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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.
Well met my fellow Sandman readers! I spent a lot of the episode just considering how well that translation worked. One of us is going to have to write a blog post about Sandman to introduce others to that realm.
Having read all of your posts, I feel somewhat confident in suggesting you’d actually get a lot from “The Sandman” series. They are “graphic novels” (comics) but you’ll see why I’ve always said that Gaiman could be to the Moff, what Moff was to RTD. It plays on some big concepts and after the first collected run hits it’s own territory well. Stories about stories. Myths and Legends.
His “A midsummer night’s dream” sees the playwright be inspired to create a masterpiece for a very special audience. It won a World Fantasy Award. Then the people who organised it changed the rules to prevent something similar winning again. Their loss.
As well as it being Neil Gaiman, and new Cybermen, I caught a glimpse of Jason Watkins in the next time trailer. Great to see him in the show.
It’s funny, he’s done some really warm and funny roles in films and TV (see his camp wedding planner in a film called “Confetti”), but it’s amazing how much scary malevolence he can bring to roles.
He was fantastic as Herrick in “Being Human”, even when he looked more human than this:
Yes – the makeup job had to be difficult. I don’t know if you ever watched “Farscape” but Virginia Hey, who played a character called Zhaan, had to be written out because her body developed an accumulated toxic reaction to her makeup (it caused Kidney problems).
I read an interview with Neve in which she said the duration of makeup work had become shorter over the time she has been in the show, which I guess she’s pretty thankful for.
When they bought back the Silurians as an offshoot species of the classic era Who a lot of people complained about the look. I was OK with it, because it lends the ability to emote a little from behind the makeup. The design team had originally pitched a much more “traditional” update. If you’ve never seen it, here it is:
I really don’t think Jenny would have been interested! š
What is a mouthy Australian?
I was laughing so much I actually misquoted. His line was:
“I once spent a hell of a long time trying to get a gobby Australian to Heathrow airport,ā
It’s a callback to a character called Tegan who travelled mainly in the Fifth Doctors run. The Doc spent an entire series trying to get her back to Heathrow. He used to say “Brave heart Tegan” a lot, so “Brave heart Clara” in this episode. Here she is:
