Who Review #80 - Revenge of the Cybermen

episode by episode, scene by scene, runthrough.

The 12th Season ended with the return of a favourite monster. The Cybermen didn't appear in the Pertwee years, although there was one in the miniscope in Carnival of Monsters, so they had been away from the show for about seven years. There would go a number of years again before they appeared, in the Davison era story "Earthshock". I have never heard a reason for that hiatus, although a fan has made the reasonable remark that the silver giants were probably done to death in the Troughton era. I am beginning to get that feeling with New Who and its continued use of the parallel dimension Cybermen.

The action takes place on the Nerva station again, so I have no complaints about the sets. (There is a scene with Tom walking along one of the bending corridors which I remembered from childhood; it was only when I saw that in this story years later that I was able to put a probable date on when I started watching the show.) There is also some great location filming at Wookey Hole. I have grand memories of the caves because I used to live in Bath as a child; I went on a visit to the caves with my infant school.

You could tell flares were in fashion as even Cyber suits had them!The Vogans are interesting though, with their half masks and long white hair. The costumes are also nicely made. The winner in the costumes department though is Liz Sladen, in the Thal uniform she picked up in Genesis: combat trousers and boots - very sassy and what your average G20 protestor wears these days.

The incidental music is a bit of fun. I am one of those fans who adores the Sea Devils, Death to the Daleks and this story's music - there sure are others who have been annoyed by the scores though.

There are a number of problems with the story. The obvious one is it has a number of the same old Cyberman plot features: a beacon or station of humans is attacked by a cyber virus and cybermats and then invaded by the Cybermen. Nothing new to see here, except with the introduction of Voga and yet another way to kill the Cybermen (this time gold). Then there is the plan to destroy Voga because it is the planet of gold; astrophysics and planetary geology will readily tell you there is a lot more gold in the universe than on one small planetoid. Why should Cybermen be effected by gold anyway - that doesn't make sense because they don't breathe?

Revenge has been panned by some fans but I think it's OK.
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