“You’ve no home planet, no influence, nothing. You’re just a
pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship.”
If Genesis of the Daleks put the scary back in the Daleks,
Revenge of the Cybermen takes it out of the Cybermen, turning them into “gold
plated souvenirs that people use as hat stands.” Although, truth be told Gary,
I never did find the Cybermen of classic Doctor Who very frightening.
As for their Vogan foes, well, their ineptitude against the
Cybermen is the only thing giving our cyber villains the edge.
Voga, the gold planet, is singularly pathetic. Here we have
an entire planet brimming with the one sure-fire weapon to defeat the
Cybermen—gold. Gold, gold, as far as the eye can see; and yet not one glittergun
is to be found.
Revenge of the Cybermen brings us full circle from The Ark
in Space. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry have finally made it back to Nerva, and
I find this an interesting parallel to that first Ark story from the William
Hartnell years. However, whereas the first Doctor returned to his Ark many
hundreds of years in the future, this fourth Doctor returns thousands of years
in his Ark’s past.
Nerva is not yet an Ark bearing the future of the human race;
Nerva is more or less a floating cemetery, its halls littered with corpses. The
first few scenes as the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry walk through those dead
corridors are unnerving and eerie. However the rest of the story doesn’t match
those spine-chilling moments.
Instead we get ineffectual mole-men cowering underground on
their mounds of gold with “the philosophy of a cringing mouse,” (they should
take a lesson from Sarah: “Well, we can’t just sit here glittering, can we?”) and
a handful of Cybermen inexplicably relying on the mercenary nature of a traitorous
human and a convoluted plot for their dirty work.
It seems, Gary, that each time the Cybermen appear in early
Classic Who stories they have been presumed extinct for centuries. And yet
pockets of Cybermen continually resurface to the surprise of all. It also seems
as though we are continually to get great chunks of the Cybermen’s rich history
thrown at us but never get to witness it. In their first story The Tenth Planet
we learn of the Cyberman home, Earth’s twin planet Mondas; in Revenge of the Cybermen
we hear of the great Cyber-War, the attack on Voga, and the creation of
glitterguns (reminiscent of ‘Polly Cocktail’ back in The Moonbase). The present story, however, never seems to
live up to those fascinating glimpses into Cyberman past.
Convolutions and enigmas abound in Revenge of the Cybermen.
Despite the belief that the Cybermen have been eradicated, Vogans have gone
into hiding, lurking in terror under the planet’s surface. However, one Vogan,
Vorus,”a gambler with a mad thirst for power,” has somehow contacted an equally
ambitious human, Kellman, and together they have devised a plan to bring Voga
back to glory. Kellman, acting as double agent, is to lure the Cybermen to
Nerva with the intent of destroying Voga. Vorus in the meantime has secretly
created and built a rocket to destroy Nerva.
The Cybermen, for their part, are using Kellman (“We can
trust in his greed; gold buys humans.”) and Cybermats to kill all but four
humans on Nerva. The surviving humans are to become living bombs sent down to
Voga waiting detonation.
Vorus runs into opposition on Voga; Vogan Militia and Vogan
Guardians fire on each other. Kellman transmats down to Voga and is captured by
the Militia. Vorus’ rocket isn’t ready. The Cybermen have sent the Doctor and
two Nerva crew members down loaded with explosives. Cybermen can’t take the
explosives themselves because of the gold, you see. However two Cybermen can
transmat down to Voga to stand guard and to threaten manual detonation if the
human carriers deviate off course.
Vogans try to shoot the Cybermen but are killed themselves.
Again, gold, gold everywhere . . . .
The Doctor is the one constant in all of this. He doesn’t
have long, thought out, convoluted plans that go haywire. He is thinking on his
toes, working it out as he goes. “Everything’s important,” he says at one point
in our story. The Doctor observes everything, misses nothing (hence his first
encounter with Kellman: “Who’s the homicidal maniac?”).
“What’s your idea?” the Doctor is asked. “I don’t know yet,”
he replies. “That’s the trouble with ideas; they only come a bit at a time.”
The Doctor does the obvious, using gold against the
Cybermen. However he doesn’t have a gun to shoot it, he is relying on handfuls
of dust against Cyberman strength. It is Lester, the Nerva crewman, who jumps
on the Cybermen and explodes his bomb. Now I have to ask myself, did the
Cybermen really think this pitiful little bomb was going to blow up an entire
planet? Even three pitiful little bombs? An entire planet? Granted, they weren’t at the core yet, but
then doesn’t that render the Cyberman threat of manual detonation useless? Yes,
it would kill the humans, but Voga would remain Voga.
Now the Cybermen do the obvious, they pack Nerva with
explosives and set it on a course for Voga. Again, I doubt if this would
obliterate a planet. It might create a whopping big crater, but obliterate? Not
sure it would work. Not if the explosives are as puny as the bomb that killed
Lester and two Cybermen.
The Cybermen abandon Nerva as it heads on its kamikaze mission,
leaving the Doctor and Sarah aboard. Big mistake. The Doctor, after a bit of
Houdini escapism, is able to avert the crash and save both Nerva and Voga.
Vorus gets his rocket working and it is aimed at the Cybermen’s ship. (Wouldn’t
that have been a better plan all along instead of luring them to Nerva to kill
only a handful of Cybermen and an entire human crew, leaving the Cyber ship
untouched?)
A rather disappointing story to follow up Genesis of the
Daleks. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry don’t disappoint, though, and their
presence throughout saves this from being a total wreck. In the end, a good
Doctor Who story doesn’t necessarily have to be good; it just has to be Doctor
Who.
I’ll leave you with that thought, Gary . . .
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