The Dark Crystal (1982)

“Prophets don't know everything."

This is a decidedly odd film, and it’s easy to forget that. A heroic fantasy set on another world with an extremely detailed backstory and completely made-up races, no human characters and no concession to the modern world; so far, so early ‘80s fantasy film boom, perhaps. But this film is 100% literal muppets.

So we have a crystal that shattered a thousand years ago and altered nature- nothing grows and there are no children for the evil Skeksis- whose puppets are awesome- or the nice but incredibly lazy mystics- who look like, well, muppets- who set around doing sod all as their Gelfling neighbours are exterminates and Podlings neighbours enslaved, in spite of allegedly having magic. Clearly they’re very rubbish wizards.

Not rubbish, though, are our Gelfling heroes, muppets who speak without moving their mouths: a boy called Jen  and a winged girl called Kira who, as the last of their kind, are morally obliged to do lots and lots of 18 rated stuff after the film ends.

The film is s rather good example of the early ‘80s fashion for fantasy films, but what really impresses are the sets and the many, many different types of muppet creature. Add this to a cast of decent character actors who don’t usually get to star, and some solid world building leading to a fantasy myth type plot that all looks Joseph Campbell, and we have a film that very much deserves its cult status.

Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen

Part One

“I suddenly feel conspicuous.”

So, now we’re beginning a new 45 minute format, eh? It’ll never catch on. We’re also getting a new writer, apparently, in the shape of Paula Moore.

We begin with the new Doctor being very different from his predecessor- after procrastinating about it ever since Logopolis he’s finally getting around to repairing the Chameleon Circuit. Apparently he’s still a little unstable, which is worrying. This regeneration has been drawn out far too much.

Lytton’s back, still stuck on Earth, planning a heist alongside characters played by Brian Glover and an unmasked Terry Molloy. But mostly we’re just watching the Doctor and Peri hanging about in the TARDIS for ages before they land. They seem to bicker a lot, too. Still, they eventually land, in 76 Totter’s Lane. In spite of the Doctor’s claim that “This looks familiar”, it bears absolutely no relation to the junkyard seen in An Unearthly Child. It hasn’t got a roof for one thing. 

The Doctor and Peri are trying to trace a distress call from an alien being broadcast from Totter’s Lane in 1985, observed by those two policemen from Resurrection of the Daleks. Oh, and the TARDIS is changing it shape in scenes which I think we’re meant to find amusing. But it’s not just Totter’s Lane; this scene alone features a bewildering and self-indulgent excess of fanwank; not only does Peri recite the name of several past companions for no particular reason, but we’re told that the Terrible Zodin was “a woman of rare guile and devilish cunning.” And that’s only the beginning.

You can probably see already that I’m not hugely enamoured with this story, but I’ll defend it for one thing; for all the bickering between the Doctor and Peri it’s obvious that neither of them really means it and they actually come across as quite affectionate with each other, especially through body language. It helps that Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant have good chemistry.

A Cyberman shockingly appears in the sewers- and is immediately shot dead, oozing green, er, ooze. This is a highly appropriate intro for the Cybermen in a story which shows them to be disturbingly easy to kill. We discover that Lytton made contact with their ship behind the dark side of the moon- all very The Invasion. 

It’s nice that cybernisation gets a mention, but then the fanwank continues; the Cyber Controller and Telos are mentioned, and suddenly we switch to an escape attempt on the part of a couple of slaves on Telos- and to be fair the location is a fair match for the Telos we saw in Tomb of the Cybermen. Our two escapers, Stratton and Bates, are very hard-boiled style characters, almost to the point of being characters in a script by Eric Saward. But of course that cannot be, as this story was written by Paula Moore. Definitely.

The Doctor and Peri find Russell, and there follows an amusing scene in which the Doctor and Peri get the gun off him, and the Doctor seems to tell Peri to shoot him. Oddly enough, I don’t have a problem with this in spite of my increasing unease with the tone of the programme. The Doctor’s clearly bluffing and the thing’s carried off with charm and humour- it’s the absence of these things, after all, that have been my main concern with recent scripts.

Russell, it seems, is an undercover copper, and so he joins the Doctor and Peri in venturing into the sewers.

Meanwhile, on Telos, Stratton and Bates seem to be killing Cybermen with the greatest of ease whenever they stop bickering for long enough to do so, while the Cyber Controller directs things. For some reason the rather rotund Michael Kilgariff has been pointlessly recast in the role, in spite of the fact that both here and in Tomb his entire body in covered, and in the earlier story he didn’t even provide the voice. The result of this is, of course, that a certain softly pronounced “c” in the line “It is a fact, Controller” becomes a moment of comedy gold.

The Doctor kills a Cyberman with a sonic lance (guns and the Doctor again!), unfortunately attracting their attention. As the Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS, accompanied by Russell, who shows the customary lack of surprise at its dimensions for this era, they are attacked by Cybermen…

Part Two

“I can understand why they call them tombs.”

The Doctor queries the Cyber Controller’s survival and is told that he was “merely destroyed.” Er, yes. This begins a running theme of this episode; ridiculous plot points and fanwank references revealed to us by dull and often long-winded exposition. We get detailed references to The Tenth Planet and Tomb early in the episode which must have been utterly alienating to the casual viewer.

The Doctor, Peri and Lytton are stranded and, separately, all make contact with the planet’s indigenous Cryons, played by the likes of Sarah Green, Faith Brown and Esther Freud, all unrecognisable. The Cryons actually look great and, with their groovy hand movements, dignity and wit, are the best thing about this story.

It seems that Lytton was in fact working for the Cryons all along, which of course means he is an entirely a good guy and the fact that hitherto he’s behaved like a total arse in no way diminishes his unambiguously heroic status.

Anyway, the Cybermen want to prevent Mondas from being destroyed, so they’ve travelled back in time to 1985 so that they can use Halley’s Comet to destroy Earth, thereby saving Mondas. This is utter fanwank; the series is now becoming sufficiently self-referential that it’s eating its own tail. What on earth would the casual viewer have made of this?

Still, at least it fundamentally makes sense. Aside, that is, from a couple of tiny little flaws, such as the reason for Mondas’s arrival back in 1986 was that they needed Earth for its energy, and the question of whether the Cybermens’ survival is really served by changing history for the benefit of a completely different bunch of Cybermen and wiping out centuries of their own history.

There’s a nice scene where the Doctor wonders why the Time Lords haven’t sent an agent to help after he warned them earlier, only to realise that he is the Time Lord agent. Sadly, this is soon followed by a discussion of why the Cryons are helping him. As even the script points out, they stand to benefit from the Cybermen changing history as their planet would never have been invaded. The explanation that “The Cryons have accepted their fate” doesn’t really cut it. As for all that frozen explodey stuff that’s being kept in the cell- aaargh!

Things get even worse. I don’t mind violence as long as it’s not done in the service of an overly grim tone, but the scene where Lytton’s hands are crushed is utterly repellent. How was that allowed to get through? Also poor is the Doctor’s statement that the Cybermen “have only one weakness- they respond to the distress of their own kind”. I think, given the number of Cybermen we see being killed in this story, that his mathematical prowess may have deteriorated somewhat since Castrovalva.

More bad stuff rounds out the story; Bates, Stratton and Griffin almost reach the Cybermen’s control centre only to be killed at the last moment- very cynical. The TARDIS is suddenly stuck as a police box again with no explanation whatsoever. And the scene with Lytton begging the Doctor to kill him is just wrong.

Terrible, just terrible. The plot makes no sense, it’s unremittingly grim, the tone is all wrong and it’s all substandard fanwank anyway. 1/5. The nicest thing I can find to say about it is that at least it’s better than Underworld.

Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen

Part One


"Perhaps we don't want your help."

"That's just it- you so obviously do."


Good Lord- a story that exists in its entirety, the first since The War Machines- such luxury! And probably the first story for ages I've encountered in the marathon that I know very well indeed. That means I'm thinking about what I'm seeing, not absorbing new info, so this review might go on a bit more than usual! Although the fact we get 100% footage may have something to do with it too.

It's such a difference watching this story in context. We start on Skaro, of course, and Victoria is introduced to the TARDIS in a scene I once considered throwaway but is a wonderful little character scene after seeing The Evil of the Daleks- Victoria's father and Maxtible get a nice mention, and the Doctor compares his time machine to Maxtible's.

So, the Doctor's 450 years old. This is our first inkling that he's of any great age, and after the last story only the second confirmation that he's an alien.

We're just bombarded with goodness- Cyril Shaps, some awesome incidental music, and a particularly well-sketched group of characters, nicely introduced. The structure of the story is great from the start, and there's something cinematic about both the look and the style of storytelling.

The one thing that bothers me about this story is there pretty much from the start though; the big, strong, practically mute servant type, always spoken about and seldom spoken to even in front of him, played by a black actor. This is an archetype from an earlier, less enlightened age.

In a story with few laughs, I had to chuckle at the revelation that the Cybermen have "dynasties". And also raise an eyebrow that, in the 25th (?) century, the women have to stay behind while the men explore!

Jamie states of the dormant Cybermat that "It's as dead as a stone". In no way is it going to prove a threat later then...

There's a lot to praise in this episode, but I'm particularly enjoying the verbal sparring between the Doctor and Klieg, well scripted and well acted by both troughton and George Pastell. And the Doctor's manipulating Klieg even from the first episode, of which more later.



Part Two



"You belong to us. You shall be like us."


I love Viner, both the character and Cyril Shaps' general magnificence. A minor character plot-wise but he adds so much to the story by voicing the audience's fears. And whilst ostensibly a comic character in some ways you never actually laugh at him; you know his tragic fate is inevitable and you sense that so does he.

Parry is in no way the leader of this expedition- it's the Doctor and Klieg who are competing for the alpha male slot here and the winner's never in any doubt. The character dynamics are very well developed as the plot progresses.

Kit Pedler's influence is clear in the technical stuff on symbolic logic and general lack of howlers, but rather surprising the excellence in plot and characterisation must presumably come from Gerry Davis, who's not previously impressed me much.

Oh look, food pills! I love these charmingly 60s sci-fi tropes. And the Cybermen's awakening scene, again to that music, is one of my favourite dramatic telly moments ever. It's awesome.

Up until the last story, it seemed as though character development had been a thing of the past, of the days of David Whitaker and Dennis Spooner. And yet, for the second story in succession, the Doctor continues his development into a more manipulative figure. The Doctor admits he allowed Klieg leeway with the controls just to see what he would do- and as a result Viner is killed! Surely the Doctor is partly to blame for this? In fact, surely Jamie should be pulling him up on this, especially after what happened last story?

It's interesting seeing the ritual by which the Cybermen awaken their Controller. They may have no emotions, but they seem to have cultural practices of a sort.



Part Three


"We're not like you!"


"You will be."



Interestingly, this story is a battle between three manipulators: Klieg, the Cybermen and the Doctor (in ascending order). Klieg's own serious pretensions to control of the situation are punctured at the very start of the story, while the Cybermen reveal their motivation more fully than before: they attacked the moonbase as their machines had failed and their extinction was nearing. Desperate to survive, they fled to the tombs.

Once again the terrifying prospect of Cybernisation is raised, and once again a first wave of Cybermen is beaten back halfway through the story. For the first time in a Cyber story, though, we're not blatantly being fed the same plot as The Tenth Planet, or at least it's being done sufficiently differently. I won't be marking the story down for excessive similarity to The Tenth Planet as I did The Moonbase.

The Cybermats are actually quite scary, although why they're called that I have no idea.

George Pastell shows what a fantastic actor he is, convincingly looking scared as Klieg knocks for the others to open the hatch and let him out. At this point Klieg is no longer at all in control, being manipulated by Kaftan. But even she is worried by his erratic behaviour,

The chat about bereavement between the Doctor and Victoria is a wonderful little scene, once again all the more so for seeing the story in context.



Part Four


"Well, now I know you're mad. I just wanted to make sure."


The final cliffhanger, with Klieg the threat, is appropriate as by this point, with the Cybermen safely below, he's the only potential cause of further danger. The threats posed by the Cybermen throughout this episode are all caused by him. This episode centres around the psychological battle for dominance between the Doctor and Klieg, but not without some other nice touches. Victoria is clever to feed the paranoia of Kaftan and Klieg with talk of "the other weapon". And I notice in the Doctor's scene with Toberman he tells him the Cybermen want to control him and make him their slave; this Doctor's dislike of slavery and control is becoming a definite character trait by now, as much as his interventionism and the hiding of his razor-sharp intellect behind the clownish exterior.

The Doctor's never been so manipulative, though, and this is a fascinating trait to behold. Al throughout the final scene with Klieg, with a gun being pointed at him, the Doctor is always in full control as he goads Klieg for just long enough for the Cyberman to sneak up behind him.





Overall, superb. The pacing was masterful, with every scene having its part to play, as was the characterisation of both regulars and guest characters. And the Cybermen have never seemed so threatening. And most of all I'm fascinated by the development to the Doctor's character, played awesomely by Troughton. Best season opener since An Unearthly Child?