Revenge of the Cybermen - Episode 2

Just a few days before this episode aired, William Hartnell had passed away which the first loss that the show had suffered. Without Hartnell’s involvement in the show then its hard to believe that the show would be about to approach the 400^th episode. Since Tom Baker took over from Jon Pertwee, the show has found new feet and is going from strength to strength. The previous episode ended with Elisabeth Sladen doing a dance routine with the cybermat that wouldn’t look out of place on Strictly Come Dancing. Within moments Sarah has become infected and the action starts.

The idea that the Doctor can use the trans mat to get the poison out of Sarah is quite clever and there is a nice built of drama built up in trying to get it working after a part of it is missing. Then there is a nice standoff between Kellman and the Doctor with Kellman acting like the tough guy pretending he doesn’t know anything. If it weren’t for Kellman this this story wouldn’t be worth watching.

The story moves a bit more to Voga with Harry and Sarah now find themselves there. I think that its funny how Harry becomes obsessed with the gold that he finds. This is perhaps the most interesting thing that Ian Marter has been up to for several episodes. Another problem that I found with the vogans that capture Harry and Sarah is that they do look a bit like Godfrey from ‘Dads Army’.

The first appearance of the Cybermen in 172 episodes is somewhat understated. It’s just a group of Cybermen in their ship. I always thought that the cliffhanger is when we first seem them. It had been 2,317 days for fans in 1975 since the Cybermen last appeared and it’s good to have them back. They pop up in the brief scene early in the episode but they really don’t get involved in the story until the cliffhanger which is perhaps what should have happened in the previous episode. I really don’t like the Cybermen being able to

There are some familiar faces that appear in this story. William Marlowe previously appeared in the 1971 story ‘The Mind of Evil’ (directed by Michael E Briant), here he plays Lester and its good that he goes from pointing a gun a Jon Pertwee’s Doctor to helping Tom Baker’s Doctor. The next familiar face is that of Kevin Stoney who last time we saw him in Doctor Who was working with the Cybermen oddly enough in the last Cyberman story. The character he plays this time is Tyrum who is the complete opposite.

Whilst I find the stuff on Voga rather tedious, I can’t deny that the cave scenes that were filmed on location were very good indeed. It does provide some entertainment and it’s good that they have finally broken out of the studio for the first time since the early stages of the last Dalek story. They used Wookey Hole to film these scenes and it was famously used in a sketch on ‘The League of Gentlemen” and considering Mark Gatiss is a huge Doctor Who fan (having written a few TV stories and a couple of Big Finish plays.

“The beacon is ours!” I think is a great way to end the episode. I think that the problems that I had with the previous episode are still evident in this episode and that’s a shame because the first appearance of the Cybermen in about seven years isn’t quite the epic event that it should have been. I think that this is the same problem that the Daleks had back in ‘Day of the Daleks’ when they returned after five years the problem was that the theory was that the name alone would help