Of their stories so far only their debut The Tenth Planet and The Invasion are that great and in the latter the Cybermen are effectively just the muscle, it's Kevin Stoney's Tobias Vaughan who gets most of the action. Tomb of the Cybermen is OK but neither The Moonbase or The Wheel in Space really float my boat. Jon Pertwee never had a story with them in so Revenge of the Cybermen is their first proper story since The Invasion in 1968. Seven years later we get Revenge of the Cybermen and then they won't appear again until Earthshock in 1982.
On the basis of Revenge of the Cybermen, it isn't hard to see why there's such a long gap before the appear again because it is pretty poor and in the Doctor's own words to the Cyberleader: "You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship."
They're a shoddy lot all around. The costumes have been redesigned. I'm not Ian Banks so I'm not going to dwell on that except to say that it was a dumb decision to stick their guns on the top of their heads. They wouldn't look so bad if they didn't spend huge amounts of time standing with their hands on their hips pontificating.
The production team's decision to let the Cyberactors play their lines without their previous vocal treatments also doesn't help as they end up sounding less like Cybermen and more like a Brian Blessed convention. Christopher Robbie's Cyberleader, in particular, is less cybernetic organism than a mid-Atlantic voiced actor trying to be heard in the Circle.
Because the Cybermen are so pathetic it undermines the rest of the story, which isn't the most exciting of tales anyway. The Doctor, Harry, and Sarah arrive on the Nerva Beacon - the scene of The Ark in Space remember - having completed their mission on Skaro for the Time Lords.
However, they've arrived early so whilst waiting for the TARDIS to show up they decide to explore. It's pretty obvious pretty quickly that something is wrong. The corridors of the space station are filled with corpses. (Mostly dummies to be fair but it seems churlish to dwell on that) It turns out that they've beamed into the middle of what appears to be a plague. Only four - soon to be three - of the crew survive: Commander Stevenson (Ronald Leigh-Hunt), Lester (William Marlowe) and Kellman (Jeremy Wilkin), although strictly Kellman's a civilian exographer.
Nerva is acting as a beacon around a mysterious 'moon' on the edge of Jupiter named 'Voga' by Kellman. Kellman's surveyed it and explained that there's no life there, except as because obvious that there is, the Vogans. It turns out that Voga is the remnants of the legendary planet of gold, which played a key role in helping humanity defeat the Cybermen during their war. It turns out that the Cybermen can be destroyed by gold.
This the Vogans themselves haven't been told or don't know, which is the big bleeding bit of stupidity at the centre of the story.
The main Vogans are played by an excellent cast: Michael Wisher is the consumptive scientist Magrik, David Collings is the speechifying politician, Vorus, and the aforementioned Kevin Stoney is the old councilor Tyrum but the masks they have to wear don't help them bring much life to the rather stilted dialogue.
Blah...you know I really can't be too bothered to explain this. It turns out that Vorus is working with Kellman to stitch up the last Cybermen so that the Vogan's can finally escape their subterranean hiding place. The Kellman-Vorus plan is to lure the Cybermen to Nerva then destroy them using their Skystriker rocket, built by Magrik. It's as cunning as one of Baldrick's plans and the Doctor's meddling almost puts a sonic screwdriver in the works.
The Cybermen have kept three of the crew alive to deliver three 'Cyberbombs' into the middle of Voga to blow it up thus GETTING THEIR REVENGE. (Sigh)
Vorus and Magrik get killed by Tyrum trying to launch their rocket, Kellman dies in a rockfall caused by Harry, who almost kills the Doctor too, Sarah trapped on Nerva gets rescued by the Doctor, then they're both recaptured as the Cybermen decide to crash Nerva into Voga...strutting off to their ship with a quip leaving the Doctor and Sarah to witness 'the biggest bang in history'. They escape, save Nerva from crashing and the Skystriker takes out the Cybership. THE END...thank heaven's.
The cast deserves so much better.
We deserve better.
Its interesting that this was the story chosen to launch the VHS range.
ReplyDeleteYes, weird. I did mean to say that one of the things in this story that does look good is the scenes in the real caves. The Cybermen do look great set against that kind of backdrop. There's a couple of v effective shots in there.
ReplyDelete