By Roy Mathur, on 2026-02-17, at 23:23:03 to 01:03:22 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Notable Cast: Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy, Companion: Ace: Sophie Aldred, De Flores: Anton Diffring; typecasted as Nazi officers, Lady Peinforte: Fiona Walker; Agrippina BBC I, Claudius, Richard Maynard: Gerard Murphy; N. Irish, minor roles, a pity as the script seemed to be building him into a companion, Jazz band: Courtney Pine; jazz sax, multi-instrumentalist, Jazz Warriors band, Adrian Read, Ernest Mothle, Frank Tontoh
Director: Chris Clough, also Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe, Delta and the Bannermen, Dragonfire, The Happiness Patrol
Writer: Kevin Clarke; his only DW cred, but see Trivia
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: Windsor Castle (stock), Greenwich, West Sussex (most, inc. Nazi tropics house, Arundel Castle doubling as Windsor Castle), Middlesex 1988
Broadcast: Story 150, serial 3, season 25, following The Happiness Patrol (601), 3 x c. 25 min, 23 Nov--7 Dec 1988
Media: Target novelization by Kevin Clarke 1989, VHS 1993 (see Trivia), DVD 2010, Blu-ray 2024, BBC iPlayer since 1 Nov 2023
The UK no. 1 single was First Time by Robin Beck. Who?
On Corrie, Terry tries to remove graffiti from Mike's Jaguar. I don't have a clue...
France tests a nuke.
In 1988 S. America, Nazi, De Flores's man detects the landing of an astronomical object. De Flores later salutes the Fourth Reich, retrieves a silver bow, then he and is men head off to the landing site.
In 1638 Windsor, black magician, Lady Peinforte's mathematician has also worked out the date and place of the object. With a silver arrow in hand, and her fearful henchman assisting, she casts a spell and time travels to 1988.
The Doctor and Ace are enjoying an outdoor jazz performance, when his digital pocket watch alarm goes off, but he can't remember why. As they leave, they are shot at and fall off a bridge into water.
De Flores, Peinforte, Cybermen, the Doctor and Ace converge on the crash site of a silvery statue that, when joined with the bow and arrow, will form an unstoppable weapon. They fight it out with multiple casualties. The Cybermen gets the statue and the Doctor and Ace get the bow and go back to Peinforte's house inn the past to investigate. They return to 1988 with a bag of gold, Ace blows up the Cybermen's ship with Nitro-9.
Lady Peinforte, De Flores, and the Cybermen try to out-negotiate each other, but she loses the arrow to the Cybermen, who plan to betray De Flores and have him converted. The Doctor and Ace bamboozle the group and give the statue the bow, which then takes off.
The Doctor completes the weapon (statue, bow, and arrow), programs it to destroy the Cybermens' invasion fleet near the moon Meanwhile Ace is killing Cybermen with gold coins shot from a bait catapult. De Flores is killed by a Cyberman.
Peinforte arrives and threatens the Doctor with revealing his secrets. He surrenders the weapon to the Cybermen, Peinforte desperately merges with the statue, which flies into space and destroys their fleet.
The Doctor is saved from the Cyber Leader by the henchman. The Doctor and Ace take him back home and enjoy a 17th century flute and lute performance by him and his wife.
Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is a bit on the nose, even for Nazis. As if being a Nazi isn't enough to declare one a bad-un, the cad De Flores is about to murder a beautiful tropical bird. There are bad guys! An elderly Nazi plotting and scuttling out from hiding reminded me of BBC1's Secret Army's spinoff, Kessler.
It might have been fine weather, but the Doc and Ace taking a dunking and then clambering up a muddy, slippery riverbank doesn't look fun for the actors.
I enjoyed the model Cybermen's main ship landing and flying and later being blown up by Ace. You can see the joints slightly where the model is superimposed on the background, but otherwise great. In fact, all the special effects where great and I, of course, enjoyed the scary statue blazing in silver.
The scenes where Peinforte loses her mind in the car, played for comedy, and later when she merges with the statue, I found grim.
Chess features a lot in this and Ace can apparently play really well and knows the lingo.
Lots of comedy. Primitives stranded in time; like Peinforte arriving in the middle of a busy modern cafe, her henchman threatened by llamas, duffing up a couple of skins (don't mess with a fop), and the pair hitching a lift with a rich, gaudy American. There are the cannon fodder and out-of-their-depth Nazis, out gunned by even a pair from the 17th century and foolishly striking a deal with Cybermen. The Doctor and Ace larking about with the royal collection; the Doctor drying a tribal mask, then wearing a fez, then plunking it on Ace. The doctor also almost commits lese-majesty, just before Ace hooks him around the neck with his own umbrella, narrowly avoiding Elizabeth II walking her Corgis, then later apprehended, trying to talk to the Queen.
Ace's alien-tech ghetto blaster is a nice present from the Doc to replace the one that was blown up in Remembrance.
According to the special features interview with David Banks, who played the Cyber Leader multiple times before (Earthshock The Five Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen), the Cybermen enjoyed improved and comfortable footwear; sprayed silver DMs. Though their sprayed silver cricket batting gloves are an insult to an English audience.
Though filming may have been fraught (see Trivia), this adventure is a lavish, sun-drenched, on-location music fest for the father-like Doctor and his delightfully badly behaved teen. The legendary Anton Diffring's dastardly Nazi, an evil black magician, and Cybermen conquerors are all sent packing by the tricky Doctor and one-woman-army Ace. Time Lord lore spices proceedings with mentions by Peinforte of the Doctor's past association with Omega and Rassilon, also hinted at in the Doctor's furtive evasions of Ace in Remembrance of the Daleks (pod 598).
In Howe, Walker, and Stammer's Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, on p. 713, Sylvester McCoy says that due to an asbestos scare at the studio they were rushed and that, "We were just going potty... I didn't know where I was."
Repeating what I said in 601, The Happiness Patrol scriptwriter Graeme Curry appears as a tourist at Windsor Castle.
Silver Nemesis writer, Kevin Clarke, also appears as a driver and later wrote for Peter Davidson's The Last Detective.
Not wanting to spoil my suspension of disbelief, even after the fact, I rarely watch making ofs, but I did this time because I wanted to get full value for the expensive VHS I bought, mistakenly thinking it was Battlefield (as far as I can recall).(
The 1638 scenes takes place during the reign of Charles I of House Stuart, the one who mislaid his head. I had initially thought the setting Elizabethan, though I also recall Doc saying something about Roundheads.
For the record, I prefer post-war and free jazz, like Bird, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, etc., to "straight blowing", which I find a little dull.