Hello ladies and gents and welcome to another DrWho review. This time its 1982’s Earthshock.
The early 80s were a pretty good time from the series; it had grown more interesting and looked much more polished compared to the rather stale. That all said, it didn’t take long for 80s Who to fall on its face.
By 1982 we had a new Doctor and a full TARDIS with three companions; Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. None of these companions are particularly memorable or even that likeable in the case of Adric. So in Earthshock, he had to go.

In Earthshock, the Cybermen plan to drive a space freighter into an intergalactic peace conference on Earth to prevent a dangerous alliance which will threaten them with extinction. They also try destroying Earth with a bomb guarded by some sinister androids which wipe all but one of a team of palaeontologists. After diffusing the bomb and now with a gang of soldiers and Professor Kyle, the only survive of said team, the Doctor and Co. go and try to find who planted it and finds himself on the space freighter.

Earthshock is one of those legendary episodes. It was THE episode of its day, a momentous Television event. It featured the Cybermen, stylish direction; its basically wonky old time DrWho directed like a blockbuster and lots of action. But while its had a glowing reputation for most of the 80s, its kind of dropped from greatness for some fans. Are they right? Well….yes. But lets discuss the good stuff first.
The biggest plus for Earthshock is its direction as mentioned before. Its such a good looking episode, with lots of dark gloomy lighting, foreboding atmosphere, a great spaceship design and some sinister music to lace the scenes. You can feel the influence of Alien on the spaceship scenes, even a warning klaxon sounds very much like the one used on the Nostromo. Of course the spotlight of this episode is the Cybermen. After a downright disaster of an episode before (Revenge of the Cybermen, a pile of boringness) they are back on form with an iconic design, even if they do look like they have 80s legwarmers around their ankles. But it was an inspired choice to give them visible mouths with the chin of the actors, painted silver and mouth blackened, to remind us that these aren’t just generic evil robots who want to take away people’s emotions because they are evil (As much as the new show wants us to think), but are people who willingly gave up all humanity just to survive. The androids, while simple; basically just people in black featureless masks and black spandex are really sinister. Always in the shadows and with creepy weaponry that reduces people to pools of foul liquids.
Its also note worthy

But then we go straight to the bad things about the episode. There’s one huge major downfall of this episode and that is pacing. The paces of the first and final episodes are brilliant, but in the middle there is a bit of flab. There’s about three or four scenes of Nyssa and Professor Kyle in the TARDIS while everyone else is out and about and each scene is basically this:

Professor Kyle: “We have to help our friends!”

Nyssa: “Woah, hold on there little lady, where do you think you’re going? We are some of the smartest characters in the episode, we don’t belong out there. Lets leave all the work to a bunch of soldiers who shoot first ask later, a brat, a loud Australian woman and a blond Doctor. They clearly have their priorities right. Now lets go back to standing around doing nothing.”

Professor Kyle: “Oh, ok then.”

Rinse and repeat three or four times. Was this really needed? It just drags the story out and doesn’t build up drama or atmosphere. Its just boredom.
I’ve also seen some reviews complaining about how grey and dark Earthshock is...but honestly isn’t that the whole point? Its a dark bleak story, not sunshine and unicorns. So if you don’t like shades of grey, you’re really not going to like this episode. Aside from that, the only biggest issue I can see with it is that, its not a fun story. Not much comedy or banter, but that’s the main problem with early 80s DrWho, so its not specific to Earthshock.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

But let’s get to the next biggest thing about this story; Adric the brat dies. Ok that is a bit harsh, but I have no doubt that everyone will agree with me that Adric was an unlikeable character. He was snide, untrustworthy and complained a lot and was a teenage prodigy in mathematics. He was ok enough in his first season, but in his second he had a habit of betraying the Doctor and his companions when it seems like they’re losing and then flips back when the tables are turned. Basically he’s the worst friend you could ever have. All these qualities and more make for such a horrid slimy character that barely anyone would like. How the Doctor tolerated this dinghead for so long is beyond me. Earthshock, as though to pile home this point, begins with Adric throwing his toys out of the pram and having an argument with the Doctor.
Even his ending is kind of selfish and petty. The Cybermen have locked the space freighter’s controls with three codes that can only be solved by logical mathematics, so of course Adric was drawn to it like a vulture to a corpse. Adric solves one of the codes, but when all seems lost and the rest of the crew is abandoning ship, Adric slips out of the escape pod and continues to work on the codes….but as revealed in his last words;

“Now I’ll never know if I was right.”

Show that he wasn’t really doing this for the people on Earth or his friends, but to see if he could crack the codes himself for ego sake. But he fails and the freighter crashes into Earth….but due to a convenience, it crashes into the Earth 65 Million years ago and wipes out the dinosaurs. So really Adric pretty much died for nothing. But after all that wailing, thank goodness he went out in fire and explosions!

So that is Earthshock. Its considered a classic, but has gotten flack over the past few years. How do I feel about it? Well...honestly I’m kind of mixed on it. There are a lot of things I do like about this story. Its got some great designs, wonderful atmosphere and suspense, the Doctor is on form and there are some great bits of dialogue between him and the leader of the Cybermen. But at the same time the padding does make the viewing more difficult. Its the curse of the home media; VHS and DVDs. Back then you viewed the story once a week and so had a whole seven days to digest the episode before the next one. Now with home media we can watch it all in one go and repeat it and that is when you start noticing the cracks. Also looking at the story now I just noticed that not much happens really. If you’re looking for things to analyse, I wouldn’t recommend this and would point to Kinda instead. Earthshock is basically like an action movie, but not as densely packed.
It is a highlight of the Fifth Doctor’s run, but I don’t think its the best. In fact its gone a bit down in my viewpoint. That’s not to say its bad, not at all, but there are other episodes that would more regularly draw my attention.
Overall, not the worse, but not the best, but without a doubt iconic.