Review: Doctor Who Classic: Silver Nemesis

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Doctor Who - Season 25, Story Three - Silver Nemesis
Written 18/6/12

JNT was determined to get the show popular again, and to do that he set about producing the show's Silver Anniversary. With a silver theme, the story was to feature royal themes as well as start probing into the Doctor's history with Cartmel's Lungbarrow plotline. They even went to Windsor palace and tried to get Prince Edward involved with the rag, leading to press stories and an official statement from the Royal Family that they would not, in fact, be part of Doctor Who's 25th Anniversary Celebrations. But, unfortunately, for all of Silver Nemesis' attempt to be something, it turns out to be one long 75 minutes of nothing. 
        The Doctor has just had an alarm call; a plan he set in motion 350 years prior is coming to fruition. The asteroid Nemesis, made of living Galifreyan metal Validium, is returning to Earth one last time, and everyone wants it. The Lady who initially designed the Nemesis statue's current form, Lady Peinforte, uses magic to travel forwards in time. Some Neo-Nazis decide to go after the power of the Nemesis, and plan to create a Third Reich. And, just as it's all getting nasty, the Cybermen turn up to claim the power for themselves. Through some carefully crafty explosives and chess-dancing, The Doctor and Ace revive the Nemesis Statue, eliminate the Neo-Nazis, vanquish Lady Peinforte and destroy the Cyber Fleet. Then everyone goes home. And The Doctor is mysterious.
      It literally is this simple. The plot is a basic MacGuffin quest, a hunt for a mystical item that's wanted by multiple parties. It's executed with such bland simplicity that there's nothing really to get behind. Lady Peinforte and co. have a bland "fish of out time" sort of plot that's played for laughs but doesn't really go anywhere, the Neo-Nazis are all cackling villainy but they're not at all camp about it so it doesn't mean anything, and the Cybermen are perhaps the blandest iterations the Classic Series ever produced. There's no clue as to why they're here, where they fit in within the Cybermen's timeline or why the hell Gold has turned from a mild irritant to their systems into a sustance that practically explodes on contact with them.

The Nemesis wakes.

      As I explained in an earlier review, the Cartmel Masterplan was the revelation that The Doctor had been loomed from the genetic structure of The Other, a Timelord founder whose role in forging Time-Lord society was hidden by Rassillon and Omega. Personally, like a lot of fandom I hate this plotline because it presents The Doctor as some kind of God in lieu of the chaotic travelling wizard that he's always been presented as. It also provides so much pretense and fluff to an otherwise fun tale; Russell T Davies would go on to make exactly the same mistake when lauding Ten as the "Lonely God" in NuWho. I hope that this is the last time this will really rear its head, because if it continues like this then Seven will become unbearable before too long.
      Silver Nemesis was an absolute shell of a story, and that's a damn-fine shame. It could have been a spectacle to rival the Five Doctors, but it had an even weaker script and instead tried to stuff more plot elements into a shorter run time, to little avail. The Nazis didn't need to be here, the Cybermen had no excuse for being here and it's just another Cartmel machination that The Doctor was on the scene at all. I didn't loathe it, but it did bore me and leave me with very little impression at all. My first Seven clunker.

Thanks.