Revenge Of The Cybermen: Ranking - 222

 Revenge Of The Cybermen

(Season 12, Dr 4 with Sarah Jane and Harry, 19/4/1975-10/5/1975,  producer: Phillip Hinchcliffe, script editor: Robert Holmes, writer: Gerry Davis with Robert Holmes (uncredited), director: Michael E Briant)

'Now that the cybermen have feelings, what next? Rage of the Cybermen? Grief of the Cybermen? Disgust Of The Cybermen? Boredom of the Cybermen? Smugness of the Cybermen? Shyness of the Cybermen? Love Of The Cybermen?' 

Ranking: 222

If you were to ask the average fan to come up with the perfect DW story...well they wouldn’t agree about anything because there is no such thing as an average DW fan and all episodes, stories, doctors, monsters and plots are loved by somebody and debating this stuff is an endless DW fan past-time. But just say they did, as a common denominator they would probably come up with Tom Baker (most popular Doctor?), Sarah Jane Smith (most popular companion?) up against a popular monsters (say for a second you can’t have Daleks…well that’s the Cybermen right?) with Kevin Stoney in the credits (most popular supporting humanoid?!) Behind the scenes you’d have Philip Hinchcliffe in as producer, Robert Holmes as script editor and maybe even re-use the sets from another really popular story (‘Ark In Space’). In short you’d have ‘Revenge Of The Cybermen’, the story that more than any other (outside possibly ‘Genesis Of The Daleks’ from the same season) ticks all the boxes. BBC video certainly thought so, ignoring the advice of most fans and making this the first ever DW video available to buy as far back as 1983 when it cost the equivalent of £100s today, on the understanding that if it was a big slop there might never be another one. So is it worth that money? Gosh no. I’m not entirely sure it’s worth the price I paid for the DVD in the sale to be honest, but then it was a twin-pack with ‘Silver Nemesis’ and that story isn’t anybody’s idea of a perfect DW story. So if all the ingredients were there, what happened? Clearly not the magic that’s there in all the other stories from Tom Baker’s first season, which whether you think it’s the pinnacle of DW or not (and I don’t) clearly have…something special going on for it, a chemistry of the people in front and behind the cameras. Maybe it’s the script, written by Troughton era script editor and co-Cybermen creator Gerry Davis that was considered so out of touch with what DW had regenerated into by 1975 that script editor Bob Holmes re-worked it at speed, with neither of its authors being that fond of it. Maybe it’s the way the Cybermen, one of DW’s most striking and unstoppable creations, suddenly develop lots of lethal weaknesses out of nowhere (had the Doctor known about their allergies to gold when he first met them in 1966 and invited them to, say, a ‘cash my gold’ kiosk their previous encounters would have been one heck of a lot shorter. Plus it’s daft: why would a bunch of cyborg conversions suddenly develop an allergy to gold? They’re not supernatural werewolves). Maybe it’s the end of term silliness, as the acting causes even seasoned professionals who should know what they’re doing to struggle to seem even vaguely believable (this is the only thing Kevin Stoney’s not been magnificent in, but then he does have a whacking great mask on his head for most of the story and the dialogue’s not convincing enough for just his voice to work; then again this was the last story screened – it wasn’t the last in the season to be made). Or maybe it’s the curse of Wooky Holes, the atmospheric caves used for location filming in this story. One day early on the production team heard about how a rock formation was called 'The Witch' by locals and decided to have fun dressing it up with a hat and cloak. During the next few days Elisabeth Sladen nearly drowned filming the boat scene, two crew members became seriously ill out of nowhere and another broke their leg, while the boat used for filming 'disappeared'. Director Michael E Briant even thinks he saw the ghost of a pot-holer who died in the caves during one day’s shooting (a real shame they weren’t doing, say, Ghostlight or Hide or one of those DW scripts heavy on ghosts or we’d be raving about the special effects to this day). Mostly, though, I suspect it’s the fact that even though the ingredients are all there there’s no one great idea beyond that to pull them all together, so that the perfect DW story ends up just being a re-tread of all the ways it was great in the past with nothing that new or distinctive to say. The script takes in a plague that turns out to be a poison, the Doctor thwarting a planned cyber invasion and Sarah Jane being possessed, all elements done many times elsewhere and usually better than here. Oh and how is it solved? Basically the Doctor gets tied up in the part of the cybership where he can communicate their dastardly plan to the planet Voga and the most ruthlessly efficient race in the universe basically neglect to tie him up properly. Oops! Even the cybermen look as bad as they ever will in the 20th century, mostly because they were built to loom out from the shadows of black and white TVs and nobody’s thought how to re-model them for colour yet. The result is far from worthless. You still get all those ingredients working, particularly the 4^th Doctor-Sarah Jane combo at their most instinctive and natural, it’s well acted (even behind masks speaking stilted dialogue this cast are too talented to be bad), the location’s nicely spooky and different (and suitably alien!)  while there’s a lot of action to distract you from the plot too. Certainly other DW stories, even from the same era, mess up individual parts a lot more than ‘Revenge’ ever does, but then that’s because they tried harder – in this story there’s so little here taking risks that its faults seem all the worse somehow.

+ The sets. It was a clever idea to recycle the pricey ones from Ark In Space for the next story in production (with less manpower needed changing the sets over) and to set the action there again but thousands of years earlier and lighting and shooting it so that it looks very different at times. By 1975 standards it really does feel like a fully functioning space station rather than just a set and the 'missing' parts of the corridor with stars chromakeyed in are an extra touch most directors wouldn’t both with that’s really effective at making it look as if we’re in space. Even here, though, it felt as if ‘Ark’ used the same sets better, making them seem more claustrophobic and threatening.

- The title. Cybermen famously don’t have feelings so they’re the one alien race who shouldn’t feel the need for revenge, even against the Doctor. Why not give the ‘revenge’ title to the Daleks? They live for little else! Gerry Davis' working title 'Return of the Cybermen' wasn’t exactly poetic either but for the silver baddies’ first appearance in seven years it would have made more sense (as the inventor of the Cybermen he was apoplectic this title got used, even more than what was done to his scripts. He never worked for the show again, a huge loss to the series).