Much has been made of ratcheting up the stakes for this season of Doctor Who. The return of the Master, Gallifrey destroyed (again!) by the Master, the secret of the Timeless Child, the return of Captain Jack Harkness, the introduction of a heretofore unknown incarnation of the Doctor and now the return of the Cybermen.
Harkness warned the Doctor's companions to beware of the Lone Cyberman and not to give it what it wants at any cost.
As we saw last week, the Lone Cyberman shows up and the Doctor goes indeed give it what it wants.
This week takes us to a dark and terrible future where the Cybermen have won and humanity is all but destroyed.
There are hints and insinuations that the Doctor's fam is not going to get out of this intact.
So where does this week take us? Do we get answers or just more questions? Is there a chance at victory or does the Doctor and her team just face more losses?
We'll find out more after the spoiler break.
ASCENSION OF THE CYBERMEN
by Chris Chibnall
Things start off in a rustic corner of Ireland with a man riding a bike on a dirt road where he finds a baby in a basket. The man brings the baby home to his wife and like Jonathan and Martha Kent, they raise the child they name Brendon as their own.
We will check in with Brendon over the course of his life at various points of this episode that appears to have nothing to to with Cybermen.
Then it's off to the future where the Doctor and the fam are there to save a scrappy handful of humans from the Cybermen. The Doctor has a bunch of tech designed to mess with Cybermen.
And none of it works after they get blitzed by a horde of Cyber drones, flying Cybermen heads with glowing blue eyes.
The Doctor and the fam get separated. Conveniently, they can't get back to the TARDIS which does not make an appearance in this episode at all.
The Doctor, Ryan and a surviving human steal a Cyber ship to zip off into space.
Yaz and Graham are with three other human refugees on a ship called a Grav Raft which is a veritable bucket of bolts with bolts falling off.
Ashad, the Cyberman with a face, is back and can monologue like he's freaking Davros or something.
The last ditch hope of humanity is to get to Ko Sharmus and from there past the Boundary, a refuge beyond the known galaxy where humanity will be safe from the Cybermen.
Yaz, Graham and their three human refugees are not safe, having pushed a badly damaged Grav Raft onto what was supposed to be an abandoned Cybership. But the ship is not empty but filled thousands of Cybermen awaiting to be activated. And along comes Ashad to wake 'em up.
Meanwhile the Doctor has made it to Ko Sharmus who is a person, not a place. She sees the Boundary, a swirling vortex of energy that leads to... Gallifrey?
And hopping out of this vortex is... The Master!
Well, of course he does!
And that is where we end things. For now!
OK, a LOT is going on in this episode.
I take issue with the TARDIS being conveniently too far away to be of help. As Graham complained last week, why does the Doctor always park the darn thing so far away?
Anyway, I understand that for reasons of plot that the Doctor and the fam need to be separated from the TARDIS but just being parked too far away seems like a copout.
And if that seems like a petty detail to complain about, that's because that's the worst thing I can think of to complain about.
This is a fairly solid episode with the Doctor and her companions facing serious levels of jeopardy and a most confounding mystery.
What is Ashad's endgame? What are the Cybermen are up to? How does this connect to Gallifrey? And the Master? And the Timeless Child?
And what the hell is going on with Brendon?
And we're left waiting anxiously until next week for answers!
No comments:
Post a Comment