The Vanquishers: Too Many Plates, Not Enough Hands
The Vanquishers has to resolve every thread Flux started and does it in under an hour. Three Doctors, four villains, and almost no room to land any of it.
The Vanquishers has to resolve every thread Flux started and does it in under an hour. Three Doctors, four villains, and almost no room to land any of it.
The Master explains the Timeless Child and rewrites the Doctor’s entire origin, in a finale that spends forty minutes on a retcon and forgets to be a story.
The Cyber-Wars are over and humanity has lost, in a bleak, well-mounted penultimate episode carrying a subplot that makes no sense until it ruins everything.
A ghost story at Lake Geneva in 1816 turns into the arrival of a half-converted Cyberman, in the best-directed and best-monstered hour of the era.
Death in Heaven ends series 8 with Cybermen in the graveyards and Missy loose. Fitting but depressing, with a couple of bits that jarred for me.
Dark Water kills Danny and finally unmasks Missy, but for me the creepy 3W skeletons can’t save a dishonest volcano twist and a messy finale opener.
The Time of the Doctor strands Matt Smith’s Doctor on Trenzalore for nine hundred years, and a messy first half gives way to a great goodbye.
Nightmare in Silver gives me the best Cybermen in years and Matt Smith playing chess against himself, then buries both in a theme park.
Closing Time sends the Doctor to babysit with Craig Owens and fight Cybermen in a department store, with a goodbye hiding under every joke.
The Next Doctor drops the Doctor into 1851 London to meet a man claiming to be him, in a Christmas special about grief, identity and a very large Cyberman.
Doomsday sets Daleks against Cybermen over London, then ends on a cold Norwegian beach. My take on the Doctor Who finale and that goodbye.
Army of Ghosts turns a planet’s grief into a Cyberman invasion, opens up Torchwood Tower, and ends on a Dalek cliffhanger I never saw coming.
The Age of Steel reveals the Cybermen’s true horror and gives Mickey Smith his hero moment in an emotionally sharp Doctor Who finale.
Rise of the Cybermen strands the Doctor on a parallel Earth where Rose’s dad is alive and John Lumic is building an army of steel men from the living.