Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually watched anything but the newest episodes. Before that, I was making a respectable run at getting through the original series, most of which I haven’t seen for decades. For various reasons, lately it has felt like it’s time to get back into it. 

Attack of the Cybermen

Starring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.
Companion:  Nicola Bryant as Peri

Written by Paula Moore.  Directed by Matthew Robinson. Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Script Edited by Eric Saward.

Format:  2 episodes, each about 45 minutes long
Originally Aired:  January 1985 (Episodes 1-2 of Season 22)

Attack of the Cybermen is the first Sixth Doctor story that I ever saw. It was at a convention that I attended near Philadelphia sometime after the season was over, and before the announcement came through about the 18 month hiatus that came afterwards. Both Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant were at that convention, which means it was the only time I saw the show’s entire regular incumbent cast at one of these events. I got Colin Baker’s autograph sometime after seeing it, and as he commented that Terry Molloy appeared in the story as Russell the police officer, sans his usual Davros make-up.

Spoilers Ahead!

Attack of the Cybermen has got a lot in common with the last story I watched for this series, Resurrection of the Daleks. Script editor Eric Saward wrote (or co-wrote, in this case) both. They were both directed by Matthew Robinson. They both featured classic returning monsters (and their returning leader) and involved a lot of the ancillary lore about them as part of their plots. They both guest-starred Maurice Colbourne as Lytton, and both even included Terry Molloy in the cast (here playing Russell, a police officer, as opposed to Davros).

Both want to be densely-plotted, gritty action thrillers as well, but where Resurrection of the Daleks piles its storylines on top of each other so that the viewer barely has time to breathe, Attack of the Cybermen stretches them out languidly to the point where the story threatens to be dull. At the very least it becomes painfully obvious that a lot of the threads are kind of irrelevant, and don’t really contribute to anything except for burning up screen time.

Most of the first episode, for instance, is taken up with Lytton’s diamond heist. When we’re not with them the focus is on some escaped slaves on Telos (the world where Tomb of the Cybermen took place). So much time is devoted to all of this that we might assume the idea and the characters are important, but aside from just giving Lytton and the Doctor some business to concern themselves with, none of it really matters. The only thing of significance that happens is that Lytton gets from earth (where he was at the end of Resurrection) to Telos. Once we’re there, it becomes clear that the story is far more interested in the Cryons. If this is so, why not get to them quicker and really spend some time developing them as an alien race and as characters?

The Cryons do have legitimate potential to be interesting. I like their design–they are limited of course by the capabilities and budget of the production, but it’s it feels like a good effort. They end up being one of Doctor Who’s few alien races that don’t just feel like repurposed humans, but also are not monsters. Flast especially (the Cryon the Doctor spends all that time with) has got some character stuff going on–surely some more of the story could have been spent taking these concepts further.

As it is, we devote ages with characters like Russell, who ends up being utterly wasted (and dying in an extremely poorly staged sequence–when I first saw it I didn’t even realize he was supposed to be dead!) Even worse is Lytton’s other colleagues, particularly Griffiths and the two guys he meets on Telos. For almost the entire serial we are watch these guys slowly make their way through the story toward a ship that some of them want to steal, only to see them all get electrocuted or gunned down at the last minute. It’s kind of a cool sequence, and indeed the only moment in the whole story where the Cybermen feel legitimately threatening, but at the same time it makes all the time the drama has devoted to them feel utterly pointless. It’s one thing to subvert the audience’s expectations; it’s quite another to just flagrantly waste our time.

The other notable thing about Attack of the Cybermen is how concerned it is with wading around in the show’s history. This was probably a cool thing for me when I was a teenager, but now it feels like a weight that is dragging the story down. Returning to Telos and the Cybermen’s Tombs would have been sufficient continuity for me. Adding the whole thing of trying to prevent the destruction of Mondas (from The Tenth Planet) is needless–it ends up being something we hear about in the story, but it never is more than that, never a visceral threat (not quite as bad as the idea that the Daleks were going to attack the Time Lords in Resurrection of the Daleks, but almost).

That’s not even getting into the various Easter Eggs the story includes, like the business with the Chameleon Circuit or the return to Totter’s Lane. The most bewildering of these is the return of Michael Kilgarriff as the CyberController (after originating the character in Tomb). I mean, good on Michael Kilgarriff for getting the work, but I think if I was the show’s director I would gone a different direction once I realised that the guy no longer had the physique one normally associates with a Cyberman. I have no desire to mock anyone–he was probably in better shape than I am–but it’s certainly distracting to have the character look so uncharacteristically portly.

The other big returning character is of course Lytton. I like the idea of Lytton and Maurice Colbourne is once again good in the role, but the show’s concern with lining up his appearance here with where we left him in Resurrection, complete with a couple of henchman dressed up as police men, bogs things down. If the story had just skipped its earth-bound setting all together and just mentioned that Lytton had gotten himself picked up by some alien crony somewhere along the way, I would have been just as happy.

His redemption and the Doctor’s guilt over it don’t quite land for me–he was definitely a vicious killer in Resurrection, and if the Doctor had known about his true allegiances in this story it wouldn’t have actually changed anything he did, except for perhaps running off to find him a few seconds earlier. So again it’s potentially interesting stuff, held up by a good performance, but not developed in the writing like it should.

For many fans, the Sixth Doctor’s era of Doctor Who doesn’t have the best reputation, and for my money, this story encapsulates a lot of the reasons why. The production is glitzy, but too often lacks substance. And Colin Baker’s Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri are characters and performances that I’ve grown to appreciate, but they often have a sniping relationship in these early stories that can be kind of unpleasant. It’s not horrible stuff, but it’s not enjoyable in the way it should be.

Other Thoughts

• When the Doctor realises Lytton is involved, he goes on for a bit like he’s well familiar with how much of a villain he is, and he even mentions that he should have known it was Lytton when he saw the two policemen. But the thing is, the Doctor barely interacted with Lytton in Resurrection of the Daleks, and I don’t think he ever encountered the policemen at all. It’s a bit of sloppiness that makes the continuity work even more pointless than it already was.

• On the other hand, a bit of continuity I did appreciate was how much the quarry-like exteriors of Telos looked like the quarry-like exteriors of Telos back in the 1960s’ Tomb of the Cybermen. Apparently, they were shot on the same quarry! That is some attention to detail.