Why Revenge of the Cybermen Faded into Obscurity (Doctor Who)
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2024
- Review of classic Doctor Who season 12 Revenge of the Cybermen, with Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor, where the Cybermen invade the Nerva Beacon, with Harry Sullivan and Sarah Jane Smith.
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0:00 Intro
0:46 Reuse of the Nerva Beacon
1:59 Revenge of the Cybermen has nothing to say
3:39 The Cybermen are not threatening
5:21 Conclusion
Do you think there is any way Revenge of the Cybermen could be improved?
this is cheating a little but using Earthshock's reveal of the cybermen only at the end of the first episode would have made the earlier stuff with the plaque and agents more effective. You're building a mystery about who is behind all of them and then the cybermen reveal themselves.
@@Exospray the way the Cybermen are first revealed in the episode is a little anticlimactic to be fair, especially the way the Doctor works it out based on... them being near Voga
It bugged me that the essence of the Cybermen built up in the Patrick Troughton era was lost for their reprise in this one. Their dialogue is very generic and they sort of fill a baddie role instead of acting or sounding like what had been established with the 2nd Doctor. Even the line "they're utterly machine creatures" doesn't exactly capture what Cybermen are. I say they should have been more in line with the older Cybermen
@@joeltaylor3189 Yeah it is one of those where the Cybermen could probably be used pretty much interchangeably with any other villain, since being "utterly ruthless" is about the only defining characteristic they are given
I agree. The costumes looked OK but the voices, 'emotional' dialogue and the body language e.g. hands on hips etc was totally wrong for the Cybermen.Even the title was wrong. The Cybermen were supposed to be devoid of emotion but is 'revenge' not driven by emotion i.e. anger.@@joeltaylor3189
The Cybermen were always going to be impotent and ineffectual with those flared cyber trousers they wore.
Not the most practical I suppose
Not only was the choice of gold arbitrary, it was also baffling from a scientific POV, as gold is one of the most benign, unreactive elements there is. Whilst it's explained that gold gums up a Cyberman's respiratory system, there's no reason why ANY metal particles couldn't do the same job, if not better.
Well apparently it's "the perfect non-corrodible metal" whatever that means. Honestly I'm not a scientist so I can buy the technobabble, but it just seems like a very random choice to then not do anything with it
@@MidnightChimey Gold probably is the perfect non-corrodible metal, but even with rust-prone metals like iron, corrosion doesn't set in so slowly that it would be an issue when it came to instantly clogging up a Cyberman's "lungs" :)
Given that this was a solo effort by Gerry Davis, perhaps he could have done with the scientific input of his former co-writer, Dr Kit Pedler.
I kinda understand it though. Just because something is unreative, doesn't mean the body wouldn't overreact to it. There are people with gold allergies, (although very rare.) Maybe they all had that one super close common ancestor that was allergic to it and they all got it lol idk. Just a thought.
@@cameoshadowness7757 That could work as an explanation if only cybermen had organic lungs. Trouble is, their chest units are purely mechanical :)
oh yeye! You right! lol my bad!@@ftumschk
I believe it was this story that gave us the Seal of Rassilon symbol. Presumably the Time Lords and Vogans had a copyright battle. Now that's a story I'd like to see.
Big Finish have an explanation for the Vogans using the same symbol (I don't know if that's actually true but they've explained just about every other bit of weird continuity so it wouldn't surprise me)
There's fan theories that the Time Lords had "meddled" with Voga at some point in their distant past, before their (paper-thin) non-interventionist phase, and/or that Voga was one of their protectorates left over from that time... which would then suggest that "RotC" is actually *another* mission the Time Lords have sent the Doctor on straight after "Genesis", without even a heads-up! Although when they get to the beacon he instantly knows they've arrived in an earlier period and the TARDIS is heading back to meet them, so maybe the Time Ring has a built in email reader and they sent him a "by the way, on your way back could you just...?" message, in loopy Gallifreyan script. =:o}
The First Doctor and Susan ran an interior design company before settling on Earth. It's how the Fourth Doctor knew about Voga.
@@zacmumblethunder7466 Ah, sounds about right
@@zacmumblethunder7466 Head-canon accepted! =:oD
As someone who saw this episode as a young child in the 70s, it was my first introduction to the Cybermen; my dad had told me that when he saw them on TV in England that they were "robots with blood" which made me instantly become fascinated with them for life. The sad part is that "Revenge" was a sort of "swan song," showing us the end of the Cybermen. They were no longer creepy, or threatening as the prior iterations were. The big mistake of the story is in the title. The episode should have been written with the Cybermen realizing their time was over and that with their last vestige of "humanity" (or Mondasity, lol) they wanted to actually just blow up Voga as actual revenge as they were literally dying. (running out of power, or their organics were too old.)
It would have been cool to have the doctor fail, and Voga actually get blown up and the remaining cybermen just simply die or self-terminate at the end. Succeeding in their final goal as a race. That would have been a better and more melancholic ending for what was originally a tragic villain.
That could be an interesting idea, and would justify the fact that "revenge" is clearly an emotional concept as many have pointed out
At the time as a kid i was really invested in this. My parents decided to take me on holiday when this aired. I remember throwing a total tantrum to the point my parents had to find me somewhere to watch this. Which involved a decent detour and visiting 'a friend'
I would have probably been outraged too to be honest. I mean it's not like there was any such thing as streaming back then. You miss it and that's it
I like Revenge of the Cybermen
@matthewbolitho-jones
😲😲😲
All your criticisms here are valid and true, looking at this story from the POV of an adult.
However, I'm old enough to remember watching this when it first ran on Australian TV as a 6 year old. The imagery of Voga shot in those actual caves was mind-blowing. And yes, there were plot holes you could drive a truck through, but there was great pacing. I particularly recall the tension of the cliffhanger when Harry started to undo the buckle. One that has stuck with me as an all time great who cliffhanger.
Furthermore there were seasons of classic Dr Who that, had they had a Revenge of the Cybermen it would have been the stand out top story.
There is some fun action and tension in the story, and it probably helps you are blinded to flaws more when watching as kid, also the idea the Doctor might get blown up is scary, whereas now as an adult with a cliffhanger like that I just think "well obviously that's not going to happen"
@MidnightChimey As kids, we knew the Dictor wouldn't get blown up, the fun and tension was in trying to predict how he'd escape.
For all the plot holes (How do the Cybermen breathe on Voga--is there no dust? Why don't the Vogans have glitter guns for just this contingency?), cost-cutting effects (Why do all the non-speaking Vogans look like Arthur Ridley?), inconsistency in the characterization of the Cybermen (Why are supposedly logical, emotionless beings so excitable?) and curious ideas about the effects of gravity on small planetoids ("Underworld" also being guilty here), I have to say "Revenge" is a lot more fun to watch than better stories like "Caves of Androzani", "Earthshock", and "Genesis of the Daleks". Or maybe "relaxing" is a better word for it. If it weren't for the admittedly high body count it might pass for light entertainment. It depends on what one likes, I suppose.
It does admittedly have its moments, honestly I can't believe I got through this review without once mentioned HARRY SULLIVAN IS AN IMBECILE. That's probably part of the problem and what makes it jarring though. Like with Destiny of the Daleks, the story treats itself as "light entertainment" and doesn't take anything too seriously, even though the content (the high body count etc.) you would think should be taken seriously.
After Genesis, we definitely needed something more fun. I didn't really care for Genesis at the time as it contradicted so much of what I'd read about the origins of the Daleks, and so only recently watched it again. Gordon Bennett, what a downer! I think it must rank alongside The Massacre as one of the grimmest Dr Who stories ever.
As for the body count in Revenge, when this went out, we were getting used to US cop shows where incidental characters were killed off without a second thought given to them, while a jokey tone pervaded the rest of the story. It was an episode of Cannon in which several passers-by were mown down with no further comment, that inspired Douglas Adams to create a character, The Whale, get us to care about him and then kill him off, as a counterpoint.
Shh. don't analyze it. Just enjoy it, No matter what! Okay, I like it if there's nothing else on, but the storyline is so inconsistent within itself that it's hard to take even as light entertainment. It's just a dumb plot laced with that season 12 charm.
Couldn’t the Vogons just have read some of their poetry at the Cybermen?
Didn't stop them recycling the script in Earthshock!
I guess there are similarities, though Earthshock succeeds much more in actually portraying the cybermen as a threat
Genesis should always have been a season closer.
Would have been more of a high note to end with
It could have established the 'end on a six parter' pattern a season earlier.@@MidnightChimey
But bear in mind, if they'd planned it that way then Genesis would have got held over to the following season instead of the intended closer, Terror of the Zygons. We'd have still ended up probably having RotC as the "accidental" season finale.
But, if they'd planned 'Genesis' as the closer, then 'Zygons' might have been the penultimate story, and then the last.@@therealpbristow
@@justynmatlock8873 True. Given how the whole season was structured around ideas like "let's avoid using the TARDIS interior all year so we can have more space for other sets" (hence the separation from the TARDIS, the introduction of the Time Ring, etc.) and the importance of Genesis being a specific mission set by the Time Lords (hence *that* being the story where the Time Ring is introduced), it's hard to see how the stories could have been ordered that way round without losing some of the overall impact of the season. You could presumably have the transmat at the end of the Sontaran Experiment getting interfered with by some kind of time-storm or whatever so that they land back on Nerva in it's early "beacon" phase of existence, but then how would the trio ever get back to Nerva's future to pick up the TARDIS? Doesn't tie-up, so instead you have to have them "pop down to Earth" and back using the TARDIS (which frankly would have made more sense for them to do, and then a TARDIS malfunction lands them back on Nerva on the wrong era. By this point it's getting hard to justify having now interior TARDIS scenes... And then where the heck do you plonk the TARDIS down for "Genesis"? Instead of trying to recover the Time Ring (twice!), you have everyone just needing to tramp back through the wastelands at the end of the story. It doesn't up the stakes as much as having a small, easily-confiscated or lost device be your lifeline.
(Re-using the ark/beacon sets didn't end up saving them very much money in the end, by the way, since the bits they re-used were mostly the cheapest bits! But the scale and quality of them did make a big impact on viewers.)
When considering "how things could have been", I just wish Robert Holmes had "got" the Cybermen better. Their basic promise of "creeping dehumanisation through technology" would have been right up his street to explore, but that aspect of them wasn't present in the template Gerry Davis provided for this story, and adding it in would have required a much bigger re-working... And poor Bob had already put so much into completely reworking "Ark"; I wouldn't want *that* story to have been any less magnificent than it was, just to give him time to improve "Revenge" a bit. If he'd *known* it was going to be the season finale, I'm sure he'd have made the effort, but instead "Revenge" was awarded the accolade of "Turd Least Worth Polishing", and we got added, easy-to-write Vogans to distract us from the "boring" Cybermen. =:o1
Revenge of the Cybermen is definitely a story where the behind the scenes is way more interesting than the episodes themselves. NGL I’d rather watch the Cybermen have to fight the witch of Wookey Hole than have a story with the boring as sin Vogans
Same to be honest
I honestly don't see using the same space station as lowering the stakes, because I always see it as the Doctor constantly changing the timeline.
Meaning he remembers his past and where he's been but that doesn't mean that place even existed in the new timeline created by his future adventures through time and space.
It's why the 2018 the 2nd Doctor saw in Enemy of the World didn't exist when our real world got to 2018.
There is a difference between continuity spanning across five decades vs one season though. While that may be a valid interpretation, the story could still have benefitted from directly referencing the flexibility of the timeline. My idea was to have them be drawn back in time precisely because the future has changed/is changing and they have to fix things in order to get back to the TARDIS
Come guys at least it’s not the timeless child
I actually rate The Timeless Children quite highly funnily enough, though I know it's very divisive
Revenge of the Cybermen was to released on VHS
Revenge of the cybermen was the perfect last story for series 12
Glad you enjoyed it, though as I said with some improvements it could have made a better finale
I enjoy Revenge far more than Genesis or any of those other more serious and heavy stories with proper baddies. Revenge is comfort Who. Brainless and daft, with some great action scenes and location stuff. It’s totally banal, but it’s just perfect as it is
I can appreciate brainless and daft stories as you say, it's just there are some aspects of this like the plague and the amount of death that are jarringly heavy. I don't feel like light and silly is the tone it was aiming for
@@MidnightChimeyyes a weird mix of tone, which is why the story actually very good. William Marlowe blowing himself up always feels out of place. But it’s so daft I can’t help but admire it. Also, as it was the first old story that a generation of fans saw, it will always be thought of in that “familiarity breeds contempt” way
How this serial managed to completely waste the talents of Kevin Stoney will always baffle me.
I srill have a soft spot for this one since it's my first Cybermen story. The music was a bit odd. The Cybermen seem emotional, the gold is their weakness is silly (although used well in Earthshock).
The trouble with the gold as weakness and the reason I think it gets mocked so often it that it's the kind of weakness you'd think they would easily be able to work around and overcome (as indeed they did according Ascension of the Cybermen)
Can't agree with you less.
What about?
Nice vlog but why the photo of the area around Crewe station?
I know it's a bit arbitrary, but it's the theme of my channel, I justify it by the fact I write a lot of my scripts while travelling, especially on trains or waiting for trains
@@MidnightChimey I get it!
Cyberman are cyborgs. If you want to do something with AI, bring back the Robots of Death.
How would I fix Revenge... I'm stuck with Harry, aren't I? Or maybe... Harry, wannabe a member? And if we're re-using the set, we should some fun time travel stuff with it.
"The Cyberman from UNIT." Ah, different set. And the Brig? And the Brig.
I would do everything but Revenge, there, problem solved.
I guess there is a time travel aspect to the plot, with it being set in the past, it's just the story does nothing with it. My idea was that the time ring takes them back to an earlier point in time because history has changed and the beacon was destroyed, so they have to put it right and prevent it happening in order to get back to the TARDIS
I honestly found the story boring for the simple reason that there is just too many shoot-outs that don't lead anywhere. It's just there to fill time
I thought it was boring as well.
The Cybermen were not interesting. I would rather watch the 60's and 80's Cybermen stories.
Well as I say, even the dramatic action segments ultimately feel a bit meaningless
@@jamesline5103 '70s were not a great decade for Cybermen
I was about to turn ten years old when the story aired, and had just got my first tape recorder. We had a Philips VCR in the house, but I wasn't allowed to use it, and *no way* could my parents have paid for enough blank tapes for me to start collecting Doctor Who in *that* format! (30 quid for a 1-hour tape bigger than a house-brick, anyone? =:oo )... Trust me, those shoot-outs are even more boring in audio only, when you're relying on hazy memory for what the guns even looked like, never mind who was holding them! =:o}
It's the character moments that make the story for me: Harry planning his retirement to the country; Sarah being indignant about (1) waking up in Harry's arms and then (2) having her ankles criticised; Lester being a tired and grumpy old soldier, until he suddenly proves himself a hero... and of course the Doctor twitting Harry at every opportunity. =:o}
Oh, and the electrified floor bit was fun! (I never heard of the game called "The Floor is Lava" until decades later).
Wasn't Revenge of the Cybermen filmed before Genesis of the Daleks?
It may have been, I can't remember off the top of my head
What has the train station and trains got to do with anything ?
A lot of the time I write my scripts when I'm travelling on trains or waiting for trains, it's just the aesthetic theme of the channel, it's not particularly relevant to anything
Loved Revenge. Better than the Cyber atrocities that JNT produced and New Series
New series has been hit and miss but Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel and World Enough and Time, genuinely very good
I find it very amusing that immediately after arguably the best Dalek Story in classic who, we get the worst Cyberman story.
I think Mr Tardis was saying that the drop off in quality is comparable to Caves of Androzani/The Twin Dilemma
What people don't appreciate is that back in the day the return of the Cybermen was a very big deal - they hadn't been seen (aside from a short cameo in Carnival of Monsters) in the whole of Pertwee's run. Yes this story was botched, but it contained some really nice ideas. The "not plague" plague and double agent (both throwbacks to Troughton stories), the vulnerability to gold and the political infighting on Voga. It really isn't as bad as it's made out. You should also bear in mind that it was never intended to be the season finale - Terror of the Zygons got held over because of industrial disputes and they slapped in the Sontaran quickie to bulk up a bit. It wasn't an easy time...
Interesting notes for some people. One of the jobbing actors who appeared several times in Who was David Collings - he's the warlike Vorus here, but also the voice of Monkey and Legolas in the early '80s BBC radio adaptation of Lord of the Rings. And William Marlowe (the double agent Lester) married Roger Delgado's widow Kismet.
I can imagine it was a big deal the cybermen returning hence why I think the writers were trying to lean into that in a meta sense with them supposedly being defeated years ago and coming back "skulking in an ancient spaceship" etc. there is potential there even if it's let down by the execution.
William Marlowe was the second in command, not the double agent. He also played Gill Gascoigne's boss in The Gentle Touch. His previous wife was Catherine Von Schell, Maya in Space 1999.
Gold could be a cool weakness if there was a story about greed. That the characters are greedy and selfish and wont use their gold to kill cybermen
And right there you've already hit on an idea that would be far more thematically inspiring than anything that's actually in the story
Apparently they were just men in special suits.
They're amazingly similar to the Cybernauts, seen in The Avengers.
How are they similar? The Cybernauts are robots. The Cybermen are scientifically enhanced humans.
They both first appeared in 1965.
@@zacmumblethunder7466 Good point.
It's crazy to me because for some reason it just feels like this episode doesn't exist lmao
It's not one I see talked about all that much, at least not in relation to the actual content of the story
Plus the fact that the Cybermen's appearance is about as threatening as a teakettle 😮. 🤷🏼♂️🤓😎✌🏻🇬🇧
It's perhaps not their best look
without RotC, there would be no "harry sullivan is an imbecile!"
It's worth it just for that alone
Don't know if nostalgia has affected my views and it probably has but i really like it.
Interesting that there seem to be a few people here that do, I always had the impression this story has a mostly negative reputation
I personally think Legend of the Sea Devils is far worse than Revenge of the Cybermen, but still an enjoyable video nonetheless, keep it up!
Well at least Revenge of the Cybermen tells a coherent story and doesn't feel like there's whole scenes missing from it, thanks!
People laugh at this daleks cybermen I think there wicked.