“The Rise Of The Cybermen”

The first two-part story of the season gave us the return of the Doctor’s second most memorable bad guys, the Cybermen. However, rather than trying to weave in some complicated back-story that gave the new viewers a brief history of Mondas and Telos and the why these silver giants were so upset in the first place, new Who writer, Tom MacRea set the story in that old sci-fi stalwart of a parallel world. This allowed a new, menacing design, and a new reason for taking over the world that really worked rather well and (if rumours are to be believed) set up some interesting story development for the series’ end. Legendary Doctor Who director, Graeme Harper, also returned and paced and structured these 90 minutes with aplomb. So why wasn’t this as good as it might have been?

Well, Roger Lloyd-Pack chewed up the scenery as the evil mastermind, John Lumic in a performance that brought back lots of memories of old Doctor Who for all the wrong reasons; the cliffhanger was resolved in a clever but oddly unsatisfactory way; and, in previous weeks, we had been treated to three of the greatest Who episodes I’ve ever seen and it was probably too much to ask for another. Despite the fact that there seems to have been another mid-season lull, these criticisms are really small beer… view the episode as a ninety minute movie and I promise you a thoroughly entertaining time. However, final word has to go to Noel Clarke, as Micky. Way back when “Rose” first aired, the guy took a lot of stick (even though we may try, how can we forget the wheelie bin scene?), but he’s come a long way and his performance
in this showed some real depth. If this is his final bow, I think I’m gonna miss him.

Tags: BBC1, Cyberman, Doctor Who, Mickey-Smith, noel-clarke, Rise-Of-The-Cybermen, Roger-Lloyd-Pack, Rose-Tyler, The-Age-Of-Steel