Attack of the Cybermen review ["Paula Moore"]

In 1986, the Cybermen were thwarted in their plan to restore Mondas to the solar system by the First Doctor. In 1985, the Sixth Doctor and Peri must stop time-travelling Cybermen from destroying the Earth and preventing their defeat.

What's in a Name?: The Cybermen never really attack at any point. They defend themselves against the Cryons, kill those who enter the sewers to preserve their secret and plan to use Halley's Comet to destroy Earth but they never really do any actual attacking. Perhaps it should have been called Convolution of the Cybermen.

When and Where: The Doctor and Peri land in Shoreditch, 1985. This isn't long after The Twin Dilemma, as the Doctor is still recovering from Jaconda, and is shortly before Vengeance on Varos. For the Cybermen, this is between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Scorpius. For Lytton, this is a year after Resurrection of the Daleks.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "A little gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
• "More bulges than an antenatal clinic."
• "That's bonkers." / "That's debatable. It's also the truth."
• "You said you came from Fulham!"
• "Lytton? Tall, lean, dark, well-spoken? The sort of man who might shoot his mother just to keep his trigger finger supple?"
• "Please remove your TARDIS from Telos before you need rescuing again."
• In The Twin Dilemma, we were introduced to a thoroughly unpleasant Doctor who suffered bouts of cowardice and paranoia-fuelled murderousness. Damage control has started quite soon with Colin Baker giving a performance that's harder than we'll meet in season 23 but that we can absolutely buy as the Doctor. He's a little prickly towards Peri at the beginning of the first part and isn't as accessible as a character as his predecessors, but he's infinitely more watchable. His scenes with Flast are some of the best of the story and show off the gentle side that we didn't get so much as a glimpse of in his debut appearance.
• If you were to ask a fan to select a John Nathan-Turner character to return for season 22, they'd say Aunt Vanessa, the Ergon or Lady Madge Cranleigh. Okay, maybe not, but Lytton probably wouldn't be one of them either. However, Maurice Colbourne is a talent that it would have been a shame not to see again. This is a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could easily be one-dimensional and unconvincing. Instead, he becomes one of the most memorable of the Sixth Doctor's guest stars.
  
• The Cryons might not be the best-realised monsters of all time, but they're a perfect foil for the Cybermen. Airy and sensual to counter the stolid Cybermen with soft feminine voices that contract with the Cybermen's deep and masculine ones. The actresses are handicapped by costumes that not only severely limit their vision but that stand in the way of a believable character with its odd design. They do a great job and help make the second episode easily the best of the two, although I understand that this is an unpopular opinion. Flast's death ends up being one of the most poignant moments of the story, refusing to tell the Cybermen anything and allowing herself to be pulled from the subzero temperature she required to live. Varne dies saving the Doctor and Rost tells him to leave the planet before more had to die for him. It's a topic that's brought up relatively often in New Who ("How many have died in your name?") but not so much pre-2005.
• Classic Doctor Who is almost always overlit. Look at the ship from Four to Doomsday or the sea base of Warriors of the Deep or, in fact, any set from any '80s story. The moodily-lit sewer is a rare example of lighting done right in this era, giving us a more sinister and eerie setting than we're used to with John Nathan-Turner's Doctors. Yes, it's an idea ripped straight from the script of The Invasion, but points for execution.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Next year? That's almost now!"
• "I don’t think I’ve ever misjudged anybody quite as badly as I did Lytton."
• One of the biggest problems with Attack of the Cybermen is the overwhelming and unprecedented amount of continuity, with a lot of the plot relying on elements of The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen. At the time, the public hadn't seen either of these stories since their transmission in the late '60s and almost certainly weren't in the minds of any but the Ian Levine's of the world. To lean so heavily on plot points from so long ago makes this story feel almost like fanfiction and makes it overly complicated and borderline inaccessible to the casual or to the newer viewer. The scene where the main characters are prisoners aboard the TARDIS is laden with exposition.
• The score for this story is truly abominable and easily among the very worst of the show. It's out of place, against the genre and sometimes downright intrusive. It almost brings the whole episode down as a result because it's difficult to take some of the scenes entirely seriously.
• Attack of the Cybermen gets a lot of flak for being too violent. It certainly has a very high body-count, but I don't necessarily object to that. What I do object to is the Doctor's off-screen battery of one of Lytton's constables in the sewer, which is inexcusable violence on the Doctor's behalf. Using a gun against a Cyberman when his own life, as well as the lives of Peri and absolutely everybody on Earth, are at risk is one thing but beating up a human being just isn't the Doctor. What makes it worse is how blasé he is about it afterwards.
  
• A Cyber-Controller, a Cyber-Leader and a Cyber-Lieutenant, each outranking one another... It feels too much and makes the Cybermen feel overly bureaucratic. These are cyborgs that surely shouldn't require so much devolution. Perhaps the Cyber-Lieutenant should have been excised. 
• It's not an issue confined to this story but the Cybermen have far too much personality and too many human mannerisms. They could get away with the mannerisms more in The Tenth Planet where there definitely felt like there was a biological element to them but in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion they felt more mechanical. Here they are saying "excellent" and emoting and squabbling and it all feels so wrong. Without the cold calculation, they're just any old monster of the week. Also, the Cyber-Controller's a bit fat.
• Killing off important guest characters is absolutely fine and should even be encourage to raise the stakes and make the villains that much more dangerous and hateable. The problem with Bates and Stratton isn't that they're killed off but that their story, which began in the first episode, never went anywhere and had no resolution or real impact on the plot. Their plan to escape fails when the third accomplice dies and they don't manage to get the head of a Cyberman. They kill another and get one, then head to Cyber-Control with Stratton in a Cyberman suit. They die there. What was the point in this plot thread?
  
• The story ends on a very abrupt note. Cyber-Control blows up, the Doctor says he misjudges Lytton and then the episode ends. If it was going for a Doctor Who and the Silurians ending, it missed the mark with the Doctor's rumination failing to resonate nearly as well as the Third Doctor's reaction to the regrettable murder of the Silurian colony.
• Peri starts off this season in a truly horrific outfit. John Nathan-Turner was clearly doing it for the straight male audience, but having both of our leads in ridiculous costumes makes it very difficult to believe the story. They look their worst in episode one, when they're traversing the mundane streets of London.
• Flast sets fire to a Cyberman's arm and what does it do? It bats at the flames with his gun. What an idiot.

His Constant Companion: The two workmen and Payne are killed in the sewers. A Cyberman is shot by one of Lytton's gang; two are killed on Telos by the escapees; another is killed by the Doctor in the sewers using his sonic lance; and in the TARDIS, Russell shoots one in the head with his own gun and then kills another with a cyber gun. Russell is killed by a tap on the shoulder by a cyber fist. Varne and Rost shot a Cyberman to save Peri. Flast is exposed to temperatures of 15 degrees or above by the Cybermen. Bates, Stratton, Griffiths and Varne are shot. The Cyber-Controller is stabbed by Lytton before the Doctor shoots him and other Cybermen. Lytton dies in this fight. The remaining Cybermen are killed by the explosion of Cyber Control.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor beat up one of Lytton's constables and then handcuffs the other without even trying to question him. Does the Doctor not care about what the constables were up to? Why not at least attempt asking them?
  
• Why are the Cybermen on Earth?
• Did Lytton and the Doctor even meet in Resurrection of the Daleks? Was there an untelevised adventure where they met again? And how would that make sense given that the Doctor describes Lytton as having been an agent of the Daleks the last time they had any interaction?
• If Lytton's transmission has been answered by the Cryons, why is it ongoing?
• The Cryons are on Telos at a point in time after The Tomb of the Cybermen, meaning they're in the 25th or 26th century. How, then, do Lytton and the Cryons communicate? How did they get his transmission?
• How did the Cybermen get into the TARDIS? It's always seemed to be self-locking and enemy-proof.
• Why do the Cybermen hesitate when the Doctor tells them to wait? They were given the order to shoot Peri so shouldn't they carry that out regardless of what her accomplice says?
• Wouldn't saving Mondas be a paradox? It would mean that Telos was never colonised by the Cybermen, meaning they couldn't have saved Mondas.
• Isn't the TARDIS in a state of temporal grace? How did Russell and the Cybermen shoot one another?
• Why do the tombs look nothing like they did in The Tomb of the Cybermen?
• How come the Cybermen are going rogue? What was that all about?
• Peri visited London with the Fifth Doctor in The Kingmaker, yet claims here that it's her first visit to the city. Perhaps she meant her first visit in the modern day.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions Jaconda, the planet that they visited in season 21 finale The Twin Dilemma.
  
• The Doctor has called Peri by a number of his previous companions' names, including Susan, Jamie, Zoe and Tegan.
• The Doctor has also called her Zodin, the name of a villainess fought by the Second Doctor offscreen. She was mentioned in The Five Doctors.
• Lytton appeared as a Dalek agent in Resurrection of the Daleks.
• The TARDIS materialises in Foreman's Yard, first seen in An Unearthly Child. It will show up again in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Cybermen were previously seen in the sewers of London in The Invasion.
• Mondas was destroyed in The Tenth Planet.
• Telos and its ice tombs were visited by the Second Doctor in The Tomb of the Cybermen.
• The Cybermen have a ship on the dark side of the Moon, just as they did in The Invasion.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I will never stop singing the praises of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, but I was dreading watching this story again. All that I could remember was Lytton's hands, all the continuity (Foreman's Yard - why?) and the Doctor being unpleasant to the whiny and oddly-dressed Peri. I was very surprised to find that it's actually rather good and not nearly as unfocused as I remembered it being. Having fully stabilised, the Doctor is a defined man now and is so much easier to watch. This is helped by the gentle scenes he shares with the Cryons and that he becomes a prisoner of the Cybermen, meaning that we get to see him in a far different position than that of the ultimate authority that he was in The Twin Dilemma. The Cybermen are easily one of the weakest aspects of this story and the second episode is, despite the continuity, better than the first but this is still an okay story. Attack of the Cybermen comes close to a B, but ultimately earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

The Twin Dilemma (Season 21)  |  Attack of the Cybermen  |  Vengeance on Varos

The Invasion review [Derrick Sherwin]

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are fired at from a spaceship hidden on the Moon before materialising on Earth, where they find themselves entangled in the mission of the newly-formed UNIT. Genius Professor Watkins has gone missing and not everyone who enters the main office of International Electromatics come out.

When and Where: The Web of Fear took place over forty years after 1935, making it 1976 at the earliest. The Invasion is in the summer four years after this, setting it in 1980. Sarah Jane Smith comes from 1980 and this takes place seven months before Spearhead from Space, so this couldn't be possible. Perhaps it's the summer of 1979 and the Brigadier was wrong about it having been four years. This means that all of UNIT's adventures from Spearhead from Space to, at least, Robot are set in 1980. Let's ignore anything that might have been said in Mawdryn Undead.

However, Last of the Cybermen explicitly dates this story as being set in 1975, meaning that The Web of Fear was in 1971 and the Third Doctor's involvement with UNIT began in 1976. This contradicts what Professor Travers says in The Web of Fear about how the Yeti attack in Tibet was over forty years before - it would have been only thirty-six years. Perhaps he wasn't very good at maths?

To conclude, The Invasion takes place in either the summer of 1975 or 1979. I'd be inclined to think 1975 given that Last of the Cybermen is the only bit of TV/Big Finish media to actually give the specific date.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "Do you not write anything on paper at all?" / "I'd only lose it if I did. Writing on a wall's much safer. You can't lose a wall, can you?"
• "Next time, read the notice on the door!" / "Oh, don't tell me you can read as well. What else can you do?"
• "If there's trouble to be found, the Doctor and Jamie can't miss it."
• "Hey, are you stinking rich?"
• Cyberman reveal in episode 4
• I've seen some complaints that The Invasion is too long. Perhaps episodes 3 and 4 could have been merged, but otherwise I find Tobias Vaughn and International Electromatics to be good enough villains in their own right and more than tide us over until the Cybermen emerge. Vaughn is a memorable human villain
• In the '60s, we've had screaming girls like Susan Foreman and Victoria Waterfield travelling in the TARDIS as our heroes and identification figures. Then we've had guest characters like Samantha Briggs in The Faceless Ones and Isobel Watkins in this story. Strong, capable, active women more than capable of travelling time and space. Isobel is one that might be irritating if she was a companion but she functions perfectly well in this story, being more than just a replacement for Anne Travers. She's an ambitious photographer with a few quirks (namely writing on walls because they're more difficult to lose than bits of paper) and is very much a feminist, rebelling against what she sees as the Brigadier's bigotry. She has a fun relationship with Zoe and brings out more of the girl behind the scientist. Saying all this, she might have needed a Donna-style mellowing before being a companion.
  
• Despite being devoid of emotions, when Cybermen die they scream for some reason. However, there are times where it's not a bad thing. The cries of the Cybermen at the end of Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel as they come to their senses and realise what they are is chilling. The mad Cyberman in this story, like in Tennant's story, has a valid reason for screaming and it's a very scary thing to witness, hobbling through the sewers shrieking.
• The quality of the animations of lost Doctor Who episodes are variable. Quite a few are rudimentary and unimpressive, but episodes 1 and 4 of The Invasion are absolutely beautiful, carrying so much atmosphere and conveying action so well.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "I think those crazy kids have gone off to the sewers to get photographs of the Cybermen."
• "Yes, sir. Something called a Cyber-megatron bomb."
• Episodes 3 and 4 feel like padding. It's fortunate that the Doctor and his companions are charismatic and watchable enough that I don't mind.
• The Cyberman voices are borderline incomprehensible at times and are a real step down from The Tomb of the Cybermen (at the time of writing I've not yet watched The Wheel in Space).

I'll Explain Later:

• Where did these Cybermen come from? Are they from Mondas? If so, why do they look and sound so different to the Cybermen that arrive on Earth some years later in The Tenth Planet?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe go looking Professor Edward Travers, who helped fight against the Great Intelligence in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. Jack Watling was, unfortunately, unavailable for filming for this serial or his creators refused to allow him to be used because of their experience in writing The Dominators. It depends where you look. He later appears in Downtime.
• In the animation, the car that takes the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to London bears the licence plate "11-22-63", the airdate of the first part of An Unearthly Child.
• In the animation, it says "Bad Wolf" on Isobel's wall.
• Jamie previously met the Cybermen in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and Zoe's first story, The Wheel in Space.
• Kevin Stoney (Tobias Vaughn), Sheila Dunn (the computer voice) and Clifford Earl (Major Branwell) previously appeared in The Daleks' Master Plan as Mavic Chen, Blossom Lefavre and the station sergeant respectively. Edward Burnham (Professor Watkins) previously appeared as Professor Jeremiah Kettlewell in Robot. Ian Fairbairn (Gregory) previously appeared as Questa in The Macra Terror.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: On a scale from Silver Nemesis to World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, The Invasion definitely falls on the higher end of the Cyberman stories, although this isn't really because of the Cybermen themselves. Tobias Vaughn is a menacing, smooth-talking villain and the first appearance of UNIT proves that it deserves to be the staple that it became in the Third Doctor's era and beyond. The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, Isobel and the Brigadier are all fantastic and such an easy cast to watch and listen to. The Invasion is very good, and that earns it an A.

Doctor Who (Season 6)

The Mind Robber  |  The Invasion  |  The Krotons

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang review [Steven Moffat]

A Steven Moffat two-parter. We've had The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, which count amongst the very best of modern Doctor Who. How will this one compare?

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe." / "You wouldn't answer your phone."
• "What's it short for? Roranicus?"
• "Hi, honey. I'm home." / "And what sort of time do you call this?"
• "I'm River Song. Check your records again."
• "Where's the Dalek?" / "It died."
• "Not to you?" / "He doesn't really know me yet. Now he never will."
• We've seen the Eleventh Doctor foster a friendship with a little Scottish girl. We've seen him come to the rescue of Dr River Song and begin peace talks with Silurians and move in with Craig Owens. Now we get to see him take on something grander and potentially universe-ending and Matt Smith does a very good job as usual. He seemed to struggle a little early in the series, but by this point he's definitely the Doctor. The speech at Stonehenge is wonderfully delivered (even if I can't help but wonder why he's not shot to smithereens - they won't shoot him but will lock him up and leave him unguarded?).
  
• Dr Song isn't as interesting as she was in her previous appearances, but this episode doesn't focus very much on her so this is understandable. After showing the painting to the Doctor, she's just one of his companions who happens to be able to fly the TARDIS (somewhat like Nyssa in that regard), which isn't necessarily a bad thing - we don't need to spend every one of her appearances wondering who she is. There's no hint of the smugness that would come to overtake her character and which was visible to a much smaller degree in her first two stories. Her escape from the Stormcage is a good scene and the stick-figure being held at gunpoint is funny.
• Seeking to contend with the extraordinary opening of The Time of Angels, we get a teaser that sprawls space and time. It's nice to see people from across this series (Liz Ten, Churchill and that robot scientist guy, Vincent, River) and have all these disparate worlds and stories connect in a way. It doesn't feel like it but it's seven minutes long, teasing you with what the painting is.
• It's not quite as effective as Sarah crying over the imminent death of her adoptive son in The Stolen Earth, but the reactions of the Doctor, River and Amy to the threat of the Daleks gives the thought of them makes them seem so scary that you almost forget their neutering only earlier this series in Victory of the Daleks. The presence of the Daleks should never garner a reaction any less terrified than River's.
• Amy shows fear and sorrow and amiability and you might almost forget the smug and unknowable cheat that we travelled with for most of this series. Rory is back, as a Roman, and the scenes between the couple, as Rory struggles to make Amy remember him and then Amy tries to stop him from going Auton, are probably the best scenes of the two of them together. Unless seconded by Amy's Choice. Rory shooting her is tragic. The Big Bang is her best episode since Amy's Choice. She really was very good in this one, as a companion and in the scene where she remembers the Doctor at her reception.
   
• River in an exploding TARDIS; Amy's been shot; Rory's an Auton; the Doctor's been sealed in the Pandorica by the unholiest of alliances. What a way to end an episode. This is surely one of the best Doctor Who cliff-hangers.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "I hate good wizards in fairy-tales. They always turn out to be him."
• "She is to me!"
• "You absolutely definitely may kiss the bride."
• "We haven't even had a snog in the shrubbery yet."
• As can be seen in the first of the bad quotations, Moffat indulges in a little mythologising of the Doctor. It's something Russell T. Davies was very guilty of himself and it's always a bad thing. Can't he just be a madman with a box?
• The Doctor calls in the Romans to fight the Alliance. Putting those lives in danger, risking damage to the timeline with their deaths, is a strange choice for the Doctor to make, not to mention their lack of effectiveness against a million starships.
• The Cyberman beneath Stonehenge serves a purpose but doesn't make for a particularly gripping scene. Perhaps I've just been disillusioned with the Cybermen.
  
• Did anyone else guess that the Pandorica was the Doctor's prison? When he said about the prisoner dropping from the sky and messing up your world it seemed obvious.
• Up until the final five minutes, this was a great showing for Amy, then she goes and delivers the last two quotations above. Thanks for reminding us of the terrible life choices of Amy Pond on the night before her wedding. I was in danger of liking her.
• The Big Bang, whilst not hugely difficult to understand, is needlessly over-complicated with Moffat's trademark timey-wimeyness.
• The "1,894 years later" wasn't at all necessary. The viewers are surely clever enough to work this out the moment we hear little Amelia's voice.
• We met Jackie Tyler in Rose's first episode; Francine and the other Joneses in Martha's first episode; and Sylvia and Geoffrey Noble in Donna's. It's taken this long to finally meet Amy's aunt Sharon. Amy's lack of a family has retroactively become a plot point - there was no hint of anything being wrong with Amy's family life until the Doctor mentioned the size of the house in the previous episode - but the lack of a family to teach us more about her as a person has made her more difficult to warm to than her predecessors.
• What luck that Amelia touched the Pandorica! Exactly what was the Doctor going to do if she hadn't? Lured her there a second time?
  
• There couldn't have been a less satisfying way to deal with the Doctor's predicament at the end of The Pandorica Opens. After all the drama, the Doctor is released with the flick of a screwdriver given to Rory by... his freed future-self. No. It makes no sense.

Professor Who?: River can fly the TARDIS and was taught how to by the Doctor. She has met the Daleks before. She once dated an Auton who could swap heads. This was presumably before her imprisonment. She's scary enough that a Dalek asked for mercy after checking its records on her. She's married, and the Doctor will very soon find out who she is.

The Pandorica is Opening: The Pandorica was created by the Alliance from a snapshot of Amy's memories. It's a prison based on Pandora's box, built to contain the Doctor so that he can't fly the TARDIS, meaning that it will never blow up and cause the cracks in time. However, the Alliance was apparently unaware that Dr Song can fly the TARDIS as well and it's actually her who's flying it when it explodes.

The Universe is Cracked, Silence will Fall: The TARDIS was remotely controlled and blown up with River inside it in an attempted assassination of the Doctor, as it was assumed that he would be flying it. The Silence is still out there. The Doctor wonders why they drew the TARDIS to the date of the Williams-Pond wedding and why they blew it up.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor knew about this cliff-face but is only now going to look at it? Coincidentally whilst he's travelling with the mother of the woman who wrote the message? Whilst in this incarnation? After he's met Vincent? Seems awfully lucky.
• How did the Alliance form? Daleks were willing to team up with Terileptils and Sontarans and Slitheen? The Cybermen were willing to team up with Draconians and Drahviins and Zygons? It shows how dangerous the threat of the TARDIS exploding is to all of existence, but it seems something that even Mance Rayder might struggle with organising.
• River's met the Daleks before? Why haven't Big Finish shown us her first encounter with them yet? Get on it.
• When River begs the Doctor to run, he asks where he could run to. Doesn't she have a vortex manipulator that could take them anywhere and anywhen?
• River identifies some ships as Slitheen. Shouldn't she have said Raxacoricofallapatorian?
• Rory is a Roman because he was taken from a snapshot of Amy's memories on the day of her wedding, but Rory ceased to exist and Amy doesn't remember him so how is this possible and how is there a photograph of him at Amy's?
• Don't the Cybermen chop people up before dumping their brains in a metal suit? How come there's a whole skull inside the Cyberman's head? Was Yvonne Hartman still blonde and beautiful when she took down her cyber-comrades for Queen and country?
• How did the Alliance know that the TARDIS was what caused the cracks in time?
• How did River know to give Amy her diary? She must have forgotten the Doctor as everyone else had. How can she even exist given that the Doctor's existence was the reason that she was born? How does her diary exist? The timey-wimeyness doesn't make much sense.
• If the universe has been restored, does that mean Amy and Rory remember the Daleks now? If so, why doesn't Bill Potts?
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Pandorica Opens has a fantastic opening sequence and a very good ending and is undoubtedly the better episode of the two. Between these two points is a decent-enough episode, even if it isn't thrill-a-minute. There's certainly some empty space that could have used filling in order to make this a great episode. In The Big Bang, some questions are answered, some questions aren't. All in all, this second half wasn't great, being unnecessarily complicated by vortex manipulators and cracks in time and rules that don't make the least bit of sense. Amy, River and Rory were all decent, as was the Doctor, but this episode was just a bit too messy when its actual story could have been so much more streamlined. In conclusion, this two-parter altogether deserves a D.

Doctor Who (Series 5)

The Lodger  |  The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang  |  A Christmas Carol

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The Timeline of River Song

Human Resources review [Eddie Robson]

Lucie is working her first day at Hulbert Logistics. The Daleks, the Tomorrow Twins, Phobos... They were all dreams. So was the long-haired Doctor in his bright blue box, who just so happens to be on his way to save her.

When and Where: For the Doctor and Lucie, this is just after No More Lies and at some point before Dead London. For the Cybermen, this is at some point after The Tenth Planet and before The Tomb of the Cybermen.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Any more rope-gags?"
• "Take a letter, Miss Miller." / "I'll take four letters and make a word out of them if you're not careful."
• "What are you doing?" / "Shredding." / "Shredding what?" / "Whatever I can find." / "Why?" / "I'm hoping it might annoy somebody."
• A key part of a number of Moffat-written episodes is the cold open. There was River's exciting departure of the Byzantium in The Time of Angels, the movement of Van Gogh's painting through time in The Pandorica Opens and the chase scenes in Day of the Moon. Here we have another good teaser, with Lucie having been taken to, of all places, the office job that she got before she was swept up by the Time Lords, and the Doctor is given a time ring to save her. Like Heaven being an office in Dark Water, Lucie having been kidnapped for an office job at Hulbert Logistics is an intriguingly strange premise. 
• Hulbert Logistics brings in humans of a non-military background and has them wage war on planets by translating their tasks into a form that they can understand whilst ignoring that which doesn't fit into the narrative. Their latest mission: wiping out the Cybermen on Lonsis. This is a great idea that almost sounds like something out of Terry Pratchett. Doctor Who is very good at combining the ordinary with the extraordinary, and that's excellently done here. The keen-eyed, however, might notice the office-robot on the cover. I didn't.
• The Cybermen here don't speak like the Cybus models in Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, nor like the Cybermen of The Tenth Planet. They're somewhere in-between, with the effect of the modern ones but the strange enunciation of the classic. Their screams are an amazingly horrible thing to listen to.
• The surprise arrival of the Cybermen at the end of Part 1 is brilliant, bookending this series with two of the Doctor's greatest enemies: the Daleks and the Cybermen. This is also the earliest in their timeline that we've seen for quite a while, excluding their origin in Spare Parts.

The Valeyard's Case:

• Although the office scenes are funny and bizarre, Part 1 does take a while to get going as a result.
• Lucie being placed in the TARDIS by mistake is a little underwhelming a reveal.

Witness Protection: Hulbert found Lucie to be a promising new addition to his company but she was taken by the Time Lords and dropped into the TARDIS before she could arrive at the office. Hulbert sent the Headhunter after her because he was afraid that a competitor had nabbed her and that they would be able to learn the secrets of his mental manipulation from her. In actuality, the Time Lords had taken her because the CIA had altered her life using a quantum crystaliser to keep her from becoming a right-wing dictator and they didn't want her exposed to the quantum crystaliser aboard one of the Hulbert offices, as it could destroy her. Lucie was, however, the wrong woman.

I'll Explain Later:

• If the Time Lords have access to technology such as the quantum crystaliser, why is this the only time it's used? It would have been handy in the Last Great Time War.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Cybermen have never heard of Telos. They came to Lonsis from Mondas after its destruction in The Tenth Planet and, after their defeat in this story, will escape to Telos where they entomb themselves and are later sealed in by the Second Doctor. The planet is bombarded by humans at the end of the Cyber-Wars. At some point, they will "give help" to the people of Red Rocket Rising, as seen in the end of Blood of the Daleks.
• The Doctor previously worked in an office in World Enough and Time.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The series finale isn't as much of a blockbuster as its first story, taking a little too long to get started and perhaps not being quite as high-concept, but it's a satisfying end to the first series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures. As a good story, it earns a B.

Eighth Doctor Adventures

No More Lies  |  Human Resources  |  Dead London