“We're carrying the Cyberman that makes other Cybermen scream..."
Well, yeah. That was very good indeed. Actually, it was sort of excellent. And Chris Chibnall bloody wrote it.
So it's a long time in the future, after the Cyber-Wars, according to the pre-titles CGI with narration which rather niftily takes us into the title sequence through a Cyberman's eye. It's a cool beginning to an episode with not much wrong with it.
One intriguing sub-plot, beginning immediately after the titles, concerns an ordinary couple in mid-twentieth century Ireland who find a baby in a basket, abandoned like Moses, and we see scenes throughout as they raise the lad into a decent, nice young man who decides to join the Garda. But his survival after he's shot and falls from a cliff makes us (and his worried father) worried that things may be going a bit Clark Kent. Only after his retirement, and his forceful accosting by two youthful doppelgangers- itself weird- do we learn that he's been under the influence of a Chameleon Arch for his entire life. A time lord, presumably? Perhaps even yet another unknown incarnation of the Doctor? The one thing I’m certain of is that the explanation is closely liked to what the Master tells the Doctor at the end of the episode. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just say the payoff to this segment is awesome.
But, for the Doctor and her Fam, the world surrounding them is very different from idyllic rural Eire. It’s a period after the Cyber-Wars, where the Cybermen are almost dead but humans are almost as endangered, the Doctor telling Yas, Ryan, Graham and the viewers that the seven people in the precarious settlement before them are the only humans left, at least in this part of the galaxy. It all feels very Frontios. These characters are likeable and well-sketched for an episode with so much else to do, but as the Cyber-drones (robot Cyber-heads) arrive we’re very firmly told that this is a narrative with no time for the Doctor’s usual tricks as a couple of characters are killed, all of the Doctor’s smugly presented gadgets are destroyed and suddenly things are looking very worrying indeed, so much so that the Doctor panics, in what is a rather important scene for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, forcefully telling the “Fam” that they need to do as she says and not question her, and she regrets putting them in such deadly danger. All this is very ominous, especially as a trio of attacking Cybermen force Yas and Graham to flee in a separate ship from the Doctor and Ryan. Oh, and one of those three Cybermen is Ashad from last episode. It’s beginning to look awfully as though his survival, after last week, is going to result in the death of at least one of the Doctor’s friends.
There are some nice touches to these scenes- the Cybermen's legendary weakness to gold is mentioned, but rather forcefully batted away as irrelevant. The Doctor used to hotwire warp drives on weekends as a teenager, "not that we had weekends, or teenagers". And this Doctor, instead of jelly babies, has humbugs. But things look ominous. Ashad seems to imply to the Doctor that he is, to semi-quote the old Cartmel Masterplan,more than just a Cybermen: he eagerly embraced conversion, or "ascension" but was "denied"- because of some kind of apparent destiny. And now, with the Cyberium, he seems to hint at literally precognitive powers, and foresees the end for humanity. Who is he?
We end with Yas, Graham and their friends on a ship full of dormant Cybermen of a quasi-Invasion vintage, and watching in horror as Ashad and his two lieutenants arrive to painfully awaken the Cyber-army. They seem to have no hope... but this is but one cliffhanger.
Elsewhere, the Doctor, Ryan and their friends arrive at the promised land (there's a lot of Biblical allusion in this episode) to find a selfless old man, Ko Sharmus, and a magic portal just into the sea that transports the desperate to a completely random point in the universe- and yet, as the Doctor looks into the portal, the sees the orange skies and the Citadel on Gallifrey. Why there? Why Now? And, no less importantly, why does the Master, still played by the brilliant Sacha Dhawan, choose this moment to jump out of the portal to gleefully tell the Doctor that everything she knows is wrong?
So... yeah. That was amazing. And will take a long time to digest. Next week's finale certainly looks big.
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