Part 6: Silver Nemesis

And so we come to the end of CyberSummer, Silver Nemesis. The last appearance of them in the classic series and they went out as they usually were...pretty bad.
Actually looking at it again, its not really that much of a Cyberman story. They’re just kind of in the background as far as the plot goes, stomping about and being monsters. Otherwise much of the plot is taken up by other characters and factions.
Ok plot time, the Doctor once launched a statue made in the image of a lady called Peinforte from England in 1638 into space where it became a comet. Now in 1988 it has returned to Earth. Now a faction of random Neo-Nazis (They always ruin everything.) have arrived to take it away and then Peinforte also arrives using a magic potion made out of blood (yes you heard me right) to take it. And then a legion of Cybermen also arrive.
So with all this fuss over the statue you can probably tell its not just some pretty statue that everyone wants in their garden. The statue, named Nemesis, is made from a living metal develiped as a weapon on an alien planet, that fell to Earth in 1638 and was found by Peinforte who made it into a statue. The statue has a bow and arrow which is needed to power it up; the Neo Nazis have the bow and Peinforte has the arrow. Oh also the Cybermen have a massive fleet of ships somewhere to take over the world after they get Nemesis.

Yeah, so problem no.1, there is way too much going on in this plot and in the span of only three episodes. The Cybermen were a late addition and just make the whole thing far more crowded. The Neo-Nazis also feel uneeded and barely get any time either, so they just come across as a bunch of losers...which admittedly all Neo Nazis are. Tee hee.

Problem no.2, The Cybermen themselves. Not only do they barely do anything, but they also don’t feel like Cybermen. The leader and second in command bicker and disagree like Megatron and Starscream, minus the emotion and Starscream’s shrillness. Oh also they want to turn Earth into the new Mondas. Eh, I suppose it is a step up from destroying Earth completely.

Problem no.3, The music. Most of it sounds like a late 1980s dance club. A really bad 1980s dance club and kept giving me flashbacks to an eighties party I went to in highschool. It was terrifying; the living envied the dead!

Despite the negatives I feel this has a fair amount of positives that save it from the utter dregs. First off Peinforte makes a great villain. Well ok maybe not a great villain, but she’s certainly an interesting one, especially near the end when she hints that she knows more of the Doctor than we do. This was all hinting at the Cartmel Masterplan (named after Andrew Cartmel, who was the script editor of the time), that was going to end the series with discovering who the Doctor really was. With the series facing cancellation, Cartmel decided the series would end with the Doctor’s past being explored which sadly was never fully realised but we do get some great hints here and there and Silver Nemesis is no exception. There are great scenes of Doctor mystery inbetween the bad plot stuff.

Also on a personal note, I do like many of the quieter scenes with Ace and the Doctor and I always love 7th Doctor era space shots with planets and stars that look like paintings. Though speaking of which, Ace gets a raw deal here compared to her other stories. She sadly has very little to do, except for a battle scene where she takes down a bunch of Cybermen using gold coins and the mysterious final moments which are actually really fascinating; Ace asks the Doctor who he is, but he just puts a finger to his lips and smiles. What happened to mystery like this in Doctor Who? Now its mostly just wailing and “OH boohoo hoo!”

So...Silver Nemesis. I really have a hard time deciding on whether this is good or bad. It has some brilliant ideas running through here and, especially the statue itself which is an interesting character in its own right and it does speed along unlike some other sluggish episodes. But its bogged down lots of shoddy ideas and overstuffed so that its bursting at the seams. It is the weakest of the 80s Cyberman stories, neither having the impact of Earthshock or the gritty action to mark it out like Attack of the Cybermen. In fact it barely counts as a Cyberman story due to their limited role.
As for being the official 25th anniversary story, eh, your better off watching Remembrance of the Daleks instead. Its better paced, has more atmosphere and fleshed out characters. If anything Remembrance feels far more like an anniversary story than Nemesis, with links to the past.

And thus comes the sad conclusion of Cyber Summer. The biggest issue with many classic Cybermen stories is that the writers didn’t seem to know what they were dealing with and what made the Cybermen such a scary villain. They’re not simply cold blooded killers, but a reflection of what people could become when pushed to the extreme and asks what would we sacrifice simply for survival?
This issue has carried onto the New Series who, aside from a few instances, don’t recognise the Cybermen as once being human and instead focus more on arbitrary things giant robots, silly sitcom comedy and Tim Burton-esque settings. Also I hate the new redesign of the Cybermen; they look more like Iron Man than horrific machines that once were human beings.

That being said I would recommend the episode World Enough and Time. Not only does it bring back the classic Tenth Planet Cybermen design but it does delve into the horror of being converted into one of these lifeless automatons. Actually it got me really uncomfortable and even nauseas at times in just how they portray Cyber conversion. So it must be doing something right. It has some New Whoisms that, I admit, I cannot stand such as being way too fast and throwing away characters too soon and also it suffers from a very clumsy part 2 which has a companion who dies not dying actually and living forever. Even at its darkest, New Who is utterly gutless. I think World Enough and Time and The Tenth Planet are the closest we have to exploring this concept, but both are inferior to the audio story Spare Parts, which I highly recommend; probably the best you can get so far.

And so it all comes to a close. As I said earlier I won’t be reviewing anything else for a while. I’ve tired myself out and haven’t found much joy in it recently. So I’ll be focusing more on story writing for now. But I hope the 3 or so people who read these journals have enjoyed it so far.