyberleader also seems to know the details of how to fly the TARDIS.
The worst thing about Earthshock, other than being a retread of Revenge of the Cybermen without the funness, is that the cybermen aren't really cybermen. There's no threat of conversion, there's no spare part nature to them, they're a bunch of "more than robots" who come across as silvery thugs who try and hide the fact they do really have emotions by passing them off as scientific research. It's a mess of a story that really doesn't deserve any sort of "classic" status. Oh well. At least when I did it as the tweetview I was doing it with others so had lots to distract me from its crapness. On a concentrated viewing.... ho hum.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Attack on the Cybermen 06 - Revenge of the Cybermen
Okay, okay, the effects are terrible, the music "different", the science absolutely lousy but... do you know what... I really enjoy watching Revenge of the Cybermen. I will now wait a short while for you to recover from shock. Yes, that's right, I said it. I actually enjoy watching Revenge. Goddess only knows how I'm going to be able to put this one into words as it's just one of those "things" but I've just spent a very happy (and quite a fast moving) 100 minutes or so wishing that every story could use the words "glitter gun" or maybe even have one on screen.
It's also quite weird writing about this as, by my own "criteria", I should loathe this one. So let's get the negative out of the way first of all. You'll know most of these already as it's one story that everyone seems to spout off the problems (probably because it's so easy and they're not up to the challenge) but there might be a few new ones in here as well. There's Voga, asteroid with an atmosphere and gravity. And water. And plants. And hell, sod all about it seems to follow any physical laws (something that the story itself points out near the start). Then there's the unlikelihood of actually having a planet type thing mostly made of gold. Then there's the rocket that's a cheap model kit in some shots and carries the American flag in others. The planet at the end which looks like what it is, a knobbly brown stick being rotated very fast. The cybermen seem to have emotions or some kind of emotional response. They have projectile weapons on a space station. The technology looks old fashioned even by the standards of the early seventies. Oh, and the dead bodies in the corridor are shop dummies. That's at least eight major problems that should make me end up wanting to throw things at the screen, shout obscenities and grind my teeth so hard that they break. Yet none of these happened. I just wish I understood why as, if I did, I might be able to write stuff myself that could get away with things.
Let me try and put down a few ideas, some of them total fanwank and others with at least a hint of support in the story. Firstly, Voga. Near the start of episode three we get told that it was once a survival chamber. Now this doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would normally crop up on a regular planet. Given that no-one really knows where Voga came from, could it be that it's actually the result of some other catastrophe and it's a chunk of planet that got converted into a habitat in its own right? This might also explain the gravity and atmosphere, if you've got a survival chamber then you're going to want to make damn sure that it's worth surviving and it's clear that, in the not too distant future, even mankind has artificial gravity (just look at the difference between the inside and outside of The Moonbase, everyone inside acts as though they're on earth). Taking Moonbase as our guide, it must be quite simple to create localised gravity as it does seem to be very much a "step over a certain line and the gravity fails" type scenario. So could there be pockets of gravity created (and might that be why shafts were widened etc?). Next we have the mystery of the cybermen. By this stage in their history they've been pretty much totally defeated and they're skulking around the galaxy trying to survive. To survive they would need to adapt. Could the basic emotions in this story be an admittance that being emotional isn't a complete weakness after all and they're toying with new things? Or perhaps they're so beaten up that their emotional inhibitors have failed? Actually, in this story they come across as being pretty much pure machine creatures (rather than a converted human or two) so perhaps it's a programming thing to fake emotions and put their enemies off their guard?
One thing that this story has a lot to answer for is the whole cybermen/gold thing. However, in this story it's no different to (say) radiation in the Tenth Planet or gravity in The Moonbase. They're a different type of cyberman, they work in a totally different way (in The Moonbase they didn't need to breathe yet here gold clogs up their breathing apparatus. In overcoming other weaknesses (in The Invasion the UNIT troops shot them down "easily" but here they shrug off bullets) have they introduced new ones? To me, gold is just the gimmick of the week here. Nothing for Who to be ashamed of and vaguely sort of just about explainable.
What else went through my mind whilst watching? Well it moved along really quickly (I got through all four episodes in the time that the first two of The Invasion seemed to take) and the cyberplot mostly made sense. Find something that could be used as a weapon, use it as a weapon to destroy things that could be used against you. If you're low on numbers, get someone else to do the dirty work for you. Use the virus that you've used effectively before (the links with Moonbase were appreciated in this one as that aspect of their plan worked well, so why not re-use it in some form... plus it's a really neat effect again) and learn from your mistakes. Kill the unwanted humans rather than hypnotise them. It's a simple, basic and almost logical plan. And when something unforeseen forces them to change it, they simply come up with a new one. I loved the cliffhanger to episode two (and also weirdly appreciated the fact that the cybermen were talked about right from episode one, thus sparing us the "...of the daleks" cliffhanger where the shock cliffhanger is the appearance of the daleks) and even the new look cybermat doesn't offend me.
It's just one of those stories I guess. You can write out great long lists of why it shouldn't work. You can even fumble your way through trying to explain why it does (even though it doesn't). Yet at the end of it... I feel happier than when I started. How could Who be better than that?
It's also quite weird writing about this as, by my own "criteria", I should loathe this one. So let's get the negative out of the way first of all. You'll know most of these already as it's one story that everyone seems to spout off the problems (probably because it's so easy and they're not up to the challenge) but there might be a few new ones in here as well. There's Voga, asteroid with an atmosphere and gravity. And water. And plants. And hell, sod all about it seems to follow any physical laws (something that the story itself points out near the start). Then there's the unlikelihood of actually having a planet type thing mostly made of gold. Then there's the rocket that's a cheap model kit in some shots and carries the American flag in others. The planet at the end which looks like what it is, a knobbly brown stick being rotated very fast. The cybermen seem to have emotions or some kind of emotional response. They have projectile weapons on a space station. The technology looks old fashioned even by the standards of the early seventies. Oh, and the dead bodies in the corridor are shop dummies. That's at least eight major problems that should make me end up wanting to throw things at the screen, shout obscenities and grind my teeth so hard that they break. Yet none of these happened. I just wish I understood why as, if I did, I might be able to write stuff myself that could get away with things.
Let me try and put down a few ideas, some of them total fanwank and others with at least a hint of support in the story. Firstly, Voga. Near the start of episode three we get told that it was once a survival chamber. Now this doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would normally crop up on a regular planet. Given that no-one really knows where Voga came from, could it be that it's actually the result of some other catastrophe and it's a chunk of planet that got converted into a habitat in its own right? This might also explain the gravity and atmosphere, if you've got a survival chamber then you're going to want to make damn sure that it's worth surviving and it's clear that, in the not too distant future, even mankind has artificial gravity (just look at the difference between the inside and outside of The Moonbase, everyone inside acts as though they're on earth). Taking Moonbase as our guide, it must be quite simple to create localised gravity as it does seem to be very much a "step over a certain line and the gravity fails" type scenario. So could there be pockets of gravity created (and might that be why shafts were widened etc?). Next we have the mystery of the cybermen. By this stage in their history they've been pretty much totally defeated and they're skulking around the galaxy trying to survive. To survive they would need to adapt. Could the basic emotions in this story be an admittance that being emotional isn't a complete weakness after all and they're toying with new things? Or perhaps they're so beaten up that their emotional inhibitors have failed? Actually, in this story they come across as being pretty much pure machine creatures (rather than a converted human or two) so perhaps it's a programming thing to fake emotions and put their enemies off their guard?
One thing that this story has a lot to answer for is the whole cybermen/gold thing. However, in this story it's no different to (say) radiation in the Tenth Planet or gravity in The Moonbase. They're a different type of cyberman, they work in a totally different way (in The Moonbase they didn't need to breathe yet here gold clogs up their breathing apparatus. In overcoming other weaknesses (in The Invasion the UNIT troops shot them down "easily" but here they shrug off bullets) have they introduced new ones? To me, gold is just the gimmick of the week here. Nothing for Who to be ashamed of and vaguely sort of just about explainable.
What else went through my mind whilst watching? Well it moved along really quickly (I got through all four episodes in the time that the first two of The Invasion seemed to take) and the cyberplot mostly made sense. Find something that could be used as a weapon, use it as a weapon to destroy things that could be used against you. If you're low on numbers, get someone else to do the dirty work for you. Use the virus that you've used effectively before (the links with Moonbase were appreciated in this one as that aspect of their plan worked well, so why not re-use it in some form... plus it's a really neat effect again) and learn from your mistakes. Kill the unwanted humans rather than hypnotise them. It's a simple, basic and almost logical plan. And when something unforeseen forces them to change it, they simply come up with a new one. I loved the cliffhanger to episode two (and also weirdly appreciated the fact that the cybermen were talked about right from episode one, thus sparing us the "...of the daleks" cliffhanger where the shock cliffhanger is the appearance of the daleks) and even the new look cybermat doesn't offend me.
It's just one of those stories I guess. You can write out great long lists of why it shouldn't work. You can even fumble your way through trying to explain why it does (even though it doesn't). Yet at the end of it... I feel happier than when I started. How could Who be better than that?
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.
Attack on the Cybermen - Intro
I have a weirdly wired brain. You’ll notice that a lot. One of the many things I really don’t like (along with chavs, a lot of politicians and reality TV) is not understanding something. Actually, looking back over the list of things I don’t like then there’s definitely a theme of not understanding in there. Except dentists. I hate dentists and understand them perfectly. They’re sadists who get paid for a living.
I’m waffling, get used to it.
Anyway, something that’s always baffled me is the popularity of the cybermen. Everyone always gets really excited when they return and everyone constantly raves about them and people always seem to hold them in high regard as monsters. Yet the thought of them coming back time and time again really isn’t one that gets me going. I really don’t like this and so I’m going to try and change it. To do this I’m going to force myself to watch all the cyberman stories (in order) and yes, I’ll be doing recons or soundtracks of the missing ones. I won’t try and do it as though it’s the first time I’ve seen them, I’ll let my mind wander forward as and when it needs to or wants to, though I don’t pretend that when it wanders forward it’ll do so accurately. I won’t be referring to the audios or the novels just yet, but I will probably end up looking at the new series episodes. Even though that would mean watching them again, which is something I’m looking forward to less than sitting through The Wheel in Space.
So, that’s the plan. And if you know me, you’ll know what I’m like with plans.
That gulp of horror you just heard was me realising what the first story I’d have to watch was…
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