Top Ten Worst Moffat Era Episodes, Part Two

(Previous article containing entries 6-10 here).

Basing an entire season's drama on whether the title character
of a decades old series will die is an awful writing move.

5 - The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (Series 6, Episodes 1 & 2)
Written by Steven Moffat

I went camping in Easter 2011 and it was terrible, just terrible. The worst aspect, for me, was not being able to see The Impossible Astronaut, a premiere I had been really excited for. In hindsight, this was to be the start of a lifetime of disappointment. When I finally watched this two-parter I was initially blown away, but as Season 6 went on, it became increasingly clear that the admittedly well-done setup of The Doctor's death and Amy and Rory's decision to hide it from his younger self were all for nought, and it was a very egregious example of the way that Moffat fails to write compelling mystery and suspense.

The Silents, introduced in this episode, have the inklings of a good idea. Moffat likes to play around with sight and memory, and so the gimmick of the Silents erasing your memory of them when you look away is quite spectacular. As time wears on, though, it becomes a bit of a tired meme, and holes start appearing in the concept - how did these things come to be, and how do they communicate? We're never given those details; neither are we very clear on why they are manipulating the Human race, other than some vague mentions of them blowing up the TARDIS last season and one of them killing a woman at random in a bathroom. For me and a few others, the story fails to convince the viewer that the Doctor's solution to the problem - brainwashing Humanity into committing a Silent genocide using the Moon Landing video - is anything short of barbaric and cruel, especially when the music and tone make it seem like a heroic and dashing thing to do with no moral implications.

Other annoyances in the episode bought it a place on the upper half of this list. Like Churchill before and after, the episode sees the Doctor palling around with war criminal Richard Nixon. (I look forward to Doctor Who in 40 years doing an episode where the 21st Doctor goes for dinner with Trump). In Moffat tradition, there is melodrama and death fake-outs, further damaging the credibility of the show's stakes, and River Song is here at her most annoying, clichéd self. It's also worth mentioning that as a whole, Series 6 is my least favourite of the revival for a number of reasons, and some of them are showcased here - poor writing, the really bad mytharc story surrounding River Song, and a feeling that the show is just being half-assed on every front.

Honourable Mention: The Wedding of River Song is the culmination of this terrible storyline and is just as muddled and poorly thought-out. It manages to barely escape the list by not including a genocide, and by being too similar to some other episodes already here.

Rory thinks he look intimidating, but he's also wearing a
Roman outfit for literally no reason and he looks like a stoned
hipster asking after his weed stash.

4 - A Good Man Goes To War (Series 6, Episode 7)
Written by Steven Moffat

I don't quite know where to start with Good Man. It feels quite unique, for both good and bad reasons. At the time I recognised it as fluffy in the extreme - heavy in style, light in substance. Now Meant to be the dramatic cliffhanger to the first half of a season unnecessarily split in two, the events of Good Man are so bizarre and ridiculous that sometimes I have to remind myself that an episode this bad even exists.

Never one for subtlety, the Doctor (the one famous for solving his problems with words and using violence as a last resort) blows up an entire fleet of Cyberman ships (which they apparently have now) to extort information about Amy's location. Rory thinks he's cool because he's wearing a centurion costume, and for some reason the soundtrack agrees. We find that Amy has been kidnapped by a military cult called the Silence; an offshoot of a Space Church that wants the Doctor dead. This army includes human soldiers, two gay characters who literally ask why they deserve to have names, and headless monks who never appear before or after and who make no sense. This trained army is disabled by a bunch of Silurians and a "good" Sontaran who talks about breastfeeding. After humiliating one of the Silence generals, it is revealed that Amy's baby is part Time Lord because she was conceived in the TARDIS, "in a bunk bed" and that River Song was Amy's baby after all. The bad guy gets away with Amy's baby, as the one they thought they rescued was a clone that melts when she leaves.

The moment I heard that Amy had named her child "Melody Pond" I knew what the twist was; I'm not sure anyone was particularly asking for that kind of twist, either. River Song's welcome was long overstayed, and tying her destiny even more tightly with The Doctor's feels uncomfortable for a show with a characteristically transitive nature. The loss of Amy's baby, something that should be traumatising to Amy and Rory, never gets the treatment it deserves in follow-up episodes, and this is where for me they cease to be characters and become delivery devices for cool one-liners.

Honourable Mention: The Almost People is nowhere near this list, as the two parter it closes actually has good ideas and executes them well, but the ending scene where Amy is revealed as a ganger and then we watch her being forced to give birth in captivity is traumatic and horrible. It has Moffat's hands all over it.

And billions died.

3 - Kill The Moon (Series 8, Episode 7)
Written by Peter Harness
Please read my review of this episode, it goes into much more detail on just how scientifically illiterate it is.

I have debated with myself about how high on this list this episode deserves to be; it was in second place for a while until I came to my senses. While it does deserve to be here, the reason that this episode is so bad is entirely down to its own writer, Peter Harness, who likes to bring right-wing political elements to his episodes. Kill The Moon fails on three fronts - the science that is so bad as to render the episode unbelievable, the anti-abortion message shoved into a show it does not belong in, and a general failure to make anyone in the slightest bit likable.

The central dilemma at the heart of the story, whether to kill the alien living in the moon, never has any weight because the science used in the episode is so laughable. The Doctor has been coming to Earth for thousands of years, and has only now noticed that the Moon is an egg?! Lines about there being no minerals or water on the moon betray the fact that Harness didn't seem to do a cursory Wikipedia search before writing this trash, and that lack of effort seeps into the episode. We're meant to be struck by the moral dilemma, and be taught that not aborting the child is the best thing to do in the long run, but unlike in the real world, Harness brings in magic nonsense that defies the laws of physics in order to avoid all consequences for that choice. That over all other things makes the polemic nature of this episode as clear as glass. The anti-abortion message is so woven into the episode that there's no hope of actually exploring sci-fi ideas, because everything is pointed towards making you hate the idea of abortion in every situation.

I really have to wonder how this got past the writing team. It's notable that Harness' later stories are co-written with Moffat, in a miraculous case of him making something better by being there. That would not be the case in the remainder of this list, with two Moffat episodes taking the silver and gold slots by a country mile...

Honourable Mention: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion two-parter, also written by Harness, spends its first half going, "Did you know that all refugees are terrorists? Dangerous terrorists. Anyone of them could be a terrorist. Your mum could be a terrorist." It then spends its second half going, "How dare you suggest that refugees are terrorists!? All that terrorists need to stop terroristing is a good talking to." It was stupid, insensitive, and although the speech at the end is well performed, the whole exercise was a total disaster.

I would mention the amazing moment when Moffat kills off a
new black character so she can have been a white woman all
along, but that feels like overkill.

2 - Let's Kill Hitler (Series 6, Episode 8)
Written by Steven Moffat

This was originally going to be one step above its immediate predecessor, A Good Man Goes To War, but then I realised that it had Hitler in it as a joke character and it just shot up here. Let's Kill Hitler is, quite frankly, an embarrassment. The end of hiatus should be a time for a good episode to bring the audience back on side, but instead we are given this nonsense - more of everything Moffat; fake-outs, making The Doctor the centre of everything, River Song, sexism, and so on.

Let's Kill Hitler is a confusing beast because it expects us to take it seriously as Moffat abuses time travel and retcons to try and make River Song's story make sense. The deep trauma Amy and Rory would suffer at losing their newborn daughter is explained away; "She was with them the whole time," he says, "She was the immature friend they had, so really they helped raise her after all!" The simple fact is that, not only is this callous, it doesn't even make sense. The Doctor's personality changes drastically even across one life, and yet we're meant to believe that River's brainwashing lasted two lifetimes, even when one of them saw her being raised as a human child in Leadworth. Her character bounces around so much in this one episode that the "surprise" at the end when she decides to sacrifice the rest of her regenerations to reverse The Doctor's poisoning feels hollow, and, along with the time-travelling vigilante team, puts a focus on Moffat's hero-worship of the Doctor over all other things.

Trying to mix this shambles of a main plot with the biggest sci-fi cliche of all time is a big no-no, as is the entire threat of the episode. You can't have the Doctor's death lingering over us from the premiere and then expect us to care that he might die now instead of then. We all know he isn't going to die, but Moffat just resist using this trope over and over. What we're left with is an episode that really serves no purpose beyond dropping the hint for the solution to this season's grand gambit. It doesn't even manage to be fun, because it all rings as insincere and childish, and with a deep lack of respect for those watching.

Honourable Mention: The Big Bang, where Moffat... retcons the Universe? I should have seen it coming.

That's the worst Series 6 episodes gone, which can only leave...

The worst, most drawn-out regeneration. Even worse than the
one before. Yes, that one.

1 - Time of the Doctor (Series 7, Third Christmas Special)
Written by Steven Moffat
My review here from the time is really good, and talks about the plot.

Here it is. The worst story belongs to the worst Doctor. Since 2013 I have seen almost everything in the Classic Series, and I have been waiting for something to knock Time from its pedestal, and nothing has. In his attempt to culminate everything in the Matt Smith era, Moffat manages to encapsulate almost every shit thing about it. He makes the Doctor the centre of the Universe one last time, and simultaneously tries to brand his mark onto the show in a permanent and terrifying way. Not content to retcon his predecessor's main storyline out of existence, not content to retcon his terrible companion into every area of Doctor Who history, Moffat decided he also had to be the one to solve the issue of the Doctor's regeneration limit, despite being two Doctors too soon, just so they can write that Moffat woz 'ere.

I might not have minded Moffat's solution to the 13 life problem had it not been such a deus ex machina. Clara begging the Time Lords to help The Doctor is something that should not have worked, and only works because of her status as a magical plot device here in her first season. The paradox the Doctor's survival creates is one that Moffat never apparently realised, as without his death and grave to send Clara through time in Name of the Doctor, all of this never happens, and Series 7 never happened. Which seems to be the show's attitude as well, as apart from the Zygon two-parter, nobody has ever mentioned the events of this season after the fact.

Sexism and archaic attitudes to gender politics were rife throughout Moffat's era, especially in Smith's tenure, and that is one of the things I remember the most from this episode. Smith's Doctor is not a role model for children - he is a pest. The Doctor by this point in his life has literally no excuse to be unfamiliar with human customs and standards of reasonable interaction. He smacks Clara on the bottom and shows up to her house naked. Five episodes before this he sexually assaults a rape survivor in The Crimson Horror by holding her down and kissing her. He laughs when she slaps him, and tells her it feels good. It may seem like I'm demonising the Doctor here, but it's clear from elsewhere both in Doctor Who and away from it that Moffat simply doesn't see anything wrong with these things

Fuckety-bye!

I would go into more detail about the episode, but I think you get the idea. My review linked above is a lot more comprehensive, and has a fun drinking game. I wanted to take a moment to say something personal. There are episodes on this list which made me mad, Kill the Moon in particular being a big one for that. But no episode crushed my faith in Doctor Who more than Time of the Doctor. I was fully prepared to sit and wait for Moffat to leave the show before watching it again. So I have to thank Peter Capaldi and Brian Minchin, who managed to steer the show back into something that, although flawed, I wanted to tune into every week. Part of me is looking forward to the future of the show, because I know that however much I have disliked what Chibnall brought to the show before now, nothing can ever be as bad as this shitty, shitty farce of an finale.

Thanks

Top Ten Worst Moffat Era Episodes, Part One

I recently wrote a list of my favourite Moffat era episodes in order to shine to positivity onto what I saw as a bad time for the show. This is not that list. For all intents and purposes, this list is intended to be my final word on everything Moffat did wrong in his seven years with the program. Some episodes are on this list because they are truly bad; others because they encapsulate an aspect of the era as a whole that really ground my gears. I'll also include (dis)honourable mentions with each entry to highlight episodes that escaped being included here. Okay, here goes...

The original placing of this episode saw Amy larking about
on a pirate ship right after traumatically losing her child.
Small blessings.

10 - Curse of the Black Spot (Series 6, Episode 3)
Written by Steve Thompson.

Eleven, Amy and Rory are a trio who, in Season 5, were developed as a fun alternative to previous companions. Eleven wasn't the authority figure that previous Doctors had been; instead, he came off as a weird mate to two fun hipsters. While this worked in Series 5, in Series 6 it starts to become jarring. I started to hate Eleven's humour, and the way that the series would excuse some of his more morally questionable actions in the name of "fun" and spectacle. Soon, on top of the that, the individual episodes would begin to suffer when the series' mytharc began to colour every aspect of production. While we will explore more of that later, what comes first on this list is the painfully mediocre Curse of the Black Spot.

I was initially excited for this story - it's got pirates and magic, as well as Hugh Bonneville and Lily Cole (who at 15 I liked for two very different reasons). The episode's main concept actually works fairly well  - a pirate curse which sends a Siren to destroy those who are injured is, in actual fact, the workings of an alien medical system trying to heal members of the crew. The problems come in the execution. Everything goes well until we actually reach the alien ship and Rory is almost drowned, leading to a long, drawn-out scene where we are meant to be sad and actually believe that Rory is going to die, even though by this point in Moffat's tenure they had pulled this trick about six times. This is just one facet of an overall problem Moffat's era has with believable stakes, with Moffat's inability to actually kill a main character lasting into the final episode of his tenure.

And, on top of all that, the issue I and others have had is that it isn't particularly memorable. A lot of the other episodes in this season have had very iconic images, whereas the pirate theme is such stale window-dressing that I'm not sure people even remember it as "the pirate one". Maybe "the one on the boat with the supermodel". While it was initially this mediocrity that got it put on this list, the melodrama was what ensured it stayed here.

Honourable mention: Night Terrors, which is just as bland and ridiculous but at least tries to be scary with some competence.

How The Moff Stole Christmas

9 - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (Series 7, First Christmas Special)
Written by Steven Moffat.
"You and me, Cyril, we're weak. But she's female."

Doctor Who is cursed with bad Christmas specials, it's just the case. They've tried to offset this in recent years by having important plot things happen in them, but before they tried this, there was this episode. Doctor-Widow-Wardrobe is full of so many odd things that I'm actually surprised that the thing that immediately comes to mind when I look back on it was how exceedingly dull it was. This episode might be lower on the list if it weren't for its bizarre sexual politics and for the fact that this is the start of Series 7, the series that took two years to finally end.

It feels very much like Moffat trying to convince us, and not too successfully, that he is a feminist.
The climax of the episode has guest character Madge save the day because the aliens see her as the strongest member of the group. This is because she is a mother, and women are strong and better than men because they can be mothers. Aside from the fact that motherhood is not the only thing that defines a woman's worth, the outright statement of "we're weak, but she's female" is such a clear attempt to dispel the discussion of the thoroughly unpleasant things that Moffat wrote previously. "Look, he said that women were great. He must be feminist." That falls through though when we see the backstory, where the most romantic way he can think of having Madge and her husband get together is him stalking her until she is worn down by his constant harassment.

The episode does have some nice moments with Madge's kids, and with Bill Bailey's cameo. But the rest of it feels as wooden as the monsters of the week.

Honourable Mention: Last Christmas, whose wasted potential as a great send-off for Clara is tempered by a passable plot and a fun guest star.

8 - The Power of Three (Series 7, Episode 4)
Written by Chris Chibnall

It's an appearance by our next showrunner, whose writing for Doctor Who has always towed the line between okay and terrible. Chibnall had a big hand in the story of 2012's September Season, writing two of its five episodes and also writing online-exclusive prologues and epilogues (one of which included the Doctor sexing up a historical figure and "laying down some backing vocals" for Dizzee Rascal.) With the exception of its third episode, I really don't like the September Season very much at all, and of his two episodes I hate this one slightly more.

The Power of Three acted as part of the September Season's theme statement, with The Doctor acting as a random interjector into Amy and Rory's suburban life. While this departure from Who norm should have been an refreshing new take, it instead highlights just how much Amy and Rory had ceased to work as companions - why would they ever want to spend time in the TARDIS? The episode loosely follows an alien plot where millions of black cubes appear out of nowhere. Apart from letting us get to know Moffat's modern version of UNIT, the episode's main plot goes nowhere, with a forgettable alien villain with zero visible motivation. Instead, a lot of the runtime is filled with smaller ideas that never get fleshed out, leaving the main story deflated and unimpressive.

Part of my feeling on this is clouded by the fact that as the years have dragged on I have come to find Amy and Rory absolutely insufferable. Something about them feels off and unrealistic, possibly the way that throughout their tenure on the show they never react to trauma in the way that real people do, and they aren't allowed to when the stakes are never high enough for us to care either.

Honourable Mention: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which I hate almost as much as this episode for its bland guest characters, weird rapey undertones and flashbacks to Pete, Part Two. It escapes this list by at least trying, and because I couldn't fit them both in when there's so much else that needs to be on here.

I have never hated a TARDIS team more. 

7 - Angels Take Manhattan (Series 7, Episode 5)
Written by Steven Moffat

We've moved one space in the list, and one episode along in the show. When the Weeping Angels first appeared in Blink they were scary and unique, and even though I didn't rate them much, I understood the novelty and admired its execution. Their next appearance in Season 5 was great too, enhancing their powers and reputation. Then came this. Angels Take Manhattan, like most of the Moffat mytharc episodes, is a mess. It wants to impress you with its cleverness, move you with its pathos, make you mourn for two companions who were, at that time, the longest runners in the revival series. Instead, I was left frustrated and confused, baffled at how this made it to the screen in its current condition.

The development of the Angels goes from the bizarre to the absurd - as weak statues, as cherubs, as the Statue of Liberty. At one point the script orchestrates a scene where an Angel is weak enough that it can't use the touch time-travel powers (the ones Angels are famous for using when they're, you know, weak) so that one can grab River Song's arm, leading her to, I shit you not, break her own hand out of love for The Doctor.

At the time I described Amy and Rory's departure as "the adult conclusion for these characters." Now I see them as being written out for narrative purposes - the September Season shows that there was clearly nothing left to do with them. Weeping Angel time travel nonsense is put in place to trap Amy and Rory in 1940s New York, where the TARDIS can now "never go", but no mention is made of them just getting a boat somewhere where the Doctor can reach them. It feels less like the Doctor has felt a great loss and more like he just gave up on his friends because he's a dick. What's worse is that, as I've said above for other episodes, them dying all the time and coming back robbed every single ounce of suspense out of their actual finale.

Rather than dressing up their departure in melodrama, it would have been far more effective and moving for them to leave the TARDIS permanently of their own accord, or even just to kill them. This half-assed crap makes important character moments feel weak. When I think of companion exits that just gut me, that make me miss them, I think of Tegan and "It stopped being fun, Doctor", I think of Sarah Jane stood on a street corner in Aberdeen with her luggage, I think of Jo, with The Doctor leaving her party and slowly driving away. There was so much potential in this but the show set itself up for failure time and time again, and this is the result.

Honourable Mention: Asylum of the Daleks because it began the utter mess that was the multiple-Claras arc and saw Amy and Rory divorce and then get together again for no reason. Also, Daleks don't have Asylums.

The biggest retcon, of course, is the idea that Ten would
ever go around with a floppy fringe.

6 - Day of the Doctor (Series 7, 50th Anniversary Special)
Written by Steven Moffat

It is no exaggeration to say that I had been looking forward to the 50th Anniversary for about 9 years, which at the time was over half my life. I expected something spectacular, and true to Doctor Who's long and varied history. What we got was the second part of the "of the Doctor" trilogy, Moffat's insidious attempt to imprint himself on every aspect of the show's history regardless of sense or reason. It featured so many retcons and bad storytelling decisions that it felt more like a monument to the Moffat era than anything else - and that includes all the foibles, including having no stakes, remedial attitudes towards women and having a piss poor conclusion. The only reason that is isn't higher on the list is because I am a sucker for nostalgia.

Day's worst crime is the Time War retcon. There were quite a few ways to write the Time Lords back into the series in a way which wouldn't rob the emotional core out of the revival's first four seasons, but instead, the Doctor's greatest regret never actually happened. The event that informed the character of Nine and Ten was a fake, according to this story. Also, there was a WHOLE DOCTOR between Eight and Nine that messes up the numbering, and his inclusion is my most contentious point. Moffat couldn't include Eight because the layman wouldn't know who he was, and couldn't include Nine because Eccleston refused to return (likely balking at the idea of his character's entire personality being a lie), so he just made up his own so he could have one more Doctor to contribute to the series. The War Doctor, while well acted by the late and great John Hurt, doesn't make sense as a character - he's supposed to be a regeneration designed to be capable of genocide, but he ends up not being able to do it, and Eleven is far more genocidal than he is.

Other elements of the episode also don't belong in a 50th Anniversary special. Ten's engagement to Queen Elizabeth I, admittedly a hangover from RTD, is made even worse by sexist writing, including a line completely ignoring the original irony of "the body of a weak and feeble woman". Most of the not-Time-War plot was taken up by a Zygon invasion of earth, which seemed an oddly specific callback to make and whose only real legacy was setting up the politically insensitive Zygon two-parter in Series 9. Among other miscellanea, the show also contained a random appearance by Billie Piper, not playing Rose Tyler; a Doctor Who superfan who would later go on to be killed by Missy, and Tom Baker as "The Curator", who is implied to be a future incarnation of the Doctor re-wearing Four's body.

Honourable Mention: Name of the Doctor also pulls off a spectacularly bad retcon when it tries to claim that Clara is responsible for not only saving The Doctor's life thousands of time, but for every good thing that has ever happened in the Doctor Who universe. Is not on this list because I already included two from the "...of the Doctor" trilogy on here.

I cut this article in half because of its length, so expect the top five soon.

Thanks.

Twelve Moffat Era Episodes Worth Keeping

After almost eight years in the driving seat, Moffat's time with Doctor Who is at an end. I have made no secret over the past couple of years how much I grew to dislike his time on the show, sometimes to the point of recommending that new fans skip entire seasons just so they don't get led down the same garden paths I did. But, now we've reached the end, I decided it would be charitable to pick some episodes from Moffat's six seasons of the show that I actually like; two for each series. They're not the only ones I like, but they are the standout few that I would recommend to people, and they are my personal highlights of what I consider to be a terrible part of the show. In order of broadcast...

The Eleventh Hour - Series 5, Episode 1 (2010)

It's easy to forget after all that followed just what a strong start the Eleventh Doctor had. After a lot of initial misgivings following the bizarre ending to The End of Time, Matt Smith's first outing was full of fun action and witty writing that reassured a lot of us about the show's future. Smith's Doctor is yet to degenerate into his later self-obsessed creep and is instead energetic and warm, giving us memorable post-regeneration moments like fish fingers and custard. The time-bending nature of the new companion's introduction strikes an innovative note across the new series, and more than makes up for the run-of-the-mill nature of the rather dull bad guy in the Atraxi.

As I said in my review of the episode, there was definitely a "moment" where the Eleventh Doctor clicked with me as the same character as the previous ten. What interests me now is that despite his actually fairly competent beginning, the bad writing for this Doctor as the show went on led to him becoming my least favourite version. That knowledge makes it difficult to watch the scene here with the same excitement, but I think it just about works. All told, I would say that The Eleventh Hour is the best first episode for any of the NuWho Doctors, and the irony is delicious.

Vincent and the Doctor - Series 5, Episode 10 (2010)

A show like Doctor Who often goes into the past for cameos from historical celebrities, but this episode stands out. Instead of simply placing said celebrity into a story and having events happen around him, this episode is directly aimed at establish Vincent's character and backstory. British comedy writer Richard Curtis uses Doctor Who's conventions in unconventional ways, taking a monster-of-the-week pseudohistorical format and using it to explore the depression of one of Europe's great unappreciated artists.

While the 42-minute format of a Doctor Who story requires that a lot of the real-world subtleties are smoothed over, the story's decision to look into mental health and the legacy of art makes something beautiful out of what would otherwise be an end-of-season filler episode.

The Doctor's Wife - Series 6, Episode 4 (2011)

This series is my least favourite of the revival show by a country mile - long arcs which constrain real story-telling, bizarre decisions like Amy's forced pregnancy and the Doctor's fake-out death, and the mid-season split that exacerbated all of the other issues. The only episode of the season that isn't affected by the all-absorbing tendrils of mediocrity is this one, written by acclaimed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman for the previous series and moved over to this one.

While at times the episode veers into fan-fiction territory, the discussion of the idea of the TARDIS as a sentient entity was a long time coming, and could not have been brought into reality more perfectly than by Suranne Jones. Add to that lots of nostalgic nods to both RTD and the Classic Series, a fab villain in Michael Sheen's House and a general sense of fantastic whimsy, and you have one of NuWho's best episodes.

The God Complex - Series 6, Episode 11 (2011)

So what if Toby Whithouse took the ending straight from The Curse of Fenric? I *love* The Curse of Fenric! And I love Toby Whithouse. Despite me saying that The Doctor's Wife was the only episode that had escaped Series 6's terribleness, this one is actually my favourite from the season, and the only one I consider worth rewatching. The unnerving hotel which exploits people's fears is such a fantastically Doctor Who kind of plot, and with the episode's well-realised cast of characters the episode hits every beat it needs to in terms of action and plot. I remember especially liking the fake-out companion Rita, even if the exchange "You're a Muslim/Don't be frightened" is even more tone deaf now than it was in 2011. And, although it wasn't permanent (it never is with Moffat), I loved the fact that Amy and Rory left! Needless to say that they had outstayed their welcome considerably by this point, and I was glad for the small hope that this was the back of them.

A Town Called Mercy - Series 7, Episode 3 (2012)

The only decent episode of the five episode "September Series" from 2012, A Town Called Mercy is another decent Whithouse episode, this time putting the Doctor, Amy and Rory into a Western town that has been infiltrated by an alien war criminal and the cyborg sent to bring him to justice. Aside from just loving Westerns, I liked this episode because of the fact it actually asked some moral questions. You know, like this is actually science fiction or something. While it has its goofy moments, and the main moral conflict isn't satisfied in a particularly interesting way, the fact that it actually inspires thought makes it an oasis of civilisation in a period of the show that was veering wildly out of control.

Cold War - Series 7, Episode 8 (2013)

Guys, I was so excited for Clara. After watching Amy and Rory's terrible writing for three years, I was looking forward to some Northern charm from Jenna Coleman's new companion. Clara is difficult to parse for me, because her three-ish seasons varied so wildly. In Series 7, she had little to no actual character that we could see, with a great deal more that was simply told to us by other characters without much evidence. Cold War, the third episode of the 2013 half of Series 7, is the best because it manages to take this and, for one episode, subvert it.

Finding themselves on a Russian submarine in 1983, the Doctor and Clara find themselves trying to pacify an Ice Warrior, making their first appearance since 1974. Clara is seen to be compassionate and empathetic, and is ultimately the solution to the episode's dilemma. I love the 80s soundtrack, the base-under-siege plot and the new-look Ice Warriors, who manage the difficult task of respecting the Classic Series and still feeling modern.

Flatline - Series 8, Episode 9 (2014)

True story: this list was almost a ten episode list, because I forgot Series 8 existed. Capaldi's first season suffers from writing that is usually more bland than painful, as the writers tried to make Twelve into an ambiguous moral figure. This has been attempted before, but the issue with this was more that instead of spending time showing Twelve making questionable moral choices, the end result felt a lot more like Capaldi being constantly grumpy and rude, and going "Am I a good man?" every other episode. The only upshot of this was that Clara seemed to gain a personality overnight and the relationship between her and Twelve became more complex and real as a result.

By comparison to the season around it, Flatline felt a lot more like an early Tennant episode - set on a council estate with some unique aliens and TARDIS hijinks. The standout performances of Jovian Wade and Christopher Fairbank as graffiti artist Rigsy and council worker Fenton respectively help to flesh out the premise of 2D aliens trying to enter our dimension by providing stakes we can work with. Add to that the element of The Doctor being trapped in the TARDIS and relying on Clara throughout the episode, and what could have been bland comes alive.

Dark Water - Series 8, Episode 11 (2014)

You will notice later that every one of Capaldi's eleventh episodes is on this list. Capaldi's finales have a flare for the ridiculous that usually start off on the right foot with a strong premise and go downhill in the second half. In this case, the episode actually culminates a lot of the season's slightly nebulous themes and brings it together in a way which threatens to change the status quo of the Doctor Who universe, as well as providing a double whammy cliffhanger that left me excited to be watching the show again after so many boring episodes.

Danny Pink is not my favourite NuWho character, especially as his relationship with Clara gave off some abusive vibes in the mid-season with Clara scared to let him know that she was with The Doctor for fear of his reaction. The finale worked with his character and gave us a side to his soldier past that felt three dimensional and worth the build-up. It also let us have the moment at the start of the episode with Clara and the Doctor where they finally have a stand-off, and it's great stuff.

This in turn leads us into the grander plot of the episode - the Nethersphere, and Missy's plot with the Cybermen. While I questioned whether some of the comments in the episode were wise ("The dead can feel it when you cremate them, lol!"), I really did like the concept and how it was executed. Missy is a bloody masterstroke - Michelle Gomez brings a brand new personality to The Master that is playful and unpredictable in a way that is more endearing than Simm's Joker-like performance.

The Woman Who Lived - Series 9, Episode 6 (2015) 

Season 9 had a number of gimmicks that felt a little off. The main one, apart from it being split up into two-parters, was a RTD-style keyword, The Hybrid, which fed into each episode in more subtle way than the previous series' inclusion of Missy in almost every episode's epilogue. Like most of Moffat's running stories, it ended in a copout, but it also gave us the character of Me, a character I genuinely thought was really cool. The only episode where that character gets the right amount of focus is this one, The Woman Who Lived.

Introduced in the first part of this loose two-parter as a Viking child who the Doctor hubristically resurrects by bonding with alien technology, we see her here as an immortal being, slowly losing her morality and memories, and desperate to be The Doctor's companion. I initially dismissed the casting of Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as stunt casting, but she really can act. I guess it was hard to see that at the time, with her storyline in the 2015 series of Thrones mostly consisting of her wiping corpses and selling cockles.

The only bad thing I have to say about the episode is that it has one too many talking lions. And that is almost entirely negated by there being almost no Clara in it.

Heaven Sent - Series 9, Episode 11 (2015)

Because of this season's odd nature, the finale two-parter is a lot more loose than usual, and this is immeasurably for the better. Simply put, Heaven Sent is one of the program's finest episodes, way beyond the likes of Blink. And I mean it; unlike the previous season finale, where I have to overlook glaring faults, this is a really well-crafted story, with everything just coming together. It's essentially a Capaldi one-hander, seeing him trapped inside a bigger-on-the-inside Time Lord device which makes him relive the same sequence of events over and over again. The theme of persistence and certainty in the face of death is a strong one, especially with Capaldi at the helm, giving it his all, portraying a man so determined to escape that he repeatedly resigns himself to death just to make a millimetre's progress.

Oxygen - Series 10, Episode 5 (2017)

Due to personal goings-on in my own life, I have not reviewed Series 10 and I don't know if I will, but on the whole I enjoyed it. I liked the semi-reboot of the series and Bill Potts is a light shining down on the show. Oxygen was a great base-under-siege episode that had some good ideas, my favourite of which was the Adams-esque dilemma of the parent company making them pay for their oxygen. It's kind of a like a traditional Doctor Who Base-Under-Siege story where the enemy is the life-support system.

Unlike a lot of Base-Under-Siege stories in NuWho, it avoided the pitfall of not feeling like there were any stakes by seriously threatening the lives of both Bill and The Doctor. They both experience the vacuum of space and are choked and chased and electrocuted. Just when you think the status quo will be reasserted, we discover that The Doctor is now blind! This was a great way to end the episode, as well as a lead-in to the following three-part story where The Doctor's need to protect Bill is a major theme.

World Enough And Time - Series 10, Episode 11 (2017)

In the year-long hiatus between Series 9 and 10, I started listening to Big Finish audios - I've listened to about a dozen now, and when they are good, they are good. My favourite, predictably, is the Fifth Doctor audio Spare Parts, which takes place on Mondas and gives a very thorough look at the kind of world that would create the Cybermen. It's spooky and full gruesome moments. I bring it up because World Enough and Time borrows extensively from Spare Parts and it's legacy, even more than the supposed "adaptation" that was Rise of the Cybermen back in 2006.

The marketing was full of spoilers for the return of John Simm as The Master. I will admit that Simm's disguise fooled me for a good while; his reveal at the end to Missy is fantastic. I had always wanted a multi-Master story, and it was a real coup to get Simm back to the show after his ambiguous exit seven year prior. Not only was it fun from a fan perspective, but it was also the perfect way to highlight the character development that Gomez' Master had been undergoing throughout this weird and wonderful season.

For the first time in a while there was a palpable sense of horror in this story, as Bill Potts spent time in the creepy hospital at the base of a ship falling into a black hole, with The Doctor and Missy at the top watching her life pass on fast-forward. The most memorable parts of the episode are the parts that surround the Cybermen, with pre-formed cloth-faced bodies crying out for death, and the crushing blow at the end of the episode when Bill is transformed. I was annoyed that this amazing character had been given so tragic a fate, but the following episodes made up for that slightly. Scenes like the ones in the hospital are what I have been asking for for so long - actually exploring the body horror of the Cyberman premise and using it to bring nightmares to whole new generation.

Epilogue

I can't honestly say, now that it's over, that this part of the show was entirely bad. The Capaldi era feels like a much-needed improvement over the Smith era, which went downhill fast. I think the key difference is that during those first three or so years, the writing of the Doctor and his companions entirely focused on archetypes and "mysteries" which never amounted to anything resembling human behaviour. The Twelfth Doctor is much more of a complex personality, even outside the narrative constantly informing us without evidence that he's morally shady. Now that I've lended the era some charity and genuinely discussed episodes I liked, I think it's time to do a top ten worst list. This is going to be fun.

Thanks.

Doctor Who 10.X: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Nardole looks as out of place on this poster as he does in
the whole bloody episode.

Doctor Who has been away from our screen for an entire calendar year, and we really needed something to bring the series back into the public consciousness. While the episode certainly tried to do this, you wouldn't know from the rest of it - the publicity for this episode was a damp squib. The trailers were badly edited, the premise looked ridiculous and most of my Doctor Who loving friends were completely meh about the whole thing. Which is a damn shame, because I actually enjoyed this episode. Its remarkably fun spirit, owed to superhero movies and general, also comes down to the fact that the superhero story is just a cover for a well-acted rom-com.
      The plot surrounds the flailing relationship between Lucy (Charity Wakefield) and Grant (Justin Chatwin, who had a bit part in Lost), the secret of course being that the latter was accidentally made a superhero by The Doctor has a child. The two's secret-identity relationship has been ripped straight from the Christopher Reeve superhero movies, with a love triangle between Lucy, Grant and Grant's alter-ego, Ghost. Despite the hackneyed ideas behind them, they are the most interesting part of the episode, with the actual threat of the piece being either confusing or boring or both. The bad guys are aliens who want to take over the world. They make lines in people's heads and replace their brains, and want to gather the world's leaders together by blowing up New York and pretending to be a safeguard against alien invasion. I immediately remembered the Aliens of London two-parter, except that had a lot more political satire and didn't just re-use a random special effect from the episode before.
     Grant could have come across as a bit creepy, and I'm sure many people thought he did, but for me I think he hit the balance perfectly and came across as genuinely charming in a kind of" "Andrew Garfield Spiderman" kinda way. Charity Wakefield was also wonderful as Lucy, who I hope will get more roles from this. I wish we'd have just focused on them rather than having this external alien story, because it brought nothing new and was actively dull at times. It didn't help that despite bringing aliens in from last year's Christmas special, no mention was made of them being in both, leading me to simply believe that Moffat had reused a special effect, something which is not particularly unlikely.

This sums up the Moffat era perfectly.. Why use fucking pockets
when you could store a loaded weapon inside your fucking head.

     Peter Capaldi was fantastic in this episode, which makes it all the more irritating that we see the return of Nardole (Matt Lucas) from last year's Christmas special. Quite like one of John Nathan Turner's mad whims, Moffat has decided that we all loved Nardole, so Nardole will be in this episode, and every episode of Series 10. The levels of wtf involved in this decision are baffling - there was no great love for Lucas' character, and he doesn't really add anything to this episode beyond very, very light comic relief that Capaldi could likely have provided himself. The main thing he seems to provide uniquely is an info-dump near the end about River Song, revealing that Capaldi spent 24 years with her before sending her to the Library. Seeing as I want River Song to go away, and go away now, this did nothing to endear the character to me, and seeing him in the rest of Moffat's finale season is going to be a chore.
     The Return of Doctor Mysterio pleasantly surprised me, but that felt very too little too late. You can make a bloody brilliant episode and it'll still fail to get the ratings if the publicity surrounding it is as lacklustre as was here. A few choices - the editing of the trailer, the general lack of advertising and the total lack of hype - meant that the return of The Doctor to our screens occured with a whimper rather than a bang. Capaldi doesn't deserve this level of apathy, this corporate assassination, and I often worry that his entire tenure is going to be draped with the same brush as Colin Baker's - a brash Doctor beset by decreasing ratings, pushed up against ITV rivals and absent publicity.

Merry Christmas.

Review: Doctor Who 9.13: The Husbands of River Song

Ten years into the run of the Doctor Who revival, and Christmas specials have rather an odd position in the show's makeup. They can't be too dense or packed with mythology, or they'd exclude a large proportion of the audience who only watch on Christmas Day. But, despite this, both RTD and Moffat have on various occasions packed the Christmas specials with huge, important arc stories. The Husbands of River Song is a very odd attempt at both, having some elements designed for mass consumption and some rather more complicated story work related to Moffat's old messy stalwart, River Song, whose presence on the show in my mind is as welcome as a Jar-Jar Binks cosplayer in a Star Trek convention.

Can we just look at how unpretty this poster looks? It's horrid.

     The Doctor arrives on a human colony in the future at Christmastime, but ends up running into River Song and her servant Nardole (Matt Lucas, Little Britain), who don't recognise Twelve as The Doctor and instead think that he is an assassin they tasked with killing Song's genocidal cyborg husband King Hydroflax. River reveals that her marriage to Hydroflax (Greg Davies, The Inbetweeners) was a ploy to steal the space-diamond from inside his head and sell it to a high bidder, and when The Doctor physically removes the still-living Hydroflax's head from his autonomous body, it chases them into the TARDIS, which River uses to escape. She and The Doctor head off to meet her buyers on a space-ship built for rich genocidal killers, but they turn out to be adherants of Hydroflax's religion and so River is forced to crash the ship on its final destination - the Singing Towers of Darillium. Just after River works out who Twelve is, she also remembers that the Singing Towers is the location of their last night together, and it seems as though her story is about to come to a close.
     I'd made it fairly clear before that I wasn't happy about River Song coming back to the series - her story was convoluted, ridiculous and tiring. There were only so many times I could put up with River's smug caricature popping up as one of Moffat's go-to female archetypes. Strangely enough, though, that archetype seems to not be in effect here - River is a lot more clueless, a lot more fallible, even though this is supposed to be near the end of her adventures with The Doctor. While I wasn't happy that her timeline was being dragged up yet again, I did enjoy the slickness and subtlety with which the "Singing Towers of Darillium" prophecy was fulfilled - especially as that particular thread had already been rather less-than-satisfactorily explored in a DVD extra a few years ago (during the height of the show's River-mania).
     And, of course, that level of continuity made those elements of the story a little impenetrable to a lot of watchers, who certainly don't remember minor one-line mentions from a story which aired seven years ago. Despite how much Moffat and his fandom claim that the show is as strong as ever, ratings are falling steadily, and there's a growing feeling, however accurate, that "it's not as good as it was." It feels a little arrogant of Moffat for this special to unload all of this continuity on us at Christmas without batting an eyelid towards explaining those previous connections, especially as the show has been trying it's best during Capaldi's run to forget the period of the show where most of River's adventures happened.

Greg Davies works as a bumbling school headmaster, but does
not have the presence to play a genocidal alien warlord.

     Aside from that, the episode was... well, it was fine. It was harmless. The episode was clearly trying, in the bits where it wasn't asking you to consult the TARDIS Wiki, to be humourous. The problem was that the whole thing was imbued with gallows humour, from casual talk of murder, mutilation and beheadings to charming races of genocidal conquerors. This extended to the visual style too, with lots of images of exchanging heads and people literally extracting things from their brains while still conscious which, while funny in say Red Dwarf, felt very out of place for 5ish on Christmas Day. It also jarred with the main comedic thrust of the episode, a very Sarah-Jane-Adventures-style misunderstanding in which despite repeated hints, River doesn't recognise The Doctor until the pivotal moment of the climax.
     I didn't expect much from The Husbands of River Song, and I didn't get much, either. Moffat apparently wrote this episode with the intention that it be the last thing he wrote for Doctor Who - until he decided to carry on and write Series 10. I was surprised given that description that this episode wasn't even more ridiculous than it turned out to be, although I don't think I want to know what that looks like. All I know is that however much Moffat's writing has changed to become a little more subtle and little less offensive, the general meh-ness of this episode is a clear demonstration if any was needed that Doctor Who really needs, if you'll pardon the reference, a regeneration.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 9.12: Hell Bent

I would have had this out earlier, but as I explained previously, I've had a bit of a weather situation.

Expectations are a difficult thing to bargain with. I didn't expect a lot from this episode, but I expected that if it did something, it would do it in an entertaining way. After eleven weeks of well-made but fundamentally flawed episodes, Moffat fell back on a lot of old tropes, and undid a lot of the meagre good will I've built up for him over the past couple of years. After last season finished its arc with quite a nice, satisfying conclusion, Hell Bent tried to capture Capaldi's lightning twice, as well as expanding the series mythos - but the result, while not outwardly offensive, ended up feeling like a bit of a waste of time. I'll try not to spoil every twist and turn to start with, but be cautious.

The sunglasses are stupid. And so is the electric guitar. But
this shot is totally awesome.

     The episode had a fascinating framing device which prevented it from being a complete washout. The Doctor, equipped with Electric Guitar, tells the story of the episode to Clara, who is a waitress at the same American diner visited in The Impossible Astronaught. At first it appears as though Clara, who returns within the story, has had her memory erased by The Doctor, who is now seeing her for one last time. As the events of the episode transpire, however, it becomes clear that it is the exact reverse - The Doctor cannot remember what Clara looks like, only who she was, and how he lost her. It brings up a few plot holes here or there (especially given the detail to which The Doctor seems to remember the story) but it also provides the few genuine moments of emotional satisfaction between The Doctor and Clara.
     The thing I was looking forward to most of all about this week's episode was the actual return of the Time Lords. The retcon of their existence irked me a lot back in Day of the Doctor and Time of the Doctor, when they seemed to be portrayed as really cool dudes full of love and happiness. Here there are still some elements of that, but at the same time their appearance has been updated to tie into their Classic Series appearances. Rassilon, previously played by Bond actor Timothy Dalton as a hammy but terrifying dictator, appears here played by Donald Sumpter as a tired, bitter old man with no power to his name. It's an interesting choice, and one which kinda works, even if it feels a little odd for the great Rassilon himself to be put aside so willy nilly, and with such little significance to the rest of the episode. If I could say anything really positive about the portrayal of the Time Lords, it was the diversity. I loved the fact that there are Shabogans; there's an actual distinction between Galifreyans and Time Lords. I loved how many black Time Lords there were, and even though it was sad to see the amazing Ken Bones leave the show, seeing an old white man regenerate into a young black woman was an amazing moment for Moffat's time on the show. I also adored the version of Hartnell's TARDIS interior, which the show has barely touched. Talk about timeless design.
     Clara of course returned this week, via The Doctor's use of a Time-Lord tech to bring her from the moment before she died in Face The Raven. I cannot tell you just how disappointed I ended up being with this fact. Even if it had some character significance for this episode (which it does), it's yet another case of Moffat not letting people die. Clara has decided she's going to leave in Mummy On The Orient Express, Death In Heaven, Last Christmas and Face The Raven, and this fifth goodbye felt incredibly hollow. The way her exit was left open was so incredibly frustrating, because Jenna Coleman is not coming back. She's gone. She wanted to go last year, and now she's finally left. It speaks of poor planning to kill her off in a semi-satisfying way and then just ruin it again. She doesn't even do much in this episode, besides complain that she didn't want to be brought back in the first place, and be the moral chain which is driving The Doctor to do the crazy, stupid things he is doing. I think that Jenna Coleman deserves better than this, no matter how cool it is that she has, essentially, become The Doctor after all.

The Classic Console Room used for Clara and Me's TARDIS
is gorgeous. More of this, please.

      And now, to the Hybrid. All season we've had this as an RTD-style arc-word, introduced in a mad rant by Davros as the reason why The Doctor left Gallifrey. Its existence is key to The Witch's Familiar and last week's episode, Heaven Sent, and while its introduction in that episode was a little rushed, it had the potential to be a really interesting mystery if solved well. However, like all of Moffat's little mysteries, there was a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. Why did the TARDIS explode? The "Silence" did it, and then never mentioned it again. How did the Doctor survive death? The Teselecta from that one episode everyone hated. Why does Missy greet everyone who dies? It's all a hologram. It turns out that the identity of the Hybrid is not even something that The Doctor knows. He blames Me, who is part Human, part Mire. She asks him if he is half-human (presumably on his mother's side.) and he denies it. Eventually there's a sweet if stupid cop-out; the Hybrid is in fact both The Doctor and Clara, who together would lead to the death of the Universe, as The Doctor is too determined to save her to let her death, a fixed point, actually happen. It's a metaphor for Moffat, really.
     I really want to like Doctor Who, and there are huge parts of this episode I do enjoy. I love the scenes on Gallifrey, with the Sisterhood of Karn and the High Council and all that grand, amazing stuff. The problem is with everything that Moffat brings to the table, and it's stuff we've seen far too many times before - characters who never die, mysteries with empty or unsatisfying conclusions. The thread is well and truly wearing very thin on his tenure, and as I sat and watched the Doctor and Clara say goodbye to each other for the fifth time in two years, I couldn't help but wonder just how brilliant this episode would be if Clara didn't appear. If we spent the whole thing on Gallifrey. If Moffat knew how to leave well enough alone. I love Capaldi and he makes this show worth tuning into every week. I'm not exactly back to the point where "I'm never watching this show again", but I really have to ask the question - where can Moffat go from here?

Thanks.

THIS CHRISTMAS: Jesus, I didn't think he'd go there. We face the unfortunate return of an old friend in The Husbands of River Song.

Review: Doctor Who 9.11: Heaven Sent

The Doctor loses himself in the Time Lord castle.

Back in 1977, upon the departure of Sarah Jane Smith, Tom Baker asked the writers of Doctor Who to allow him to do an entire story without a companion. That story was The Deadly Assassin, and if we're including the various temporary companions popular here and there, that was the last time The Doctor went without a companion. I was a little concerned that 55 minutes of Capaldi wandering around by himself might be a little trying, but I needn't have worried - the man is an acting giant, and he single-handedly carries this bizarre thought experiment through to its glorious, glorious end. Spoilers follow, as usual.
      Teleported to a mysterious castle by Mayor Me in the previous episode, The Doctor is stalked by The Veil, a creature ripped from his childhood nightmares. As he runs through the castle's changing rooms, he discovers that the only way to stop the creature is to tell the truth - specifically, to confess the secret behind the Hybrid, the legendary breeding of two warrior races that caused The Doctor to leave Gallifrey. He eventually comes across the TARDIS encased in diamond, and realises what he must do - the rooms of the castle reset themselves, and so upon The Doctor's death he can bring another version of himself in from the past to chip away at the diamond, a little bit at a time. Over a period of two billion years this continues, until The Doctor finally escapes and finds himself on Gallifrey, angry, and a stone's throw away from the Great Citadel.    
     You know how I go off on one about Moffat and his use of time loops, but for once this felt like a working part of the story which developed Twelve's character and continued a theme of anger and persistence, held together by a repeated line stated by Twelve every single time he "appears" once more - I'm going to find you, and I'm never going to stop. Instead of being corny or trite, there was some actual consistency to the rules of the episode's temporal skulduggery, soaked in tragedy and loss and creating a delightfully dark tone which the series has been striving for for a long, long time under Moffat's reign. It's also been pointed out online that this episode works as something as an extended metaphor for Moffat's episode-writing process - we get to see The Doctor's thoughts as he works out how to survive each deadly encounter, and as he works out that the creature is trying to scare him. Obviously I would have asked to look into the mind of a better writer, but it really is quite interestingly (and for once competently) done.

500 billion iterations of The Doctor chip away at this diamond.
That's committment for you.

      The time loop does mean that we can only really look at what this episode brought going forward, and hoo boy, that's some fun stuff. Clara's sparse appearances of a figment of The Doctor's imagination were expected but not too distracting, and I'm glad that the show is pressing through the fact that yes, Moffat actually let a character die, even if it's unfortunate that the only reason she's dead is to give Twelve character development. The end of the episode, with The Doctor looking out towards Gallifrey's Great Citadel and declaring that "The Hybrid is Me" left open some interesting possibilities - seeing new Time Lords again, the fact that Mayor Me is working with them, and the ambiguous capitalisation on that last word which will hopefully tie together this season into a fairly satisfying conclusion.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Time Lords! TARDISES! Gallifrey! Wouldn't be surprised if The Master turned up either. But Mayor Me definitely is. The Doctor is Hell Bent.

Fate of the Cybermen: The Cybermen of NuWho

Written 1/10/15.

This is Cyberman Month, where we've been looking at the original five black and white stories featuring Mankind's cyborg nemesis. I've also covered the five other Cyberman stories from the Classic Series, under Phillip Hinchcliffe in 1975 and later John Nathan Turner through the 80s. But what of the Cybermen now in the revival of the show? I've certainly covered all of the episodes, but it's often harder without hindsight to pinpoint the design and story changes which have brought the Cybermen from the swinging 60s into modern living rooms. So, in this article, I will be examining the history of the Cybermen in NuWho, and wondering where they might go from here.

This was in fact the first publicity image
of the Cybusmen. I love the head tilt.

The Cybusmen - 2006-9
Seen in: Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Cyberwoman, The Next Doctor

Russell T Davies waited until the second series of the revived show to bring back the Cybermen, spending his first season giving a similar treatment to the Daleks. While they were made shiny gold and layered in a number of different political metaphors, the Cybermen were given an entirely new origin story. Instead of originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas, the Cybermen of an alternate universe originated on Earth itself, created by a disabled human scientist, John Lumic, who wished not only to end human pain and suffering, but also to prolong his own life and unite the world under the brand of his company, Cybus Industries.
     These Cybermen are strong, and sturdy, their design featuring a more angular face and a headplate which from behind recalls a roman helmet. Much was made of the Cybermen's reduction to "stampy metal robots," in the fan consciousness at the time, but this is somewhat unfair - if anything, these Cybermen harken back to the "boiler-suit" design from the middle three Sixties stories, except this time with a budget to fully execute the idea. While their voice was fairly memorable and well done (ta to Nicholas Briggs), they were imbued with a few new catch-phrases indicative of the change in their overall philosophy - "Delete", "Upgrade" and similar phrases likening their thoughts to computer software.
     That change in philosophy is a distinctly modern one. The original Cybermen were a reactionary fear to the use of cybernetics in medicine - artificial hearts, artificial limbs. They were the whole concept of prosthesis medicine taken to a logical extreme, in which a person's entire body is replaced and thus, in the eyes of Kitt Pedler and Gerry Davis, so is the soul. RTD's Cybermen - or the "Cybusmen" as fans call them - are an attempt to apply the same method to capitalism, more specifically to companies like Apple. Rise of the Cybermen sees everyone on the Alternate Earth owning a Cybus Industries "earpod" which downloads information directly into people's brains, and from this we can see the Cybusmen as a particularly heavy-handed message to not let corporations tell you what to think and what to feel.

Of course Chris Chibnall would give a Cyberman a metal bra
and heels. Talk about fetishes.

     But allegory aside, one area where I think that the Cybusmen excel over their previous incarnations is the fear and paranoia that they produce. Conversion between human and Cyberman was only actually seen in a single story of the Classic Series - the often derided Attack of the Cybermen. With the Cybusmen, we see the population of London marching into factories, waiting outside little cubicles, and then wandering in as their brain is surgically extracted from their body and placed into a Cybus Industries shell. It's obviously not as gory as I'm making it sound, but the whole idea of extracting and reprogramming the brain rather than slowly switching body parts means that becoming a Cyberman is an act of complete and utter dehumanisation. Some of my favourite moments from the Rise/Age two-parter came when the Cybermen ended up for one reason or another referring to their former selves, especially the Parallel Jackie Tyler, which just hits you as a gut-punch that this person, while not dead, is irreversible changed. It's fantastic.
     The Cybusmen within Series Two were at their most effective. I was glad that the show used them sparingly, and used them to influence a large part of the show's ongoing mythos. While Cyberwoman was quite, quite ridiculous, it had all of the body horror, all of the adult fears about losing the ones you love, and it also presented the whole idea of a single Cyber-conversion unit as a terrifying thing. While their execution in The Next Doctor was a little more experimental and weird, I think it was still an interesting use of the concept, and I can't really think of anything more awesome to do with your cybernetic guys than to stick them in Victorian England and make them create a slave-driven steampunk mecha. Oh. Yeah.

Hold on... that's a Preacher gun. From the Parallel Universe.
The Cybusmen never even wielded those, this is ridiculous.

The Fake Cybusmen - 2010-11
Seen in: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes To War, Closing Time, Nightmare In Silver (briefly).

Moffat's first move upon taking the show was to hoist a major redesign onto the Daleks, who had to be included at least once per year in order to fulfil the BBC's contract. However wise that decision was given that as of writing we just had a massive Dalek episode and not a single "New Paradigm" Dalek actually appeared, it led to the apparent explanation that the Cybermen couldn't be redesigned, because the budget had gone towards the new Daleks and the new Silurians. Why bother to bring them back, then, if it's going to be a continuity nightmare? Ha. Moffat doesn't care about keeping continuity within the show as he runs it, only in making references to Classic Who in some bizarre effort to please the fanbase.
     In this period of the Cybermen's history, there was a motion to distance the show from their alternate-universe origin, with the idea being that the Cybermen we were seeing were the originals from our Universe. However, the only concessions made to this were the removal of the "C" plate in the centre of their chests, and the fact that they now apparently have vast fleets of interstellar spacecraft that The Doctor can blow up as and when he pleases. Their catchphrases have changed as well, with at least one Cyberman screaming the Borg cry of "Assimilate" and for some ungodly reason having tentacles in its head. At least one fan theory espouses the idea that some of the Cybusmen remained in our universe at the end of Doomsday and found some of our Universe's guys, who decided to copy the design in the name of style.

Skulls are more funny than scary, particularly when they start
chattering at you. What's it going to do, bite you to death?

     The show attempted to make these Cybermen better in Closing Time, an episode which somehow managed to be the most disappointing thing in Series Six - no mean feat, I'll tell you. They had them skulking under a department store, kidnapping people, converting them and making the use of Cybermats for the first time since 1975. But, of course, they had to spoil it by having the Cybermen's weakness to emotion (admittedly weaponised by both The Invasion and The Age of Steel) become so absurd that the sound of a child crying for his father became enough to melt solid steel.
     It says a lot about the Moffat era that they simply didn't care enough to try and work out what these Cybermen were all about. There's no ideology behind them, no basis in any form of metaphor or idea, they are just cut-and-paste villains who borrow a lot of their catch-phrases from The Borg. Which, when you mention it, goes to describe our next lot...

Some Cybermen face designs look happy, others sad. These
are in a state of constant dumb surprise.

The Iron-Man-Borg-Lovechild - 2013-Present
Seen in: Nightmare In Silver, Time of the Doctor, Dark Water/Death In Heaven

The excitement when I saw the publicity photos for Nightmare In Silver was just ridiculously high. I love the Cybermen, and I love Cybermen stories, at least in principle. Every time there's a new Cybermen story or redesign I tell myself that this time, it's going to be good. It's going to work, there's going to be a point to them again. The Cybermen are best when they are both A.) working off of your fears about being robbed of your humantiy and B.) working as a metaphor for some aspect of ourselves that is leading us down a bad path. The best Cyberman stories have these elements, be it the original fear of medical technology in The Tenth Planet, of unguarded militarism in The Invasion, or of dehumanising Capitalism in Rise/Age. The most recent incarnation of the Cybermen? They are completely gone. Any hint of being about something is gone, and the Cybermen are now mostly just empty villains.
      Their initial appearance in the romance-novel-sounding Nightmare In Silver brings with it a lot of promise. Their design is given a technical upgrade when a "Cyber-mite" (evidently an evolved version of the Cybermats) absorbs and reverse engineers a newer piece of technology. The Cybermen which result from this have super-speed (an ability seen in a single sequence in their very first appearance and then never again) as well as the ability to both adapt to energy weapons as they're being fired upon and to assimilate people using tiny organisms. In other words, the Borg. I make this comparison a lot on this blog, and that's because it's perfectly warranted, especially after that episode., While the idea of a plague which could rob you of your humanity is still pretty scary in principle, it lacks the body-horror and deeply personal elements which make the Cybermen effective.

Death In Heaven returned some body horror to the Cybermen,
even if it went about it in a weird way.

     Ignoring the ridiculous wooden Cybermen of Time of the Doctor (fuck that episode, seriously), their next appearance was in last series' finale, Dark Water/Death In Heaven, where they have become tools of The Master. This two-parter did good and bad things with the concept. On the one hand, the whole idea of downloading the minds of the human race and resurrecting them in robotic shells is key to what made the Cybusmen work, and so that was really effective. What wasn't effective was this whole business of these new Cybermen apparently having an entire human corpse inside them, which seems to go against the entire idea of having them now so easily transferred via a "Cyber-virus". Why attempt to forcibly combine the two ideas, when the whole "downloading people" thing is scary enough? Having people actually rise from their graves as Cybermen with their original bodies and suggesting that one of them is The Brigadier is effing ridiculous. It made the episode funny rather then terrifying, which as is the case with Capaldi's stuff so far, it was a hair's breadth from being.

The Future

There were accusations flying around during the Wilderness years that any interesting things that could be done with the Cybermen had already been done, and not just in the show, but in the extensive material from the Expanded Universe. Then, Rise/Age appeared, an adaptation of the audio Spare Parts, which was an origin story for the Cybermen of our Universe, similar in style to the way that Genesis of the Daleks had breathed new life into the metal pepper pots by revealing their history and ideological purpose. Whether or not you believe that everything good from Rise/Age came from Marc Platt and Spare Parts, I don't think that there is a Cyberman story which better combines a really good origin for the Cybermen, a set of body-horror moments which scare and unsettle, with what is a fairly decent adventure story.

The one on the right has discovered that her husband Gerald
is having an affair with the pool boy, and the one on the left
was the one trying to cover it up.

     There are so many possible stories that you could develop using the Cybermen from either Universe which would be fulfilling to a purpose of some sort, and genuinely fun at the same time. We don't need a full history lesson a la Attack to explain where they've come from - if necessary, just stick in some minor background dialogue, because the people who notice that stuff will love it and people who don't will love the story for being a good story. The Cybermen have always been for me the dark mirror of humanity, always a vision of what we may become, either literally or in metaphor. It's what makes them so powerful to me, and why after all these years, they're the ones I remember the most. I bought Earthshock, I bought Attack, because the most exciting thing for me about rewatching The Five Doctors over and over again was watching the many different ways the Doctor defeated the Cybermen. One can only hope that there will come a story good enough to inspire that same devotion and love in future generations.

Thanks.