Season 7, Episode 12 - Nightmare in Silver
Sadly those hopes were soundly dashed as I spent most of the episode watching The Doctor cavort around arguing with himself. This is my biggest issue with this episode, so let's start there. What the hell was with the Cyber Planner? From the very start, Cybermen have been all about the removal of weakness. This included emotion and personality. We see this when Webley and the kids are partially upgraded. Why then does the Cyber Planner act the way it does? It was rather jarring.
I liked the idea of the Galactic Empire, although it had a slight whiff of Warhammer 40,000's Imperium, in that they are willing to destroy a whole planet and it's population if a threat is too large. Davis didn't disappoint though. Although he didn't really do much, Porridge was a great character. The punishment platoon was pretty good too, with most of the standard Dirty Dozen tropes present.
It was good to see The Doctor use gold to short circuit the Cyber Planner in a nod to the past, but the Cybermen themselves seem to be going a bit overboard with the upgrades. Apparently they can do it on the fly now. I would have preferred the upgrades to have been long term evolutions rather than instantaneous mutations to solve a problem.
The Cybermites were a good inclusion and a logical step from Cybermats. I liked that they only partially upgraded the creatures they infested, but we should have heard some threat of a future full upgrade. The Cybermen themselves looked awesome. They were the perfect blend of the classic Mondas Cybermen and the Parallel Earth Cybermen.
The episode played out at a good pace. The monster reveal was very early, but we still got some good "Monster Vision" from the Cybermites and another minor reveal for the new-look Cyberman. Things moved along nicely with no real dead time. The Cyber Planner's ruse about The Doctor's feelings for Clara was well played and I would hesitate to classify it Hunka Hunka Burning Doc, because as with the kiss with Jenny in The Crimson Horror, there was no reciprocity. The Sonic screwdriver was used well, in that it played a part in The Doctor's solution, but was not the entirety of that solution.
Oh! I totally forgot about that stupid line about Clara's tight skirt! I don't think she's ever worn a tight skirt on the show. So unnecessary.
In fact, if it weren't for that damned Cyber Planner I would have scored this one higher.
6/10
Can we fix it?
A couple of little fixes to the way the Cybermen worked would be nice. When they are getting electrocuted in the moat, rather than just instantly upgrading, we see that the dead ones are dead, but Cybermites swarm over the remaining horde performing manual upgrades to get around the issue. This would happen for multiple different traps laid by Clara and the defenders. The traps slow the Cybermen down, but don't stop them. In this way, they become the relentless zombie horde they are supposed to be.
The major changes would be with the Cyber Planner. Most of this is just how it was played by Matt Smith (or possibly the direction). The lines as written by Gaiman were mostly fine, but they needed far less Doctor in the delivery. Dead and monotonous like a proper Cyberman is the way to go. Note, I'm not saying he should have had a heavily altered voice, just that he play it emotionless. This would also make his ruse to Clara more interesting, as we haven't previously seen the Planner use The Doctor's "voice".
Additionally in those scenes where The Doctor is talking to the Cyber Planner in his mind, the Cyber Planner should have been more Cyber. The Planner should also get increasingly Cyber as the episode goes on, including his voice. In this way, we get a visual and audial indication of how close to defeat The Doctor is.
And as one last thing, I'd have liked to see a bit at the start with The Doctor agreeing to take the Kids somewhere. Following on from the weak ending to The Crimson Horror, it just seemed glossed over.
No comments:
Post a Comment