Hello and welcome to another Doctor Who reviewing, discussing Sunday night's episode which was Part One of an epic emotional roller coaster that is the Series 12 finale; better strap ourselves in as it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Ascension of the Cybermen: It's interesting on where to start or how to review in a meaningful way without going straight into revealing a spoiler. Sufficed to say that if you haven't watched the episode yet, you'd do well to stay clear of social media or anywhere else that might be discussing the specifics, as there's lots to mull over in the aftermath.
That's not to suggest that this episode must therefore be one of the most amazing episodes there's ever been in Doctor Who's fifty six year history. In some ways it has less going for it compared to last week's episode. But it does approach one of its story threads in a bullish way that I don't quite recall Doctor Who attempting before. That helps to make the episode a lot more layered than it otherwise might have been, and certainly gives fans one more thing to talk about before next week’s finale.
I suppose we should probably start with the most fascinating aspect of this Cyberman war story: the part that has absolutely nothing to do with Cyborgs, spaceships, or the destruction of the human race. After the opening titles, we were taken to the amber-tinted haze of the Irish countryside, where farmer Michael is riding his bike down the country lane where he comes across an infant baby in a basket seemingly abandoned in the middle of the road, he takes the basket home to show his wife.
Baby Brendon soon gets adopted by Michael and his wife and we cut back to their idyllic life throughout the episode. He grows up, he becomes a member of the local guard, he gets blown away by a local gun man and falls off a cliff and survives. He retires, and gets given a clock and much like Captain Jack it would seem that Brendon can not be killed. If wasn't already made obvious from his inclusion in a story which is mostly about space robots from the far future, there is clearly more to Brendon than meets the eye.
However when you take a story like this and present it out of context from everything else that is going on from within the story, you're going to confuse the viewer, especially if your are flashing back and forth, it's confusing and annoying, and for me, I wanted to see Cybermen, I didn't care much for Brendon's story. I didn't really understand where this sub plot fitted in to the cyberman story, and maybe it wasn't supposed to.
What it does do however, is get the viewer asking a lot of questions? and that is a tactic that gets them talking and discussing theories and making them want to watch again in order to find out what the conclusion to the story and how it all fits in. Most people have said it's the lone Cyberman's back story? and maybe it is. But I'm betting on it being something much more than that.
These kind of cutaway scenes have been used in Doctor Who before, you see them often in two parters. But what's unusual here is the episode finishes and you're left unsure how Brendon's life factors into everything else we've seen on screen. Ordinarily the link between worlds is at least hinted at - in Silence in the Library, for example, we don’t know how or why a little girl’s living room and an alien library are connected, but we do at least know that they are because the Doctor and Donna appear on her TV right away. With Brendan, we might just as easily have been watching clips from an entirely different programme.
There are hints that he and the mysterious gatekeeper Ko Shamus might be one and the same (only Evan McCabe, one of several actors portraying Brendan, is credited as such) but I for one found it hard to say for sure. On the other hand, Ashad begins to electrocute a sleeping Cyberman at around the same time Brendan gets apprehended and tortured, so maybe that’s a clue instead. Is Brendan’s life really some kind of simulation designed to keep the human part of a Cyberman subdued? Is he an ancient hermit guarding a rift in time and space? Is he a Silurian? It’s a mystery that adds spice to the story, that’s for sure.
Now, back to the Cybermen, It's really good to see Ashad back again, presenting himself as the opposing threat for the Doctor and her companions. Ashad as a character is certainly more commanding and threatening than an entire army of zombified soldiers as he still felt human emotions and was possessed with some extremely negative human qualities, I said that in my review of last week's episode 'The Haunting of Villa Diodati'. His scary and twisted sneer apposes more of a threat than Tim Shaw could dream of.
However, before Ashad and his cybermen troops arrive we first find the Doctor and her TARDIS team lugging large amounts of equipment through the remains of a settlement that is, from what the Doctor grimly informs them, most likely the last bastion of humanity. We have arrived at the end of the Cyber-Wars, a bitter conflict where mankind has been reduced to a scant handful of refugees being remorselessly hunted to extinction, although they gave as good as they got and the Cybermen are all-but-kaput as well. There’s almost nobody left to save.
Given the very personal stakes that were laid out last week, to say that this is a surprise is putting it mildly. The Doctor’s declaration that any ensuing genocide would be a direct result of her choices really doesn’t add up here. If anything, it seems that this war was a fixed event in time and destined to unfold this way whatever happened, with only the final few hours in flux now that Ashad’s reclaimed the Cyberium.
From a narrative standpoint, this makes sense, we’re going to be more invested in the survivors if we believe that they’re the last humans standing, but it also reinforces that this is an expected part of future history and not the Doctor’s fault, however loudly she might claim responsibility.
Speaking of raised stakes, we get a clever scene where various ways the Doctor has beaten the Cybermen in the past. Emotional inhibitors, gold dust, and so on; all these are set up as literal plot devices, only to be effortlessly destroyed by a squadron of cyberdrones. Why are these things shaped like flying Cyberman heads? Are they actual Cyberman heads? Answers on a postcard please. This leaves the human survivors, broadly-sketched civilians ripped straight from the Russell T. Davies era with names like Feekat and Yedlarmi, scrambling to escape.
The TARDIS team get separated Yaz and Graham climb aboard with the last humans aboard their spaceship, giving encouraging doctor-like speeches of how they shouldn't give up. This motivates the team to carry on moving forward throughout their journey in this episode. On the other side of the pond, the Doctor finds Ryan and they befriend a character called Ethan who comes along for the ride and proves to be pretty useful. Together they hijack a Cyberman spaceship and travel to the boundary which is meant to a safe haven or paradise where they find Ko Shamas.
Whilst Yaz, Graham and the other surviving humans find themselves on a spaceship containing many cybermen in deep sleep, sort of like in 'Tomb of the Cybermen' or 'The Invasion'. So let's discuss the Cyber Warriors. They're design, I'm not overly keen on it if I'm honest. The heads are good, they were looking to replicate The Invasion cyberman head, but everything from the neck down I'm not sure about, they look a bit too robotic, and I don't like the armour plates with the spikes on them, I'm not overly keen on the medieval armour look. It has the same issue that the previous cyberman design had in that they look a bit too robotic and too mechanical. I would preferred more reference back to the fact that these were once humans in the design so we as the viewer can almost feel sad for these people who have been turned into mechanical men. The design aside they'll serve their purpose in the story, or at least I hope they will. I don't like the name cyber warriors either, they're just cybermen.
Ashad is delighted when he catches up to his quarry and discovers that an entire army of mint-condition soldiers which become his for the taking. This scene serves as a great example of how haphazardly the Cybermen behave throughout this episode, and I’m honestly uncertain how much of that is Ashad’s influence and how much is narrative convenience.
Historically, Cybermen have mostly sought to upgrade humans by freeing them from emotions, using force mostly to achieve that goal rather than as a matter of course. From the get-go, we’re told that these Cybermen are few in number the Doctor even warns her companions that if they’re captured, they’ll be ripe for conversion. Despite that, the Cybermen continue to kill on sight, almost as if they’re not paying attention to their own best interests. Also, despite supposedly being brilliant tacticians, they’ve apparently never thought to check their own wrecked ships for survivors.
Then we have the Cyberium itself: a focal point of last week’s episode and previously portrayed as some kind of all-powerful superweapon. Ashad himself treats it with an almost deific reverence, declaring that it’s responsible for leading him to this replacement army, though I’d argue it was following the humans that did that. It’s hard to see what concrete advantages, beyond the ability to read up on the Doctor, the Cyberium has actually conferred upon him. Is it genuinely powerful, or more of a totem? You can make your own minds up on that one.
Regardless, we know that Ashad is a cyber-fanatic and that he’s driven by a heady mix of zealotry and self-loathing – the Doctor says as much while they’re butting heads, and Ashad readily agrees. It’s possible to view the contradictory patterns of his behaviour and erratic decisions made by these new Cybermen as symbolic of his state of mind, but a lot of the time it comes across as plotholes rather than precision storytelling. Ashad is still a great villain, but one way or another, he seems far less capable and calculating than he did this time last week.
Having stolen a cybership of her own, the Doctor overtakes the human survivors and makes it to Ko Shamus, who turns out to be a person rather than a planet. Together with Ryan, she learns that the Boundary is indeed a real thing and that humanity might not be as extinct as previously believed – except that when it opens, the Boundary leads to the smouldering ruins of Gallifrey. A moment later the Master appears from the breach, surprising anyone who hasn’t already peeked at this episode’s IMDB page, and the episode reaches its end.
There’s an awful lot of plot crammed into this instalment, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The story rarely sits still and so demands your attention throughout, there are some witty exchanges and imaginative visual flourishes here and there. At the same time, all the stuff jammed in means that a series-long problem rears its head once again: there are too many characters and not enough space to develop them. As far as the companions go, it’s Ryan’s turn to tag along behind the Doctor this week, although Graham fares a little better and manages a bit of chemistry with Ravio as they explore the cyber-carrier.
If the Cybermen had been the entire focus of this episode it would have come across as rather aimless, with an awful lot of chasing - but not much actual catching - going on. Luckily, we have two other plot-threads woven throughout that are stronger and more enticing than the war story surrounding them. Firstly, it looks likely that a number of human survivors found their way through the Boundary to Gallifrey, whatever that may mean for Doctor Who canon, so there’s a lot to explore there.
On top of that, we also have the story of Brendan, his immortality and his torturers that still needs connecting up to the plot-in-progress. There’s no point in waiting to hear how the Master escaped the Kasavin, he’s the Master, of course he did. But his arrival promises to add another rogue element into the mix next week on top of everything else, and I’d expect him to inject a bit of manic levity into proceedings too.
I have to say watching it live, I was wondering who was going to appear at the end of the episode. Was it going to be The Master, Captain Jack, or maybe even the Ruth Doctor? I was pleased to see The Master again, but you imagine how amazing it could have been if it was Jack that burst out of the boundary instead of The Master? Fans would have been screaming with excitement. It didn't come as any massive surprise to me, however I'm not going mark down this episode for not living up to my expectations. I'm just one viewer, compared to the millions more watching, some of which aren't even Doctor Who fans, for the purposes of the story, we probably need to have a showdown between the Doctor and The Master, so good on Chris Chibnall for bringing him back.
In summary, then, Ascension of the Cybermen fails to properly capitalise on the strengths of last week’s episode and instead delivers a fairly standard Cyberman romp where victories on both sides seem to stem more from luck than judgement, though it’s still entertaining enough to watch. Luckily, there are other parts to this tale, and the intriguing questions they pose go some way to making up for this week’s flimsy character work and relative lack of focus. Much like Spyfall Part Two, next week’s finale has a lot to prove and plenty of loose ends to tie up - for better or for worse, the truth about the Timeless Child is almost here. Until next week, but for now it's 3 cyberman heads out of 5, a bit disappointing if I'm honest. I expected much better.
3/5 - a bit meh!
