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Revenge of
the Cybermen
19TH APRIL 1975 - 10TH MAY
1975
(4 EPISODES)
After winning a fan poll to
become the first Doctor Who video release,
Revenge
of the Cybermen has had a rough few decades. To say that it doesn’t
enjoy the loftiest of reputations these days would be understating things
just a tad, as of all the Cybermen tales out there, it is Revenge
that often gets the worst roasting. And whilst in the past I’ve taken
on the mantle of apologist for notorious adventures such as Time-Flight
and even Timelash, I can’t do the same for this four-part travesty,
which is now available to own on DVD as part of a tenuous Cybermen-themed
box set that it shares with Silver Nemesis.
Any serial broadcast a week after Genesis of the Daleks was always
going to look below par in comparison, but even that defence doesn’t hold
now as, when watching this DVD out of sequence, Revenge is every
bit as bad as it always had been – the picture quality is just
a little better. In any case, even when watching Season 12 in transmission
order, by the time that you get to this serial the last thing you’ll
want to see is the Ark again! Sorry, Nerva...
Gerry Davis’ narrative is slow and plodding, Michael Briant’s
palette is neutered, and Carey Blyton’s “Mickey Mouse” score is so woefully
inappropriate that even the producers saw fit
to excise great swathes of it. As for the Cybermen, it’s no surprise that
they had decade off after this debacle. Be warned: the more that you love
the Cybermen, the more you will loathe their Revenge...
“You’re just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy
in an ancient spaceship.”
It was thought that the return of an old foe would offer a touch of
familiarity for an audience adjusting to a new Doctor, but sadly the
emotional parodies of Cybermen that we see here lack the menace of serials
past. The one fundamental tenet that sets the Cybermen apart from any
other race is their cold, emotionless dependency on rationality and logic,
yet here the writer who co-created them does a complete u-turn - the title
says it all: Revenge. Rather than spitefully attack Voga, surely –
no, logically - wouldn’t
the Cybermen have just retreated and regrouped? It puzzles the will how a
writer could stray so far from the successful tenets that he himself
established. Even the physical realisation of the Cybermen is poor -
Briant’s
idea of them being able to shoot from their helmets may have looked good
on paper, but on screen it just looks feeble, and worse still, the
actors’ voices aren’t treated electronically; we just hear human
monotones, occasionally punctuated with rage or pique.
Furthermore, the narrative lacks both pace and punch. After the tedium of
a cyber-induced plague and then some dreary underground sequences which
see the Cybermen try to use the Doctor and company as lemmings, the silver
giants decide to crash Nerva beacon into Voga. Now this would have been
all fine and good were it not for the fact that any discerning viewer
knows right from the off that their plan won’t work as the events of The
Ark in Space, set in Nerva’s future, haven’t happened yet. I know
“time is in flux” et al, but try telling that to the misanthropist inside
you as you watch these events unfold. There’s no tension; no drama. Davis
should have at least squeezed a line in there about the future “not being
set in stone” or something, as writers so often do in the revived series
when faced with similar scenarios.
More positively, the Cybermen
don’t show up to spoil things
until the end of Part 2, and in
fairness when they do Davis
at least paints a fascinating
picture of the end of the Cyber
Wars, the creation of the Glitter
Gun, and the role played by the
Vogans and their gold in the
destruction of the Cyber race.
Furthermore, the evidently Rassilon-worshipping Vogans are an interesting
race. Visually they are quite distinctive – their gold skin and pronounced
eye sockets really make them stand out, if not always for the right
reasons. It’s fascinating to see how their culture has evolved with the
constant fear of the Cybermen hanging over them; ironically, just like
their enemies, their primary obsession has become survival. Their human
ally, Kellman, is also
an intriguing character; Jeremy Wilkin plays him in such a way that the
audience believes that he is in fact working for the Cybermen, a device
that the pseudonymous ‘Paula Moore’ would later recycle with Lytton in
Attack of the Cybermen.
“Did you make the rocks fall, Harry? HARRY SULLIVAN IS AN IMBECILE!”
However, the principal difference between Revenge of the Cybermen
and the worst Doctor Who serials is there to be seen in the
performances of the regulars. Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter
are an absolute joy to watch together on screen. I’m particularly fond of
the latter; even with the best of intentions, Marter’s Harry can’t help
but get things wrong time and time again - either he’s making rocks fall
on the Doctor’s head or he’s patronising Sarah-Jane at a pivotal, life or
death moment. The “I don’t know if you’re aware, old girl…” sequence at
the end is just sublime.
Ultimately though, Revenge of the Cybermen is best known not for
its many failings or few successes, or even for being the butt of a
memorable League of Gentlemen sketch – it is best remembered for
being the first Doctor Who serial to be made available to the
public commercially, albeit at the inflated price of £39.95 (£103.07 RPI†)
and with all the episode breaks removed. Prior to its release on VHS,
Betamax and Video 2000 in October 1983, Who fans had to turn to
off-air audio recordings or Target novelisations if they wanted to explore
classic stories. Occasionally the BBC would indulge them with a repeat
season (1980’s Five Faces of Doctor Who, for instance) but such
broadcasts were few and far between.
Above: Cheques, Lies
and Videotape...
It’s rather fitting then that this DVD’s flagship documentary,
Cheques, Lies and Videotape, explores the dearth of classic Who
available prior to video; the early 1980s black market explosion of
imported Australian home video recordings; and the lengths that some fans
went to to try and put their hands on stories past. Living as we do in a
world of on demand entertainment, it’s difficult to recall (let alone
fathom) what life was like before DVDs and the internet, and this Nicholas
Pegg-penned documentary does a first-rate job of emphasising just how much
times have changed.
What
I found especially endearing is that many of the fans
interviewed here actually miss the days where they’d have
to spend £350.00 (£902.96 RPI†)
on a pirate copy of Doctor
Who and the Silurians or labour over which serials to keep
and which to rub off (blank VHS being prohibitively expensive
in its early days). Even though I’m a generation or two down
from these fans, I share many of their sentiments - I have very
fond memories of laboriously trying to track down an episode
guide, and from there spending years lovingly locating and
devouring as many stories as I could in whatever format.
Many VHS releases were available to buy by my time, but
my pocket money wouldn’t stretch to them unless I saved up
for about two months, and so for almost five years my VHS
collection was limited to just Spearhead from Space, Day
of the Daleks, Frontier in Space and The Five Doctors (the
latter I’d not bought, but won in a UK Gold competition). After
my parents had finally invested in Sky, I was able to spend two
years’ worth of Sunday mornings and Monday nights watching
all the stories that I’d only read or imagined previously, only to
be left feeling a bit dejected when they didn’t live up to the images
conjured by Target prose
(as beautifully conveyed by Rob Hammond’s rendering of a scene from The
Three Doctors novelisation, which in the documentary is brutally
contrasted with a Three Doctors television clip, see below).
Above: Hover your mouse
over the glorious, prose-inspired image above to reveal the reality!
In addition to the above, the DVD also features a less remarkable
twenty-five minute feature, The Tin Man and the Witch, which charts
the making of this serial with the DVD producers’ usual aplomb. It speaks
volumes about Revenge of the Cybermen though that its director’s
Wookey Hole ghost story is far more chilling than the serial itself!
Rounding off the disc is a Tom Baker-less commentary, former
series producer Philip Hinchcliffe and actress Lis Sladen being
joined by a Doctor from another dimension, David Collings (Full
Fathom Five, The Robots of Death, Mawdryn Undead) who also
played Vorus in this serial. It’s enlightening as ever, but a little flat
– Baker’s presence really does make all the difference to these
things.
On the whole though, this DVD release is more than equal to
the howler that it houses. Even if, like me, you aren’t a fan of this
serial, then the box set is worth the purchase price alone for the
outstanding Cheques, Lies and Videotape documentary, not to
mention the underrated seventh Doctor classic Silver Nemesis,
which is in another league entirely…
†
Based on an RPI of 86.36 in October 1983 and 222.8 in April 2010
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