Liked Age of Steel more than Rise of the Cybermen! While I think the Cybus designs themselves fundamentally misunderstand the Cybermen, the writing with them in this episode is one of the few to get it in NuWho! The Sally scene is incredible. I think Tennant is nailing his performance, as is Piper when she’s interacting with anyone but 10.
But my issues stand with Lumic being an awful villain, the designs not being great, and with Noel Clarke just not being great in this. Decent enough story with high highs but shockingly low lows. I’ll give it a 7 because I’m feeling generous.
Also love Flux. They honestly could’ve left the Cybermen out and just used Sontarans and Daleks. I do admit I liked them in Power of the Doctor, but mostly for the design and how funny they were during the Rasputin scene
So very true! Yes, the Sally scene is excellent. It’s constantly surprising to me how often the genius (and truly horrific) concept of the Cybermen is forgotten in stories featuring them. This is the huge saving grace of this story. The core of what makes the Cybermen truly scary is the horror of what has been done to them and the pity we should feel for them. They are their own victims.
One thing this story does excellently, which in my opinion is necessary for any good cybermen story, is to portray the horror of them. Cybermen are at their best when it is very clear that they were human, and in some ways still are. This especially stands out in the scene with Sally. I don’t particularly like Limit as their creator though.
I also think the parallel universe is super interesting and well used for the emotional development of both Mickey and Rose, even though I can’t really decide if I like Mickey’s plot here. I feel like it and he were a bit superfluous but then that’s kind of the point too, isn’t it? I think it could have used some further development.
Overall, I think this is one of the best Cybermen stories on tv, mostly because it’s so strong on the body horror.
Doctor Who on a parallel Earth, & how do we know? Zeppelins! This is all pretty average tbh with things moving at such a slow pace, especially in the first part. Roger Lloyd Pack is terrible as Lumic, feels like a cheesy villain/performance from late 80s Dr Who. Plus I really hate this cybermen design. & not forgetting Mr Crane, the Temu Michael Caine.
This one is very much frustrating, there are great things to it and I enjoy the parallel universe aspect of it all (while it’s far away from the best execution). I absolutely loathe this Cybermen Design, it’s horrible, not the worst but easily one I very much dislike. I don’t really want to repeat points others did, but yeah, the whole Origin story part of it. There are some great moments, that remember what Cybermen are, then we get stuff like the entire Catchphrase Thing with “Delete” feeling more appropriate for a generic robotic enemy not the Cybermen.
Part of me wonders if this Story should have focused more on the alternative Universe Part. Since that part does easily work for me the most, meanwhile the Cybermen Part of this entire Story leaves me mixed. It’s by far not the worst outing for them in NuWho (Shoutout to whatever they were in the Smith Era), but yet it does bring out some of the very worst aspects that later got used again and again.
I love it, but I’m partly blinded by nostalgia and the fact this was the first Doctor Who I ever saw. It kinda feels like a comic strip brought to life. Great teatime adventure Doctor Who. I wholeheartedly love it.
Age Of Steel was the second DW episode I ever watched, but I immediately fell in love with the Cybermen here. It’s no Spare Parts, but very few things are, and I like it for its contemporary commentary on tech culture that has only gotten so much worse in the years since.
Also, as much as rewatching Mickey episodes is a bit rough in hindsight, I like how this finally gave hm a chance to show his own worth as a character. Even knowing his actor’s antics behind the scenes, it still hurt a bit to see his character get belittled so much throughout the show, so it was nice seeing him have his big hero moment.
This two-parter is good, but definitely has its flaws. The Cybermen walk a fine line between being just robots and being cyborgs, thankfully the conversion factory scene and “I am so cold” manage to make the body horror element of them stick. I don’t mind John Lumic that much and in hindsight, he’s kind of aged “well” in that we basically have someone like him in real life cough cough Elon Musk cough cough so it feels a bit more real.
I like Mickey’s arc in this and him finding a place to be alongside Jake. Also him and the Doctor making amends before parting ways after their rocky relationship across S1 and 2. If you just tweaked a few things in this story it could be better. For example, instead of killing everyone at the dinner party, the Cybermen could just be immobilizing them to later take them to the conversion factories.
I don’t mind Cybermen killing (or deleting in this case) people but it shouldn’t be their first instinct.
Ever so slightly not as good as I remember it being, but still pretty damn good. I’ll always have a soft spot for Age Of Steel because it was my second-ever DW episode, but the total package still delivers for reasons other than nostalgia.
The character drama is solid (that final beat between Rose and Pete is so good, the perfect way to handle that leg of their arc), it ties contemporaneous tech culture together with the Cybermen origin quite well (I specify ‘contemporaneous’ because I don’t like thinking about this potential reality being even more likely in the years since its initial airing, what with Neuralink and other such nightmare fuel), and honestly, good on Mickey for finding his own path and not being tied to Rose or the Doctor… for a while, at least. As much as I love Series 2, the way he kept being treated by pretty much everyone still hurt to see, so I was happy for him.
A solid two parter and very interesting alternative origin for the Cybermen. The first part is mostly set up but the familial relationships are really nice and do a lot of legwork for the story. The second part is pretty much nonstop action but the slower moments are my favorites, like the conversations with Mrs. Moore or Sally. This is also where we see Mickey’s strongest show of himself, which is great but also unfortunate that we didn’t get to see more. The resolution was a bit quick but decent otherwise.
