Hi. It's been a while.
Several years ago (before the pandemic, I suspect, but my aging memory might be wrong), I started an attempt to rewatch/listen to all of the Doctor Who episodes and audio dramas...and also trying to attempt to collate all these things into a coherent chronological order.
I will let you make your jokes about my insanity intending to take on this task.
Then, a few months before the return of Russell T. Davies to Who, I started rewatching the new series as prep for what I hoped would be The Exceptional Reign of Ncuti Gatwa. I posted my thoughts on my Facebook page before I left it--as well as pretty much all social media--behind lest my soul and brain rot away.
I went through a lengthy period where I stopped writing, well, pretty much everything. I'm attempting to restart writing again. and part of that is taking up this project (and others) here. Since this is consolidating two projects into one, I will mark the reviews of NuWho episodes with an N to keep things straight.
So...onto the first appearance of the NuWho Cybers...
For those of you who weren't following me during the original run of these episodes, you should know one thing. I really hated the first Russell T. Davies run, especially the second and third season. In revisiting the first season for this project, I gained a new respect for it because I better understood how Christopher Eccholson was portraying the Doctor as suffering from extreme PTSD due to the Time Wars. Rose still comes off as a spoiled and shallow brat, but maybe that's what Nine needed...and looking at Nine as suffering made his moments of triumph all the more impactful; to me, Nine in 'The Doctor Dances' proclaiming "everybody lives!" is the first truly iconic moment of NuWho.
Unfortunately, we're deep in the Tennant Era, arguably my least favorite NuWho era until RTD II rocked up. In this, the first two parter for the Second Season, we see the TARDIS landing Ten, Rose and Mickey in a parallel universe. In this universe. Pete Tyler is alive, successful and acting as a lackey to dying oligarch John Lumic...who has just introduced a new product from his company Cybus that provides digital information directly into a user's brain via a set of ear buds. But as the team waits for the TARDIS to recover and Ten is trying to warn Rose away from meeting this universe's version of her parents, Mikey discovers that his counterpart is the leader of a group of rebels investigating the disappearance of homeless around London...which ties into Lumic's desire to transcend mortality whether anyone cares or not.
This is supposed to be a big deal, as the Cybermen are part of the Three Bad Monsters of the series (we get the Sontarans next season, completing the set), but in this rewatch, I realized RTD doesn't...get the concept of the Cyberman. This whole episode seems to be forcing the race into a Dalek sized hole with its creation of a Davros stand in and plays lip service to the body horror aspect (along with a musical number that, as with most RTD musical numbers, falls thoroughly flat) in favor of turning them into....well, second rate Daleks. I know that I criticize RTD in the past for slavishly using Joss Whedon's Buffy as a template for his vision of Who, but this reminds me that he had another heavy influence, namely Marvel Comics. By chaining the Cybers to a mad scientist type, it erases what makes the creatures unique--that they are the ultimate expression of what happens when civilization sacrifices emotion for survival. Hell, I wonder if Davies created this version of the Cybermen solely so he can set up an exchange in this season's last episode that makes his beloved Dalek So, Like, Cool, Man.
I also think the episode suffers from the world setting shoving the Social Commentary too far into the background. When we arrive at this new universe, the sky above London are full of zepplins. It's meant to indicate we're in an England Succumbing To Late Stage Capitalism, with the rich filling up those zepplins and the poor left to fend for themselves in the increasingly crumbling city below. There's some stray lines in the episode establishing this, but they're pushed back in favor of the 'Mikey's got a hardass counterpart'....ummm, 'comedy' and the constant focus pulling to our Special Snowflake Rose family drama. It's obvious to me that a particular scene with Rose and Alternative Universe Jackie is designed to jerk a few tears....but given how Tom MacRae's script has Ten repeatedly tell Rose 'No, you're not going to like it.' before...letting her do what she was told not to doesn't have the expected tear-jerking response. It's just another moment of our Special Snowflake not being allowed to do anything Truly Wrong that made me find her insufferable as a companion.
This is the beginning of the period which led to me rage quitting NuWho for a while. And this script gives me everything I really learned to hate about RTD. It doesn't hold up twenty years later, and I'm not looking forward to the second part.
