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archeological team goes missing in some mines, a group of soldiers goes
looking for them. Soon, they too are decimated by some androids.
Luckily, Doctor Who along with Tegan (Janet Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah
Sutton) & the annoying boy genius Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) do
arrive nearby in their time-machine TARDIS (time and relative dimensions
in space) & they soon find out these androids actually protect a
timebomb set to blow up the earth. After they succeed in defeating the
androids & dismantling the bomb, one question remains to be
answered: Who planted the bomb ? And - on track of the trigger signal
meant to explode the bomb - off the Doctor plus his companions plus
what's left of the soldiers go to deep space, where, on a freighter
commanded by Beryl Reid, they find ... the Cybermen, some of the good
Doctor's deadliest foes. Not having succeeded in blowing up the earth
via their bomb, they now want to blow it up by crashing the freighter,
packed with explosives, into the planet. Just why would they want to do
it ... because some big conference is taking place to unite a great many
of forces from different planets to fight & defeat the Cybermen
(just why the Cybermen would use the very same freighter that carries
their vast army is a question left unanswered. As is the question why
the Cybermen could come up with an alternative plan needing much
preparation just mere seconds after their first plan went wrong). Of
course the Doctor & company can spoil the Cybermen's plans,
especially Adric who has the freighter travel back in time some 65
million years (just how he did that is never explained),
still causing it to crash into earth, but instead of wiping the human
race, it now wipes out the dinosaurs (& here the story goes full
circle, in the beginning of the story the Doctor commented on how nobody
ever exactly knew why the dinosaurs became extinct), making human
supremacy on the earth possible in the first place (or at least so the
theory goes). Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how much you
liked the toddler), Adric dies in the process.
This story, a story of Doctor Who's 19th season (!) is regarded as
somewhat of a milestone in the show's long history, not only did it mark
the return of the Cybermen after a 7 year hiatus (the last story begore
being Revenge of the Cybermen of 1975, with Tom Baker as Doctor
Who), it is also one of the few episodes that kills off a central
character (only the 3rd time that happened in the series). On the other
hand it also shows what did essentially go wrong when John Nathan-Turner
tried to take the show "into the Eighties". Everything is so
streamlined, slick & polished, with many a shoot-out & action
aplenty, just like any decent sci-fi actioner ... & that's exactly
what Doctor Who never was meant to be. In its prime during the
70's, with Jon Pertwee or especially Tom Baker in the lead, the show
relied heavily on wild concepts, sharp & witty, even absurd dialogue
with the Doctor inevitably trying to talk his way out of
situations, with sets that looked anything but realistic & monsters
that often seemed to be (at least half) made up on the spot.
In this one though, the Cybermen's costumes seemed to be carefully
designed to look like something out of bores like Star Wars or Battlestar
Galactica (though when in some shots you see they wear customary
moonboots, that's at least a little endearing), the (admittedly) wild
concept of the Cybermen's bomb making human's supremacy of earth - which
they wished to
end - possible in the first place, is sacrificed for the emotional moment
of Adric's death. Also, the strangeness of the Doctor went somewhat
amiss when Peter Davison - an accomplished actor, maybe the best to take
the role, but entirely un-weird - took over, not at all helped by the
unwitty, uncomical, very very bland dialogues he had to deliver. He for
example says to the Cyberleader "when was the last time you saw a
sunset, smelled a flower, had a well-prepared meal", which
supposedly was thought to be humane & meaningful, but instead comes
across overly clichéd & Americanized to the point where it makes
you want to throw up ... though the thought of a Cyberman having
a well-prepared meal is actually somewhat intriguing.
David Banks by the way played the Cyberleader, a role that he would
continue to play in 3 more episodes (The Five Doctors, Attack
of the Cybermen, Silver Nemesis) until 1988 - his sticking to
the role being somewhat strange though because his face was totally
hidden behind a motionless mask !
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