![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
To show signs of being likeable in Attack of the Cybermen is to risk being turned into a Cyberman. The affable sewer workers encountered in the first scene take their places quickly in conversion cabinets. The Doctor is distant and abrasive and Peri complaining and stupid by turns. I'm not sure whether the fact the only character I warmed to in part one of the story was the Cyberleader proves or undermines my first sentence.
Part two is potentially more interesting: there is a clash in design between a mid-1980s Top of the Pops style and a fragile gothic from which could have driven the episode had it been more carefully expressed. As it is one is left with a sense of futility - Bates and Stratton and Griffiths, weighed down by heavy dialogue, fail to take the Cybermen time vessel; the Doctor fails to do very much except get stuck in a room, be slow on the uptake and fail to understand Lytton's plan; the Halley's Comet subplot is sidelined; the Cryons talk slowly and flatly; every piece of exposition seems to be repeated at least twice.
Perhaps these reactions are too obviously shaped by over a quarter-century of recriminations concerning falling ratings, disputed authorship, the alleged unrealistic and outdated aspirations of the producer. For a generation, the merit of the 1985 season of Doctor Who is entangled with the cancellation crisis which emerged in the last week of February, attended by a sense of relentless inevitability.
Part two is potentially more interesting: there is a clash in design between a mid-1980s Top of the Pops style and a fragile gothic from which could have driven the episode had it been more carefully expressed. As it is one is left with a sense of futility - Bates and Stratton and Griffiths, weighed down by heavy dialogue, fail to take the Cybermen time vessel; the Doctor fails to do very much except get stuck in a room, be slow on the uptake and fail to understand Lytton's plan; the Halley's Comet subplot is sidelined; the Cryons talk slowly and flatly; every piece of exposition seems to be repeated at least twice.
Perhaps these reactions are too obviously shaped by over a quarter-century of recriminations concerning falling ratings, disputed authorship, the alleged unrealistic and outdated aspirations of the producer. For a generation, the merit of the 1985 season of Doctor Who is entangled with the cancellation crisis which emerged in the last week of February, attended by a sense of relentless inevitability.
Tags: