THE PLOT
*Takes deep breath* OK, here goes...
The Doctor is making repairs to the TARDIS, in order to repair the chameleon circuit. Though his last attempt involved wizards mumbling mathematics, this time he just tugs on a few wires while background noises go "bleep." After a rough patch of travel, and a moment in which the Doctor and Peri observe Halley's Comet, he picks up a distress signal coming from Earth, 1985. Since such a signal is beyond human capability, he decides that it must be an alien, and investigates.
Meanwhile, a gang of crooks plot a diamond heist. Their leader is a man known as Lytton (Maurice Colbourne), who is actually an alien mercenary hiding on Earth following his last encounter with the Doctor. Lytton leads his gang into the sewers, the plan ostensibly being to break into the diamond exchange from below. But Lytton isn't actually there for diamonds. He is there to rendezvous with the Cybermen lurking in the sewers, and is bringing his gang along as "gifts."
Meanwhile, on Telos, a couple of prisoners of the Cybermen escape. This has no real connection with anything, but it does kill a bit of time that might otherwise have been used to clarify the actual plot.
Back on Earth, the Cybermen discover that the Doctor is in the sewers, and decide to steal his TARDIS and take him, the TARDIS, and Peri back to Telos. Once there, the Doctor discovers that this is all connected to the Cybermens' plot to undo the events of The Tenth Planet by reversing history so that Mondas will never be destroyed.
The Cybermen lock the Doctor in a room with a Cryon named Flast. Flast knows all the necessary exposition for the Doctor to thwart their plans. Also in the room are a whole bunch of explosives. So this is the absolute most logical place to lock up a dangerous and resourceful prisoner.
Oh yes, the Cryons. What's a Cryon, you ask? Well... (head explodes)
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: The ending of The Twin Dilemma assured us that the Doctor had fully stabilized, and that his remaining spikiness was simply part of the new persona to which we would have to adjust. Unfortunately, this cue is not followed, despite this script having been essentially written by the same man who wrote those lines in the first place! Instead of a spiky yet stable Doctor, the first episode presents a Doctor who spends a fair chunk of the episode wandering around in a semi-delusional haze, referring to Peri as "Susan" (and, offscreen, as Tegan and Jamie) while nattering on about "The Terrible Zodin." When he does get proactive, it mainly involves beating up policemen (who aren't really policemen) or shooting Cybermen. The second half sees him spending most of the episode confined to a room, and his TARDIS has to be rescued by the Cryons in order for him to get away. This is the hero of the piece?
At least Colin Baker is still game, even if his Doctor is rendered completely ineffectual. The first episode has a very good scene, in which he attacks the Cyberman in the sewers. He brashly assures everyone that he knows what he's doing. Then, when no one's watching, we see the doubt and apprehension on his own face before he springs into action, indicating that much of his bravado is sheer bluff. He gets some strongly compassionate moments in Part Two, expressing his sorrow to the Cryons or his regrets over Lytton, in a serial that ends on a note of self-recrimination. If anything, it seems like overcompensation to cries that he was too cold in The Twin Dilemma, as from too alien a Doctor he seems to have swung back to being too human and fallible. Still, Colin plays what he's given well.
Peri: Peri is no longer plucky and willing to give as good as she gets. Instead, she stands around whining while the Doctor alternately bullies her and patronizes her. Somewhat bizarrely, when the Doctor bluffs (?) at her to shoot Russell (Terry Molloy), Peri actually looks like she might do so, simply because the Doctor has told her to. When separated from the Doctor in Part Two, she isn't any more useful opposite the Cryons. Effectively, as Flast delivers one batch of exposition to the Doctor, the other Cryons deliver another batch of exposition to Peri. Nicola Bryant is still trying hard, and does what she can, but there's really no character here for her to play.
Lytton: Anyone tuning in for the first time here could be entirely forgiven for thinking Lytton was the main character, as he carries the story and drives the action. Colbourne gives by far the best performance on-hand, and its apparent that writer Eric Saward was far more interested in writing for the shady, acid-tongued Lytton than he was in writing for the regulars. The good news is, when Lytton's on camera, it just about works. The character is well-scripted, the actor is good, and the individual Lytton scenes tend to hold up. The bad news is, the effect doesn't last once Lytton is off-camera. I'd also question how badly the Doctor really did misjudge Lytton. So the ruthless mercenary is working for victims this time instead of aggressors. That hardly makes him suddenly into a good guy, does it?
Cybermen: The good news: Gold is no longer the Cybermen's only weakness. The bad news: That's because EVERYTHING is their weakness. Russell kills a Cyberman by shooting it with a pistol. A police pistol, not a sci-fi laser thingie. The Doctor stabs one with a sonic lance. Stratton and Bates kill Cybermen by knocking their heads off with heavy objects. I get the feeling that if you sneezed really hard at a Cyberman in this story, it would go "Uurgh!" and collapse, and then we'd cut back to control where a Cyberman would tell the Cyberleader, "A Cyberscout has been de-stroyed."
THOUGHTS
Attack of the Cybermen is a generally good production. It's a much better-looking story than The Twin Dilemma was. Director Matthew Robinson has a strong visual sense, and provides the set pieces with the urgency and atmosphere they need. Individual scenes and moments of this story do work, with individual set pieces even becoming fairly gripping. Much of the credit must go to Robinson, whose camera sense milks whatever tension is possible from every situation. Yet another good '80's Who director, putting paid once again to Saward's assertion that Peter Grimwade was one of only two.
Unfortunately, I'd prefer a good script that suffers pedestrian direction to a bad script that benefits from sterling direction. Attack of the Cybermen has probably the worst script of any Doctor Who story I've yet reviewed. It's a collection of scenes, set pieces, character types, and continuity references, all looking for a plot to attach themselves to.
The first episode almost sustains interest through atmosphere. The sewers are a good setting, lending themselves to tension. The knowledge that 1980's London is just outside the sewers, that the Cybermen could go out and massacre people on the streets at any moment, gives an added edge to the first part. This helps sustain it through some endless (and frankly, appallingly-written) padding scenes with the Doctor and Peri wandering up and down alleyways.
If the story had confined itself to the simpler setting, it may have worked. A story about diamond thieves and an undercover policeman stumbling across Cybermen in the sewers has potential. Then the action switches to Telos. An alien planet filmed in a quarry just doesn't carry the same immediacy, so that edge is immediately lost. The whole Stratton/Bates subplot goes nowhere. Worse, it takes away valuable time that Saward might have used to actually demonstrate the threat the Cybermen pose. Instead, he simply has characters standi around talking about the threat.
Most of the content in Part Two seems only barely connected to Part One. Lytton is working for the Cryons to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos and blowing it up on their way out. But the Cryons aren't even mentioned in Part One, so the whole near-genocide perpetrated upon them by the Cybermen feels like part of a separate story. There are good moments in both halves, and the set design for the Telos interiors is quite strong and atmospheric in itself. Either half could have been expanded into a pretty good full story, if the unnecessary convulations had been dropped. But by cramming so many convolutions into 88 minutes, the result is less a story than a barely-coherent jumble.
That's not even mentioning the sheer idiocy of knowing that the first story of Season 22 was an important one. A new Doctor, about whom the public was deliberately left uncertain. A new timeslot, a new format. This was, in effect, a relaunch. And what story was chosen? An ultraviolent mish-mash of continuity elements from three 1960's Cybermen stories, none of which had been seen in more than a decade, and none of which even completely existed in the archives at that point in time!
I do disagree with the decision to rest the show after Season 22. I do believe the hiatus was misjudged on virtually every level. But honestly, raising the curtain on Season 22 with Attack of the Cybermen was all but a dare to the powers that be to push the "Cancel" button.
Rating: 4/10.
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