Silver Nemesis: Part Three

The Cybermen want to get their hands on a powerful piece of Gallifreyan technology which has landed on Earth, but The Doctor and Ace must stop them.

Sound familiar? It is virtually an identical story to Remembrance of The Daleks, with The Cybermen in place. Even that great cliffhanger where Are is surrounded by three Daleks is recreated here with three useless Cybermen.

Unfortunately it is woeful, the first episode was pretty good, but the story failed miserably when The Cybermen appeared, they are abysmal, inept, useless, and are all desperately in need of target practice.

Doctor Who? Once again Lady Painfort is the only interesting character, the one good scene comes when she taunts the Doctor and Ace about his true identity. Walker was perhaps the one good thing about the whole of the story.

This is hard work, 4/10.

There are times it is a race as to who is overacting the most. Sylvester McCoy or the Cybermen.

Since their return in the 1980s, the Cybermen seemed to have become more emotional. Their weakness to gold is overexploited.

Ace takes them down with gold coins fired by a catapult.

It is still a fun story despite the flaws. There is a lot of action even though the Cybermen just need to shoot the Doctor and Ace dead then grab the bow.

The Nazis are not much of a threat, even though Karl's treachery even had De Flores fooled for a moment.

Fiona Walker steals the show as Lady Peinforte but she takes the Doctor's secret to her tomb.

The dark Doctor vibe has been explored in modern Doctor Who over 30 years later.

Just watched... "SILVER NEMESIS". This was the "bookend" to the 25th season, the opposite number to "REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS"-- and some have suggested, has the identical plot. The Doctor-- long before the story started-- did something with a mega-powerful Gallifreyan weapon-- on Earth-- and deliberately lured a large number of his deadliest enemies into trying to get their hands on it. I mean, the nerve of some people, to pull the same stunt TWICE, and in the same (very short) season!

But there's problems... namely, I'd rate this along with "GHOST LIGHT" (2 stories later) as one of the 2 worst-butchered scripts in the entire history of DW. It clearly has enough plot for 4 parts-- maybe more-- but the damned thing is only 3 parts! As a result, while "REMEMBRANCE" moved at lightning-pace, this one feels like a "Reader's Digest" version of an actual DW story, rather than a real one.

You've got De Flores (the magnificent Anton Diffring-- HEIL Hitler!!) and his neo-Nazis, who hope to create "4th Reich" (I've heard that one before). You've got the self-proclaimed "E-VIL" Lady Painforte, who managed time-travel from the 16th Century via alien technology & black magic, who raves, "All things will be mine!" You've got-- for cryin' out loud-- CYBERMEN!!! And you've got "Doctor Floyd" (as I used to call him) and "Ace" (who refused to go by her real name either-- heh). He's got a thing for destroying evil, she's got a thing for blowing things up. And in this one, she blows up an entire Cybermen scout ship! Take that, bad guys!

But like I said, all this is crammed into 3 episodes. The pacing of "GREATEST SHOW" was nearly perfect, but picked up drastically in "HAPPINESS PATROL". But it picks up even more her, so if you watch all 3 stories back-to-back it's like it's all building to one big climax, as seen here. This was ruined, incidentally, when the BBC rescheduled "GREATEST SHOW" because of a sports match. A SPORTS MATCH!!! They wanted to run this story on a specific date, so they stupidly ran the 2nd story 4th. And it's been listed that way in episode guides ever since (including this one!). But trust me... "GREATEST SHOW" is supposed to be between "REMEMBRANCE" and "HAPPINESS", everything about the season makes more sense if you watch them in that order.

To make it worse, the whole thing appears to be a sequel to a story we never saw. All the way thru, I kept finding myself asking, more and more-- "What's going on here?" In particular, I'm referring to the fact that "everybody" seems to know everybody else's business-- but we never find out why-- or how? I could understand the thing with Lady Painforte-- there's clearly an entire adventure with her we never saw. But the Nazis-- and the Cybermen? How the F*** do either of these groups seem to know all about her, and the statue, etc. etc. etc.??? Can you say... "BAD writing"???

There's a lot more stuff in here that's just annoying-- especially the 2 would-be thieves who get hung upside down, and the "Southern" lady visiting the land of her ancestors who seems completely clueless. With all the "important" things getting the short end, why these were even included is beyond me.

The good points, of course, can be summed up almost entirely in The Doctor (who is aggressively going after evil, if in a roundabout and thoroughly devious manner, not even letting his sidekick in on what's going on), and Ace (who is just so relentlessly cheerful when it comes to blowing things up-- including Cybermen. She takes out half a squad single-handed with a slingshot and some chunks of gold! Absurd? You bet! Fun to watch? No question! It still boggles my mind that I disliked her so completely in her debut story, yet 4 stories later, I had gotten to really, really like her. In one scene, she admits she's really scared, and The Doctor suggests she go back to the TARDIS, where, whatever happens, she'll be safe. Anger fills her face, and she says, "NO CHANCE!" You just know she's screwing up her courage as she does this. I just wanna give her such a hug! For a companion, Ace got better writing than maybe anyone on the show since Ian & Barbara. It's a shame she didn't get even better writing, like we've seen on the revived series.

And then there's the ending, where, in a follow-up to "REMEMBRANCE", there's more hints that The Doctor is not exactly who he claims to be-- or who the audience has been led to believe ever since the end of "THE WAR GAMES". It's been said they wanted to bring a sense of "mystery" back to the show. Fair enough. But it never went anywhere! Oh, I've read all sorts of things online in the years since, some of it so convoluted only the worst possible sci-fi geek could have come up with it. ("Keep it simple"-- words to live by.) But I tend to dismiss it all. If it's not on screen in the show, it's not official, as far as I'm concerned.

So what we're left with here is something that's fun to watch... but should have been at least TWICE as good as it actually was. Oh well...

Utter nonsense. A poor story, with the nice characters of Lady Peinforte and Richard as its saving grace, finishes up with a dose of gobbledegook and a convenient end. Luckily, Ace is a far better shot than the cybermen, to an absurd degree.

The DVD making-of extra is worth watching, primarily for writer Kevin Clarke's smug interview, in which he seems to be not only not ashamed of his work, but actually pleased with it. Nothing is explained at any stage, and one feels the scenes could easily be shown in any order and would still make as much sense. Anton Diffring's opinion of this is well documented, but it is still astonishing that any of the actors or technicians could sit around rehearsing and making this nonsense without actually standing up and pointing out that it would be an embarrassment to all concerned and perhaps they had better just stop now.

As an attempt to entertain it is a failure. As an attempt to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a once-brilliant show, it is an insult.