4.5: Revenge of the Cybermen

In which the elder fan consensus is just plain wrong.

Broadcast: April-May 1975

Watched: May-June 2020

This story is loved by fans a few years older than me, because it was the first VHS release, so they all saw it a hundred times. Will I agree? Let’s find out!!

Revenge of the Cybermen, Part One

“The mention of Cybermen fills me with dread.” 

So, first thing I’m wondering is why the Cybermen vanished for so long, and they eventually brought them back now. 

Anyway, this is intriguing - plague! Aliens! A new moon! Cybermen! - but also a mess. The professor is clearly dodgy as f**k, but that’s communicated largely through incidental music rather than actual story. It’s not really clear what the plot is or what anyone is trying to do.

“But Cybermen died out centuries ago” is a cute twist on, “Aliens? Are you mad?”, mind. And returning to the beacon at an earlier point that the last story we saw it in (Ark in Space) is a nice touch. Surprising we haven’t see something like that before. The Ark did it in reverse I guess?

The actor playing Warner is doing a very odd voice, so much so that I thought he was doing a fake Chinese accent for a while. Oh he’s been attacked by a cybermat, that was convincing.

“What, you mean there are now 13?” Hostage to fortune, that line. [It refers to the number of moons of Jupiter.]

Huh, Michael Wisher is in this one too? [Last seen in the previous story as Davros; this time, face still hidden, he’s playing a Vogan.]

Revenge of the Cybermen, Part Two

I guess the advantage of having the Doctor just work out it’s the cybermen halfway through episode 1 is that it doesn't ruin the cliffhanger at least.

Love the way people keep saying, “look, gold!” to sell us on the idea that stuff that obviously isn’t gold is in fact gold. Also, “this is Voga, the famous planet of gold!” 

Having an entire scene of two Vogans arguing was an error wasn’t it. Also I have no idea what the political situation here is meant to be or why these aliens are shooting at each other.

Some dreadful “Oooh, I’ve just been shot” acting from Baker at the end. 

Anyway, this is quite bad.

Revenge of the Cybermen, Part Three

“I think you’ve riled him.” These cybermen absolutely aren’t emotionless. This might be the most emotional they ever get in fact?

The “oh we need them alive” excuse seems a bit weak: why give the Doctor and the humans any chance at all? Oh wait it’s a lie that makes sense.

One of the vogans looks like Neil from The Young Ones.

Okay I liked the cliffhanger. Assumed it’d be the rockslide, then the traitor being dead, then “the Doctor... dead!” After which the realisation that it’s Harry doing something helpful which will set the bomb off is actually quite clever.

Revenge of the Cybermen, Part Four

“Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!” Harsh.

Some fun things here... The cybermat filled with gold; the Doctor and Sarah tied up and turning around so they can look at the screen; the stock footage of a rocket launch. But I’ve never quite fit past the “I don’t care” problem, sorry. I still don’t know which Vogan faction is which (can’t help but feel this would work better without the prosthetics) and there are so many double crosses... It’s quite lively, so I can see how it works when you’re six, and maybe it’s fun If you buy into the characters but if not? Meh.

The cyberleader instantly changing his mind on whether there’s a rocket because Kellman said so is very irritating.

“Six minutes!” Is said when there are six minutes to go in the episode. Cool.

Ending with a phone call from the Brigadier is nice. The fact the beacon has only one survivor and there’s presumably going to be an enquiry is under discussed. 

It’s odd, scrawling my notes on this one I found myself criticising certain things I’d normally be in favour of - in-fighting among the aliens, reversals, double crosses and so forth. If you care about the characters, that feels complex. If not it just feels messy.  

Something that the story does do, which is good - it has the Holmes-ian quality of moving along at a fairly brisk place, so that every episode is different. Broadly speaking 1 is the plague, 2 is explaining the plot, 3 is the bombs, 4 is the rocket. At this point the series rarely does the thing it did in too many late ‘60s base under sieges, where you could take out three episodes in the middle, as they’re all functionally identical and the serial doesn’t need any of them.

But by and large after a very good season that was very dull. And you can sort of feel that the finale has been lopped off the season. [It was originally going to end with the next story, Terror of the Zygons; but when the BBC brought season 13 forward from spring 1976 to autumn 1975, that got pushed to be the first story of the next run.]