Plot Details: This opinion reveals no details about the movie's plot.

(For those unfamiliar with the Doctor Who television series, please consult my "Doctor Who Primer" at the following Epinions page):

http://www.epinions.com/content_3396182148


In this story the Doctor and his companions, Harry and Sarah-Jane find themselves traveling through time and space back to the spacecraft Nerva, seen previously in "The Ark in Space." It is now many thousands of years before the last time they were on Nerva. In the current time period the spacecraft is in use as a beacon, warning space craft of the presence of a new asteroid in the obit of the planet Jupiter.

When they arrive, the three soon discover that everything is not quite as it should be on the Nerva. The Doctor and his companions find that the ship is littered with corpses and that seem to be locked into the part of the ship where they find themselves, from the outside.

The fact of the matter is that there remaining living inhabitants of the spacecraft Nerva believe that their ship has contracted a space plague, and they have partitioned off a good portion of the ship in order to isolate the pathogen. The crew has also bravely put themselves in quarantine, and they will not entertain anyone from outside of the ship to come to their assistance, and risk the plague in the process.

The crew is mistaken, and the Doctor ingratiates himself with the crew by coming to their medical assistance with the aid of Harry who is of course a physician. Naturally, this is nothing as simple as a plague but is in fact the work of the evil Cybermen, evildoing alien men-machines out for revenge on mankind.

As if this surprising diagnosis were not discovery enough, the Doctor goes on to deduce that the new satellite in orbit around Jupiter is in fact none other than the planet Voga, the so-called planet of gold. This, by way of curious happenstance is the Achilles heel of the Cybermen, since gold is the only metal which can interfere with their respiration, and they are therefore highly susceptible to death by gold dust. The Cybermen would like to destroy Voga!

By an even more curious twist of fate, the only way to rid the now-infected-with cyber-poison Sarah-Jane of her ailment is to transmat her to the planet Voga itself. Naturally, the Cybermen invade the ship. Naturally, the Vogans assault Harry and Sarah-Jane. Naturally, there is a misunderstood double agent on the Nerva, out to rid the world of the Cybermen once and for all with ingenious cunning! Of course, the Doctor is put in great peril of his life in trying to make everything come out right in the end!

Will the Vogans kill Sarah Jane and Harry?
Will the Cybermen destroy the Doctor and the planet Voga all in one fell swoop?
Can double agent Kellman finish his plan to destroy the Cybermen before his crew lynches him for being a collaborator?

All these and more curious and confounding questions will be answered when you watch, on the edge of your seat "Revenge of the Cybermen!"

So much for the plot!

Revenge of the Cybermen elicits different responses from me every time I watch it. Here we are, re-using the set....errrr I mean traveling back in time to the spaceship Nerva, one of the better sets from the mid-seventies shows. There is nothing wrong with re-using good sets, and of course time travel scenarios permit just such license.

Alas, whilst the travelers have traveled back only in time, the quality of the script has suffered a far more severe retardation. Many of the passages of dialogue in this story are too dry for even the most enthusiastic thespian to get any joy from. Add to this the fact that the Cybermen with their tin man masks cannot use facial expression to enliven their lines and one is left with a profound sense of cheapness.

Yes, Revenge of the Cybermen suffered very much from a feeling of cheapness. The lighting is atrocious, the very print itself is over-exposed, and the re-used sets ensure the viewer should recall the previous story set on the Nerva, to which this is but a pale comparison.

The scenes which were filmed on the planet Voga (actually filmed in one of England's few extensive cave systems...Wookey Hole in Somerset) were more rewarding to the eye, although the suspension of disbelief required in this portion of the story pushes the boundaries, even for Doctor Who! At one point two Cybermen are present on the planet Voga. They manage to run casually walk around, wiping out half the inhabitants of the planet, who are all the while attempting to shoot them with their sub machine guns and proclaiming "our weapons do nothing to them!"

Is this not Voga, planet of gold, Achilles heel to the Cybermen? Am I truly meant to suppose that the inhabitants of the planet, universally aware of this weakness of the Cybermen are suddenly unable to lob one of the innumerable lumps of Gold at them? Poor show, chaps.

This is just one example of how the entire story seems cobbled together.

On other days when I have watched this story, more sympathetic to the repertory-like qualities with which Doctor Who has always been endowed, I manage to complete the process of suspension of disbelief, and under these circumstances the Revenge of the Cybermen never fails to entertain me fully. I liked the Cybermen, redesigned as they were for this story; I even liked their flared trousers, and the fact that one of them does not have his head attached properly so that it wobbles every time he walks.

I liked the interplay between the Doctor and his companions, which I found to be at its best throughout the whole of this the twelfth season. Poor Ian Marter was destined to suffer a very premature death, but his contribution to Doctor Who as both Harry and then later as the author of many of the best TV-to-book conversions from the series was exceptional. He is a gem in the Doctor Who crown.

As I mentioned, there is too much story trying to happen in this adventure. Any one piece of this, be it the action on Nerva, or the action on Voga would have made a good story on its own. In combination, it is all too busy, and the best of both worlds was never gleaned by this amalgamation.

This was the last story in the otherwise exceptional twelfth season. This season had re-established Doctor Who as excellent intelligent science fiction adventure for the whole family. Tom Baker et al would maintain this standard of work throughout the remainder of the seventies.



CAST
Tom Baker The Doctor

David Collings Vorus

Brian Grellis Sheprah

Ronald Leigh-Hunt Commander Stevenson

William Marlowe Lester

Ian Marter Harry Sullivan

Christopher Robbie Cyberleader

Elisabeth Sladen Sarah Jane Smith

Kevin Stoney Tyrum

Alec Wallis Warner

Jeremy Wilkin Kellman

Michael Wisher Magrik

CREW
Michael E Briant Director

Gerry Davis Writer

Norman Bennett Studio Sound

Robert Holmes Script Editor

Philip Hinchcliffe Producer

Dick Mills Special Sounds

Roger Murray-Leach Designer

Prue Handley Costumes

Carey Blyton Incidental Music

Peter Howell Incidental Music

Jim Ward Visual Effects

My Reviews of Doctor Who:
Logopolis
The Brain of Morbius
The Pyramids of Mars
The armageddon Factor
The Ark in Space
The Ribos Operation
The Revenge of The Cybermen
The Stones of Blood
The Sontaran Experiment
The Genesis of The Daleks
The Destiny of the Daleks
The Pirate Planet
The City of Death
The Androids of Tara
The Talons of Weng Chiang
The Robots of Death
The Power of Kroll
The Leisure Hive
Terror of the Zygons
The Horror of Fang Rock
The Invasion of Time
The Seeds of Doom
Full Circle






Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8