I’m going to say something now that will lead to a chorus of disapproval from those of you reading this, but I’ve not been that impressed by the work of Neil Gaiman so far with Doctor Who. I thought ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, hailed as one of the best episodes of New Who so far, was an OK episode in my eyes, full of fan service but not the touching, geek fest it has been labelled to be.
And last night’s ‘Nightmare in Silver’ was less enjoyable. Coming after last week’s brilliantly constructed episode I was hoping for an upturn in the series but we’re back to the lower points of the last few weeks.
The concept was certainly an interesting one, with the Cybermen able to upgrade on the fly to become an unstoppable machine, with the politics of blowing up planets to destroy them, all wrapped up in a fun idea of an intergalactic fairground. Unfortunately, cemented around these ideas, was the difficult to portray battle of a Cyberman in the Doctor’s head and though Matt Smith tried valiantly with two styles of voices, it just became an unwatchable mess of words and, at times, confusing as to what was going on.
The episode was supposed to see the Cybermen back at their scariest but, aside from the spun-out possibilities of them being able to combat whatever it was you were throwing at them, didn’t feel particularly threatening. The detachable hand move and the distracting removal of a head to threaten someone, alongside the bullet-time rush forward, were great ideas, just not particularly scary, though the new ‘Cyber-mites’ had a certain creepy nature to them.
‘Nightmare In Silver’ was an average episode in an average series so far. It had seeds of some great ideas but ultimately at times felt too confusing. Clara got time to shine, though, away from the over-shadowing figure of the Doctor and Warwick Davies as Porridge made for a strong guest cast member, even if a lot of the other introduced figures felt underused.
However, with the finale ‘The Name of the Doctor’ next week looking like a corker, hopefully things can only get better.
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