NuWho Review: Series 2 Episode 5 “Rise of the Cybermen”

By: Tom MacRae

**Spoilers**

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

        The episode begins with John Lumic. A man whose acting contains more wood than a park bench, twitching and fidgeting all over the place as he huffs and puffs out his lines. He’s extremely annoying to the point where one hopes that he will be the pre-credits victim of a hidden attack. But, sadly, he was not....



Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:

- Poor Mickey! I was hopeful, after last week, that things would be shaping up for the relationship between The Doctor, Rose, and he, but ‘twould seem that it were not to be. He’s always going to be stuck as the third wheel odd man out, but the TARDIS duo don’t seem to be making any effort to help ease him into their travels. To be frank, they’re as juvenile and mean in this little scene as they were for the duration of Tooth and Claw. The Doctor is acting like a real stinker and poor Mickey is doubtlessly wondering why he ever offered to come along in the first place. 

- And Rose...Rose has lost any of the friendly teasing she had in School Reunion or the camaraderie and compassion displayed in The Girl in the Fireplace and is back to her usual catty, self-absorbed self. It’s a shame; those last two episodes had almost caused me to rethink my position on Rose Tyler. 

- It is such a relief when the TARDIS goes haywire and sparks start shooting from the console. At least we lose the jocular lovebirds once the peril returns. The poor Doctor looks so sad as he mournfully inspects his dead TARDIS. He just sounds so heartbroken and pitiful that one cannot help but feel compassion for the Time Lord who just lost his oldest and most faithful companion.

- The parallel universe is pretty cool also. And I actually like the fact that it looks just like our world, albeit with a few minor changes. True the zeppelins are a little odd, but that fact only helps to reinforce the idea that we have indeed entered another dimension. Points go to Mickey for being the one to notice and to explain the concept to us (because no one watching Doctor Who has ever heard of parallel universes before).  

- Okay...so I know that this is the land of television where coincidences and chance meetings are perfectly normal and amazingly frequent, but really; what is the likelihood of the TARDIS landing right next to one of Pete Tyler’s nauseatingly orange posters?  

- And then Rose had to be dumb enough to keep looking at it, despite all of The Doctor’s warnings. I can cut her some slack in Father’s Day because it would have been horrible to just stand by and watch him die, but here Pete Tyler isn’t really her father. For all she knows the man already has a Rose whom he loves and dotes on. Doesn’t she know anything about parallel universe travelling and how awkward (and dangerous) it is to bump into your alternate self? And even if she didn’t exist there, what makes her think that talking to her dad would be helpful to her or him? She couldn’t tell him who she was and he’ll doubtlessly think she’s either a stalker or a madwoman so it will just be emotional pain that she foolishly inflicted on herself. Come on, Rose, use your brain! While it is always promoted to 'follow your heart', sometimes the heart can be misleading so one must use one's head.

- Jackie really is awful in this universe, isn’t she? Gosh! It’s like all of the flaws of her alternate self are exaggerated and all of the good things (like her love for her daughter) are missing, making for a character about as likable as a pair of scissors on the sofa! You feel no sympathy with her and that makes her an extremely hard character to identify with. 

- It’s an interesting concept that here (being childless by choice and the wife of a millionaire) Jackie didn’t have her character shaped by the trials that she went though back in Rose’s world (losing her husband, raising a daughter on her own with limited funds, losing said daughter for a year, etc.) and the Jackie that we are seeing is not pleasant at all. Camille Coduri does a beautiful job of incorporating subtle differences between the two Jackies (who are very similar, but invoke very different responses from me). 

- I am never wearing a Bluetooth headset, nor will I ever don a pair of earphones again without feeling a bit hesitant! 

- Why do people in these sorts of episodes always have computers that respond to voice commands? Whatever happened to pressing ENTER or using a mouse? It must be nice to just be able to say ‘Please pull up my report and edit it’ and have the computer jump to it.

- And The Doctor is back in put-down Mickey mode this episode. For some reason it just sounds more mean-spirited and inappropriate here than it did in Boom Town or in School Reunion (my guess is that, while in those episodes the insults were actually witty here they just sound petty and hurtful). There is no sign of the team that we saw in School Reunion or the friends from The Girl in the Fireplace and that fact saddens me. 

- At least Mickey manages to get a jab of his own in here and there:

     [The Doctor kicks the console]

     Mickey: “Did that help?”

     Doctor: “Yes.”

     Mickey: “Did that hurt?”

     Doctor: “Yes.”            

     Mickey’s dry humour – gotta love it!

- Whoa, whoa...why is there a Torchwood in the parallel universe? I mean, I understand the need to get the arc word in there somewhere, but if there is no Rose Tyler in this world there would be no Torchwood because if The Doctor (assuming the parallel world has one) had never met Rose he probably wouldn’t have been on his way to that particular concert which left him stranded in the moors of Scotland with a werewolf and Queen Victoria. No Tooth & Claw, no Torchwood.

- The idea of Lumic’s goons picking up hapless homeless men for experiments is actually quite cold. Though I would like to know what punk-band-boy (I think his name is Jake) was doing hanging around the burn barrel like that. 

- Speaking of the burn barrel…why is there a Lumic emblem spray-painted on the rusting metal? It probably shouldn't bother me, but once I noticed it was oddly there, that was all I could think about.

- Doctor Who is turning me into the biggest softie ever! Here, as The Doctor is lovingly tending to the TARDIS and recharges her final power cell by giving up some of his own life, I found myself with the largest, soppiest grin on my face ever.

- This moment where The Doctor is alone in the dying TARDIS with Mickey working to save his beloved ship by giving her ten years of his life easily is my favorite part of this episode because of its sheer simplistic beauty.

- With that thought in mind, let’s get back to the episode. The Doctor and Mickey go to tell Rose about the good news that the TARDIS now has power and will be ready to fly in twenty-four hours only to find that she has directly ignored all orders and looked her father up on the internet.

- Here is where I take issue with Miss Rose Tyler. While I understand where she’s coming from, I still think she was acting quite rashly and stupidly. The Doctor told her not to even look. Of course it would be hard to not investigate her parents, but didn’t she realize that that knowledge would make it twice as hard to stay away from them? They’re very unlikely to accept her as their daughter from another universe and even less likely to then let her go again if (through some cosmic abnormality) they did accept her in the first place. She should have learned by now that The Doctor usually knows best and that you should take his advice whenever trapped in a paradox or a parallel universe. 

- I’m also a little bit disappointed in Mickey who, rather than backing The Doctor up, said that since they had twenty-four hours he could do anything he liked (giving Rose the excuse and opportunity to go and try to see her parallel parents). 

- Hang on...Mickey was brought up by his Gran? Uh, I distinctly remember Rose saying in, well, Rose that she didn't know how she'd have to tell Mickey's mother that he might be dead. 

- It also bugs me that Rose, despite her practically useless realization about how she used Mickey in Boom Town, suddenly has a crisis of conscience as she realizes just how much she takes her ex-boyfriend/friend/current boyfriend/I-don't-know-what's-going-on for granted. Too bad it won't do much for her behavior towards him.  

- One thing that sticks with me the most when I watch this episode is the music. I love Murray Gold’s Cybermen theme!

– So the Cybus earbuds have gone to slightly alarming fashion statements to hideous items of complete creepiness! I’m not sure what is more alarming, the statue-like people all standing frozen while stuff is uploaded into their heads or the way they all start laughing at once when they hear the generated joke. 

- I was more intrigued by Mickey’s meeting with his Gran than Rose’s meeting Pete simply because we’ve seen the latter before. Even the rather weak gag where Mickey’s Gran called him ‘Rickey’ doesn’t really ruin the poignancy of the scene for me. This is one moment where Noel Clark really shines and I really felt the connection to his grandmother, even with the short amount of time they shared on screen together. Mickey needs more scenes like this – moments when he’s just being genuine and not grimacing or practicing his pratfalls. Of course about that time ex punk-boy-band member, Jake, comes to snatch ‘Rickey’ away in his TARDIS blue van, but the moment was still sweet while it lasted.

- And was that a veiled reference to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang I heard? 

- Between the opening quite-visible silhouette to the (admittedly alarming) scene with Jackie’s earbuds, we all know where this is going and so all of the secretive build-up gets quite annoying by the time one is about halfway through the episode. And while it is quite shocking that the Cybus fellow drowns out the screams of the test subjects with that Godawful song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, by this point we all pretty much know what is going on and are just waiting for the reveal.

- May I just say right now that I find it hilarious that The Doctor uses the psychic paper to get them into Jackie’s party as part of the catering staff? It’s not only Rose’s incredulous expression (and the reference to their knighting in Tooth & Claw) that I find so enjoyable but The Doctor’s observation that the best way to find out what’s really going on is through the gossip in the kitchen. It makes me wonder what other events he might have served drinks at while gathering information on his intergalactic adventures.

- I think Rose’s talk with her father is very well done, though it does pale in comparison to the heart-strings-tugging conversations and emotions of Father’s Day…and I should probably stop comparing the two before I end up hating this episode. 

- Then comes my hands-down favorite part of this episode: Rose talking with alternate!Jackie. There is a scene that is so packed with tense emotions and unexpected twists that I could easily watch it for the duration of this episode. No really! I could do without the I-Just-Swallowed-A-Porcupine-Fish John Lumic and the I-Am-A-Skinny-Porcupine-Fish Jake & Co. and just spend the entire time with Jackie and Rose (with a bit of The Doctor hacking the Tyler’s computer thrown in for variety). While it doesn’t carry quite the weight of Father’s Day (this is the last time, I swear!) it still is strong enough to carry its own weight. 

- Part of the reason I am such a big fan of this scene is the unexpected, jarring ending. Rose and Jackie are talking amiably, seeming to get on just as well as Rose and Pete did (and better, I would hazard, than Rose and nonalternate!Jackie) when Jackie suddenly realizes that she is confiding her deepest fears and secrets to a total stranger. But rather than taking it quietly like Pete did, Jackie gets to her feet and unleashes a wave of anger on poor Rose before stalking off back into the party. The performances of Coduri and Piper are spot on and none of the emotion seems forced or contrived. 

- After that there’s not much to tell other than the fact that we finally get the reveal of the Cybermen and then the weakest cliffhanger in NuWho thus far.

- Sorry, MacRae, but that’s the facts. Aliens of London had a better cliffhanger than Rise of the Cybermen. 

- The cinematography for these scenes is interesting, particularly the part where the Cybermen (quite literally) crash the Tyler’s party. I love the way they are shot with an upwards angle, giving the illusion that they are actually a lot bigger and more intimidating than they otherwise would appear. 

            As always, I can’t really give a proper rating to this story until I review part two – but I always give a rating to the story and set-up of part one. For Rise of the Cybermen there were some odd moments and pacing and I think that they dragged out the reveal waaaay too long, but the story had a lot of good mystery and character development (particularly for Mickey) and the idea of the parallel universe, while not original, was handled beautifully. I give this episode a 3/5 and look forward to watching part two.

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