Nightmare in Silver (2013)

This is the episode that many have been waiting for. Not just because it’s a Neil Gaiman episode but it’s the return of the Cybermen in what I am going to say is their best outing since they returned to the new series. Gaiman said he wanted to make the Cybermen scary which is a good thing to hear as I don’t feel like they have had a good run since returning in 2006. The first story that they appeared in was ok but since then they haven’t had that fear factor that they had during their 1960’s heyday. The story sees The Doctor and Clara take the brats on a space trip. Angie and Artie were the kids introduced at the end of the story and before we know whats what they arrive at a futuristic theme park.

The Cybermen got a new look which was a lot more svelte than previously. They seem to have shed the flairs and were able to do a lot more things as a result. They moved at lightning speeds which was realised in a great scene where everyone else was moving slowly and the Cyberman was moving fast. Then there was the moment when the Cybermen positioned its head in an attempt to lure one of the soldiers to it and then kill it. The idea that the Cybermen are all part of a network and that energy was used to help the Cyber Planner win his chess match against the Doctor meaning the other Cybermen were immobile was a great one.

I thought that this was Matt Smith’s best performance because it was just superb. Playing the Doctor and the Cyber Planner meant that he was switching from one persona to the other. He seemed to enjoy playing the Cyber Planner. Smith can always be relied upon to give stunning performances and he doesn’t let the show down when needed. Despite having to do the Mary Poppins routine, Jenna Louise Coleman is very good and doesn’t put a foot wrong from start to finish. Warwick Davis is best known for playing Willow and also being in Star Wars and Harry Potter and is very likeable in this as Porridge who turns out to be the Emperor. The character was funny and also managed to come across as one of the good guys.

I’m sorry but the brats served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. I cant imagine why they were included because all that happened was that Angie was whinging about no signal and being blasé about stuff (though it was clear later on she seemed to just being a teenager) and Artie was just being a typical boy by being bowled over by things. They may go on to having sound careers but Eve de Leon Allen (Angie) and Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie) are on a hiding to nothing because their characters serve only one purpose which is to get in the way of the story.

Neil Gaiman is a huge asset to Doctor Who and has succeeded in making the Cybermen scary again. After the brilliant ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, he has managed to match that story with a superb story that restored some pride in the silver machines and this series’ good run continues and it all boils down to the final episode where we get to know a what the Doctor’s name is (??) and also who Clara really is. It’s going to be a long week.

The Doctor's Wife (2011)

Now if there’s one thing that we should have learnt since the show returned in 2005 is that titles should be taken with a pinch of salt. All sorts of things went through my mind when I heard the title ‘The Doctor Dances’ in 2005 and ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ in 2008. So I was wondering what to expect from The Doctor’s Wife. Now this story is written by Neil Gaiman. A lot of people seem to be getting excited by his contribution to Doctor Who. I have to say his name means nothing to me because until it was announced that he was writing a Doctor Who story I had never heard of him. Having said that the story was clearly written by someone who knows how to tell a good story and also knows Doctor Who.

The story sees the sole of the TARDIS taken and put in a strange woman played by former Coronation Street actress. Her character is called IDRIS which is a very good character and Suranne Jones manages to play a character that has a complex idea such as the Matrix in her. Of course as we learnt with Donna and Rose that holding any part of the TARDIS in you is a bad thing and you will die as a result but this actually happened with Idris.

When the TARDIS lands on the asteroid we meet two people called Auntie and Uncle who have been cobbled together (a nod to The Brain of Morbius). I didn’t really see the point to them as they weren’t in it for very long and seemed to be discarded too easily. I did like the sudden randomness of the Ood’s appearance. It seemed like a bit of an odd thing to stick in a story (sorry I was trying to find a different way of saying this without using the word odd). The Ood has green eyes which is something that we haven’t seen before but its just to show that its under the control of House.

We get to know a bit more about the beginning of the Doctor’s time in the TARDIS. We learn that that the Doctor has had the TARDIS for over 700 years. There is also the use of a cube which is similar to the one used in the 1969 story ‘The War Games’. The idea that the TARDIS archives the old console rooms was a lovely idea but its one that for listeners of Big Finish will have heard before when we learnt that the TARDIS archives the rooms of former companions. The mere mention of secondary console rooms is a nod to fans who have been watching the show for more than six years. We get to see the old TARDIS control room which was the one used by the Eccleston/Tennant Doctors and it was good to see though I know some people who would like to have seen the classic console room. It’s odd to see the Matt Smith Doctor on the set of the old TARDIS set. The story plays with the notion that there might be Timelords about, there is a great deal of time handed over to this idea until we learn that all we have are these distress boxes that have the voices of Timelords. I did have a feeling that the Timelords were coming back and that where the story seemed to be heading but sadly it wasn’t. I do hope that they bring the Timelords back soon but at this moment in time we just have the one Timelord and the little girl who we don’t know the identity of yet.

As well as Darvill’s performance, I also liked Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and in particular Suranne Jones. I was impressed at just how good she was. Also I was surprised at Michael Sheen’s performance. I had hoped he would actually be on screen as opposed to just a voice. The voice was very good and creepy and the fact that its from a creature that just does things because is quite a terrifying idea. I thought the way that it was defeated was quite a good one because it was being so smug and clever that it hadn’t planned on Idris being on board the TARDIS and as a result of this slight oversight it was beaten and on a visual point that bit with the TARDIS energy flowing throughout the console room was one of the best directed scenes for quite sometime.

For the first time since The Christmas Invasion in 2005, we see more of the TARDIS than the console room. It was only a corridor but that is where some of the best stuff happened. It’s a running joke in Doctor Who that it’s full of scenes where people run down corridors and that they all look alike. It had a claustrophobic feel to it and that helped add to the drama. Credit to Arthur Darvil who after a off episode last week finally gets to put in a superb performance. I wish that they would do more stuff in the TARDIS. One thing I liked about Amy’s Choice was that large chunks of it were in the TARDIS and one of the things that I like about this story is that a great deal is spent in the TARDIS. Oh and I liked the green look of the TARDIS.

The idea that the TARDIS is the Doctor’s wife is the most obvious one that its amazing that its taken so long for someone to put it smack bang in the centre of the story. It took a while to get use to the idea of the matrix being a woman but it actually make sense because of the way that the Doctor has acted with the TARDIS since episode one. The TARDIS has always been talked about as an ‘old girl’ and to have it in a human form shows in a better way the emotional bond between the Doctor and machine.

I like this story very much. I was hoping that we would get something out of this story and whilst it wasn’t what I thought it would be I still enjoyed this a lot. I didn’t know about Neil Gaiman before this story but now I do and I strongly urge the producers to hire Gaiman to write further stories because I think they would be like this and that means very clever but not complicated. It’s the strongest story of the series so far.