S33 (7) 13 – Nightmare in Silver
This topic contains 525 replies, has 43 voices, and was last updated by 
Dentarthurdent 1 year ago.
-
Anonymous @
And I thought I had too much time on my hands. How the Doctor could have won in six moves, without the sonic:
http://setsuled.livejournal.com/880790.html
As well as the puppet from TGC, Webley’s World of Wonders contained waxworks of a Shansheeth from SJA and a Blowfish from Torchwood/TPO, & many other obscure Who monsters.
Wednesday derives from ‘Day of Mercury’. Amongst other things, Mercury is the patron god of messages/communication (including divination), travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery and thieves; he is also the guide of souls to the underworld.
Ok – I’ve just done my rewatch and I still think this is excellent stuff, with one exception.
The kids – now that was a shame because since little Amelia we’ve had some great natural performances from kids on the show, and their interactions with Matt have made for some great television. If you compare the girl who played young Clara in the prequel, it’s a far more natural sounding performance than last night which seemed too stilted and mannered. A bit “stage schooly”, perhaps? I found that this was more than made up for by Warwick Davies. So often behind latex, or adopting a jokey voice, here he had a role to bit into and obviously did it with some relish.
The main point though was the Cybermen. A fantastic idea that was allowed to diminish after their sixties heyday. I premptied the “Borg” question on the Guardian blog because some people do have no sense of history. Kit Peddler, who co-created the Cybermen was a scientist and writer. His original inspiration was organ replacement surgery and played on the notion of how much you could replace before really calling yourself human.
It was a cutting edge idea. The term “Cyborg” was only coined in 1960 and when the “Cybermen” were created it still wasn’t in common useage. It’s easy to forget that. For me, it seems natural to extrapolate that to include elements of nano-technology that were developed in the 80s. The old show missed that trick before cancellation, but by then they were on a long slide towards irrelevence. Attack of the Cybermen saw a Cyberman killed by a “lucky shot” to a vulnerable point we’d never heard of before. How the mighty had fallen.
The scariest Cyberman since the reboot was in “The Pandorica Opens”. My neice screamed as the head grappled with Amy and discharged that skull. People suggested it didn’t make sense, but for me the idea that the robot part, if it’s internal organs had rotted or failed, would have enough basic comprehension to seek out new organic parts made them all the more creepy. It also had echoes of a quote from “Revenge of the Cybermen” in which they proclaim they have “Robot parts hidden to build a new army”. Robot parts who could seek out the organic oomponents themselves perhaps.
I think they trialled the ideas of new conversion pretty effectively in the free to download* Adventure Game “Blood of the Cybermen”. In it the cybermats are used to inject nanites into targets who slowly turn into “cyberslaves”. If you haven’t had a go, it’s pretty good. Very atmospheric.
So for me, this did bring back the creeping menace of the Cybes. The scene where the Mites crawled out of their eyes I could guarantee would have lodged in my mind had I been a nipper.
My one concern is perhaps too powerful. I think this was a trap RTD fell into with the Daleks. When one Dalek could cause so much havoc and was invincible, numbers don’t matter. The resolutions then became trickery and probably not as satisfying. GodDonna spinning a few buttons and muttering some technobabble comes to mind. We’ll see how that one plays out.
* Legally free to download in the UK from the BBC web-site. Although if you’re overseas a quick google search may provide you with other alternatives.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
