Silver Nemesis

Dear Gary—

Silver Nemesis is good only as long as I am watching it; thinking about it is another matter. There have been a number of Doctor Who stories that don’t hold up upon review; Terminus is a prime example. However, while I have great fun watching Terminus, I have even greater fun picking it apart; whereas with Silver Nemesis I enjoy watching it but don’t relish mulling it over.

I’ll start with the worst, as does the serial—De Flores and his Nazi gang. There is absolutely no point in having this character and even much less relevance to his being a Nazi. This goes nowhere and could be dispensed with entirely. The Nazi business is simply a shorthand way of telling us this is a bad guy; I think we could have guessed that on our own. Additionally, we are never even given a hint as to how he obtained the bow or how he knows all about the Nemesis. De Flores is merely plunked down in the midst of the plot as a convenient third member of this triad of baddies that really doesn’t need a third member. The bow could have just as easily been in the possession of Lady Peinforte, the Cybermen, or the Doctor, or even have been sitting in the basement of Windsor just waiting for one of those three to collect it.

(About the only good thing De Flores arouses in my mind is the amusing recollection of a recent FB discussion regarding childhood memories of mangled Milwaukee German and of the everyday use of the word ferschummulled—ferschimmeled? ferschimmelt?—which apparently is a bastardization of verschimmelt.)

Next on our shortcut to bad—the Cybermen. This insert-villain-here of the week came up on the wheel of fortune of baddies, and they just didn’t even try. I’m not sure I need to say anything more because they just didn’t even try.

Now about this plot. My first thought when the Doctor’s alarm watch goes off is: What? Why? Since when? Then I have to echo Ace: “You mean the world’s going to end and you’ve forgotten about it?” For a Seventh Doctor who puts on a very good show of being in control, he reveals himself to be highly irresponsible in many important ways. This has to be one of his lowlights. The Doctor himself admits: “This may qualify as the worst miscalculation since life crawled out of the seas on this sad planet.”

It’s not just that he forgot about the Silver Nemesis that has the Earth on the brink of disaster; it is that he is responsible in the first place for the whole thing. Why exactly did he launch the Nemesis into space knowing that it was going to wreak havoc every 25 years and eventually fall to Earth to rain down destruction? Why not send it home to Gallifrey?

And OK, Lady Peinforte and De Flores have to wait around for the thing to come crashing down (after miraculously calculating the exact date and place—and is it my imagination, or did the Doctor actually give De Flores the means to do this?—and even more miraculously on the part of Lady Peinforte to travel through time to get there), but couldn’t the Cybermen just pluck the thing out of its orbit at any time?

But most importantly, why did the Doctor take his time getting there to resolve this pending crisis that he set in motion? When he first sent the Nemesis out on its lengthy journey, why didn’t he immediately set the TARDIS coordinates and arrive at the moment of impact? No, he set an alarm watch and promptly forgot all about it. And how exactly does this alarm watch work anyway? Presumably he set it in 1638 to go off in November of 1988 Earth time. “Well,” the Doctor explains, “in strictly linear terms, as the chronometer flies, I’ve known since November the twenty third, 1638.” But he didn’t travel in linear, as the chronometer flies terms; did he set his alarm watch to those terms? If so, he could have been anywhere in time or space when it went off 350 years from his adventures in 1638. He might even have been dead. Or did he set it to go off whenever he happened to materialize at that precise time in 1988? In which case, given the vastness of time and space, he might never have made it there. And what if he lost that watch in the meantime? Or didn’t happen to have it on him when it chimed?

This has got to be one of the worst things the Doctor has ever done. Where is the Time Lord Tribunal when you need it?

“Nobody’s perfect,” Ace tells the Doctor. However when the show is trying to make him out to be some grand mastermind with deep secrets hinting at almost godlike powers, he better be darn close to it.

Alarm watch aside—the Nemesis has crashed to Earth; Lady Peinforte, De Flores, and the Cybermen are all converging towards the same goal; Lady Peinforte gets lucky that her foolishly gold tipped arrows are actually the one thing that will take down a Cyberman; everyone gets lucky that the Cybermen are such pathetic shots; the Doctor and Ace hop back and forth between 1638 and 1988 (something that would have behooved him back when he originally . . . oh you know, Gary, I’ve already said it); the Doctor steals the bow out from under the Nazi’s noses without them even realizing it while they run around acting as though they are still a major player in the game; Richard throws away Lady Peinforte’s arrow and drags her off into the alien world of 1988; the Doctor steals it all out from under the Cybermen’s noses, programs the Nemesis to annihilate the Cyber Fleet and tricks the Cybermen into sending it out on its destructive mission (why the Doctor didn’t just give the direct order but instead had to go through his charade with the Cybermen is yet another example of his rather unsound judgment in this serial).

Yes, thinking about Silver Nemesis makes me want to send it out into orbit.

But then I watch it and I enjoy it. Given a choice between seeing, say, Vengeance on Varos and Silver Nemesis, I would pick Nemesis over the vastly superior Varos. Vengeance on Varos is a case where the thinking of it is more appealing than the viewing.

All credit goes to Lady Peinforte and Richard. The entertainment value of this pairing carries me through; Lady Peinforte’s calm, somewhat maniacal confidence and Richard’s cowering loyalty helps me to overlook the defects as they are unfolding before me.

“We ride on the back of time,” Peinforte tells a protesting Richard; and with an “oh fie” she dismisses his understandable concerns as they confront all manner of strange things some 350 years ahead of their time. This anachronistic duo breeze through twentieth century England with barely a sideways glance thrown their way and through it all the Lady Peinforte remains unfazed (“This is no madness; tis England”) while her loyal follower jumps at every shadow.

Yet for all his trepidation Richard stays steadfast to his lady and despite her contempt he remains loyal.

Even Lady Peinforte is forced to notice: “Always I have treated you badly. I have done you no service, shown you no kindness, and yet you risk your life to save me.” But it is ingrained in him; Richard can merely shrug when asked; “What’s to understand,” he wonders. It is who he is; cowardice and all he will fight for his lady; complaints and all, he will attend.

It is this decisiveness of character, the Lady Peinforte in her arrogance and Richard in his dedication, that plays so well in this fish-out-of-water scenario. And so when a couple of street punk thugs confront the two it is the skinheads who are left dangling upside down in their underwear.

Just when I’m getting fed up with incompetent Cybermen and wooden Nazis, Lady Peinforte matter-of-factly informs her devotee, “It is thy grave, Richard,” as they come upon his headstone. “I ordered you to be buried here when I planned my tomb.” And then again: “Such things happen only in the theater,” when Richard frets about a possible bear attack.

And then as the Nemesis, the bow, and the arrow go crisscrossing through the plot and I start getting irritated, this droll pair again save the serial.

“We can avail ourselves of one of these steeds, my lady,” Richard tells Peinforte, and he promptly sticks out his thumb to hitchhike. The comic timing is delightful as Richard tries in vain to flag down a passing car only for the calmly mumbling “All will be mine” Lady Peinforte to slowly enter the roadway and plant herself firmly in front of an on-coming limousine.

Their rich American benefactress is slightly over the top, but Richard’s bemused attempts to make sense of her conversation make up for it, as does Peinforte’s continued “All things will soon be mine” refrain, and then her sudden interest at the mention of a hated foe.

“We ride to destiny.” Peinforte never breaks character. She is so supremely confident that even without weapons, even without the Nemesis, the bow, or the arrow, she will prevail. All she needs is her knowledge.

Lady Peinforte is the holder of some deep, dark secrets regarding the Doctor. “I shall tell them of the old time, the time of chaos,” she warns the Doctor. “Be my guest,” the Doctor replies. The Cybermen are not interested in Time Lord secrets, and I have to admit, Gary, that neither am I. Just like that she is dismissed; it is the only way to deal with this puffed up ego, to brush her aside as superfluous. “You may go now.” Go she does, flinging herself into the Nemesis and becoming one with it as it goes soaring off into space to meet the Cyber Fleet leaving poor Richard behind (not to worry, the Doctor and Ace can give him a lift home).

Peinforte and Richard carry the serial, but the Doctor and Ace have some nice moments as well. They really are remarkably comfortable with one another and it is such a pleasant change from years of TARDIS turmoil.

The moment the credits roll, however, I am left with nothing but impressions of a story that becomes increasingly ferschummulled.

I’ll send this out, Gary, and won’t give it another thought until the next time I pop it in . . .