NuWho Review: Series 2 Episode 6 "The Age of Steel"

By: Tom MacRae

**Spoilers**

If you have not yet seen this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.

 Good grief! If The Doctor could just shoot fiendfyre from that little power cell thingy and disintegrate all Cybermen within a certain radius, then why the whole "We surrender!" gimmick to begin with? Did he have to wait for them to lower their shields? Did he suddenly have a moral crisis about putting the poor things out of their misery? Was it just to create tension?

           Whatever it was, this whole sequence just felt a bit clunky and poorly executed. It felt like a novel where you read through an action sequence and still have no idea who punched whom on the jaw. So yeah, cracks about Scooby Doo not withstanding, I was less than enthusiastic about this beginning.  

Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:

- Finding out that Rickey is London’s Most Wanted for parking tickets (he claims that he’s rebelling against the government by parking wherever he pleases…something The Doctor immediately identifies with) is fun.

- The earpod idea paid off well and the idea of thousands of people mindlessly marching to their own destruction is beyond creepy.

- The Cybermen, on the other hand? Eh…let’s just say that despite the implied gruesome, body-horror-filled way that humans are upgraded, I can’t find anything particularly frightening about the metal men. Their blank stares could be a bit unnerving (like the Autons from Rose) but their ridiculously loud stomping and tendency to monologue then delete leaves much to be desired. 

- It’s been said before, but I’m just going to reiterate. Why is anyone ever killed or sneaked up on by a Cyberman? You can literally hear them coming from meters away…why don’t you just start running when the telltale ‘STOMP! STOMP!’ starts up? Don’t stand there staring in horror. They’re not all that fast. Rip out your earpods and RUN!

- Micky, you’re killing me, man! I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about Noel Clark’s rather daunting tasking of playing both coming-of-age Mickey and tough-as-nails Rickey within this episode. It is a tough thing to do, especially during the scenes where the two characters have to play off each other alone. Does he pull it off? Well…kind of.

-  Keeping in mind that playing two very different characters that are ultimately the same person is very difficult, I do have a bone or two to pick with the performance. Noel Clark seems to have the mistaken idea that in order to portray a tough character he must scowl and scrunch up his nose. Constantly. There is little subtlety to the performance and nothing but that twisted scowl to differentiate between the two characters. 

- That’s not to say that Clark does a terrible job. It’s just not particularly compelling. 

- Now I want to talk about the absolute out-of-nowhere crisis of conscious that was displayed courtesy of Lumic’s right-hand man, Mr. Crane. You know: the man who drowned out the screams of the homeless men with 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'? Well, apparently guilt has been secretly gnawing away at his innermost psyche because he executes a complete character turn around and starts dismantling the life support on Lumic’s chair-thingy. I actually had to stop my viewing the first time around, rewind, and watch the scene all over again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. 

- But Crane isn’t the only one experiencing an identity fluctuation (the only word I can think of to describe it) because Lumic suddenly starts to express what we can only assume is second thoughts about the whole upgrading process. Funny, that, I thought that this whole mess was because Lumic was dying (a process now accelerated, thanks to the rampage of Crane) and wanted to be upgraded to a body that would never perish. So why the sudden reluctance? Did some of those agonising screams filter up into his office? C’mon, MacRae, you need to explain! Especially if you want us to be glad that Lumic is getting his just deserves at long last. 

- Cybermen first appeared in the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet and, like the Daleks, have been a recurring monster on the show ever since. Actually, it’s hard to even call them monsters. Villains would be more like it, seeing as how the Cybermen are simply humans who have upgraded themselves so many times they have lost their humanity. It makes for quite a creepy concept (especially as technology becomes more intelligent and personalised each day) and an excellent foe in the form of humans who have become the technology unable to be reasoned with.

- Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel adds the very gruesome and sickening upgrading process to the Cybermen lore. While there is never any blood or guts actually shown on screen, the whole idea is just made all the stronger by the power of suggestion. By showing the whirring knives and having us hear the screams of the victims, the script allows for the viewer to fill in the blanks via imagination – and often the images we conjure up within our own minds are twice as scary as anything that could be shown on screen.

- The moment where Pete and Rose find the upgraded Jackie is quite chilling, made worse by the fact that it is cut off by their capture which Cyber!Jackie orders.

- After a deliciously atmospheric scene where the two must navigate their way through a tunnel filled with dormant Cybermen, they finally come out the other end and The Doctor disables the emotion inhibitor on one of the Cybermen. What follows is a dark and potentially disturbing scene where we find that this particular upgrade was made on a bride preparing for her wedding. The poor girl doesn’t know where she is and cries out for her fiancé. The Doctor and Mrs. Moore do the best to comfort her, but she eventually dies. 

- Then comes the chilling statement from The Doctor about the reason the Cybermen remove or inhibit their emotions. They purge such things from themselves because, if they did not then their human brains trapped inside metal casings would be driven mad. To this day this scene still has enough body horror to disturb me and it sets up the sickening solution to the Cyberman problem.

- I also want to take a moment and say that The Doctor and Mrs. Moore work splendidly together and I was more than a little upset by her death...despite the forced exposition back story monologue that she was required to deliver only moments before. But after she dies Barty goes off to confront his dear old daddy, meeting up with the captured Rose and Pete along the way.

- Some people have accused these two episodes of being just like the incredible Series 1 episode Father’s Day but, while there are a few similarities in some of the minor themes, I would say that this two-parter cannot be compared to that earlier episode simply because they are so different. Father’s Day was fuelled on emotions and the intimacy of a small cast, limited location, and the story of a single family. Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, however, is an origin story for an iconic monster in a parallel universe, dealing with dark themes and horror elements on a massive scale. As stated before, you could argue that it has more in common with the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, what with the people all marching their way to destruction, or that it is some sort of spiritual metaphor; but you can’t feasibly, logically compare it to the intimate, heartfelt story of Father’s Day just because Pete Tyler happens to be in it.

 

             This episode is very much a mixed bag. It had a slow, clunky beginning and enough stilted scenery chewing from Lumic (who was more bearable once he had been upgraded) to put Headmaster Finch to shame. Yet there were some truly powerful moments, particularly the bits with the Cyberwoman and the shocking ending. Mickey found his purpose in this two-parter when he decided to leave Rose behind (at last!) and remain in the parallel Earth to take care of his Gran and to help out Pete and Jake. The Doctor got some genuinely frightening scenes and Rose being rejected by Pete was a bit upsetting. I love the ending where Rose finally shows some love towards Jackie (overdue, but all the more fulfilling when it finally happened) and I feel that all of the characters really grew over the course of the episodes. It wasn’t perfect, but I would rate Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel as a 4/5 and encourage all future writers who set out to pen an effective Cyberman episode to look back on this one for guidance.

 

What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?