Nightmare in Silver
Story 238, Episode 797, Series 7 Episode 12
Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Clara Oswald
An attempt to make the Cybermen scary again goes awry with an episode that shows Neil Gaiman did not have a lot of time to rewrite.
The Review
The idea for Nightmare in Silver was simple, the Cybermen weren’t scary anymore, so we’re going to turn to Neil Gaiman to make them scary. Well, it doesn’t work. This story was not meant to originally be where it slots in now, which we’ll get to later, but Gaiman fundamentally goes the wrong direction with the Cybermen. Now they have super speed, can ‘upgrade’ people on the fly with Cyber-mites, detach body parts, swivel their head around, etc. The Cybermen were never a threat because of how powerful they were, it was what they represented: abandoning basic humanity in conquest of technological advance. Starting with the Cybermen housing skeletons of the dead in Dark Water and refined further in World Enough and Time and Ascension of the Cybermen, the new series has learned from this mistake and focused on Cybermen body horror. The super-powered Cybermen here though, still lead to a miss of a story.
Gaiman wrote this story for Amy, and once you know that you can’t help but see how Clara’s dialogue would make much more sense coming from Karen Gillan. She’s a lot more aggressive and detached than Clara normally is, and it sticks out like a sore thumb as she only gets this way for good by Series 9. The children she babysits, Angie and Artie, come along, Artie does next to nothing while Angie is an annoying teenager who storms into a barracks demanding entertainment because she’s bored. The Doctor has a mind-showdown with a Cyber-planner called Mr. Clever which gives Matt Smith very fun moments playing a sinister Doctor. Still, isn’t the whole Cyberman thing that they don’t have emotions? Mr. Clever is flowing with them. Warwick Davis is a highlight as the Emperor in disguise, but this leads to a way too easy ending as everybody just gets insta-teleported as the Cybermen are imploded on the planet. Oh, and the whole tonal dissonance of taking place on a ruined theme park doesn’t help either. Don’t get me wrong, Nightmare in Silver is still watchable, but it’s quite disappointing.
Seriously, just read the lines blind and you’d guess this was a story with Amy circa Series 5. The Doctor also says Clara is in a ‘skirt that’s too tight’, which is just uncomfortable for everyone involved.
7.5/10 Still very watchable, but a lot to be desired
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