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Cyber-Summer part 3; The Wheel in Space and The Invasion
7 years ago
ScottishFurAfter two pretty good Cybermen episodes and one not so great one, we find ourselves now with the Wheel in Space which sort of reaches a middle ground.
The Doctor and Jamie arrive on a deserted space vessel transporting materials to a space station, the titular Wheel in Space. The cargo holds two Cybermen and a bunch of Cybermats who aim to take over the Wheel and use its random super laser cannon to destroy the Earth...of course.
So the Wheel in Space is basically a retread of The Moonbase and Tenth Planet’s destroy the Earth. Why does the same writer who created them keep returning to this same plot line? Was it time constraints or was he just exhausted with them? Who can tell. That being said I initially thought that Wheel was going to be a better story than Moonbase coming in, being the last Cyberman episode I have yet to watch/listen to yet. Did it hold up? Not really.
Wheel is a lot more creepy atmosphere and build up. That first episode especially has a tangible sense of claustrophobia, as the Doctor and Jamie are floating in space with no sign of help anywhere. Unfortunately this slow pace gets really dull midway through when the plot kind of grinds to halt and the cybermen reminds us of their plan for the third or forth time.
The best thing in this story are the characters. We have Gemma, an all round compelling and wonderfully written character. She provides the voice of reason to the unstable leader of the station Jarvis and has a great rapport with the Doctor. There’s a really sweet scene where the Doctor calls her ‘Miss’ but she corrects him with ‘Mrs’, and the Doctor seems genuinely disappointed. Oh Doctor you sly dog! Her death by Cyberman laser beam is really sad and the Doctor’s reaction is muted yet far more weighty than any extended crying scene.
And then of course there is Zoe, the new companion. Zoe is the first companion who is just as intelligent, or its suggested at times, even smarter than the Doctor. She’s the precursor to Romana and Nyssa. Oh and she’s a lot of fun to. Here she makes fun of Jamie and is overall bright and perky. She does get a lot more material later on, but this is a good intro for her.
Unfortunately this where all the good stuff end. The slow pace is good at first for building suspense, but it really hinders the story in the midpoint. It becomes insufferably dull seeing the usual ‘heroes mistaken for saboteur’ routine and the usual wrong accusations and arguing here and there. Its the effect of coming at the end of a season where nearly everything else was the same base-under-seige routine. With red shirts dying and so on.
And then there’s the Cybermen. Oh poor Cybermen you have taken a beating. They’re back to being brainless ‘CONQUER THE WORLD FOR ITS TREASURES!’ generic baddies. No cyber-conversion or anything like that. How come they kept hiring this writer if his track record was this uneven? No offence Kit Peddler but make up your mind! And it doesn’t help that the Cybermen, despite a rather cool redesign, have some of the weirdest voices.
You may be wondering why they’re nodding their heads like that. It was so the actors could work their voices through the filter giving them that robotic tone. And what is with that dialogue?
That being said there is this great scene with them and the Second Doctor.
So….the Wheel in Space. Its kind of on the same level as Moonbase; it does one or two things better yet it also has some flaws and so they’re both pretty equal. Its not very entertaining for the most part, not even really scary and coming at the end of a long string of samey stories, it just feels so tired. I admit I enjoyed it a tiny bit more than Moonbase, a bit, but its not the hill I want to die defending.
And with that boring chapter out of the way, we- OH hey The Invasion is next! Sweet!
I didn’t want to do another 2 parter journal so soon, hoping to keep it until later for Earthshock and Attack of the Cybermen for reasons that I will get to later. But I think I’ll keep the Invasion’s review brief. Oh not because its bad, on the contrary. I think it should be experienced though so I won’t give anything away.
The Doctor and co land on Earth in an unspecific date (I won’t go into the whole UNIT dating thing. It’ll just make heads explode.) to find a strange gigantic company called International Electromatics. The company makes electronic devices and is lead by a man called Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn is secretly in league with the Cybermen and is shipping them into London via railway cars and the sewers. The Cybermen begin transmitting a radio signal through the devices that paralyse humans and emerge from the sewers in force. However, both Vaughn and the Cybermen are planning to backstab each other and soon Vaughn’s haughty ambitions are dashed as the Cybermen plan to...oh...blow up the world….ok.
Alright The Invasion. The story may be quite slight and not very deep, its got a lot of style and characterisation that lifts it high above many of the other 60s Cyberman stories. In fact I think its one of the best of the bunch. Its also immortalised as the introduction of UNIT, which became integral for the Third Doctor. This sort of format of modern day (well modern day for then) settings and Doctor saving Earth from alien menace became a standard part of the series.
The Invasion also benefits from trimming most of the fat that would be bolted onto previous outings. This story is 8 episodes long, two more than Wheel in Space and double the length of Moonbase, yet it feels far more smooth and engaging. However this streamlining comes at a cost for some scenes. There’s a big chase that’s talked about to rescue a kidnapped scientist, but that’s the main issue; its just talked about. We don’t see it. And also the ending is a bit limp. We just end up waiting around with the other characters for a rocket to hit the main cyberman spaceship. Boy its a slow three minutes long.
Despite these bumps, The Invasion is still one fine story with memorable imagery and a great supporting cast. And they really splashed out with the budget on this one, with helicopter rescues and so on. Oh also should talk about the animation. Several stories have had animated episodes for DVD releases and the Invasion was the first. Its also probably one of the better ones and adds a great noir look to the serial. Also they fixed some issues; the electronic chips the Doctor bring in actually look alien and they add a spaceship to a scene where there was none originally, yet the characters talk about it. So overall I’d recommend the DVD.
And so that is that for the 60s Cyberman stories. I’m sorry this has taken a while. The Wheel in Space slowed down my momentum since it wasn’t available on DVD and it was a pretty frustrating episode to write about. But now it should be smoother.
Next we get the only 70s Cyberman story. Is it good? No…but that is a tale for another time.
The Doctor and Jamie arrive on a deserted space vessel transporting materials to a space station, the titular Wheel in Space. The cargo holds two Cybermen and a bunch of Cybermats who aim to take over the Wheel and use its random super laser cannon to destroy the Earth...of course.
So the Wheel in Space is basically a retread of The Moonbase and Tenth Planet’s destroy the Earth. Why does the same writer who created them keep returning to this same plot line? Was it time constraints or was he just exhausted with them? Who can tell. That being said I initially thought that Wheel was going to be a better story than Moonbase coming in, being the last Cyberman episode I have yet to watch/listen to yet. Did it hold up? Not really.
Wheel is a lot more creepy atmosphere and build up. That first episode especially has a tangible sense of claustrophobia, as the Doctor and Jamie are floating in space with no sign of help anywhere. Unfortunately this slow pace gets really dull midway through when the plot kind of grinds to halt and the cybermen reminds us of their plan for the third or forth time.
The best thing in this story are the characters. We have Gemma, an all round compelling and wonderfully written character. She provides the voice of reason to the unstable leader of the station Jarvis and has a great rapport with the Doctor. There’s a really sweet scene where the Doctor calls her ‘Miss’ but she corrects him with ‘Mrs’, and the Doctor seems genuinely disappointed. Oh Doctor you sly dog! Her death by Cyberman laser beam is really sad and the Doctor’s reaction is muted yet far more weighty than any extended crying scene.
And then of course there is Zoe, the new companion. Zoe is the first companion who is just as intelligent, or its suggested at times, even smarter than the Doctor. She’s the precursor to Romana and Nyssa. Oh and she’s a lot of fun to. Here she makes fun of Jamie and is overall bright and perky. She does get a lot more material later on, but this is a good intro for her.
Unfortunately this where all the good stuff end. The slow pace is good at first for building suspense, but it really hinders the story in the midpoint. It becomes insufferably dull seeing the usual ‘heroes mistaken for saboteur’ routine and the usual wrong accusations and arguing here and there. Its the effect of coming at the end of a season where nearly everything else was the same base-under-seige routine. With red shirts dying and so on.
And then there’s the Cybermen. Oh poor Cybermen you have taken a beating. They’re back to being brainless ‘CONQUER THE WORLD FOR ITS TREASURES!’ generic baddies. No cyber-conversion or anything like that. How come they kept hiring this writer if his track record was this uneven? No offence Kit Peddler but make up your mind! And it doesn’t help that the Cybermen, despite a rather cool redesign, have some of the weirdest voices.
You may be wondering why they’re nodding their heads like that. It was so the actors could work their voices through the filter giving them that robotic tone. And what is with that dialogue?
That being said there is this great scene with them and the Second Doctor.
So….the Wheel in Space. Its kind of on the same level as Moonbase; it does one or two things better yet it also has some flaws and so they’re both pretty equal. Its not very entertaining for the most part, not even really scary and coming at the end of a long string of samey stories, it just feels so tired. I admit I enjoyed it a tiny bit more than Moonbase, a bit, but its not the hill I want to die defending.
And with that boring chapter out of the way, we- OH hey The Invasion is next! Sweet!
I didn’t want to do another 2 parter journal so soon, hoping to keep it until later for Earthshock and Attack of the Cybermen for reasons that I will get to later. But I think I’ll keep the Invasion’s review brief. Oh not because its bad, on the contrary. I think it should be experienced though so I won’t give anything away.
The Doctor and co land on Earth in an unspecific date (I won’t go into the whole UNIT dating thing. It’ll just make heads explode.) to find a strange gigantic company called International Electromatics. The company makes electronic devices and is lead by a man called Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn is secretly in league with the Cybermen and is shipping them into London via railway cars and the sewers. The Cybermen begin transmitting a radio signal through the devices that paralyse humans and emerge from the sewers in force. However, both Vaughn and the Cybermen are planning to backstab each other and soon Vaughn’s haughty ambitions are dashed as the Cybermen plan to...oh...blow up the world….ok.
Alright The Invasion. The story may be quite slight and not very deep, its got a lot of style and characterisation that lifts it high above many of the other 60s Cyberman stories. In fact I think its one of the best of the bunch. Its also immortalised as the introduction of UNIT, which became integral for the Third Doctor. This sort of format of modern day (well modern day for then) settings and Doctor saving Earth from alien menace became a standard part of the series.
The Invasion also benefits from trimming most of the fat that would be bolted onto previous outings. This story is 8 episodes long, two more than Wheel in Space and double the length of Moonbase, yet it feels far more smooth and engaging. However this streamlining comes at a cost for some scenes. There’s a big chase that’s talked about to rescue a kidnapped scientist, but that’s the main issue; its just talked about. We don’t see it. And also the ending is a bit limp. We just end up waiting around with the other characters for a rocket to hit the main cyberman spaceship. Boy its a slow three minutes long.
Despite these bumps, The Invasion is still one fine story with memorable imagery and a great supporting cast. And they really splashed out with the budget on this one, with helicopter rescues and so on. Oh also should talk about the animation. Several stories have had animated episodes for DVD releases and the Invasion was the first. Its also probably one of the better ones and adds a great noir look to the serial. Also they fixed some issues; the electronic chips the Doctor bring in actually look alien and they add a spaceship to a scene where there was none originally, yet the characters talk about it. So overall I’d recommend the DVD.
And so that is that for the 60s Cyberman stories. I’m sorry this has taken a while. The Wheel in Space slowed down my momentum since it wasn’t available on DVD and it was a pretty frustrating episode to write about. But now it should be smoother.
Next we get the only 70s Cyberman story. Is it good? No…but that is a tale for another time.
The best cyberman story though is from the new series; World Enough and Time...despite a few personal issues here and there with it :p