Revisiting Doctor Who - Series 2, Episode 6 - The Age of Steel
Continuing on from last week...
Where were we? Oh,
yeah...Cybermen! About to delete a surrendering Doctor! Cue title sequence!
Well, we needn’t have
worried. The Doctor unleashes a
super-charged-by-that-bit-from-the-TARDIS-that-he’s-charging nuclear blast from
his sonic screwdriver and vaporises the crap out of the Cybermen. They all leg
it, The Doctor telling Pete that everyone in the house is dead, so he’ll have
to forget about Jackie. Who is actually still alive, hiding in a small room.
In the van, they all
argue about who’s bad guy and who isn’t – Pete was working for Lumic (the bad
guy from the first episode, if you’ve forgotten) to give the security services
information, and Ricky is actual London’s Most Wanted for parking tickets,
which is pretty hardcore. The Doctor says they just need to find the
authorities and report him for being a naughty man, but from his base, Lumic has
other ideas. He sends a secret signal into the population of London’s ear pods,
which sends them towards Cyber-factories like zombies.
The group split up,
looking for Lumic’s base of operations. Mickey and Ricky head one way, but
Ricky gets electrocuted to death after the pair get split up. Rose, The Doctor,
Pete and Mrs Moore have a narrow escape, too. At Battersea Power Station,
Lumic’s base, Michael Caine Mr Crane is brought before his former boss,
and manages to damage his breathing equipment before the Cybermen electrocute
him. The Cybermen want to upgrade Lumic to stop his pain, and he’s not too
happy about it, but they wheel him away to a conversion chamber.
Mickey meets back up
with the group, letting them know of Ricky’s death. They find Battersea Power
Station, plotting a way in; Pete and Rose will wear fake ear pods to fool the
Cybermen, Ricky will disable the ear pod transmitter in the zeppelin, whilst
The Doctor and Mrs Moore will enter from the tunnels below. Oh, hang on, we’re
forgetting someone again...oh, yeah, what’s Mickey going to do? Go with Jake
apparently.
Inside the tunnels,
The Doctor and Mrs Moore immediately run into a load of already-converted
Cybermen, awaiting activation. Outside, Rose and Pete slip the ear pods in, and
successfully join a line of people. Jake and Mickey make their way onto the
zeppelin after knocking out the guards. Back in the tunnels, the Cybermen begin
waking up, and The Doctor and Mrs Moore just escape through a ceiling hatch in
time. In the main building, Rose and Pete find Jackie – she’s a Cyber(wo)man,
which sucks for their relationship, frankly. Jake and Mickey are in the control
room of the zeppelin, looking for the transmitter controls, and finding empty
Cybermen skeletons in the closet. Mrs Moore manages to disable a Cyberman with
an EMP, and when they open it up they find it has a metal heart, human nervous
system and emotion-inhibitor to stop them realising what has happened and going
insane. Unfortunately, this downed Cyberman’s inhibitor has broken and it’s
still alive (and by Christ, if you don’t choke up slightly here you’re as dead
as a Cyberman with a functional emotion-inhibitor). After putting it to sleep,
The Doctor declares the inhibitor to be the key – if they can find the right
frequency then they can shut them all down. It would kill them, but if would
stop them killing everyone else. Like Mrs Moore, who stands up and gets killed.
The Doctor is taken away as an ‘unknown upgrade’.
Back in the control
room, Jake and Mickey decide to crash the zeppelin as the easiest way of
turning off the signal, but they trigger a silent alarm that starts to wake the
Cyberman in the cupboard. The Doctor is taken to a holding room where he finds
Rose and Pete. They learn that Lumic has been upgraded to Cyber-Controller, who
promptly arrives on a futuristic version of the Iron Throne from Game of
Thrones. Before he can do anything to them, Mickey tricks the Cyberman into
punching the transmitter control box, severing the connection to the ear pods.
Everyone begins to come to, legging it past the Cyber army. The Doctor points
out that by doing all of this, there will be no more advancements, and that
would suck, basically. Using a secret code of calling Mickey an idiot out loud,
so that Mickey can hear over the CCTV footage, he gets said idiot to locate the
code and send it to Rose’s phone. All the Cybermen start freaking out, noticing
what they’ve become and literally all blow their minds. As Lumic stays behind
to burn, The Doctor, Rose and Pete flee to the roof as Mickey and Jake wait for
them in the zeppelin. Just as they begin to climb the ladder, it turns out
Lumic escaped after all and is coming after them, but Pete uses the sonic
screwdriver to burn through the rope and drop him hundreds of feet back to the power
station.
Back in the TARDIS,
The Doctor puts the power module back inside, recharging it. As Rose bids Pete
goodbye, learning that Rose is his daughter in a parallel world, Mickey tells
Rose them that he’s dying. His gran is still alive, there is work that can be
done, and she has The Doctor. And, gods, I think I’ve got something in my eye
because they’re leaking really badly.
Rose and The Doctor
arrive back in Jackie’s flat for an emotional reunion, and Mickey and Jake head
off to Paris in a van, as all new best friends should.
So, how does this fare compared to the first part? Well,
it’s not perfect but it’s good, with plenty of tension, moral dilemmas and a
damn good and shocking emotional punch at the end in more ways than one. Mickey
leaving isn’t something you’d necessarily anticipate (though he’s obviously
been unhappy since episode 1), and as I have no idea whether or this was
announced before the original episode was broadcast I’m going to stick with it
being a good shock.
Oh, Mickey. Even on a parallel Earth you still end up the
butt of the jokes. ‘London’s Most Wanted...For Parking Tickets’. Fighting the
system by parking anywhere. Ricky might have a harder edge, but he’s still our
Mickey at heart. Noel Clarke is definitely the unsung hero of the first couple
of seasons of Who, and he brightened
every episode he was in. I don’t remember the show suffering without him as
such, but he definitely provided plenty of memorable moments.
It’s often the way the other’s treated him, aswell, that
sticks in mind. The Doctor’s face when he realises that they’ve forgotten to
give Mickey a task, again, outside
Battersea Power Station is priceless. The smile that The Doctor and Rose give
each other, compared to the muted farewell they give Mickey before he lives
with Jake, also speaks volumes.
I loved, loved,
how The Doctor manages to get Mickey to locate the code to shut down the
emotional inhibitors. Showing Mickey that he really does respect him (by
calling him an idiot) is a great way to end Mickey’s character arc (though he
will return a couple of times, of course) as he gets to be the hero he deserves
to be. He’s been great as both a comic foil and another human eye on The
Doctor, but one that sees the negative of being a companion.
Of course, Tennant and Piper are great as ever. Shaun
Dingwall as Pete Tyler has been brilliant with every appearance, and you really
do feel for him and Rose that their relationship will never get to be (keep
quiet, those of you giving me knowing winks).
On to the negative, there’s just something about the whole
storyline that doesn’t quite let it stand with the best stories. I think part
of it is just the fact that the Cybermen happen to get built on a parallel
world, in an almost exact copy of the originals from our universe, but with a
completely different origin. It’s just a bit too convenient.
I’m a bit disappointed in the way that everyone flees the
power station by just running past the Cybermen. Yes, there were plenty of
them, and perhaps they didn’t stop them because they didn’t want to damage
‘good stock’, but if they are this easy to run away from and push past then
they suddenly become a bit pathetic. Surely they would have started
electrocuting people as they went past?
So, the zeppelin wheel goes up and down…how does it go left
and right? I’m sure there’s a way, but…
In other Who-lore,
is this the first use of ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ when The Doctor tends to the
fallen Cyber(wo)man? The President used it in the previous episode, but I don’t
recall Tennant using it before then. It’ll be his signature catchphrase from
now on, of course. And talk about tugging on your emotional heartstrings – the
woman, Sally Field, who has been turned into this Cyber(wo)man, is meant to be
getting married tomorrow – blimey, I thought my heart was breaking!
The solution, killing them all by turning off the
emotional-inhibitor is the kind of genocidal conundrum that our favourite Time
Lord has found himself in before, of course. His reaction is a lot calmer than
when he last had to make a choice to kill everyone (the Daleks and humans in The Parting of the Ways), asking Mrs
Moore whether or not it was something they could do, and just like when he
wiped out both the Daleks and the Time Lords it comes down to numbers – by
doing so, more lives will be saved. Horrible ethical conundrum, but I’m glad
the show never shies away from this sort of thing.
In the same vein, the idea of someone doing
something evil in the hope of prolonging life is a staple classic of Science-Fiction,
but in this case The Doctor’s point that it would kill imagination, when
imagination is what brought him this idea, kills dead any argument that Lumic
could possibly have.
There’s a couple of great quotes:
Mickey:
You’re just making this up!
Doctor:
Yuuuuup. But I do it brilliantly.
Yes you do, Doctor. That’s why you’re awesome.
‘Oh Lumic,
you’re a clever man. I’d call you a genius but I’m in the room’
The Doctor’s ego, ladies and gentleman! Brilliant
as ever!
‘All reject
stock will be incinerated’
That’s pretty...shitty. Not good enough to be a
Cyberman so they burn the parts. You suck, Cybermen. You suck.
The music really is superb, with the Cybermen theme probably
one of my favourite Murray Gold compositions. It helps build up their menace,
and leaves us in no doubt that what’s about to happen isn’t going to be good.
The music is consistently one of the strongest elements of new-Who, and I’m glad that the composer
always seems to get the recognition he deserves.
Torchwood Mentions
Overall
It’s a strong end to a two-parter, though it’s not quite up
there with new-Who’s strongest
multi-episode arcs. A great episode for Mickey fans, with strong emotional and
moral punches that should leave you with a few tears by the end.
8/10
