It's never easy following an icon. Indeed, Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis faced a taxing challenge in 1966 to follow up on the success of Doctor Who's globally acclaimed, rather iconic Daleks. In spite of the scale of the task at hand, though, in the Cybermen viewers encountered a heartless, eerily pseudo-human menace which has continued to plague the Doctor throughout the course of his eleven lives.
With just twelve weeks (that's a mere 84 days!) to go until the 50th Anniversary Special broadcasts worldwide, our latest Best Of Who Awards shortlist is here. Get ready to brave the darkest and most terrible incarnations of the Cybermen as we travel back through the Time Vortex to discover their finest hours...
5. THE TENTH PLANET (1966)- As we mentioned earlier in this feature, the mission of writers Pedler and Davis in the penultimate adventure of Season Four was an uneviable one. Balancing the Doctor's first "renewal", trips to the South Pole and into the depths of space with the introduction of the Cybermen into the series must have been rather tough, yet with The Tenth Planet this pair of talented scribes did an exceedingly impressive job. This is a formative tale for the Time Lord's second most-famous adversaries in every sense, and although their rather eccentric and quirky voice modulaters became the subject of various parodies later in the show's history, the characters are certainly presented as nothing less than an apathetic, logic-driven and desperate race of humanoid life forms who barely resemble their human counterparts...
4. THE NEXT DOCTOR (2008)- Coming off the back of the rather sensational Season Four, which had featured successful returns for the Sontarans, Davros and various new series characters, it was only natural that Who's current helm Russell T. Davies must have felt more than a little ambitious heading into the 2008 Christmas Special. Thankfully, The Next Doctor just about manages to live up to the audacity of its namesake, and while the revelation of Jackson Lake's inadvertent Time Lord façade was disappointing with hindsight, at the same time the new back-story of the parallel universe Cybermen established in Victorian London was both chilling and dramatically effective. Even if the 'next Doctor' narrative strand itself is lost in the special's second half, at least the big revelation of Jackson's familial torment does justice to the fear and horror the Cybermen can still evoke for a viewer in the 21st Century!
3. ARMY OF GHOSTS/DOOMSDAY (2006)- Another story inevitably forced to juggle a wealth of narrative elements, Russell's Season Two finale again manages to pull off its revival of the parallel universe Cybermen (introduced earlier in the run with aplomb). Sure, once the Cult of Skaro turn up and commence their particularly destructive bout of "pest control" on these age-old steel antagonists, things take a turn for the more predictable, with a deus ex machina resolution yet again shaping the story's climax, but until then in Army of Ghosts the tension around the Cyber-return is handled magnificently by Davies. Plus we were introduced to Freema Agyeman for the first time in this epic conclusion, which can't be a bad omen.
2. THE INVASION (1968)- Considering how tempting it would have been for the writers of 1960s Doctor Who to slip into a state of complacency after the success of the Cybermen race's debut in Tenth Planet, it remains a rather admirable feat that Derrick Sherwin doesn't allow sequelitis to get the better of the third consecutive appearance of the enemies in three years. The Invasion remains a brilliantly intriguing contemplation of the ease with which members of our own race can be corrupted and manipulated to suit the purpose of an invasion force. Whether it's in iconic sequences such as the main armada's arrival on the streets of London or in the more subtle instances such as Tobias Vaughn's vivid revelation of his supposed invulnerability to mortal wounds, Invasion is packed with superb moments that form together to create a truly impactful piece of television drama even fourty-five years after its original broadcast!
1. THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN (1967)- This writer will always hold an extreme fondness for Tomb in particular, seeing as it was one of the initial 'classic' Doctor Who tales which truly endowed me with the sense that the show's innovation and dramatic impact has endured over the entire duration of the past half-century. While the adventure opens up with a premise that mirrors those of just about any other action/science-fiction shows and films launching in the 60s, ultimately the narrative proves to be anything but unoriginal. In fact, no matter how obvious it is at first that some members of the human exploration team will betray their colleagues and that the titular 'Tomb' will be broken, The Tomb of the Cybermen is one of the rare examples of 1960s science-fiction that feels totally unique, and that it features the Cybermen in their greatest appearance yet is simply the icing on the proverbial cake.
No comments:
Post a Comment