Oh.
I really don’t want this to be another Heaven Sent situation…
But I don’t see why everyone loved this so much.
And it’s not a patch on Spare Parts.
I love fairy tales - I really do. I’m quite fascinated by their history and development so am quite familiar with the tropes. And those tropes don’t work in a Cyberman origin story.
I didn’t really gel with the idea of the Cybermen emerging from a bad king wanted to perpetuate his father and then himself. The selfish queen added very little and the vain prince was just irritating.
Spare Parts showed us a civilisation desperate to survive. Genesis shows us a trio of selfish royals with some scientific know-how. Spare Parts gave us a family forced into doing something with tragic consequences. Genesis gives us a couple of peasants who don’t want to get captured.
Although the mother scene was awful (in a good way) I’m not sure I got the logic of why she had been converted. There seemed to be a muddied explanation of people volunteering vs people being press-ganged if they were criminals. I don’t think it was properly explained how the populace was being taken into the King’s Guard - and there seemed to be some level of cybernetics amongst the general public but this is never explored beyond Shan saying she can’t afford it. But who can afford it? There doesn’t seem like any level of society between the royals and the peasants.
There was an oppressive, tragic atmosphere permeating Spare Parts with a society that felt properly developed and explained. Genesis lacks that, in my opinion, and relies on fairly flat tropes to tell its story.
I did really like the regulars (although Tegan is hugely side-lined). Nyssa, in particular, really shines in the story and her dilemma is well-told. (That said, how does her mentioning ‘cybernetics’ in passing lead her to believe she’s responsible for the Cybermen? She doesn’t actually say anything more than that one word. It’s a bit of a leap to go from that to ‘I caused the Cybermen’.
I also think Spare Parts has, by dint of being set after Earthshock, much more emotional weight which is sorely lacking from this story. The regulars try to inject it, but because only the Doctor knows the future of the Cybermen, the three companions have to rely on their belief in him and what they see with their eyes. The Nyssa of Spare Parts brings the same experience as the Doctor to the story and that adds so much more.
I didn’t want to compare this story to Spare Parts (inevitable thought that is going to be) because I wanted it to stand on its own. But after an intriguing start I just felt like it disappointed me more and more. There was a lot I liked (the emotional Cybermen were heartbreaking; the aforementioned Mother scene; the scene where Adric realises Rafe has been converted; the jump forward in time; everything with Nyssa) but there was so much that just didn’t, for me, work or felt like a pale imitation of what we saw in Spare Parts.
Even the writer, David K Barnes, points out how nonsensical the ending is with the spaceships being the reason Mondas is knocked out of the Solar System and I really wasn’t convinced by the ‘human Mondasians are the ancestores of humans on Earth’ bit either. It just didn’t feel necessary.
It gets a 6/10 from me.
(Oh and some of the sound design annoyed me too. There were a few occasions where the music seemed to working against the dialogue rather than complementing it).
I feel like a right curmudgeon. 
