Doctor Who: Nightmare In Silver

Well this is surprising. After one of the best episodes this season, ‘The Crimson Horror’, I thought we were in for a home run with this one. When Neil Gaiman, the legendary fantasy writer who wrote Series 6's ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ was returning this year to script another story featuring the Cybermen, I got quite excited. ’The Doctor’s Wife’, whilst not a classic episode like some fans are claiming (it felt far too rushed for that, should have been a two-parter), it was nethertheless packed chock full of idea’s and it was a uniquely weird adventure that felt original in every-way. Gaiman is known for doing darkly weird fantasy stories, so you could say he is perfect for Moffat's version of DW. He’s also a massive fan, and has said on numerous occasions that he isn’t doing it for the money (apparently English drama’s don’t pay writers for rewrites, while the American industry does, so basically writing for DW doesn't pay well) and writing for the show is something of a ’childhood dream’ for him. He also said, after the Doctor’s Wife, that he’d only ever do another episode of Doctor Who unless he could ’do something that can only be done once‘. So in short, he loves writing for Doctor Who but will only write an episode that lives up to his own standards. PERFECT. Gaiman has shown time and time again that he’s a fantastic writer, so how could an episode of his possibly suck, especially with his stated convictions? Well…

I haven’t seen an episode this sh*t since the 2011 Xmas special! Holy crap was this a disappointment! It’s been a while since the last good Cyberman episode, most of their Moffat-era appearances were either too brief or too dumbed down to be of any importance. Their last episode ‘Closing Time’ had them defeated by the power of love for christ sakes! I was hoping that Gaiman could make them a credible and scary threat again, in fact he’s said numerous times in interviews that he really wanted to get the scare factor out of them this time, but nope. There might be a good Cyberman episode somewhere in here, but it’s been mostly diluted to the point of them ONCE AGAIN being an ancillary threat to what is really the main part of the episode.

This episode has four MAJOR downfalls:

1) THIS ISN'T A CYBERMAN EPISODE, ONCE AGAIN! As far as NuWho villains go, the Cybermen haven't exactly had the best track record. While 'Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel' brought them back almost perfectly, in the Series 2 finale 'Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday' they were pretty much Dalek cannon fodder and mostly served an accompanying role. Their next appearance in the 2009 special 'The Next Doctor' was really good though, giant robot be damned! Then we got a rather creepy scene in 'The Pandorica Opens' but that was merely an extended cameo. They had another good cameo role in 'A Good Man Goes To War' in Series 6, but that was then followed up by one of the most bullsh*t endings I have ever seen in 'Closing Time' which quite frankly demoted them down from a fearless DW baddie to...well...wimps! So in comes Neil Gaiman in Series 7, saying his intent for this episode was to make them more powerful AND scary again! YAY! Or so I thought...you see this episode isn't really focused on them as much as it is their Cyber-planner, a malevolent AI fighting for control of the Doctor's body. Most of the screentime for this episode is given to the Doctor fighting an evil version of himself, the Cybermen are just an ancillary threat to all of this, they're basically robot pawns controlled by the AI, which is fine as long as the Cyber AI vs Doctor fight is really compelling. But unfortunately....

Oh look it's Borg Doctor!

2) The Cyberplanner vs the Doctor fight doesn't work. Firstly, the Cyberman AI doesn't act anything like a Cyberman, whose whole M.O is that they're unfeeling, unemotional cyborgs who used to be like you and want you to be like them. Their scare factor has always been induced by their origins, and one of the reasons why 'Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel' was so good was because they really played up that body horror aspect to them, to the point where when you saw a Cyberman you didn't see the robotic shell but in fact you saw the person INSIDE that robotic shell and what it had become. In this episode the physical Cybermen are basically robots, which sucks because you've once again dumbed them down from what they were originally supposed to be. And to add to that the real villain of the episode, the 'Cyberplanner' acts NOTHING LIKE A FRIGGING CYBERMAN! It's quite literally an evil Doctor, emotional thought processes intact. WHY NEIL GAIMAN WHY??! And to make everything worse, Matt Smith does a cringe-worthy job at trying to convey two opposite sides of his character. Yes you read that right, he was overacting to the extreme and made his character seem like a cartoon! THIS EPISODE WAS SO SH*T IT MADE MATT SMITH LOOK BAD! Now granted, playing against two different versions of yourself is a tough job for any seasoned actor, but Smith hams it up so much that it's resembling comedy at points. It's like he took all of the zany quirks in his doctor and amped it up to 11, basically a the 11th Doctor as a cartoon. And all of this could have been averted if they had just gone in a different direction with the Cyber-planner and downplayed the evil zanyness of it all! So in short we have an episode that doesn't focus on the Cybermen and what it does focus on (while a neat idea I suppose) is SH*T! Great.

3) The Cybermen aren't scary, and their new powers are inconsistent. What was that again, Gaiman? You WANTED to make the Cybermen scary and powerful again huh? Well you botched that up didn't you! It's hard to be scared of something that acts like a cartoon villain (the AI), and the actual Cybermen don't really do a lot as far as the 'we are sooo powerful and we kill lots of people' thing is concerned. Sure they try, the whole 'we can upgrade ourselves constantly' idea is cool, so they basically get more powerful with every encounter and learn from their mistakes, but we don't really see that in action. And the super-speed thing was cool but why didn't they use that for EVERY situation? Later on they're plunking about at a slow pace again (it takes forever for them to get to Clara), and its clearly better if they are all in super-speed mode, so why not? Well obviously because they'd win outright with no contest, that's why, so why introduce this ability in the first place if you can't use it! NOTE: NEVER give a DW villain super-speed again! Oh, and the detachable hand/head thing? Laughable, not scary. In fact it makes them even more like robots! Yet again the Cybermen are underpowered and about as scary as a toothbrush. Why didn't they just follow the formula that was laid out by 'Cold War' and 'Dalek'?        

4) THOSE KIDS OMG I JUST WANT TO KILL THEM!!!! Worst kids in DW ever. I felt rather unnerved about the unexpected twist at the end of 'The Crimson Horror', mainly because the child actors hadn't exactly showed a lot of promise in their previous appearances with Clara. And yep, here they're absolute brats, moaning about everything and being generally incompetent to the point of frustration. And they also seemed to be completely pointless, not to mention adding nothing plot-wise to the episode. Again it begs the question: WHY? In addition to those two awful brats everyone else in the episode are poorly written two dimensional cardboard cut-out's with no time given to imbue them with any sense of dimension. Which I assume is because of that horrible Doctor vs AI story taking up half the episode...

About the only cool shot of the Cybermen in the entire episode...

So what did I actually like you ask? Well it wasn't all bad, I mean the new Cybermen designs are cool, and the idea's, concept and setting for the episode could have been better with a fully fleshed out two-parter I suppose. And Warwick Davis was slightly charming as Porridge/The Emperor so there's that...yep I got nothing, this was quite simply a sh*t episode that lacked any decent execution due to rushed storytelling, not to mention it failed at what it was trying to achieve, in fact I'd go so far as to say that it couldn't have been any further from it's goals. It's 'The Doctor's Wife' all over again. Shame on you Gaiman, and let's hope the show-runners don't F*CK up the Cybermen again: 3/10.  

Positives:

+ New Cybermen design looks good
+ The concept of 'The Cyber Wars'
+ Warwick Davis
+ A few good idea's, but underdeveloped

Negatives:

- Matt Smith delivers his first bad performance
- Cybermen aren't scary and appear weak
- The AI Doctor is a cartoon
- The children are annoying, THEY MUST DIE
- Clara feels like a completely different character
- Other characters are card board cut-outs
- The Cybermen's new powers are laughably bad
- Cybermen are basically robots now
- Rather ugly looking episode
- Feels rushed
- WTF that ending was pure Deus Ex Machina!

This episode was utter porridge...