Earth's twin planet arrives and brings with it the Cybermen, a race of emotionless, metal monsters who's only aim is, as they put it "You will become like us!!". From their blank, empty, featureless eyes to their massive, metallic, motor on their bodies; everything about them screams their lack of emotion. In my opinion the thing that makes them so scary is when they open their mouths to talk, they stay open and the metallic voices come tumbling out like an echo from a cave. The voices are super effective and non-human created perfectly by Roy Skelton. I like how they change the pitch after every word although I don't know what happened but by episode 4 they seemed to be screaming for no reason so it became rather annoying after a while. Their most effective and best scene in the whole story was easily them coming out of the blizzard in part one, it creates a sense of vulnerability when you can't quite see them through the heavy snow, their features blurred, looking human in shape but so completely un-human. The setting of the story, the South pole gives the whole story a feeling of claustrophobia and as I've said acts as the perfect environment to reveal one of Doctor Who's most famous monsters. In the opening scenes, the setting is displayed perfectly, the lived in kind of feeling you'd expect from somewhere people are trapped for up to half a year. The fact one of the characters, Tito has half naked women next to his bed shows this well. I liked the small bits of comedy from the doctor such as him saying "Speak up I'm deaf" to someone shouting at him. Despite him suffering from ill health during the story like collapsing on set meaning he didn't appear in part 3, his regeneration scene was something to put you in awe. The noise of the TARDIS as he changed was very affective and added to the emotion I thought. The regeneration itself wasn't the best but was probably excellent for the 60's. My only problem with the regeneration is the black and white made it slightly unclear so to unsuspecting audience members they may not have even noticed the change. The animation of episode four was another major thing. It looked incredibly detailed although sometimes I felt they added just too much detail making it hard to believe but still good and the great cliff hanger to episode 3 is resolved well. Now to my problems with the story. First of all I don't quite understand why the Cybermen need to wear blankets over themselves as they don't feel things like that. Secondly, I feel the way of killing, with the torches attached to them isn't the most inventive was of killing and as we saw, the prisoners can easily got hold of them. Thirdly, it's slightly clichéd they don't kill the companion (Ben) when he points a gun at them but they kill someone else for just moving. Finally the strings are visible on the excellent model of the Cybermen spaceship landing on the again excellent model of the South Pole, but I don't normally judge on things like that. Overall a brilliant story with few flaws. This story is very important in the Doctor who world; the first regeneration, the first Cybermen story and it really lives up to it's potential. I also just wanted to mention the General character, I thought he was quite complex; on the one hand he want's his son back, on the other he would commit genocide and later becomes a villain. But anyway, a story that's nearly 50 years old yet still manages to be creepy and scary with a lovely conclusion!
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About this areaThis area will be where I write reviews on Doctor Who DVD's classic and new. The area is split up into episodes of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and new who to make it easier for me and you to see them. Enjoy! Archives
October 2015
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