Doctor Who (1963) 25-09: Silver Nemesis, Part Two

Episode:

676

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Serial:

150

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Writer:

Kevin Clarke

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Director:

Chris Clough

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Air Date:

30-Nov-1988

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've got more Silver Nemesis for you, whether you want it or not. However you can CLICK HERE if you'd rather go back to to part one.

Silver Nemesis was writer Kevin Clarke's first serial for Doctor Who and, coincidentally, also his last. Though to be fair, at this point every serial was someone's last, as there were only five more stories left before the classic series got cancelled. Doctor Who did eventually come back, but the writers didn't (except for Rona Munro, who returned to write one of Peter Capaldi's final episodes).

There will be SPOILERS here for this episode and earlier stories. You don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens later though.

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Previously on Doctor Who:

A comet containing a 350-year-old statue made out of immensely powerful living metal has landed in Windsor. Four different factions have arrived at the crash site and they each want it for themselves. First, there are the Nazis, who have come out of hiding with one of the relics needed to activate the statue (the silver bow). Second, there's Lady Peinforte, a villain from 1638 who created the statue and still possesses the other relic (the silver arrow). Third, there's the Doctor, who sent the statue into orbit to begin with and knows the world will end if anyone else gets hold of it. And finally, there are the Cybermen, who just came out of nowhere in a big shiny spaceship to make everything even more complicated than it already was.

And now, the continuation:

In a battle of Nazis vs. Cybermen, everyone wins! Well, except the Nazis, as they're learning the hard way what UNIT has known for years: bullets don't work on Doctor Who monsters. They make some pretty sparks, but this Cyberman is unharmed and unfazed. He just aims his own gun and shoots his attacker dead.

I'd love to have used a screencap that features both sides on screen at the same time, but the battle just isn't edited like that. These days you can watch something like the John Wick movies and get beautifully choreographed gunfights that put everything together in the frame at once, so you can see the hero take aim and the bad guy get shot all without a cut. Events are tied together in one seamless flow, you can picture the positions of all the participants, and the experience is more impressive and immersive.

Unfortunately Doctor Who didn't have the time or money for that, so it just cuts back and forth between shots of Cybermen firing guns and shots of Nazis getting blown up. And a shot of the Doctor and Ace leaping behind cover.

The Nazis are too busy to hold Ace hostage at the moment so the two of them are actually safer now than they were a minute ago. As long as they keep their head down.

This is all pretty familiar to the Doctor, as it's more or less how it went down the last time Nemesis landed in Windsor, 350 years ago. Only back then it was Lady Peinforte fighting the Roundheads.

Though Lady Peinforte is in this battle as well, which becomes obvious when Cybermen begin falling to gold arrows fired from off-screen somewhere. In fact, it's hard to really figure out where Peinforte and Richard are, as every time we see them they're in their own personal world of bushes. This could've been filmed halfway across the country from the other side of the battle for all I know.

Richard's currently praying for a way out of this nightmare, promising to be a good man, but Peinforte's quite satisfied by how her enemies are destroying each other. Well, they're fighting each other at least.

The thing I don't get is, she specifically says that she hasn't met the Cybermen before, but she brought gold arrows, so she clearly prepared for their arrival. Unless... she just likes gold arrows and it's pure coincidence that gold happens to be the Cybermen's weakness. Yeah, that makes sense, I can live with that explanation.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to grab the silver bow from its case during the chaos and then makes a run for it. Bow acquired! Peinforte takes a shot at him, but the arrow lands harmlessly in the TARDIS' door. At least I think it's harmless. Can the TARDIS get sick from a poisoned arrow?

I think this is the first time it's been demonstrated that the doors really do have the properties of wood... to an extent. You couldn't hack through them with an axe but an arrow can get embedded in the surface.

De Flores orders his men to retreat, but he has one of them make a daring run through the explosions to grab the bow. I'm giving this guy high marks for bravery but a low score for curiosity, as nobody thinks to check that the bow is still in the box. I'm also giving these pyrotechnics high marks as the place looks like an actual warzone right now.

The Cybermen are doing a lot better, as they've claimed the Nemesis crash site. They also spotted the Doctor swipe the bow and they've figured out that Lady Peinforte must have been sniping them from the bushes dimension. I don't know why they jump to the assumption that a woman from 350 years ago must still be alive, but they're not wrong.

They get to work cutting the statue free so they can carry it into their Cyber assault shuttle. Meanwhile, Lady Peinforte and Richard have wandered off into town.

This means I get this beautiful look at what a British high street looked like in 1988! I love how series like this can immerse you in slices of a time that just doesn't exist anymore. It's like real-life time travel.

Though actually, I just checked this street out using Google Maps and the place has barely changed in 35 years. The red awning has been removed, different shops have moved in, the signs have been updated. Not much more than that really. Those are some authentic 80s cars though!

This location is just down the road from Arundel Castle, which was standing in for Windsor Castle in episode one. Actually 'just down the road' is underselling it...

The castle is right behind the high street, towering over it on a hill!

This place is a great location to film in, but I'm struggling to work out why they filmed this scene here. The story has done this a few times, brought characters somewhere for apparently no reason, and now it's keeping me in the dark about what Lady Peinforte is up to. It definitely seems like she's on her way somewhere, but where?

At least I can take some comfort in the knowledge that Richard is as clueless as I am. Perhaps more so.

The Cyber assault shuttle is on the move now as well, bobbing up and down as it flies. It's not a great effect and they got a bit too ambitious when they tried to have it fly behind that tree, as the leaves have an aura. Though they do get bonus points for even attempting to composite the ship into a moving shot.

Meanwhile, the Nazis have parked their van and De Flores is contemplating a pouch of gold dust he presumably brought with him as currency. He noticed how effective the gold arrows were and is clearly  wondering if this is a weapon he can use.

Hey, the arrow's still in the door!

The TARDIS materialises in the scenic Windsor countryside and the Doctor starts following the flashing bow, letting the validium lead them to the rest of the validium. It's a bit of a strange move, seeing as he just left both the validium arrow and the validium statue behind at the crash site, but I'm sure he knows what he's doing.

He explains to Ace that the living metal was created to defend Gallifrey in ancient times. She asks who created it, and the Doctor tells her it was Omega, the villain from the 10th anniversary story, The Three Doctors! She asks who else, and he reveals that he was working with Rassilon, from the 20th anniversary story, The Five Doctors! I get the impression she wants him to continue and admit he was involved as well, but he shuts that down right away.

I criticise Doctor Who's visual effects sometimes... because they look like this. I think it's the lighting that's throwing it off this time, it doesn't look like it was filmed under the sky.

This time though they went the extra mile and did something I've never seen a show do before: they brought in a helicopter to get the plants blowing around and then superimposed the ship on top. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of television visual effects, for all I know Stargate SG-1 and Earth: Final Conflict did this all the time, but it's new to me!

Lady Peinforte and Richard encounter an obstacle on their mysterious journey, as these two (credited as "Skinheads"), have decided to do a bit of old-fashioned robbery. Skinhead #2 asks if they're social workers and I have to wonder what gave it away, the bows or the way they're dressed like 17th century time travellers?

The episode eventually cuts to the two skinheads hanging naked from a tree.

It's not a huge shock to me that the two of them got their asses kicked, but dragging them out of town and hanging them from a tree is kind of hardcore! Didn't any one notice? And where did they even get the rope?

I was expecting Peinforte and Richard to decide they need to blend in, and take their clothes, their boots, and maybe their motorcycles if they have them. Nope, they burned their clothes. This encounter was entirely irrelevant to the plot!

The Doctor uses his custom boombox to block the Cybermen's communication, because it's powerful Gallifreyan tech and it can do that, and just to troll them he uses Ace's Courtney Pine jazz tape from episode one. It's the most literal kind of jamming since Lone Starr gave Dark Helmet the raspberry in Spaceballs last year.

I like how Ace is wearing his hat to show how close they are. I also like how the Doctor stands up by lifting his legs and rolling over backwards, though the scene cuts just before we see how well that worked out for him. I imagine the rest of the shot's on a blooper reel somewhere.

One of the things this episode gets right is that the protagonists are the ones having the most fun, without being obnoxious about it. They're the team you want to be hanging out with.

The Cybermen have brought the statue to a crypt, which is a bit weird, but okay. They're trying to communicate with the other Cybermen, but all they're getting on their radio ball is jazz.

Okay, so the episode actually managed to tie in the gig the Doctor and Ace were at at the start and make that relevant to the plot! This has me feeling more hopeful that all the pointless trips and isolated encounters are going to get weaved together into some kind of story-shaped tapestry. Maybe I'll even find out why those two assassins with the headphones came after them.

Hey, the Skinheads came back! So the heroes on the same path as the 17th-century time travellers, they're just a little bit behind.

The Doctor asks who did this to them and all they say is "Social workers". The punchline would've worked better if the set-up in the other scene hadn't been awkward as hell. Or maybe it made perfect sense to people watching this in 1988 and it's just me who doesn't get it. You know what, it doesn't even matter, the situation's ridiculous enough to be funny enough on its own.

And that's the end of the skinheads' involvement in the story. We never learn if the Doctor lets them down, but either way, they'll be going home in their boxers.

Further down the path, Richard is in a bit of a panic after spotting a pair of llamas. Cars he could deal with, but llamas are a bridge too far. England is now full of terrors!

Lady Peinforte tells him to get a grip. He's not returning to his own time without her knowledge and she's not going back without the Nemesis statue, so he should focus on the task. Besides, there's something far more disturbing here for him to dwell on.

He's standing on his own grave!
Lady Peinforte had made arrangements before they left 1638 for him to be buried next to her, so that he can continue to serve her in the afterlife. Which is pretty hardcore. The inscription states that he was "in the 51st yeare of his Age", and I'm going to believe that's exactly how something like this would've been written in 1657. 51 years isn't the best run, but if you do the maths it reveals that he'll make it back home after this and live 19 years in a land without llamas. Either that or someone impersonated him after he left because they wanted to be buried under that awesome gravestone.

That fortress behind them is Lady Peinforte's tomb and it's also where the Cyberman are lurking with the statue. Hmm, tomb... Cybermen... why is that familiar? Oh right, the Cybermen tried to invade the Tomb of Rassilon in The Five Doctors! Yeah, that must be what I'm thinking of.

Twist: they're in a safari park! A safari park with a tomb. Unfortunately, visitors never got the message to stay in their cars as they put the sign on the wrong side of the road.

There is a good reason why the production crew went with llamas over one of the other kinds of animals you might find in a safari park and that's because no one wants their cameraman to get gored by a lion halfway through filming. Also, they were likely cheaper.

"It was cheaper" explains a lot of the choices made in Doctor Who. Like why they shot this in broad daylight instead of going with spooky darkness.

It's plenty spooky and dark on the inside and also surprisingly empty. No Cybermen, no statue.

This is the point where the Cybermen finally explain why they got the statue out of the comet, put it in their ship, and then flew it all the way over to Lady Peinforte's crypt. The plan was to lure her into her own tomb, where the proof of her mortality would make her absolutely freak out.

You know what, that actually makes perfect sense. They couldn't just fly off with the statue, they needed to lure out the people holding the bow and the arrow, so they arranged a personalised trap for Lady Peinforte. And the whole thing that drives the Cybermen is a need to survive so of course this would be the worst thing they could think of.

Well, it's the worst thing for them anyway. Lady Peinforte doesn't actually give a damn! She's satisfied with how great her tomb looks but she's mostly preoccupied with figuring out where they hid the damn statue. The arrow led them here, so they must be standing right next to it.

The Cybermen observe her behaviour and conclude that this is "the human condition of madness", which means it's time to attack!

This leads to a replay of their previous encounter, with Cybermen exploding into sparks, then keeling over and dying.

The Cybermen had a bold and imaginative plan here, but it seem like they've overlooked a crucial step.

1. Lure the woman with the Cyberman-killing arrows to a defensible position containing Nemesis.
   
2. ???
3. Take the silver arrow and Nemesis.
   

Incidentally, I don't like how that box at the bottom of the chest plate that's connected with tubes can just come away from the suit like that. It gives away that it's all one piece of plastic worn by an actor, instead of cybernetic implants.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ace discover the parked Cyber assault shuttle. Unfortunately the Nazis tracked it in a van, so they've gotten there first and put their two assassins as guards at the door.

That bit of the ship they're standing next to was absolutely real, assembled on location, but everything else was composited in. The blue fringe is a bit of a giveaway.

Ace sneezes, which is generally an instant fail when you're on a stealth mission, but the Doctor improvises, prodding a branch with his umbrella and making bird noises. I've never been keen on how the umbrella has a question mark handle, but I do like how McCoy makes use of the prop. It reminds me of how Tom Baker would sometimes find uses for his scarf. His bird impersonation is on point as well.

The Doctor makes sure that Ace is definitely not carrying any of that homemade Nitro-9 explosive that she always carries around, and then sends her to blow up the whole damn spaceship with it! Bloody hell, that must be strong stuff.

Suddenly the Cyber ship looks really good!

This is more like what a spaceship parked out outside under a grey sky would actually look like, and I'm presuming that they achieved this effect by just putting the model outside instead of filming it inside a studio and compositing it in. It also helps that this was shot on film instead of video, and they were using a larger model. The miniature they used for compositing was only 2 feet long, while this was around twice the size.

The Doctor distracts the two assassins so that Ace can throw her bag through the door and then...

...boom!

The reason they built the larger model was that it'd make the explosion more believable when they blew it to pieces. Things like fire and water just look wrong filmed at smaller scales.

I think most series would be satisfied with footage like that. Nice looking explosion, lots of pieces flying everywhere, job done. But Doctor Who just couldn't resist going the extra mile when it came to pyrotechnics.

They went and set off another explosion to depict the continuation of its obliteration and there was nothing miniature about this one!

The Cybermen find the two assassins with the headphones and have them executed by firing squad for their betrayal. Wait, what betrayal?

Ace is distraught about them being killed because of her actions, so the Doctor assures her that they were dead already. Or at least, they'd lost their humanity after the Cybermen had transformed them. So the guys with the headphones were Cybermen huh? That does explain why they knew to go after the Doctor and Ace at the gig. It's starting to make more sense.

De Flores has been sitting in his van this whole time, but he sees the explosion and decides to go meet with the Cybermen. He proposes one of those doomed villain alliances that the Master always likes to make. His soldiers will take care of Lady Peinforte and retrieve Nemesis, and in exchange, the Cybermen will give them half of the Earth. They'll each have their own slave groups and stay out of each other's business.

Of course, once he's gone the Cybermen basically turn to camera and reveal that they intend to betray him. It's like The Five Doctors all over again.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ace are hanging out by a fallen tree. One of the victims of the infamous hurricane that had hit England recently.

The Doctor's dwelling on the unintended consequences of sending Nemesis up into space. He's noticed that really bad things tend to happen every 25 years, just when Nemesis comes by the planet. Such as World War I, World War II and the assassination of JFK. I'm hoping that he's just being a big worrier because I don't need the Doctor to be responsible for some of the most horrific conflicts in history.

While everyone else has been keeping busy outside, Lady Peinforte has managed to find the statue of Nemesis. It was placed where her bones should be in order to spook her, but it's Richard that's more spooked by her missing corpse.

They've got bigger problems right now however, as they can't activate Nemesis without the silver bow, the Nazis are attacking, and they're down to their final gold arrow.

Peinforte is determined to lift the statue and drag it out through the crypt's secret passage, but Richard decides to take charge for once. He drops the silver arrow and gets them both to safety just as the Nazis spray the room with bullets at point-blank range.

Nemesis grabs the arrow, which is a bit of a weird thing for a statue to do.

Another weird thing about the statue is that it was played by the same actress who played Lady Peinforte. I'm not sure why they went to the trouble, as she got a mask on.

Now that the Nazis have Nemesis they decide to betray the Cybermen. The thing is, they didn't require the silver bow to find the statue, they just followed the Cyber assault shuttle (RIP), so they still have no idea that it's not inside the case.

The Cyber Leader knew all along that the bow had been swiped so he's not all that concerned about De Flores' threats to use Nemesis against them. The Cybermen don't have emotions, they remove them during the cyber conversion process, so the Cyber Leader probably shouldn't sound as smug as he does when he asks De Flores where his bow is.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has decided that his next goal is to find out where the other Cybermen are located in space, but his ghetto blaster scanner's not picking them up.

He sees a lizard crawling out from under a leaf and has a TV episode epiphany: they can't see the Cybermen forces because they're shrouded! They don't want to be seen.

The Doctor is able to correct for this and discovers that things are bad. Space is full of '80s BBC visual effects right now.

A whole bloody Cyberfleet of Cyberwarships! Thousands of them! Ace is going to have to make a lot more Nitro-9 if they're going to take all of them out.

I'm trying to figure out why this shot doesn't look very good to me, and my first guess is that it's because the ships look like a plastic toy with silver spray paint. Maybe the miniatures were a little too miniscule as I feel like I'm looking at something small put right up to the lens instead of something huge at a distance.

Red Dwarf 2-01 - Kryten

Here's a shot from another BBC series from the same year that came out looking so much better, just so you know I'm not picking on an old low-budget series for being old and low-budget.

Anyway, that's the end of the episode! It's a very Modern Who-style "The Doctor struggled with just a small number of monsters, but now there are thousands of them!" kind of cliffhanger.

TO BE CONTINUED IN SILVER NEMESIS, PART THREE

CONCLUSION

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Sometimes you'll watch an episode and kind of enjoy it in the moment. But then the more you think about it afterwards, the more you realise it doesn't quite make sense. The story falls apart under examination, collapsing into a pile of plot holes and fridge logic.

I was enjoying Silver Nemesis, Part Two just fine as I was watching it, but the more I think about it, the more it falls together. I've been picking up on things I didn't catch the first time around and realising that there is some logic to it and events do have explanations. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

One of the first things that tripped me up is that everyone splits up and heads away from Nemesis. It confused everything and made it appear like Lady Peinforte was following some mysterious agenda when she headed off across town, through a safari park, and into her own crypt. Now I realise that she was just following the arrow to Nemesis, that's all it was.

The Cybermen's bizarre plan to take the statue out of the comet and put it in Lady Peinforte's tomb also makes sense when it's revealed that they're doing it to screw with her. They knew who she was, they knew she had the arrow, so they led her to the scariest place in the world for a Cyberman: their own grave. The proof that they won't survive. But there's no proof there for Lady Peinforte, no bones, and she doesn't give a damn anyway, because she's convinced she can cheat fate!

A lot of the episode follows the humourless Nazis and the emotionless (yet kind of campy) Cybermen, and that works fine, because they contrast against the daring Lady Peinforte and her long-suffering servant Richard. The two of them seem to exist in their own separate world of bushes and high streets that the other characters can never enter, so they only ever talk to each other, but they've got such a great double-act going on that I don't care. Richard needs a hug, and he's not going to get one.

But the most fun characters to watch, for me, were the Doctor and Ace, and I'd say that's a definite positive. The Sixth Doctor's era suffered from other characters hijacking the story from him, but these two managed to hold their own here despite the crowded cast. It helps that the Doctor has the most history with Nemesis.

We find out in this episode that the story is basically about a missing nuke that's fallen into the hands of a more primitive culture. In fact, there are three groups here with three very different levels of technology playing 'rock, paper, golden arrows' with each other to decide who gets to keep it. This is such a fascinating premise for a Doctor Who episode!

So overall, I'd say that the fun characters, interesting concept and impressive pyrotechnics kept the episode entertaining for me despite the awkwardness in the script, the messiness of the visual effects and whatever the hell was going on with the soundtrack. There's more action than part one, less padding, and all the characters are properly in play. I wouldn't call the episode a highlight of the series but I am giving it another thumbs up.

Now it's up to part three to deliver some kind of payoff without completely messing everything up.

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COMING SOON

Doctor Who will return with Silver Nemesis, Part Three, the final chapter of the Silver Nemesis saga. Hopefully it's better than Star Trek: Nemesis, or that Voyager episode called Nemesis.

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