Episode Review: Arc 138: Attack of the Cybermen

[x_losfic]

With the caveat that I’ve yet to see EVERY Cybermen episode and haven’t yet finished Six’s era, this may well be both my favorite episode in either category.* It's not a BIG IMPRESSIVE episode, but it's serviceable, loveable, and gives me what I really wanted for Christmas: a Six I can truly like.

I am a bad Doctor Who fan: Daleks and Cybermen, unless especially well executed a la Genesis of the Daleks or Dalek, largely bore me. I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to cower behind the couch should the toilet be clogged in deathly fear of someone bringing out the plunger, but because I came to the show as an American in her 20s, without the cultural lore of Who or early exposure, there’s not an intrinsic magic there. So sorry to say, this episode, in which Cybermen can be taken out by practically anything and their monotone machinations really aren’t terribly important to the plot, satisfied me by being a Cybermen episode in which I didn’t have to pretend I cared about their doomed attempt to advance the Cyber-race of the week.

They’re more pouty and sulky than droning and potentially scary here: I’ve nicknamed their portly cyber-leader Larry Chubbles (he was so obviousy a Larry before his conversion), and the person I was watching the episode with suggested his sidekick be known as Wobble Head Wobble for what I hope are readily discernable reasons.

This is the episode that made me like Six. Me. The girl who judged him for the wretchedness of Twin Dilemma and never fully recovered from it, who watched other eps through a haze of dislike. To be fair, I was primed to finally accept Six by audios, in which he ran around with Evelyn and seemed charming, but almost an entirely different character from Show!Six as I remembered him.

But Six is delightful all episode. He channels Three, stealing a bite of Peri’s apple and making a silly gadget. He tried to fix the Chameleon Circuit, which saddened me deeply, but he was so sweetly defensive of the TARDIS’s efforts that I got over it. He defeats a policeman in an off-camera slap-fight and steals his hat before arresting him. He’s funnier than he is shouty, a little bit of a coward, and engaging. He likes his big bombastic voice: he likes himself, and I like him too.

Before the Cybermen invaded, Telos was apparently “planet of the bubble wrapped, gropey, mustached lesbians.”** Excepting, naturally, the lone heterosexual who gropes Six feelingly and enthusiastically while yammering on about her people’s trail of frozen tears. You can tell she is important in their culture because her breasts are so very ponderous. I mock, but really I like the idea of costumes that make an alien species look properly ALIEN, and sociological indicators of alien-ness, like the degree to which their communication seems to rely on touch, are indeed Groovy.*** Though it doesn’t feel quite right to mock Hetty the Only Straight Eskimo in the Tribe when her prolonged death is so very disturbing and uncomfortable to watch.

The running joke of ‘the terrible Zodin’ comes back, and so does Foreman’s Junk Yard. I adore lame classic Who in-jokes. They’re what I want out of my Who.

While I make fun of the Cybermen in this one and the original Lesbians of Telos, I do genuinely think this episode’s well written. A lot of the jokes are awfully good, not just Six’s great voice here. The extras are serviceable—the would-be robber’s mockery of his robotic captors is great. The Time Lords VERY subtly manipulating the Doctor into dealing with the situation is slick as I'll get out--probably this is a Brax plan. I like the idea of bringing back Lytton and the Creepy Policemen from Resurrection of the Daleks, though more could have been done with them, and the ending lacked something in the way of dénouement.

It’s only poor Peri who doesn’t get to talk like a real person all episode: not an American person (well, she never does), not a young woman, not anything. She sounds really stiff and unnatural. It’s a bit as if she were being written by someone who’d never met a human. Between this and hot hot-pink lycra breastcage (Peri is ruining breasts for me) and the pleated shorts (also hideous) she’s not contributing a whole hell of a lot this week. And the poor girl always sounds as if she’s in agony, like she REALLY does just want dropped off back home. Peri has her moments, but this is not among them.

* I have to exclude The Five Doctors from lineups like these, lest it sweep simply for being almost my favorite thing ever.
** credit aralias
*** A word, incidentally, which I had to warn a Dutch friend off of yesterday—no, you cannot say that and mean it. We will no be able to stop ourselves from laughing at you and then feeling very mean indeed. Please do not put us in this position. Retire ‘groovy’ for the sake of all who love you.