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| The Doctor is possessed by the Cybermen! |
1 episode. Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Neil Gaiman. Directed by: Stephen Woolfenden. Produced by: Marcus Wilson, Denise Paul.
THE PLOT
The children under Clara's care, Angie (Eve de Leon Allen) and Artie (Kassius Carey Johnson), have found multiple photos of her online with the Doctor - all in different places and times. When they confront her with them, she gets the Doctor to agree to take them on one trip to keep them quiet. He takes them to the logical place for children: An amusement park. Specifically, to Hedgewick's World of Wonders, the greatest amusement park in the universe!
Unfortunately, he gets his dates wrong. The park is closed, its only occupants a punishment platoon of misfit soldiers and Webley (Jason Watkins), who houses a collection of waxworks and oddities from across the galaxy. Webley shows the Doctor and the children the prize of his collection: The shell of a Cyberman, made to play chess by his diminutive assistant, Porridge (Warwick Davis).
But the Cyber-shell isn't quite as dead as it seems. Tiny metallic insects, which the Doctor dubs "Cyber-mites," have infested the park. They reactivate the Cyberman, which takes Angie and Artie hostage. The Doctor goes to their rescue, of course - but he falls right into a trap, the Cyber-mites infecting him with the goal of making him their new Cyber-controller!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Smith gets to play a true double role, being both hero and villain, Doctor and Cyber-controller. In my opinion, he does a lot better as the Doctor, though a large part of the reason is the script. The Cyber-controller is too manic, egotistical, and sarcastic to be convincing as an unemotional being. Perhaps the script's goal was to showcase the Doctor's darkest qualities divorced from his virtues, but it doesn't work in this context because the Cybermen are meant to be emotionless. I will say that Smith does a fine job of separating his characterization so that we can generally tell when he's the Doctor, when he's the Cyber-controller, and when he's one character pretending to be the other.
The Doctor: Smith gets to play a true double role, being both hero and villain, Doctor and Cyber-controller. In my opinion, he does a lot better as the Doctor, though a large part of the reason is the script. The Cyber-controller is too manic, egotistical, and sarcastic to be convincing as an unemotional being. Perhaps the script's goal was to showcase the Doctor's darkest qualities divorced from his virtues, but it doesn't work in this context because the Cybermen are meant to be emotionless. I will say that Smith does a fine job of separating his characterization so that we can generally tell when he's the Doctor, when he's the Cyber-controller, and when he's one character pretending to be the other.
Clara: Very protective of the kids in her charge, even referring to them as "my children" at one point. she trusts the Doctor to get them back - at least, she trusts him a lot more than the captain (Tamzin Outhwaite) who seems a little too eager to blow up the planet with all of them still on it. She knows the Doctor well enough by now that when he begins complimenting her beauty and intelligence, she instantly knows that it can't be him. Even if he truly did feel that way, which she knows he doesn't, she knows that he'd "rather die than say it."
Cybermen: This latest variant of the Cybermen is most effective in the episode's early scenes. The visual of the Cyber-mites, running up a victim's body to "upgrade" him, is just the right level of ghoulish, as is the idea of children's minds being used to create a Cyber-controller. "A child's brain, with its infinite potential, is perfect for our needs." Less good is the self-upgrading that the Cybermen do at many points in the story. They upgrade themselves any time they encounter an obstacle. A good story idea, if that updgrade shows them absorbing some resource to make it happen. But these upgrades just occur out of thin air. They might as well be using magic, for all the basis their self-upgrades are given by the story.
THOUGHTS
Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who debut came with The Doctor's Wife, my pick for best episode of Series Six. Nightmare in Silver is his second episode. While it's still an enjoyable piece, with some excellent atmosphere and imagination in its first half, the second half squanders a lot of those virtues. It's entertaining enough, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Nightmare in Silver continues Series Seven's trend of visually strong episodes. The realization of the Doctor's battle for control of his own mind is particularly well-done, as the Doctor and the Cyber-controller fence verbally in a virtual landscape, with visuals looming between them: first of Clara, then of the Doctor's past selves, finally of the Doctor's current self. In one shots, the Doctor stands against a yellow/orange background that resembles the time tunnel of the opening titles. The Cyber-controller stands against a visually colder background colored black and metallic gray.
The early scenes build up a lot of atmosphere. A standout moment sees Porridge telling Clara about the last war against the Cybermen. He walks her out to a view of outer space, pointing out a void and telling her: "It used to be the Tiberion Spiral Galaxy. A million star systems, a hundred million worlds, a billion trillion people. It's not there anymore. No more Tiberion Galaxy, no more Cybermen. It was effective." This lays out the stakes: The Cybermen became such a threat that collateral damage on a massive scale was deemed acceptable to stop them. It also tells us that the society we are visiting is one that will engage in such practices. The scene, well-performed and beautifully realized, ends on a haunting note as Porridge observes that he feels sorriest not for the dead, but for the man who had to push the button that made it happen.
While the setup is wonderful, the story begins to weaken from the second the Cybermen make themselves visible as a threat. One problem is that there are too many of them. If the situation was this desperate against a handful of Cybermen, that would emphasize what a threat they are while not straining credibility that they could have been hiding on this world without discovery. With an army, the threat of a single one is de-emphasized: The threat is one of numbers, and I have difficulty getting past the question of where they were all hiding.
Make no mistake, I fully endorse Neil Gaiman returning to Doctor Who. He has a strong feel for the Doctor's character, and his imagination and style lend themselves well to this series. Even when things get silly in the second half, the story remains fast-paced and enjoyable. But I think Gaiman's imagination is best-suited to more atmospheric stories with smaller casts (horror/fantasy pieces), not to large-scale action epics. The moment this episode shifts from atmosphere to action is the moment that the story spins out of control.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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