Cybermats, the only villain in science fiction that can cute you to death.
This was a pretty damn good penultimate episode - the comedy is far more dialed back than in the last episode to feature James Cordon, but that’s ok. I was quite surprised by how well Cordon took on the role of the primary companion. The comedic opening with the baby is quite good and the banter demonstrated by the Doctor’s ability to speak baby is put to as good a use as in "A Good Man Goes to War."
Not without fault though - I got the impression that they were trying to take the Cybermen back to their classic years form in that they were hiding in the shadows and not only getting as far as planning the massive invasion. To this effect it was traditional in the classic Doctor Who for the Cybermen to claim that they had large numbers but for only a few of them to appear on screen. That and they didn’t have the money for more than eight Cyberman costumes per episode.
This return to the old cyber traditions is alright – it makes them have far more impact than they did in the Davies era, but at the same time it raises the same criticism as the episodes of the classic series that involved the Cybermen. It has basically the same story as all of them - the Cybermen are hiding underground, because their ship crashed a long time ago they were just waiting for power to absorb - there’s no real difference here between this and the classic stories.
Weirdly enough, the internal storyline - that of the Doctor coming to terms with the fact that he must soon die - makes up for the lacking depth in the external story. Now I normally take the view that the main story should always take be more important than the internal parts. That’s one of the reasons that in the past I have been less than pleased with the character of Amy Pond - take for example ‘The Lodger’ where the Doctor mentions to her that’s there’s something above him that threatens the whole universe and she’s worried about being thrown off into the timestream – like she’s saying ‘and the destruction of the universe itself, but what about MY problems.”
But in this episode there’s some very welcome focus on the Doctor and all he’s done for Earth in particular - what’s really good is the bit when Craig tells him to stop being stupid and assuming it’s him that gets everyone in danger.
Not really much else to say – oh that he-killed-them-with-love thing is saved only by the way that the Doctor calls him out on it.
Next week River kills the Doctor! – why isn’t one-eyed lady any older?
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