A celebration of Revenge of the Cybermen
Revenge of the Cybermen doesn’t deserve its poor reputation. I’m not wholly sure why it is so badly thought of. Certainly it has its flaws; mainly just a few duff production decisions and a couple of unimpressive special effects, but few stories are without such defects and it has many virtues.
There’s an impressive efficiency in some of the writing, for example in the scene of the Doctor’s party quickly talking themselves into the confidence of Commander Stevenson and Lester, and in the method of separating Sarah and Harry from the Doctor via the transmat. The script (credited to Gerry Davis but heavily reworked by script editor Robert Holmes) is sound, with some witty lines for the Doctor, though much of the rest of the dialogue is unremarkable, perhaps betraying the mixed authorship.
The plot is straightforward but sensible, and the common criticism that the ostensibly emotionless Cybermen shouldn’t be motivated by revenge is nonsense. Although Tyram refers to the “vengeance of the Cybermen”, the Cybermen themselves certainly don’t speak in such terms. The Cyberleader outlines their objective as destroying Voga, humanity’s main source of gold, in advance of launching their next campaign. It’s a very sensible tactic – which belligerent wouldn’t want to eradicate the source of their enemy’s most potent weapon against them?
It makes a nice change that the Cybermen are clocked as the villain half-way through part one, and we see them silently approaching in their ship, establishing the threat and letting it hang ominously over the story long before they make their big entrance at the end of part two. And what a great episode ending that is, with the Cybermen not just arriving on the beacon but shooting down the crew and the Doctor, with the Doctor writhing under their repeated blasts. Whilst reminiscent of older, longer stories, this holding back of the baddies’ arrival gives the added bonus of preventing the dreaded part three water-treating, and here the third episode is one of the best, with the plot advancing and the threat escalating.
Some of the production decisions are remarkably successful, most notably the use of the wonderful Wookey Hole location for Voga. Thanks to this location, and director Michael E Briant’s creative use of it, Revenge has one of the most impressively realised alien landscapes in the entire series, and the best of its many cave settings. Subdued lighting, real echoes, the sound of dripping water, and atmospheric music from Carey Blyton (which is somewhat reminiscent of his score for Death to the Daleks), make these sequences eerily effective.
Which other alien world in Doctor Who can boast a genuine subterranean river along which the natives travel in fully practical boats? Briant’s direction makes good use of the different levels afforded by the caves – which could never be matched in studio – particularly in the action scenes. The Cybermen versus Vogans battles are spectacular, although the massacre of the Vogans does beg the question of why the Vogans’ guns don’t fire gold bullets, given the metal’s ubiquity for every other purpose on their world.
The Vogans are an interesting species, and are well developed within the necessary limits on the screen-time available for this. Their internecine conflict is a good method of emphasising the differences between the Vogan characters and creating the impression that they have a genuine political culture, making them seem so much more real as a civilisation than any number of other more uniform alien cultures in the series.
The Japanese-inspired Vogan design is also good, with the exaggerated eye sockets suggesting the enlarged eyes of subterranean creatures without a potentially disastrous attempt to actually give them huge eyes. The generic masks for the non-speaking Vogans are less impressive, but the main Vogan characters are well differentiated.
The new Cybermen costumes are also effective, being a similar design to the last appearance but beefed-up, with a more robust exoskeleton of tubing, unlike the more delicate-looking Invasion model. The makeup effect for the poison victims is remarkably good and also horrific. The colourful pulsating vein pattern suggests the skin itself is becoming translucent. For long-in-the-tooth fans it is a welcome nod back to the similar but more simplistic makeup design used for the victims of the Cybermen’s poison in The Moonbase.
So, when next you dust down your season 12 Blu-ray set, or visit the Doctor Who history collection on iPlayer, give Revenge of the Cybermen another chance. Put out of your mind the hands-on-hips Cyberleader, the rubbish Cybermen voices, the stock footage rocket and spinning-log planet-flyby effect, and enjoy the strong aspects of the story instead. There are plenty of them.
Images © BBC
This is a slightly revised version of an article originally published in Panic Moon in October 2010