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Attack Of The Cybermen
daveyboy7472
Posts: 16,418 Forum Member
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Though not as good as Earthshock, Attack Of The Cybermen is not a bad opener for the 22nd Season.
The story is full of continuity references, back to mainly The Tomb Of The Cybermen, The Tenth Planet and even a little bit to The Invasion. As with most of the Season, continuity was taken to a further level than it had been during the Davison Era, to an extent the show started relying on it's own mythology and out of all the stories, this one does it the worse.
As for the Sixth Doctor, as mentioned in the previous thread, he is noticeably friendlier here, and less aggressive, though prone to the odd outburst or three. I liked the way it is implicated that maybe he still hasn't fully got over his regeneration between stories by getting Peri's name wrong for example. As I said in the Dalek Thread last week, I find it difficult to really understand his remorse over Lytton's death and getting his character so wrong when he hardly met him in the previous story. It does seem a bit of a continuity cock-up but it wouldn't be the last for this Season. And Lytton's death itself was the first example of the more violent nature of the story with his hands being squeezed to produce blood and The Doctor shooting down the Cyberleader. I also liked how for the first time in years the Time Lords manipulated The Doctor into the situation he is in, assuming his theory at their involvement is correct.
The story also boasts some excellent guest characters. Bates and Stratton, and Brian Glover as Griffiths is just superb. There was also Terry 'Davros' Molloy as Russell, it was good to see what he really looked like. Also my other fave Blue Peter presenter, Sarah Greene and Faith Brown. I also liked the Cryons as well, thought they were an interesting race.
I have other stuff to add to the thread but after a busy day I'm knackered so I'll open the floor up to others who wish to contribute and add further comments at a later time. Just thought I'd better get it started!
The story is full of continuity references, back to mainly The Tomb Of The Cybermen, The Tenth Planet and even a little bit to The Invasion. As with most of the Season, continuity was taken to a further level than it had been during the Davison Era, to an extent the show started relying on it's own mythology and out of all the stories, this one does it the worse.
As for the Sixth Doctor, as mentioned in the previous thread, he is noticeably friendlier here, and less aggressive, though prone to the odd outburst or three. I liked the way it is implicated that maybe he still hasn't fully got over his regeneration between stories by getting Peri's name wrong for example. As I said in the Dalek Thread last week, I find it difficult to really understand his remorse over Lytton's death and getting his character so wrong when he hardly met him in the previous story. It does seem a bit of a continuity cock-up but it wouldn't be the last for this Season. And Lytton's death itself was the first example of the more violent nature of the story with his hands being squeezed to produce blood and The Doctor shooting down the Cyberleader. I also liked how for the first time in years the Time Lords manipulated The Doctor into the situation he is in, assuming his theory at their involvement is correct.
The story also boasts some excellent guest characters. Bates and Stratton, and Brian Glover as Griffiths is just superb. There was also Terry 'Davros' Molloy as Russell, it was good to see what he really looked like. Also my other fave Blue Peter presenter, Sarah Greene and Faith Brown. I also liked the Cryons as well, thought they were an interesting race.
I have other stuff to add to the thread but after a busy day I'm knackered so I'll open the floor up to others who wish to contribute and add further comments at a later time. Just thought I'd better get it started!
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So yeah, a bit of a mixed bag, something thats perfectly illustrated in the music to this episode. Some of the track is great, effective and really atmospheric. Other music, is shit. I mean what is up with the music+costumes in this season? It does look great though
I just love it that the Doctor has fixed the chameleon circuit on the Tardis so that it starts changing shape again. Yes, it's not a police box :rolleyes: that's just the shape it's stuck in now (basically for the novelty nowadays).
But the number of times, amongst all the seriousness and drama of the story, the Doctor lands the Tardis then looks back in a 'wtf?
If I had my way this would happen in every story. Oh the fun it would be seeing the Doctor trying to find the door on a number of different objects.
As was said in the Twin Dilemma thread, if only this was the 6th Doctor's first adventure. There's a real freshness to this story that would have complimented him making his debut, plus they could have incorporated the Doctor's newly unbalanced state/appearance with the constantly changing Tardis in a clever way.
I also love the moment when the Doctor is being kept prisoner locked in a freezer with a Cryon who is offloading everything the Cybermen are planning. For the first time his crabby mood fits very well, not only being outraged and disgusted at what he's hearing but because he's also freezing his arse off the longer he's in there.
Overall it does feel like a whole mass of ideas were just thrown together to make this story, but I manage to find it entertaining.
I also loved the stuff in Totter's Yard. Shame it looked different to what it was before, and all the scenes in the opening episode around it with The Doctor locating the alien signal were amusing as well. Liked Peri in her pink leotard outfit and in this story, the whinging and arguing wasn't quite as great as others in the Season. Agree also the cliffhanger was a good one.
I also liked the way the same location setting was used from The Tomb Of The Cybermen, gave it an extra dimension, though at the time very people would have been unaware of it as the story was lost at that time. Not so sure about the Cybercontroller in this either. In Tombs his appearance was sleek and menacing, here he looks a right fat B*****d. At least the vocals were better. I also thought it was a mistake having him and the CyberLeader in the same story as it sort of devalues the latter really, he works better on his own as the boss.
Aside from what has already been mentioned, there were other violent moments as well. The Cybermen knocking The Doctor to the floor of the TARDIS was unnecessary I thought and Flast's death as she tried to get back into the cold was well played but disturbing at the same time.
Lytton's secret involvement with the Cryons was a bit of a copy from Kellman's secret pact with the Vogans in Revenge Of The Cybermen. Not sure if this radical change in characterisation really worked, he was better as a right hard mercenary in his previous story. Did like the way he wound The Doctor up on board the TARDIS though!
Overall though, there is much to enjoy in Attack Of The Cybermen. As has been said it would have made a much better debut for the Sixth Doctor. Colin Baker is really good in this, but the damage was already done.
This is nothing but fanwank of the highest order - that's what you get when you have 'superfan' Ian Levine effectively working as an unpaid script editor... What's so annoying is that these hamfistedly shoehorned-in continuity references add absolutely nothing to the story, and were clearly dumped in the script solely to make fanboys wet themselves. And then the fanwank script is turned into a lazy production which makes no attempt to get all the continuity correct, eg:
Totters Yard - it's not the same junk yard.
The Tombs - no attempt has been made to make them even slightly similar to those in the 1967 story.
The Cyber Controller is clearly intended to be the same character as the 1967 one, yet he looks completely different.
OK so the general public wouldn't notice these things, nor would they particularly care, but as this story is so loaded with contnuity referenences that ONLY the fans would understand it's doubly annoying that there are all these errors that ONLY the fans would would notice.
And this script is aimed, not at the general public, who'd probably not follow much of the plot (such as it is), this script is aimed firmly at the Fans. And this is JNT's biggest and most catastrophic mistake. In pandering to a very vocal, but actually very small group of people, JNT took Doctor Who down a blind alley. He should have been making solid early evening sci-fi/fantasy drama (like all the producers before him), but instead he's now producing the TV equivalent of Fan Fiction, a programme that can only ever appeal to an ever more insular minority crowd.
Now this isn't an attack on fan fiction - I love it - but I understand that it's a very niche product, and BBC1 is not the place for it. JNT seemed to lose that perspective in the mid 1980s and we end up with tedious dross like Attack Of The Cybermen, or The Two Doctors. Stories with no focus, no desire to appeal to a wider audience other than a dwindling number of Who fans.
OK rant over. There are a number of good points about Attack despite everything. The Cybs in the sewers are terrific, Terry Molloy gives a cracking performance, the action sequences on the surface of Telos are well directed, but as with the previous season's Dalek story it's little more than series of disconnected set pieces, many of the characters seem to be having their own unconnected adventures, and there's no dramatic tension at all. The Cybs look good as always, (this design is one of my favourites) but are distressingly easy to kill (with the Cyber massacre of the Five Doctors being the template). The level of violence is ramped up again, which adds nothing to the story, having been added only for a bit of 'excitement' in the absence of a decent script. Oh, and the Cryons - rubbish or what?
And finally a word on the costumes - Colin's appalling outfit has been commented on many times, and it's terrible and undermines his Doctor's authority at every turn, but what was poor Nicola Bryant wearing in part one? I mean it showed off Nicola's figure all right, but no-one in their right minds would ever really wear an outfit like that. Not even in 1985...
I wasn't complaining........
When you start making the show purely for the hardcore fans, you're only ever going to alienate the majority of the audience and - given how picky we hardcore fans are - piss off the people you ARE catering for. This reliance on continuity porn is going to please nobody, upset everybody, and it's ultimately what lead to the show dying for a time (for all the conspiracy theories about Grade etc., if the show was actually any GOOD at the time it wouldn't have wound up on hiatus).
Respecting the past is one thing (and I think Saturday's episode, with it's oblique references to Adric, Sara and Katerina, bringing in a spinoff characetr without mentioning the spinoff, and the passing mentions of the Brig and Zygons, was an example of how to cater to fans well - that stuff was there for us, but the episode would be just as effective [or not, depending on your view of TPOT] if you didn't pick up on those things), but I've often said that putting the hardcore fans first could well be one of the most dangerous things you could do as showrunner.
Some people just have dirty minds.
I always think Season 22 is a double-edged sword for me. As a fan, I actually enjoy all the various continuity references back to previous stories. As I've said numerous times before, I hate the fanw**k expression, but it's meaning I well understand and there's no doubt as you say that this Season did appeal to the fans more than anything else. It's probably why I enjoy it so much.
On the other hand though, I would love to have seen more stories like Vengeance on Varos which shows what could have been done with a bit more originality. I think what happens in the New Series is right, bringing back old monsters now and then but having fresh and original stories as well and that's where JNT really failed during this Season.
Someone said the other day that the big problem with 80's Who was that once something was popular once it was done over and over again and ultimately failed. With the continuity issue, it all started with Earthshock. JNT saw it was a popular move to bring back the Cybermen and constantly decided to bring back old monster after old monster, sometimes like Warriors Of The Deep, giving them crap stories to appear in. Seasons 18 and 19 were the most original he did until the McCoy Years and shows he could have got it right if he'd thought about it.
You can't expect Peri or any other female companion for that matter to wear outfits like that and not have a dirty mind!
The idea of the chamelion-circuit being 'fixed' alarmed me for a while. But when I saw what it 'became', I thought it might be good having the Tardis appear as something weird every week. But when I saw it re-appear as the Police-box - I knew that's what it's meant to be:)
Great to see the cyber-men back, and their 'excellent' performances as ever. Lytton was a blast from the past - but got his come-uppance this time.......although he wasn't such a bad chap really.
Those Cryons were a bit weird and their wiggling about niggled me......they reminded me of those insect aliens in The Web Planet back in the 60's!!
Good start anyway, I quite enjoyed Colin's term as the Doctor.....short as it was!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3vAc-TLvYHg/UBbpUJlxDII/AAAAAAAAAXk/JV3zzKpxvRY/s1600/chameleon+circuit.jpg
Aww how lovely.
And to think people thought Dr Who was camp.
Absolutely spot on. Your analysis not only gets to the heart of what is wrong with this story, but what was wrong with the entire show at this point. The fact is no producer of any long running franchise should listen to its fans. In fact, fans are the very last people they should listen to. That way lies madness and disaster. And Doctor Who 1980-89 is the ultimate tragic proof of that.
You can at the age of 8.
Colin's great here, too. Shame about that outfit . . .
You can't at the age of 12.......;):D
It doesn't matter that the Tombs look different. This is another area of the Tombs.
My problem here is the continuing Sawardisation of the show. Oh look ... he (co)wrote this script as well as editing it! Again, this means he takes his eye off the Script Editing ball and doesn't do as tight a job of watching the show's content as he should do.
It's not just the squashing of Lytton's hands. The scene that disturbs me most is Flast's death. The Cybermen torturing a woman who is clearly unwell, makes for most unpleasant veiwing and is up there with innocent Professor Laird being shot in the back in Resurrection of the Daleks.
Various other characters are casually bumped off just as they were in Warriors of the Deep (another script that has Saward's fingerprints all over it): just as the story is about to end, sundry people line up for their needless death scenes. It's meanspirited, unnecessary, gratuitous and OTT.
Amongst the things I do like in this story:
- the fantastic music (that wonderful clanging sound for the Cybermen, the "Peri running" music, the Cryon tinkly music, etc)
- the grim London street scenes (I am watching a lot of 80s TV drama on DVD at the moment, and they really don't make telly like that anymore)
- diamond robberies and "lose the motor" make the show seem like a junior version of stuff like The Sweeney!
- The Cryons are excellent, excellent creations
- the sewer scenes are nicely atmospheric
This is a pretty good story, all in all, but the nasty excesses of Sawardisation are continuing to take the series up a bit of a blind alley. Maybe he was giving us what he thought we wanted, but it smacks of his own agenda coming through. Action/adventure stories are all well and good, but trying to recapture Earthshock time and again is not healthy.
Having just watched those scenes in The Twin Dilemma, I noticed that too, there is a couple of scenes accompanied by the threatening sound effect of danger used in the previous serial for those scenes. I just got the impression they wanted to remind everyone this guy could turn. A jolt as it were to say we have an erratic new guy here.
The sound effects for the Cybermen made me laugh on watching it just recently, the footsteps sound in the sewers scenes with Lytton and co, it just seems so intrusive at that point, but also effective at the same time. But the music in general just like those used in Earthshock are very good.
The body counts in a lot of stories in this era are high, noticably high when you rewatch them - Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks and this. It smacks of lazy storytelling as so many of them are just cannon fodder for cannon fodder's sake.
On that does anyone notice how fallible the Cybermen are to bullets, yet in Earthshock the futuristic energy guns are at times virtually useless against them.
I'm glad Lytton gets another outing, although he is less effective in his Cryon double agent guise. Overall I liked his more ruthless approach in Resurrection of the Daleks, but still has plenty of good moments, winding the Doctor up on the TARDIS and him risking himself to capture the time machine. Pity we did not see him again, surviving and turning up in another story. After all they loved a mercenary in this era of the show!
I do like this story, it generally has a good pace. I would agree the end is a little too quick. But the story throughout is always shifting and being added to, with the prisoners on Telos and the introduction of the Cryons. A good Sixth Doctor story and a decent follow up to Earthshock for the Cybermen.
I do think there are a number of issues with the story telling that reflect issues with the writing at the time;
a/ The heavy-handed continuity references that were great for fans, but not so much for other viewers
b/ The feeling that things could have worked out the same way if the Doctor had never been involved (this is even more pronounced in the season finale, Revelation of the Daleks, when the Doctor and Peri needn't have been involved at all)
c/ The violence
Within itself, though, a great story. The confusion about the Doctor seeming to know Lyton could easily be sorted out by Big Finish!
I loved the violence in this didnt see a problem with it and kinda wished other series had the same thing. Bought time the Doctor killed some Cybermen.
Todays standards in Moffatt would just ruin it and have someone else do the killing.
Colin's settling in, but Nicola gives a particularly whiny performance and I just found myself not caring about the characters and their plight. It just feels inconsequential to me. Add to that an appalling cliffhanger and the conclusion with the Doctor feeling sorry for a murdering gun for hire who quite happily shoots people in the face (well, that was in his first story, but still...)
Um, not a favourite then.