Nightmare in Silver

Dear Gary—

It’s just so wrong. Nightmare in Silver is wrong. And it could be so right. The elements are in place but they are not utilized. Everything is shortcut and convenient and obvious. It is lazy and shoddy. I am speaking about New Who in general, with Nightmare in Silver being my focus for this troubling pattern.

Let’s start with location. At long last we are on an alien planet. As Doctor number nine would say: “Fantastic.” Not just an alien planet, but an alien planet with “the biggest and best amusement park there will ever be.” Only to quickly learn that the park is out of business and abandoned. That’s OK, though. Abandoned amusement parks are rife with all kinds of possibilities. Then Webley shows up and leads us to “Webley’s World of Wonders. Miracles, marvels, and more await you.” This, too, makes the imagination reel. However, not one spark of creativity emerges from this wonderland of opportunity.

My mind wanders back, Gary, to two subpar Doctor Who stories from the Classic years. The first is The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.  This fails on many levels, but at least it exploits the circus element to full extent. Next I think of one of my least favorite episodes of all time, the deadly dull and boring The Web Planet with its bouncy castle web of intrigue. At least that serial had some originality, even if it did fall flat for the most part. But I think I would rather bounce around with Vicki in that stagnant story than spend the oh so brief moments of Spacy Zoomer microgravity with Angie and Artie.

Angie and Artie. It is easy to blame the failure of Nightmare in Silver on Angie and Artie. More so Angie. Artie is OK in a generic kid kind of way. Angie, on the other hand, is obnoxious and irritating, in a generic kid kind of way. Capital Generic, capital Kid. Two more convenient and shortcut characters are not to be found than Angie and Artie. They are the cardboard cutout charges of Clara, for whom she clearly has no affection and in whom she clearly has no interest, and vice versa. Angie rivals Peri in the high maintenance category. At least Peri took an occasional interest in the marvels of the universe the Doctor showed her.

No matter how generic or irritating, Angie and Artie are Clara’s responsibility, and she (and the Doctor) show the highest irresponsibility in nonchalantly whisking these two minors off into the most dangerous of situations for no good or clearly defined reason. The previous story ended with the two brats blackmailing Clara with pictures of her in impossibly historic settings. So what? (I won’t get started in on the whole ‘the Doctor is erased from history but pictures of him exist on the internet for any child to find when it is most convenient’ rant.) What has she to lose? Her standing as a nanny? What even does she have to explain? That she has look-alikes, possibly ancestors, who once lived and had photographs taken of themselves? Neither she nor the Doctor has anything to fear from these children or from the random photos found on the worldwide web. So why exactly do they cave and take the ungrateful little monsters anywhere, much less into danger?

Which leads me to a Rory reminiscence. I don’t remember the story and don’t care enough to research it, but at one point Rory condemns the Doctor with a ‘why don’t you read your history books’ accusation when the Doctor leads Amy and Rory into a dangerous situation of the future. So why didn’t the Doctor learn his lesson and look before he leaped onto this planet that he promised would be nothing but fun but turns out to be nothing but danger? Especially with two kids in tow (even if they are obnoxious brats). As soon as he sensed something amiss he should have taken the two out of harm’s way. He has a time and space machine; he has the TARDIS; he could have dropped them safely home and returned in time to save the day. At the very least he could have deposited them in the TARDIS to ride it out. But no, he places them in a stranger’s hands (Webley’s) and tells them, “don’t wander off.” As if that’s an option.

Webley and the kids are sacrificial lambs on the altar of New Who. They serve no purpose other than to give the Doctor something to fight for. Webley in particular is disposable; nobody cares about poor half-cyborg-converted Webley once his job of luring the kids is done. Poor wibley wobley Webely. He could have been so much more.

But the true creativity killer in Nightmare in Silver is the titular monster of the piece. These Cybermen are supposedly a mash-up of the Classic and the New Who races, Mondasian and Lumician. What they are really is a totally new and impossibly powerful creature that only resembles Cybermen in outward appearance. These Cybermen can do anything; overcome any difficulty; counteract any weapon. They simply “upgrade” themselves by the magic power of the author’s pen.

This is the same problem that I find with the Weeping Angels in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. An omnipotent, omniscient foe that can do anything on the writer’s whim isn’t scary. It’s boring. The only options open to our protagonists are to die, run away, and/or wait for the miracle lurking in the script to save them.

In Nightmare in Silver the answer is laughably inexcusable. Throughout the story the Doctor and Clara run around telling everyone, ‘don’t blow up the planet, don’t blow up the planet, whatever you do don’t blow up the planet,’ until the last minute when they change their minds and: ‘uh oh, better blow up the planet.’ But darn the luck, the only person who can voice activate the bomb is dead and the remote control device is destroyed. Wait a minute—Porridge was the Emperor all along! He can save the day. All he has to do is click his heels three times. And just when you think the Doctor and Clara and the Emperor and the odd lot troops will be blown up along with the army of Cybermen, a magic transport system teleports them all off planet and safely into the Emperor’s throne room, even allowing enough time for the Doctor to make a special request for the deliverance of his TARDIS. Voila. One stroke of the mighty pen and it’s all over.

So why didn’t they do that to start with and save all of the trouble and the deaths? It was so simple and effective. But then we wouldn’t have an excuse for the Doctor and Clara to do what they do best, which is to be Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman.

As far as I can see, this entire story is an excuse to let Matt Smith uncork a rollicking performance as the Cyber-Planner/Doctor split personality. This is indeed an entertaining shtick that almost makes the uselessness of the narrative worthwhile, and I might not complain at all if half of the dueling ego wasn’t supposedly a Cyberman. The one element that truly makes the Cybermen scary is that they have eliminated all emotion. Yet the Cyber-Planner half of the Doctor is brimming with charismatic individuality. The best way to tell when C-P has control vs. the Doctor is when he is the most vibrant. “I could call myself Mister Clever,” he gloats, and then adds most uncharacteristically for a Cyberman, “Oh this is just dreamy.” His attempted seduction of Clara is another give-away that this is no Cyberman, and again only an excuse to let the Doctor deliver this line to Clara: “You’re too short and bossy, and your nose is all funny.” It’s an amusing skit inserted into the framework of a makeshift plot.

Jenna-Louise Coleman, too, is enjoyable to watch as she plays at being Clara. Her brave and resourceful and take-charge personality is delivered expertly and I almost forget what a negligent nanny she is. That’s it, though. She has this job on paper, it says so in the script, but it isn’t developed any further than that. There is no feeling behind it. She could just as easily be a waitress or a doctor or an executive. The kids are merely a McGuffin. This lack of depth is enhanced when the Emperor proposes to her at the end of the day. He throws a few shy glances her way during the course of the tale, but they have no meaningful interactions that would lead one to believe that he has fallen in love with her. Her rejection and his acceptance of her rejection are devoid of any real sentiment.  

It is ironic that in a story about Cybermen it is the Cybermen who exhibit the most emotion. It is also indicative of this trend of the show to make things up as it goes along; to make things up and then to forget them when convenient; to make things up and then to ignore them; to make things up and then reinvent them. There is no consistency. And so the Doctor can erase himself from history but two school kids can find pictures of him on the internet.

It is lazy and it is shoddy. And ultimately it is boring when you know that the show can do anything it wants with no restraint.

Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman keep me on this slow path, Gary. It is certainly not this Probable Girl “mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that’s just a little bit too tight,” of an arc.