(797) Nightmare in Silver

If you want to make the Cybermen scary then there is only one person that could make this happen in Neil Gaiman. After his wonderful story The Doctor’s Wife, it was fingers crossed than inevitability that he would write for the show again. It doesn’t take long for Gaiman’s magic to work and for him to achieve his objective. The way that the Cybermen are introduced into the story is quite good because its literally unveiled and that forms the end of the pre-title scene. The Cybermen were awesome in this because they look and sound slightly different to what they did in their last story. The fact that they can walk faster than two miles an hour means that they have a new threat because it wasn’t too difficult to outrun a Cyberman. They way they look and move is very good because it seems more mechanical than before even though in previous stories their walk was ok. Gaiman has introduced Cybermites which is a nice introduction. They are small and very difficult to spot unless the camera focused in on them.

The Doctor gets attacked by the Cybermites and there is a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on with both versions of the Doctor seemingly having control over the body. This meant that we got to see another great performance from Matt Smith and he plays both versions rather well and there was a seamless transition between the two which isn’t an easy thing to do. Jenna Coleman has a good time in this episode and gets to act like a boss whilst the Doctor is dealing with the Cybermen. There is a lovely bit inside the Doctors head where the Cyber version of the Doctor talks to the normal Doctor and the whole visual effects used was another highlight.

I must admit that I didn’t find the kids as annoying as I thought I would. The girl was slightly annoying at first but as the episode played out things changed and by the end of the episode I almost (almost) wanted the kids to stay. I don’t know whether that’s because of Gaiman or the child actors but something happened and they were quite good. Now had this been an RTD story then they would have been hair pulling annoying and there would be sentimental slosh running through the story.

The barracks is the same set that was used in The Doctor’s Daughter. It’s not the most interesting thing that’s ever been written but I spotted it and thought it should be included. The whole setting for the story was quite good and it seemed like some of the names were Gaiman having fun which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This was a very enjoyable story and I was impressed with how the episode looked and this is definelty the best Cyberman story that there has been since 2005. After being slightly disappointed with several Cybermen stories in recent years, its nice that we have such a good story and hopefully Gaiman gets to write another Cyberman story in the future.