What an utter disappointment.
Neil Gaiman? really?
The kids, were pointless, annoying and lacked any credibility as characters. The plot was wafer thin. The Cybermen, well, just weren’t Cybermen, no background, no explanations. After a pretty good run by far less famous writers this was a huge let down. Even the regulars seemed badly written out of character. Aimless, meandering, any casual viewer stumbling upon this would be justified in turning off after ten minutes. At least next week looks interesting. Having a celebrity writer doesn’t guarantee a decent script, does it Steven? Worst episode since the return in 2005, easily. The only redeeming quality was Matt Smith’s acting in the face of difficult odds.

Maybe you just need to stop watching the show, you obviously don’t enjoy anything about it.

That was a fantastic episode.

Worst episode since 2005? That is laughable. Ever watch season 3?

You’re just bitter about something.

The new Cybermen are amazing!The fact they can now turn the Doctor into a Cyberman was scary enough, let alone the fact they can now move at fast speed and adapt to any attack!
Matt smiths acting was brilliant, It’s about time they mde an episode where the Dctor had a spilt personality, I love those!
Dissapointed about how terrible the children were ( I swear they just let any terrible kid actors play these roles) and the fact the Cybermen return on a fairground, but this episode will definetly be an Iconic Cybermen episode!

@Glenn
Bitter? Not at all, I love this show. That is why when the standard of writing falls so catastrophically as it did tonight I become very concerned.
It is not enough to be an unthinking, loyal fan who is blind to any faults or failings and deaf to all criticism.
At its best Doctor Who is the best of British television, and generally it stays at that level.
But we have to be honest here. The kids were mere cyphers, lacking any background or reality or even a genuine reason to be with the Doctor other than the pathetic 30 second introduction to the episode at the end of the brilliant ‘The Crimson Horror’. It was downhill from there on. The Cybermen could have been any off-the-shelf monster, there was nothing uniquely ‘Cybermen’ about them, and for no given reason they seemed to have evolved into an mindless robot. Actually I have watched Doctor Who since 23rd November 1963, probably a bit longer than you have and I have to say that Series 3 was brilliant, your talking about Family of Blood and Human Nature here!
You’re right I don’t just enjoy ANYTHING about it; I enjoy most things about it. But I have enough intelligence to be discerning and critical.

@John Black
Well said John, agree with every word, particularly about series 3!

I didn’t say ALL of series 3 was a big pile of pants, of course FoB/HN were fantastic, so was Blink, but does everyone forget Dalek’s take Manhattan/ Evolution of the Dalek’s. This single episode was far better than those combined IMO.

I just didn’t agree with John’s statement that this was the worst episode since the new series began. That’s all. No biggie. There’s no need to pull out the “whose watched it longer” argument. Its bear’s no credence in this day and age when you can obtain every single episode on various formats. So you may have watched it longer, but you still haven’t seen anything I haven’t.

I didn’t like the children either, just to make that clear, but there appearance at the end of The Crimson Horror didn’t ruin that episode for me, and there rubbish acting didn’t ruin this episode for me. I thought Matt’s acting was superb though! I was totally engrossed in the doctor/cyber doctor stand-off.

It just seemed over-critical to not mention 1 single positive thing about the episode, and I was just questioning if you can’t find any positives then why bother watching.

I just feel the whole WHO community gets overly critical about EVERYTHING. Its meant to be entertainment, sit back and enjoy it, you suck the life out of it for yourselves.

I wish Gaiman and Moffat had had the guts to let the kids actually be transformed into Cyberbrats. That would have been incredibly chilling and it would have led to a real battle between the Doctor and the CyberDoctor with the Doctor demanding the children be (somehow) transformed back.; (And those kid actors were awful. Thankful that the Cybermen shut them up for most of the episode.)

As great as Matt Smith was in both roles of the Doctor and the CyberDoctor, his approach to the CyberDoctor was completely wrong. The CyberDoc should have been emotionless, calm and determined to succeed. He most certainly should not have been even wackier than the Doctor. Again, Smith was brilliant. The writing/direction got the CyberDoc wrong.

What was the point of giving the Cybermen the ability to move at super-speed – their movement not even visible to the human eye – then have them completely forget about using that super-speed? That “super-speed” made for a great scene when it happened. But then, once again, the writer and director completely forgot about this new ability! Also, the constant “upgrade” ability seemed to take away more than anything. Star Trek’s Borg were always adapting, now the Cybermen are able to always be upgrading. Still doesn’t seem to do much for them.

Why did the army Captain (or whatever rank she was) so willingly (and gladly) accept Clara as her brand new commander? Why did anyone listen to a word Clara had to say, command-wise?

This review must read like I didn’t like the episode. I actually thought it was good. Certainly nothing above and beyond or “classic”. Just good. I thought the same of “The Doctor’s Wife”. Just good. I’ve never read any of Gaiman’s books and going by these two DW stories, I really don’t plan on ever reading one.

I almost forgot to mention… We were treated to a glimpse of all the previous Doctors. Did you almost forget about that too? Perhaps that’s because it just wasn’t really all that special this time. It just sort of seemed ‘thrown in” without any real purpose. Odd that it had happened previously in another Cybermen episode, “The Next Doctor”. It was a real treat in that one. Here it was actually forgettable.

And just one more thing: CHESS? Again?! Enough with the Doctor playing chess. It’s a bit tired and a whole lot cliché. If the Doctor’s going to play chess, then have him play against Fenric. Now THERE was an opponent! (Still wonder why the Viking in “Wedding of River Song” should have been a form of Fenric. It would have made (some) sense. Still, the chess game did help in the making of another great Matt Smith performance.

Actually I have seen episodes that you haven’t seen as not everything survives on video, and more importantly, I watched them in a contemporary context. That aside, I did mention one positive thing and that was Matt Smith’s superb acting.

The fact that I was moved to comment critically means that, for me, there was very little in the writing to be pleased with.

There is no value in always enjoying something just because you are a fan, it must have an intrinsic worth.
This series has been brilliant in my opinion, because of excellent writing. When a much heralded writer is thrown into that mix, one would expect the standard to be the same or higher.
Instead, characters reacted to events as if they were part of a video game. There was little or no motivation for their actions or reactions. The whole thing about the kids was bolted on to the (lack of)story without any credible justification. It could have been written by an amateur fan.

You have to be honest with yourself when you watch something you love and not allow one’s judgement to be clouded by blind faith and loyalty. If every episode this series had been of the dire quality of last night’s then the BBC would start looking at replacing it with something a lot cheaper to produce. It has happened before.
The purpose of this ‘forum’ is comment, and that means you may read other peoples opinions, with which you disagree. Its okay to disagree and post your own views on an episode, but not to suggest that other people’s opinions should be kept to themselves, or make personal comments if you just happen to feel differently.

Silver Nemesis – Cyberleader : “The Secrets of the Time Lords are of no interest to the Cyber Race” (possible not word perfect but bear with me!)

There is good and bad points in this story, so here goes –

GOOD POINTS –
1. Written by Neil Gaiman
2. Visual References – There were amazing visual references to “Earthshock” “Tomb of” and “Attack of”
3. Verbal References – There were great references to “Tenth Planet”, Moonbase” and “Revenge of”
4. The new Cybermen. I think they look sleek, dangerous and menacing but betrayed an innocent about them. Cunning and devious, they have evolved to be able to remove body parts to lure the victims to his/her conversion. Upgrade indeed.

BAD POINTS
1. I believe NG submitted an awesome script that was massacred by Steve Moffat (And before anyone moans, Steven Moffat is the Head Writer as well as Exec Prod!!)
2. The children, ah the children. These were pointless characters which brought the story down. I mean, they arrive and then are sent to bed, get taken over and then have to be rescued! Most of which would make sense if Clara had been the target of the Cybermen.
3. I am afraid to say Matt Smith. His acting was devastatingly bad. I am not sure this is far to Matt himself but should rest on the directors shoulders. Although in fairness, Directors these days are not really directors at all but people who put what is on the page to the screen. The whole Doctor/Cyberplanner thing reminded me of First Contact. Within the Doctor’s Mind the battle was handled very well but in the “real world” it was camp dreadful acting that would make Julian Clary look butch!

If I was to give this a rating, it would be 6.5 out of 10. Looking at previous comments, I would throw this in. Matt Smiths second season was the most dreadful in the last 50 years. There is not one episode other than Neil Gaimans, that I rated as over 5. And whats more, in 40 years of watching, reading and listening to Doctor Who, this is the only season I fell asleep in! This year has been marginally better because Jenna-Louise Coleman is a lot better actress than the awful Karen Gillan!

Well, I was expecting something as emotionally moving as ‘The Doctor’s Wife’. Instead, we get another tension-light episode before the big finale next week. Immediately after ‘Nightmare…’ I have watched ‘The Crimson Horror’ again. Both episodes are an easy offer for a nice evening and I can appreciate that.

I agree with @jb — this week’s writing was not top notch. The main problem I think was not making clear enough explanation why the Doctor stayed on the planet with kids. If you sense any clear danger, you take youths away from it. This is a basic instinct. But the Doctor just said ‘we are staying for the night, because I’ve found something curious’. It was the same Doctor who broke his vow of not-getting-involved-with-the-world to protect two children in ‘The Snowmen’. He could leave kids home and get back with Clara only and then try to solve a mystery.

I see two good ways of making that up.

One — the Doctor saw how Angie (the girl) was misbehaving towards Clara and he decided to give her a lesson in a form of a scary night. But instead telling chilling stories by a campfire, he arranged some scary moments in a room of figures. But Cybermen started their hunting/haunting first.

Two — the Doctor was the very first one who got ‘upgraded’ by Cyber-insects. Then Cyber-Doctor learnt about kids’ potential as Cyberplaners from Doctor’s mind and arranged staying a night to open a way to snatch them and convert. Or simply wanted more spare parts for hidden comrades.

All other tension falls and plot holes could be fixed from one of these two ways.

But I also agree with @Glenn — there were some great things in this episode. Doctor’s trap of ‘mate in three moves’ was brilliant and saved Clara’s and soldiers’ lives. The Emperor was great: especially his powerful voice and an aura of dignity he projected. And a tension in the beginning was good — when an empty Cybermen caught old man’s hands it was definitely a creepy moment.

In case like this, the overall verdict comes from an individual taste: do bad things lower fun of watching, or do good things prevail despite plot holes? Both ways are okay, but one can have only one of them at a time (it change in time, though).

For me, this time fun was the winner.

I have no way to influence any of next episodes, so I treat plot holes as an opportunity to learn how to write or how not to write.

Only six days to the big finale…

Interesting comments Whovian’s. Have to say that i agree in part with both JB & Glenn.

For me this was an up & down kind of episode, on one hand i really enjoyed things like the Planet Setting (Theme Park was quite different), the disfunctional Imperial Army, The fantastic new & powerful Cybermen – although a little underplayed in their introduction, Matt Smith’s personal battle with himself. Yes i think there was some good stuff going on here.

However – some things were not quite so good especially the kids – definately a strange addition to the previous episode & again no real introduction to the TARDIS, they just didn’t fit in for me with their most enjoyable contribution coming when they left at the episode’s conclusion!! lol.

Overall i give it a 3 out of 5 & in my opinion it was no where near the worst episode since Dr Who returned in 2005. That title for me is easily held by the terrible ‘Fear Her’.

Overall i’m loving this series & am so looking forward to the big secret reveal this coming Saturday! :)

I loved it! It did what it set to do – it made the Cybermen threatening again. By ‘Closing Time’ they had become a complete joke (defeated by the power of love? really?) and this episode fixed that perfectly.
I’ll admit, having the kids there seemed a bit tacked on and it did occasionally flit from ‘Doctor Who’ to ‘Adventure of the Stroppy Teenage Girl & Her Much More Interesting Brother Who Had Too Little Screentime By Comparison’ but that was just near the beginning and having them become pawns in the Cyberplanner’s game against The Doctor was a good remedy. Certainly not something that would ruin the episode for me.
Neil did a brilliant job writing the episode, although I’d like to have a few words with whoever was in charge of editing both the script and the production because I think they made some very bad decisions, looking at Neil’s Tumblr posts.
Matt’s acting, especially his acting against himself, was brilliant and he really sold the character in this episode.
I especially liked the call-backs to the past, including the visual and historical references to Tomb of the Cybermen, which add a flavour of 50th Anniv celebration to the episode.

The main complaint I have is that too much was borrowed from the Borg. Unless Assimilation² is being drawn into cannon, there wasn’t a real reason to borrow from another franchise.

Having the Doctor be vulnerable was a much overdue change that I was glad to see, but as others have said, the even-less-sane CyberDoctor was very un-Cyberman. Had it been spun differently as an insane Cyberman warped by something unexpected in Time Lord physiology, beyond just the two seconds of “what shall I call myself”, it might have made more sense.

The “fools mate” gag didn’t do well to establish the children, lacking either poignancy or sense.

All in all, it was a cute side-story, but for the most part it made guest writers scary again instead of the Cybermen.

I actually liked this one a lot. I do agree that the super-speed was a mistake, as it makes no sense whatsoever for them to be unable to enter the castle later, and I think they were upgrading a little too easily — too much like the Borg. I am uncomfortable with the idea of the Cybermen being derivative of the thing that’s derivative of them, and I don’t think it should be necessary in order for their overwhelming numbers to beat this rather pathetic squad.

But that’s really my only serious complaint. I think in many ways, the biggest thing working against this episode was the fact that everyone was expecting it to be impossibly awesome. I think that prevented it from being appreciated on its own terms. And it seemed shorter than it should have been, but I think the format causes that. I tried to keep that in mind and let it tell the story it wanted to tell, not whatever I wanted it to tell. It also definitely drew from one of Gaiman’s personal fascinations, which is tourist traps. The setting was gorgeous — a run-down amusement park, now inhabited by a futuristic Oz. Some reviewers mentioned Willy Wonka, but he’s more of an Oz. A humbug.

The best performances of course came from Matt Smith (who was decidedly creepy when possessed) and the inimitable Warwick Davis. I did figure out who he was before the big reveal; it made sense. And of course I knew he’d be inside the Cyberman, because of course that’s how everybody assumed the Turk was operated — a dwarf inside the thing. (Which actually wasn’t the case with the real Turk. It was a full-sized adult hidden away in there, making it even more impressive.) But he pulled the whole thing off well, not overdoing the pathos of the loneliness of command.

There were a lot of good shoutouts to the past, as others have noted. I loved that. What the Cybermen were, not just what they now are. And I love the new costumes. The flexibility is a huge improvement, allowing not only more movement but also a more dynamic performance from the operators. And although I actually did like the last Cyberman look, the new Cyberman face is great. It’s a good step forward, and I look forward to seeing them again. ;-)

@Gonzo “The main complaint I have is that too much was borrowed from the Borg” – Er….aren’t the Borg the biggest rip off from Doctor Who? The original Cybermen had human parts exposed!

Gaiman has since said he has not watched The Next Generation and knows very little about The Borg. He came to these choices outside of the Borg.

I have seen films with a budget of a million dollars not look as good as this episode.It looked fantastic.The best of this season so far.

I’m enjoying this season a lot but, I can’t quite put my finger on why i seem to feel slightly dissatisfied with Doctor Who lately. i always seem to come away with little bit of anti-climax. it could be that i’m expecting way too much. the episodes are not bad, there hasn’t been a bad episode, they are all very even, all good/OK but theres not a lot of great or brilliant. the production values are generally excellent Matt is great too, Jenna seems to have the acting chops to be a great companion but there just seems to be a lack of real drama.

I think that if this episode would have been a Neil Gaiman book it would have been great, scary, creepy setting, noble characters, irrepressible enemy that just keeps coming, the doctor having to think his way out of a deadly situation using just him brain against that of 3 million Cybermen the tension between Clara and the Squad leader over the destruction of the planet and yet it all seemed a little bland once translated on screen.

maybe the running time is a bit short for the scope of these stories, there were moans about two parters in the past but maybe thats what you need to tell a story which such a large scope?

who knows?

@Paul

When a story doesn’t feel right, there is always one of these two problems to blame (or both sometimes).

One — the lead hero is not likeable enough.
Two — the main stake of conflict between the lead hero and the lead opponent is not high enough (meaning: it doesn’t involve the lead hero losing something very precious to him PERSONALLY). I put an emphasis on PERSONALLY, because saving the world is almost never personal enough to be a good reason to fight.

Since both Clara and the Doctor are wonderful characters, I’m looking at the second reason. Almost all of this season’s episodes are good adventures, interesting places, but stakes are quite low.

Paul, does it make sense to you?

@Profzed

Chess is around for a couple of hundred years. It is logical to assume it will be for another couple hundred more. Also, I’d assume 80-90% of people at some point of their life tried to learn how to play it. It is the game of the kings. All these things make chess a cultural motif that is easy to understand by an audience.

In this episode chess made great sense in a story: it was a nice trick to occupy Cyber-Doctor attention and a wonderful trick to stop Cybermen’s attack at Clara and soldiers.

I agree it was used in a more shallow sense in ‘The Wedding of River Song’.

What game would you use instead?