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| Episode: | 715 | | | Serial: | 172 | | | Writer: | Tom MacRae | | | Director: | Graeme Harper |
| | Air Date: | 13-May-2006 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's been exactly 20 years since they aired Rise of the Cybermen! It was actually a bit of an anniversary story, as it came along approximately 40 years after the Cybermen's debut. Which means that The Tenth Planet turns 60 this year!
Some titles leave you guessing what to expect, but this one's not hiding that it's the reintroduction of a classic villain. It's like series 1's Dalek in that way... plus both episodes came at the same point in the season, and they're both inspired by existing stories. In this case it was based on the Big Finish audio drama Spare Parts, by Marc Platt, and once again I haven't heard it. I need to try listening to one of these audio dramas already.
This was the first Doctor Who story to be written by Tom MacRae and he didn't write many more. His next was the Eleventh Doctor episode The Girl Who Waited, and that was pretty much it. He had been commissioned to write another David Tennant episode but it was cancelled.
Director Graeme Harper had a lot more history with the series, as the guy started in the Tom Baker era, directing parts of Warriors' Gate after Paul Joyce was too much of a renegade. The story felt unusually modern for its era and Harper brought a similar energy to his first full serial: the legendary Fifth Doctor story The Caves of Androzani. He also directed Revelation of the Daleks, which is widely regarded as being 'pretty decent for a Sixth Doctor serial'.
Harper took a 20 year break from the show, mostly because they stopped making it, but with this he became the first and only director to have directed episodes of both the classic and modern eras. He's basically the Jonathan Frakes of Doctor Who.
There will be SPOILERS below, but only up to 13th May 2006. I won't even spoil part 2.
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RECAP
The TARDIS crashes on a parallel Earth, its power drained. The Doctor sacrifices years of his life to charge a power cell but it's going to take 24 hours to be ready, so they get shore leave.
Rose discovers that her dad Pete Tyler is alive (and rich) in this reality and wants to see him, while Mickey goes to see his gran. The Doctor can only follow one of them and Mickey knows it's never going to be him. Along the way the Doctor and Rose see people downloading the news into their brains via their EarPods. Meanwhile Mickey gets yanked into a van by his doppelganger's gang of anti-Cybus rebels, who find there's already one of him back at base.
It turns out that Cybus Industries has been taking the homeless and putting their brains into cyborg bodies as part of a project to give people immortality. Though terminally ill CEO John Lumic is more concerned about his own survival, and when the President of Britain turns down his proposal, he plans to attack him at Pete and Jackie's party.
The Doctor and Rose are there in disguise as serving staff, though Rose becomes unwelcome when she attempts to talk her mum's doppelganger into giving her marriage another chance. Suddenly Cybermen burst in to kill the uncooperative president, along with the other guests. The Doctor, Rose and Pete escape and run into Mickey's rebels, but they're surrounded by Cybermen who won't accept their surrender.
REVIEW
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My first proper introduction to Doctor Who was the Matt Smith era, but I've seen everything now, give or take a couple of episodes. I didn't see it all in order though, as when I first checked out the Tennant era I watched the stories that always got mentioned. Things like The Empty Child, School Reunion, and The Girl in the Fireplace.
Not Rise of the Cybermen though, this was so far off my radar that I didn't get around to it until I'd decided to review the whole of series 2. I'm not sure why it got so overlooked as it turns out this is a pretty big part of Rose and Mickey's arcs, building off episodes like Father's Day and Boom Town.
Also there's one thing about it that's pretty damn unusual for Doctor Who...
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They're in a parallel universe this time! This was such a well known concept by 2006 that it's actually Mickey who figures it out and does the exposition for the audience. Though he didn't spot the Zeppelins; they're always a dead giveaway that you're in another reality.
Doctor Who had been travelling space and time for 715 episodes at this point, so parallel universes should be old hat by now. But this is actually only the second story to feature one, with the first being the Third Doctor story Inferno in 1970. The series has visited plenty of possible futures, but it almost never goes full Sliders.
This means that there isn't a lot of parallel universe lore for the episode to get wrong really. Though the end of Inferno had the Doctor powering up the TARDIS console with cables from a power station, while here they're stuck because the electricity is from the wrong universe. So that's a bit of a contradiction! Plus they don't think to delete rooms to get energy, like in Castrovalva. I guess the room deletion hardware is offline.
Fortunately this seems like a much better Earth than the one in Inferno. It's not perfect by any means, with the soldiers on the streets, curfews, the rich flying over the starving homeless in their Zeppelins, the mind-control EarPods etc. But it's basically our world, just a little more advanced. Plus it seemed like Britain had a decent enough president, until he got executed.
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It was obvious that the president was doomed when he opposed Lumic, because Lumic is one of those evil billionaire Bond villains that you see sometimes in fiction and also reality.
I've heard that some viewers weren't able to take Roger Lloyd-Pack seriously as a ruthless genius because he's so well known for playing a complete idiot in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. I've barely seen the series though, so I was able to judge the actor on his performance here and... I wasn't keen. At first. He maybe had a bit too much fun playing against type and overacting. But Lumic has grown on me.
The guy's a bit of a retread of Davros from the classic series, complete with chair, and it's maybe not ideal that the Cybermen and Daleks have such similar creators. I think the chair was the right choice here though, as he's confined to it due to the terminal illness that's motivating him to take drastic actions to survive. It makes sense that he'd see cyber-conversion as a good thing.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_30.jpg)
Lumic's got a decent henchman too, which I always appreciate.
Mr Crane is a little eccentric himself, he puts on 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' to cover up the screams of the homeless victims he just kidnapped and put into a blender. But he always leaves the scenery for his boss to chew.
I kept thinking that I must have seen the actor, Colin Spaull, in a bunch of series, but I couldn't recall where I'd seen his face. It turns out I've only seen him in one other story: Revelation of the Daleks from classic Doctor Who!
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I don't know if the episode contrasts Lumic and the
Doctor deliberately, but it's interesting that a story driven by a man determined to
add years to his life at any cost also has a scene of the Doctor giving away 10 years of his life to save
the TARDIS and considering it to be worth it.
This may be the first episode to reveal that he can give away life energy, but it's a bit vague about what that actually means for him. I mean, did he just give away 10 years as the Tenth Doctor or 10 years in general? Here's a better question, why does he bring the power cell out with him instead of leaving it in the TARDIS? If he loses this they're never leaving this reality, and he's really keen to leave this reality.
It's weird that the episode uses the charging power cell to justify the heroes leaving the TARDIS and going on an adventure, as Doctor Who stories don't typically need a reason for that! Though it turns out that the downside of setting this in a parallel universe, is that the Doctor has to spend the whole episode telling people to not go off and find their lost loved ones.
But, like Mickey says, he can't keep an eye on both of them.
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Poor Mickey never gets to be happy. He spent series one distraught about his girlfriend running off with a time traveller and now that he's ran off with the time traveller himself he's feeling like the third wheel.
I get where he's coming from, the Doctor is always going to run after Rose instead of him. But the Doctor has been travelling with her for a whole year longer, having wild adventures in space and time and Cardiff, so maybe he should just give it time. Plus the Doctor doesn't do domestic, so it's not really a surprise he's never asked him about his family. The only reason he knows about Rose's family is because Jackie's hard to miss.
It turns out that we haven't seen much of Mickey's mum and dad because they left him to be raised by his gran! So his abandonment issues run deep. Oh, plus his gran fell down the stairs and died five years ago. Rose knew about this all along, and she still just ran off and abandoned him in the first episode!
That's also the episode where she thought Mickey had died and said she'd have to tell his mother, which seems a bit weird now. I suppose she'd still want to be told even if she hasn't been in his life for years.
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The good thing about characters wearing sunglasses is that you sometimes get behind the scenes footage of the film crew in the lenses. I remember the movie Stargate was great for this.
Mickey's gran has never been mentioned before and she's in the episode for less than two minutes, but that's really all the actress needed to establish her presence in his life. That moment where Mickey glances over at the torn carpet on the stairs really sold me on the pain and guilt he's suffering. Man, imagine how much worse the scene would've been for him if the carpet had been fixed in this universe. I'm glad the episode doesn't twist the knife that much.
All Mickey wants is to go inside and have a cup of tea with his gran, though the scene ends with him being dragged into a van instead. Now his poor gran is going to think he's been kidnapped along with all the other missing people!
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So Mickey ends up meeting the Preachers, led by his doppelganger Ricky. That joke about the Doctor always calling him by the wrong name actually got a payoff! I wonder if the First Doctor ever took Ian Chesterton to a universe where he's called Ian Chesterfield...
I don't know if finding out that his other self is leading a resistance group is making him feel any better or worse about his own choices, I think he's mostly just concerned for his life at this point. Personally my attention was on the compositing, and they've actually done a bloody good job here. Especially considering how the two Mickeys are lit by a flickering fire. The only problem I caught is that when Ricky walks behind Mickey the first time the light doesn't change, but the second time he casts a shadow on himself.
The scene gives Noel Clarke a chance to show his range, playing two very different versions of the same person, and I reckon he pulls it off. (He's more convincing than he was as Plastic Mickey from Rose at least.) Sure Ricky is a bit of a semi-comical try-hard tough guy, but... he's Mickey, so what do you expect?
Incidentally that tattoo was apparently something the character has, not the actor, and was applied as makeup.
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Meanwhile Rose is fixated on seeing her dad again.
Rose hasn't been an ideal companion this season, she's always trying to get Queen Victoria to say the line or sulking because she's jealous of Sarah Jane, and she's no use at all here. But I suppose the Doctor needs someone a bit flawed and human to keep him grounded, and the episode cares as much as she does about how Pete and Jackie turned out in this reality.
Turns out in the universe where she wasn't born, her dad lived, became incredibly wealthy, and got a dog called Rose. It's a real gut punch for Rose, and only slightly hilarious for the Doctor. But it's somehow worse for her when she learns her parents are getting divorced! Then it gets even worse when she tries to talk Jackie into staying with her dad, and her mother makes it clear she doesn't give a damn what a serving girl thinks! Spoiled upper class Jackie is the worst Jackie. (Plus we already know from School Reunion that Rose really hates this job.)
See, this is why you listen to the Doctor when he says "don't go and see your family in a parallel universe". Though it's nice getting to see Pete Tyler again after Father's Day, even if he is working with the main villain.
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The episode's all setup for the next story, but there's a lot to be set up so it's always introducing something new. Ricky doesn't even turn up until half an hour in!
It's a bit of a stretch that the heroes just happened to crash on the world where Tylers are so famous the president shows up for their parties and Mickey's the one leading the fight to save the world, but that's how parallel universe stories often go.
My bigger issue is, where did the Doctor and Rose get their disguises for the party from? They're outside watching the guests arrive at the party, the Doctor mentions he'll use the psychic paper, and then it cuts to them all dressed up and serving drinks. Did they beat a couple of people up and steal their outfits?
Anyway 40 minutes into the episode, Lumic's Cybermen crash the party and we finally get the proper reveal of what they look like in this era.
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Man, they really nailed this shot.
Also those are some really big robot feet. I guess the Cybermen and Daleks both have one thing in common: they both look like they'd have real trouble with stairs.
Though unlike the Daleks, the Cybermen have gotten a major redesign. I've said words about TV series messing with iconic designs in the past and I've got a few words for this as well: they did a great job. I mean, the Cybermen are always getting a major redesign, and these are parallel Earth Cybermen anyway.
These Cybus Cybermen keep elements from earlier versions (like the tear drop on the eyes, and the handles on top of the head) but are otherwise a radically different design that takes advantage of modern rubber suit technology. They've also got proper choreography so they stomp very loudly in unison. Though trying to be louder than a Murray Gold soundtrack is a fight even the Cybermen can't win, and their new theme works well for them.
The Doctor acknowledges that he's fought them before, so the history remains intact. In fact we already got a glimpse of the Cybermen in Van Statten's museum back in Dalek.
This particular design dates back to the Fourth Doctor story Revenge of the Cybermen, which was apparently the last time they had the teardrop by the eye in classic Doctor Who. So they designers have pulled elements they liked from multiple different suits. (The pipes going into the ears were not brought back).
Here's a fun fact, Jackie is celebrating her40th 39th birthday and this is the 40th anniversary of The Tenth Planet, so she was born the same year that the Cybermen were introduced... almost. The heroes have been a year in the future since Aliens of London, so she was born the following year.
Anyway you can really see what four decades of improvements in technology can do for your TV series.
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And you can really tell this CGI is two decades old.
The automatic cybersurgery device looks very goofy and impractical. Though that was probably the plan, as the producers needed something to take the edge off the otherwise horrific scenes of people screaming as they're sliced up.
These Cybermen are still human beings in metal suits with a determination to survive and they've still been stripped of their emotions, so they're very true to the original intent. The big difference is that on this world people are already augmenting themselves with technology before the metal suit.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_09.jpg)
Bluetooth earpieces were everywhere at the time the episode was made, so the EarPods were introduced into the script as the Doctor's first clue that something sinister is going on with Cybus Industries.
Early on Rose accepts a free upgrade to her phone, then we see that the general public have upgraded to EarPod downloads straight into their brain, and then the episode ends with one last 'upgrade'. It's free, but also compulsory. Man, this episode has only gotten more relevant in the era of Windows 11.
Though in 2026, the story would be about how they're replacing the Cybermen's human brains with AI. It's just the way things are going, no point trying to fight it.
The TARDIS crashes on a parallel Earth, its power drained. The Doctor sacrifices years of his life to charge a power cell but it's going to take 24 hours to be ready, so they get shore leave.
Rose discovers that her dad Pete Tyler is alive (and rich) in this reality and wants to see him, while Mickey goes to see his gran. The Doctor can only follow one of them and Mickey knows it's never going to be him. Along the way the Doctor and Rose see people downloading the news into their brains via their EarPods. Meanwhile Mickey gets yanked into a van by his doppelganger's gang of anti-Cybus rebels, who find there's already one of him back at base.
It turns out that Cybus Industries has been taking the homeless and putting their brains into cyborg bodies as part of a project to give people immortality. Though terminally ill CEO John Lumic is more concerned about his own survival, and when the President of Britain turns down his proposal, he plans to attack him at Pete and Jackie's party.
The Doctor and Rose are there in disguise as serving staff, though Rose becomes unwelcome when she attempts to talk her mum's doppelganger into giving her marriage another chance. Suddenly Cybermen burst in to kill the uncooperative president, along with the other guests. The Doctor, Rose and Pete escape and run into Mickey's rebels, but they're surrounded by Cybermen who won't accept their surrender.
REVIEW
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Not Rise of the Cybermen though, this was so far off my radar that I didn't get around to it until I'd decided to review the whole of series 2. I'm not sure why it got so overlooked as it turns out this is a pretty big part of Rose and Mickey's arcs, building off episodes like Father's Day and Boom Town.
Also there's one thing about it that's pretty damn unusual for Doctor Who...
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_02.jpg)
Doctor Who had been travelling space and time for 715 episodes at this point, so parallel universes should be old hat by now. But this is actually only the second story to feature one, with the first being the Third Doctor story Inferno in 1970. The series has visited plenty of possible futures, but it almost never goes full Sliders.
This means that there isn't a lot of parallel universe lore for the episode to get wrong really. Though the end of Inferno had the Doctor powering up the TARDIS console with cables from a power station, while here they're stuck because the electricity is from the wrong universe. So that's a bit of a contradiction! Plus they don't think to delete rooms to get energy, like in Castrovalva. I guess the room deletion hardware is offline.
Fortunately this seems like a much better Earth than the one in Inferno. It's not perfect by any means, with the soldiers on the streets, curfews, the rich flying over the starving homeless in their Zeppelins, the mind-control EarPods etc. But it's basically our world, just a little more advanced. Plus it seemed like Britain had a decent enough president, until he got executed.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_15.jpg)
I've heard that some viewers weren't able to take Roger Lloyd-Pack seriously as a ruthless genius because he's so well known for playing a complete idiot in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. I've barely seen the series though, so I was able to judge the actor on his performance here and... I wasn't keen. At first. He maybe had a bit too much fun playing against type and overacting. But Lumic has grown on me.
The guy's a bit of a retread of Davros from the classic series, complete with chair, and it's maybe not ideal that the Cybermen and Daleks have such similar creators. I think the chair was the right choice here though, as he's confined to it due to the terminal illness that's motivating him to take drastic actions to survive. It makes sense that he'd see cyber-conversion as a good thing.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_30.jpg)
Mr Crane is a little eccentric himself, he puts on 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' to cover up the screams of the homeless victims he just kidnapped and put into a blender. But he always leaves the scenery for his boss to chew.
I kept thinking that I must have seen the actor, Colin Spaull, in a bunch of series, but I couldn't recall where I'd seen his face. It turns out I've only seen him in one other story: Revelation of the Daleks from classic Doctor Who!
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_08.jpg)
This may be the first episode to reveal that he can give away life energy, but it's a bit vague about what that actually means for him. I mean, did he just give away 10 years as the Tenth Doctor or 10 years in general? Here's a better question, why does he bring the power cell out with him instead of leaving it in the TARDIS? If he loses this they're never leaving this reality, and he's really keen to leave this reality.
It's weird that the episode uses the charging power cell to justify the heroes leaving the TARDIS and going on an adventure, as Doctor Who stories don't typically need a reason for that! Though it turns out that the downside of setting this in a parallel universe, is that the Doctor has to spend the whole episode telling people to not go off and find their lost loved ones.
But, like Mickey says, he can't keep an eye on both of them.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_28.jpg)
I get where he's coming from, the Doctor is always going to run after Rose instead of him. But the Doctor has been travelling with her for a whole year longer, having wild adventures in space and time and Cardiff, so maybe he should just give it time. Plus the Doctor doesn't do domestic, so it's not really a surprise he's never asked him about his family. The only reason he knows about Rose's family is because Jackie's hard to miss.
It turns out that we haven't seen much of Mickey's mum and dad because they left him to be raised by his gran! So his abandonment issues run deep. Oh, plus his gran fell down the stairs and died five years ago. Rose knew about this all along, and she still just ran off and abandoned him in the first episode!
That's also the episode where she thought Mickey had died and said she'd have to tell his mother, which seems a bit weird now. I suppose she'd still want to be told even if she hasn't been in his life for years.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_10.jpg)
Mickey's gran has never been mentioned before and she's in the episode for less than two minutes, but that's really all the actress needed to establish her presence in his life. That moment where Mickey glances over at the torn carpet on the stairs really sold me on the pain and guilt he's suffering. Man, imagine how much worse the scene would've been for him if the carpet had been fixed in this universe. I'm glad the episode doesn't twist the knife that much.
All Mickey wants is to go inside and have a cup of tea with his gran, though the scene ends with him being dragged into a van instead. Now his poor gran is going to think he's been kidnapped along with all the other missing people!
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_14.jpg)
I don't know if finding out that his other self is leading a resistance group is making him feel any better or worse about his own choices, I think he's mostly just concerned for his life at this point. Personally my attention was on the compositing, and they've actually done a bloody good job here. Especially considering how the two Mickeys are lit by a flickering fire. The only problem I caught is that when Ricky walks behind Mickey the first time the light doesn't change, but the second time he casts a shadow on himself.
The scene gives Noel Clarke a chance to show his range, playing two very different versions of the same person, and I reckon he pulls it off. (He's more convincing than he was as Plastic Mickey from Rose at least.) Sure Ricky is a bit of a semi-comical try-hard tough guy, but... he's Mickey, so what do you expect?
Incidentally that tattoo was apparently something the character has, not the actor, and was applied as makeup.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_06.jpg)
Rose hasn't been an ideal companion this season, she's always trying to get Queen Victoria to say the line or sulking because she's jealous of Sarah Jane, and she's no use at all here. But I suppose the Doctor needs someone a bit flawed and human to keep him grounded, and the episode cares as much as she does about how Pete and Jackie turned out in this reality.
Turns out in the universe where she wasn't born, her dad lived, became incredibly wealthy, and got a dog called Rose. It's a real gut punch for Rose, and only slightly hilarious for the Doctor. But it's somehow worse for her when she learns her parents are getting divorced! Then it gets even worse when she tries to talk Jackie into staying with her dad, and her mother makes it clear she doesn't give a damn what a serving girl thinks! Spoiled upper class Jackie is the worst Jackie. (Plus we already know from School Reunion that Rose really hates this job.)
See, this is why you listen to the Doctor when he says "don't go and see your family in a parallel universe". Though it's nice getting to see Pete Tyler again after Father's Day, even if he is working with the main villain.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_05.jpg)
It's a bit of a stretch that the heroes just happened to crash on the world where Tylers are so famous the president shows up for their parties and Mickey's the one leading the fight to save the world, but that's how parallel universe stories often go.
My bigger issue is, where did the Doctor and Rose get their disguises for the party from? They're outside watching the guests arrive at the party, the Doctor mentions he'll use the psychic paper, and then it cuts to them all dressed up and serving drinks. Did they beat a couple of people up and steal their outfits?
Anyway 40 minutes into the episode, Lumic's Cybermen crash the party and we finally get the proper reveal of what they look like in this era.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_100.jpg)
Also those are some really big robot feet. I guess the Cybermen and Daleks both have one thing in common: they both look like they'd have real trouble with stairs.
Though unlike the Daleks, the Cybermen have gotten a major redesign. I've said words about TV series messing with iconic designs in the past and I've got a few words for this as well: they did a great job. I mean, the Cybermen are always getting a major redesign, and these are parallel Earth Cybermen anyway.
These Cybus Cybermen keep elements from earlier versions (like the tear drop on the eyes, and the handles on top of the head) but are otherwise a radically different design that takes advantage of modern rubber suit technology. They've also got proper choreography so they stomp very loudly in unison. Though trying to be louder than a Murray Gold soundtrack is a fight even the Cybermen can't win, and their new theme works well for them.
|
| 1-06 - Dalek |
This particular design dates back to the Fourth Doctor story Revenge of the Cybermen, which was apparently the last time they had the teardrop by the eye in classic Doctor Who. So they designers have pulled elements they liked from multiple different suits. (The pipes going into the ears were not brought back).
Here's a fun fact, Jackie is celebrating her
Anyway you can really see what four decades of improvements in technology can do for your TV series.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_12.jpg)
The automatic cybersurgery device looks very goofy and impractical. Though that was probably the plan, as the producers needed something to take the edge off the otherwise horrific scenes of people screaming as they're sliced up.
These Cybermen are still human beings in metal suits with a determination to survive and they've still been stripped of their emotions, so they're very true to the original intent. The big difference is that on this world people are already augmenting themselves with technology before the metal suit.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_09.jpg)
Early on Rose accepts a free upgrade to her phone, then we see that the general public have upgraded to EarPod downloads straight into their brain, and then the episode ends with one last 'upgrade'. It's free, but also compulsory. Man, this episode has only gotten more relevant in the era of Windows 11.
Though in 2026, the story would be about how they're replacing the Cybermen's human brains with AI. It's just the way things are going, no point trying to fight it.
_2-05_Rise_of_the_Cybermen_34.jpg)
We get a "Sorry, so sorry" from the president instead of the Doctor, then he's killed for his anti-Cybermen policies and the event turns into a massacre. It's sad because Jackie specifically said she didn't want politics at her party.
This is what the whole episode has been leading to, as the Doctor and Rose, Pete and Jackie, and Mickey's new friends all end up at the same place, just in time to be surrounded by Cybermen. Turns out Ricky's guns do nothing against the Cybermen (huge shock), and now they're all about to die due to the Cybermen's built in electricity attack (huge shock).
Why are the Cybermen so keen to "delete" them? I don't know, drama I guess? The Doctor says that they surrender, but they don't care, no matter how much fun David Tennant has repeating the word "Surrendah!"
Why are the Cybermen so keen to "delete" them? I don't know, drama I guess? The Doctor says that they surrender, but they don't care, no matter how much fun David Tennant has repeating the word "Surrendah!"
RATING
I like to compare things to other things, so is Rise of the Cybermen better than Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra?
Uh, I can't really remember any of them clearly so I'll just say 'yes', 'yes', and 'probably'. In my opinion.
In fact it's a much better episode than I expected. Despite the parallel universe twist, this is just good solid Doctor Who with a decent pace, decent comedy and a decent plot. It's a bit of a step down from the last two stories maybe, but it's no crime to be worse than a Hugo Award winner.
7/10
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NEXT EPISODE
If you've got any thoughts you want to share about Rise of the Cybermen, then go for it. There's a comment box down there, same as always.
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