Attack of the Cybermen [TV/1985.1.5 ~ 1.12]

★★★☆☆

  Even as a steadfast fan of the Sixth Doctor and how he was portrayed on telly, I understand it when people say he turned them off the show after a couple of his first serials. It's no secret that Eric Saward had it in for this incarnation of Doctor Who and the show itself — and so we get the Doctor acting even more volatile, tetchy and heartless in the first serial of Season 22. As I said, I can see how a Doctor seemingly so detached from his previous moral codes might be distasteful... but for me, he's absolutely intriguing. Even with oddities in the script that a paranoid part of my brain can't help but blame Saward for, I could clearly see the Sixth Doctor as the same Doctor we've known all along: a being of compassion (immediately demanding Peri's safety to the Cybermen), jovial wit and regretful ponderings. Plus, the more violence-prone and acidic incarnation really worked for very-early-days Sixie, all credit to the interminable Colin Baker.

  Besides, even if you decide to hold onto the notion of the Doctor's actions in this serial (which are admittedly more '80s action movie protagonist than BBC pacifist alien, what with resorting to guns to defeat the big bad Cyberman), you have to admit the more brutal tone works well with this industrial nightmare of a serial. There's a realness to the action in this serial, a very believable undertone to every scream uttered by a dying character. Blood spills from crushed hands, Cybermen (with actors still inside the suits) are destroyed in very flashy and explosive shocks, and green life fluid/blood ends up on the camera as the Doctor shoots all the Cybermen down. Even if it's not a particularly noteworthy serial in the grand scheme, I always found it memorable due to this newfound willingness to shock. This entire season is to Cannon Films what the Hinchcliffe era was to Hammer horror, and I would never have it another way. Call it schlock sci-fi, but this B-movie horror twist on the Cybermen is more than entertaining enough to catch my fancy.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  These '80s Cybermen are rather daft, aren't they? Their voices are probably the worst in the Cybermen's long history, their choreography often fails to be more than people bundling around, and the way they're performed makes it less believable that they're emotionless robots. Kudos to Attack of the Cybermen for using them the best in the entire 1980s; with Lytton, they even managed to bring back body horror in style!