10.6: Rise of the Cybermen

In which we visit a parallel universe that’s even less interesting than our own! Also, Trigger creates the Cybermen, boringly.

Broadcast: May 2006

Watched: August 2019

The next few are episodes which I seem to enjoy when I expect them to be crap, then hate when I remember enjoying them last time. This one, on this occasion, I expected not to be as bad as I’d once thought, and... well.

It’s about a quarter as interesting as it sounds on paper (parallel Earth! Cybermen! Pete! etc). Looks worse than it did before World Enough & Time showed us a better option, too

Quite ’70s, which is maybe why I don’t like it? Weirdly trad opening (“It’s.... alive!”). The cliffhanger is blown before the opening credits, which is also very ’70s. Utterly wastes Don Warrington (this Earth has a president but is vaguely fascist? Although, given recent world history, perhaps that isn’t an error so much as a vibe).

A lot of it doesn’t make huge amounts of sense. If everyone literally stopped to receive the downloads, cars would crash, etc. It’s not clear how Pete relates to Lumic (employee? contractor?), or why the cybermen massacre everyone at the end, or why Mickey has a parallel self but he has a different name (I mean, plot convenience, obviously, but). It is very unclear why the Cybermen need a creator, and kind of sick that he’s in a wheelchair.

Some of the parallel Earth stuff – I’m assuming it’s there partly so we can get Pete back, partly for the finale, partly just for the vibes (airships etc.) – is cool. Airships, a republic, etc. Mickey’s gran is a nice heartstrings moment. I do like how Ricky is both an utter dick and a sort of wish fulfillment for Mickey (though LOL that RTD wanted to make him gay; wonder what that says about the nature/nurture debate). I love the joke about Rose being the dog.

The oddest thing here, though, is that Mickey is suddenly annoyed that the Doctor cares about Rose not him. That’s... a bit weird? Surely he should be chasing Rose’s affections, not the Doctor’s? It’s like the narrative has hammered him into being a companion rather than the human we’ve been watching since the start of the series?

Other things:

• The TARDIS is dead is it, right, course it is, yep, definitely buying that.

• Couple of things here that RTD clearly wasn’t happy with, because he later did them again: the villain killing starving homeless people in wastelands (End of Time 1), “Give us track 19” over the noise of the conversion chambers is stolen for Last of the Time Lords (hmm, both Master stories, odd).

• I like Rose being visibly jealous of the Doctor chatting to Lucy the waitress. Billie clearly has great fun every time she gets to play Rose’s bratty side.

• Invasion reference. Cool.