CRRRRS 557 Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen

By Roy Mathur, on 2024-10-09, at 23:59:59 to 01:50:21 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show

Archive.org Down

During the DDOS my podcast, hosted on Archive.org, was unavailable. I'm glad to say they patched their security, at least for the time being, and so the podcast is back online.

As usual, this is my fairly fresh/naive review of a classic Doctor Who story I have revisited, relatively untainted by the views of others. Forgive any clunkiness, as this is my first pod after the Archive.org hack, so I'm rusty and I fact-checked these shownotes in the midst of making crabapple jelly, and jam-making is a hard job for rough-tough manly men. Enjoy enjoy.

Production

Notable Cast: Sixth Doctor: Colin Baker, Peri Brown: Nicola Bryant, Flast (Cryon leader): Faith Brown; comedian, actress, singer, and leggy staple of British late 70s light entertainment, Lytton: Maurice Colbourne; other sci-fi villains he played included Lytton in Resurrection of the Daleks (pod 537) and Day of the Triffids' Jack Coker, Griffiths: Brian Glover; ex-wrestler (Leon Arras the Man From Paris), English and French teacher, An American Werewolf in London, Alien 3, and prolific player of muscle, Bates: Michael Attwell; also an Ice Warrior in The Ice Warriors in 1967 (pod 92) and his sharp features suited many other tough guy roles
Director: Matthew Robinson, also Resurrection of the Daleks in which he cast the third Davros (Terry Molloy), high flying Beeb producer and management, notoriously axed the Kapoors, the only Asian family from Eastenders, thanks for that, mate (sarcasm mode engaged)
Writer: Paula Moore; real name Paula Woolsey credited as story's author due to attribution problems when script editor Eric Saward rewrote the script. Minor contributions also from trollish fan Ian Levine
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: Various London locations, Gerrards Cross Sand and Gravel Quarry, BBC Television Centre Studio 6, 1984 Broadcast: Story 137, season 22, serial 1, following The Twin Dilemma (pod 553), 2 x c. 45 min, Saturday 5 Jan at 17:20 to 12 Jan 1985
Media: Target novelization by Eric Saward (1989), BBC audio book read by Colin Baker 1995, VHS 2000 and 2001, DVD 2009 and 2010, DVD Doctor Who DVD Files Issue 82 2012, Blu-ray Doctor Who The Collection: Season 22 2022

Zeitgeist

International: Operation Moses airlift of Ethiopian Jews.

UK: it was the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas (Twelth Night), celebrating Epiphany, which commemorating the Magi (wizards!). UK No. 1: Band Aid's Do they Know it's Christmas?.

Story

Tunnel workers are attacked by something mechanical.

Cut to the Tardis where the Doctor fiddles with electronics behind a couple of the roundels with his sonic lance, attempting to repair the chameleon circuit, when they lurch to Halley's comet, then pick up a distress signal from Earth in 1985.

In London, Lytton, the Dalek's former mercenary, now a robber, and his fellow crooks, are attempting a heist in the sewers of London.

Back in the Tardis, the Doctor tracks the signal, piloting the malfunctioning TARDIS---it's chameleon circuit transform it unpredictably from a garish memorial to a pipe organ---to Totter's Yard in Shoreditch. After beating up an armed arm disguised as a policemen, they follow the signal underground where they are caught by Cybermen who coerce them to take everyone to the planet Telos. The Doctor reconfigures the roundels to pilot the TARDIS off-course to the Cyber-Tombs, the frigid last sanctuary where the temperature sensitive native Cryons are making their last stand.

Peri, Lytton, and Griffiths escape, but the Doctor is captured by Cryon leader Flast who tells him the Cybermen want to use a time-ship to destroy Earth with Halley's Comet, thus preventing the destruction of Mondas, their home world.

Lytton and Griffiths meet the time ship's crew, Bates and Stratton, failed Cyber-conversions and recently escaped slave labourers. They try to retake their time ship, but die and Lytton is captured.

The Doctor lends Flast his sonic lance to rig an IED to destroy Cyber-Control, then leaves. Flast is later ejected from the cold chamber and left to boil to death by the Cybermen.

Peri is helped by some Cryons and rejoins the Doctor. We find out that Lytton, far from reverting to type, is helping the Cryon insurgency.

At Cyber-Control, the Doctor finds Lytton partially converted. The Cyber-Controller arrives, a fight ensues and all die, except the Doctor and Peri who leave just before the IED explodes.

Thoughts

The script gives Lytton the redemption he doesn't deserve. After-all, he was in the pay of the genocidal Daleks against his fellow humans in Resurrection of the Daleks (pod 537), though he still despised those from Earth for their weakness. Lytton, in his own ruthless way, does the right thing, though the Doctor doesn't see that until it is too late to save him. While it is nice to see the Doctor not quite as arrogant and realising his own capacity for poor judgement, who could blame the him for thinking ill of such a cold-blooded mercenary?

The shock revelation that Bates and Stratton have been partially Cyber-converted is as disturbing as their sudden end, after so much time is invested in their character development.

Acting is acceptable all-round, and I of course enjoy Faith Brown as Flast. I am a little irritated by Brian Glover occasionally playing for laughs, which detracts from this brutal drama. However, the only reason to cast the lumpen ex-wrestler is for comedic value, so he plays the role of the thick hoodlum to the hilt.

The creature design isn't particularly notable, at least as far as the Cybermen are concerned. They are some variant of the constantly evolving form, the usual hard-face version in this case and one I don't find as intimidating as the fabric-bandaged face-type. However, the slim, soft voiced, silver-clad, and long expressive fingered Cryons, with their sinuous dancing movements, even with googly eyes and crystalline beards, are very seductive. For the dads and the teenagers (me included at the time), Peri is busting out of a tight pink top.

Colin Baker's first whole season begins with a nihilistic adventure. There is the shock death of the prisoners, the murder by boiling of Flast, the end of Lytton's grim character arc, and the explosion at the end kills everyone on Telos, despite the Doctor saving Earth. However, I enjoyed the nostalgic scenes that return us to Totter's Lane scrapyard in Shoreditch (it doesn't exist, I looked), the comically malfunctioning TARDIS; particularly when the Doctor starts playing Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on it when it transforms into a pipe organ. I also enjoyed watching the Doctor duff up the fake copper.

Trivia

The change in format to two forty-five episodes per story did not improve ratings and almost led to Doctor Who's premature cancellation. That is a pity, as I much prefer that to the shorter though more numerous episodes and I like even more New Who's single story episodes.

As well as killing off K-9, JNT, also wrote the sonic screw driver out of Doctor Who, but then allows him the short-lived sonic lance.

There's a misspelling error in the iconic sign, which says, "I. M. Forman" instead of An Unearthly Child's "I. M. Foreman".

Follow-Up

In pod 556, I said, "...the UK have grudgingly returned the Chagos Islands to Mauritius..." and, "it's at least as small step in the right direction." I have to apologise for my mistaken reading of the situation because the Americans will be staying on the main island, Diego Garcia, indefinitely. So no real decolonisation at all, not even enough to satisfy the UN.

Recently, I may have used the nauseatingly emotive phrase, "to help me keep the lights on, please support me on Ko-fi". While I definitely do need your help, it's not as if I'm going to be rendered homeless without your tips, so again apologies. In my defence, I was influenced by another podcaster.

Finally, I am sorry for slacking off during the Archive.org hacks. It was no excuse for the pod to fall apart due to depressive apathy.

I'll speak to you next in the Halloween show.