Doctor Who - Rise of the Cybermen (no spoilers)

[andrewducker]

I have very mixed feelings about this one.

On the one hand, I thought that the scenes with The Doctor, Rose and Mickey were very good.  The "24 hours" scene was just fantastic, and the relationships between the three of them continue to impress.

On the other hand, the bits with Cybermen in them were pure panto.  The guy playing Lumic was particularly bad, giving a performance that would have been great had he been playing against John Pertwee or Tom Baker, but felt completely at odds with the style of the new Doctor Who.  And the cybermen themselves are coming across as more Dalek-like in their behaviour than Cyberman-like.

Not terrible, but definitely my least-favourite of the new season so far.

In the meantime, here's pure sacrilege on a plate - the KLF's "Doctorin' the Tardis" (itself a mash-up) mashed up with Green Day's "Holiday".

Comments

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Your definition of spoilers is different from mine.

[andrewducker]

I don't see how. I mention no specific information that can't be gleaned from the title of the episode except for the fact that Mickey is in it, which is known to anyone who saw the episode before. Anything else I mentioned was deliberately phrased so as to be meaningless to anyone who hasn't seen the episode and therefore can't have spoiled any details.

What details of the show would you say I had given away?

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Well, to be honest I'm being totally over the top but I like to know nothing, as in, not even that the cybermen aren't really acting cyberman-y. Being told repeatedly if a program or film is good (or bad) totally warps my perception of it (which is why, in part, I hate ROTK so much).

So, like, don't worry or get annoyed at me, because most people wouldn't take a review to be a spoiler, but for me it is because it, to some extent, spoils the film/tv/whatever. Er. Yeah. I'm just crap, clearly.


(...and I was working on Saturday so missed it (as I will be next Saturday, oh the joy of two jobs) so I'm just being "grrr" because I can't find it to download it...)

[andrewducker]

To be fair, I _did_ cut too close to the edge with the cybermen/daleks thing (even if I didn't say how they were doing so), and I should probably have just cut for spoilers so I can could go into more detail.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I'm watching it now - I see where you're coming from with the dalek thing.

Generally a cut with more detail works better because you don't have to restrict what you say and yet noone will have to see it. :) I tend to go back and read things after I've seen whatever it is being talked about, anyway.

This episode seems okay (so far). The dialogue is, however, awful..

[andrewducker]

But strangely, only some of the dialogue. The bits in the Mickey/Doctor/Rose argument were good, and the Mickey/Ricky stuff has been fine too. It's only when The Villain is wheeled on that it all goes horribly wrong!

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I agree. Mickey/Rose/Doctor/Ricky etc are good, but the bad guy is just a cardboard man. He's crap. Totally unoriginal. I'm disappointed because I remember being -terrified- of the cybermen in the 80s and I'd quite like them to have a storyline that isn't exactly like the daleks.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

You gave away the fact that cybermen were in it. The obsessive among us avert our eyes at the title bit and get our partners to do all the skyplus controls so you don't read the 'info' accidentally.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I thought Trigger made a surprisingly rakish villain... he also broke his ankle a week into filming so it's just as well he was in a wheelchair.

[andrewducker]

I thought he gave a totally over the top performance. As Doctor Who has (generally) been going for more believable ones recently I found it rather jarring - like he was coming in from a parallel series of Dr Who...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I don't think his performance was at fault - it was that his dialogue was written like a cartoon villain, straight out of Dr Who of the 70s, when as we said when watching it , everyone else is now speaking naturalisticly. very odd, especially given the Dr/Rose/Mickey bits were still fine (I suspect re written by RTD).

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I liked his performance. Each to his own, I guess.

It's Tennant I'm finding I'm having problems with lately.

Looking forward to part 2 enormously.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

This is the worst so far.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

I agree. Considering that the Cybermen returning is this series' Big Thing, I was surprised that they made such a campy, lightweight episode. Least favorite episode for me since the Slitheen one's last season, and rather similar in tone.

Shame, cause I thought that the last 3 episodes have all been superb.