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 sixthdoctor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sixthdoctor. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Sunday, 27 February 2011
The Delight is in the Detail
Having just written a less than glowing piece on The Moonbase, I thought I would balance things out by posting a (just ever so slightly shorter) piece on "The Feast of Axos" the latest (at the time of writing anyway) release from Big Finish. Don't worry, no major spoilers ahead.
I am something of a continuity nut but I also like a bigger picture. Continuity between stories is great and, as I pointed out in my Moonbase piece, it's good to hear Ben reference back to the cybermen's radiation weakness. Doctor Who does this very well at times on television, even if the continuity only lasts the duration of one production team. However, something that it was pretty poor at was the continuity of the bigger picture. In the 60s there are a handful of "near-ish" future stories such as Enemy of the World. In that, there's a big change in the way the world is divided up and who is in charge. Yet in other stories there's no real indication that this is going on. Similarly, the building of The Moonbase is a huge project that must have been a global undertaking... yet it seems to be one of those things that takes place silently in the background. An even better example is The War Machines/The Faceless Ones... stories that take place on exactly the same day but don't feel as though they're even on the same planet. You'd think that there would be a buzz about WOTAN's robots in The Faceless Ones or there would be stories about thousands of missing teenagers in the papers in The War Machines (rather than a front page piece, with photo, of a missing tramp). So mainstream Doctor Who doesn't often satisfy my "bigger picture" craving.
Big Finish's "The Feast of Axos", on the other hand, really makes an effort to feel as though it takes place in the same world/universe as the original Axos story. There are mentions of places and people that really tweak the atmosphere of this story (which, by the way, would be good even without these details) and make you think "yeah, this actually feels as though it's a natural progression". It's not intrusive. If you don't know the stories that it's referencing then you probably won't even notice that they are being referenced. Okay, there's no reference of Salamander yet who should surely, by now, be a big world player* but you can't reference everything in one go, so thank you to Big Finish for at least making the effort and making this Who Geek really happy that other people care.
I am something of a continuity nut but I also like a bigger picture. Continuity between stories is great and, as I pointed out in my Moonbase piece, it's good to hear Ben reference back to the cybermen's radiation weakness. Doctor Who does this very well at times on television, even if the continuity only lasts the duration of one production team. However, something that it was pretty poor at was the continuity of the bigger picture. In the 60s there are a handful of "near-ish" future stories such as Enemy of the World. In that, there's a big change in the way the world is divided up and who is in charge. Yet in other stories there's no real indication that this is going on. Similarly, the building of The Moonbase is a huge project that must have been a global undertaking... yet it seems to be one of those things that takes place silently in the background. An even better example is The War Machines/The Faceless Ones... stories that take place on exactly the same day but don't feel as though they're even on the same planet. You'd think that there would be a buzz about WOTAN's robots in The Faceless Ones or there would be stories about thousands of missing teenagers in the papers in The War Machines (rather than a front page piece, with photo, of a missing tramp). So mainstream Doctor Who doesn't often satisfy my "bigger picture" craving.
Big Finish's "The Feast of Axos", on the other hand, really makes an effort to feel as though it takes place in the same world/universe as the original Axos story. There are mentions of places and people that really tweak the atmosphere of this story (which, by the way, would be good even without these details) and make you think "yeah, this actually feels as though it's a natural progression". It's not intrusive. If you don't know the stories that it's referencing then you probably won't even notice that they are being referenced. Okay, there's no reference of Salamander yet who should surely, by now, be a big world player* but you can't reference everything in one go, so thank you to Big Finish for at least making the effort and making this Who Geek really happy that other people care.
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