The Twelfth Series of Doctor Who enters into its end game with sees The Doctor face off against The Cybermen in “Ascension of the Cybermen.”
The Doctor and her companions arrive in the far future during the Cyber Wars. The last remnants of humanity are down to single digits. She sets out to protect the remaining humans who believe that there’s a safe haven on the other side of the universe. The Doctor also comes face-to-face with Ashad, the Lone Cyberman from the previous episode.
The penultimate of the series was a combination of Series Three episode “Utopia” and The Terminator. In “Utopia” The Doctor was forced to arrive at the last human settlement at the end of the universe. The humans believe that there’s hope that there was still a habitable planet. The survivors of Cyber Wars had a similar belief and were trying to build a spaceship to get to this planet. The scene where Cybermen drones were sent reminded me of the Toclafane when they attacked me.
The Terminator feel came from the post-apocalyptic setting where the reminds of humanity were being hunted by a robotic race. Some of the references were obvious such as the music in the episode was similar to the themes in the film series. A smaller reference was when one character revealed that he was held in a camp by the Cybermen and it was like Kyle Reese’s backstory in the original Terminator film.
The Cybermen are one of the most iconic villains in Doctor Who but under Moffat’s run there done a disservice. It was only in the Series 10 finale where there were given a great episode. The Cybermen were a threat because they outmanned and outgunned, and they had spaceships that can travel faster than the speed of light. When the Cybermen ships appeared in the sky they looked like a bit like Star Wars. The production clearly invested in the CGI effects.
The Cybermen had a leader in the episode. The Cybermen were a hive mind that simply existed to assimilate or delete humans. Ashad literally gave the Cybermen a face. He was the Borg-Queen to Doctor Who’s equivalent of the Borg in Star Trek. Ashad has great interactions with The Doctor and there was an impactful scene when Ashad awakens another Cyberman.
However, the episode does have some issues. The first being the more minor issue was the humans were building a spacecraft to travel to the other side of the universe. But the survivors were ordinary people – teachers, builders, and care workers. Even in a future where space travel was accessible, I would have thought the group would still need a mechanic, a pilot, or a computer programmer. Yaz and Graham end up with the human survivors and they end being the ones coming up with a suggestion to survive a crisis. They have experience travelling with The Doctor, but they also ordinary people, not engineers or something of that nature.
When the humans and Doctor leave the planet to get to the safe haven the episode becomes more slog. It just meanders about until it reaches its cliffhanger. It’s not an episode that can stand as its own singular piece. Most of the drama comes from Yaz and Graham who are stuck on a ship with Cybermen.
The episode had a subplot with Brenden, an Irish policeman. It was a subplot that was randomly attached to the episode. It was a mystery why it was in the episode. The finale can address this issue but at this point, it looked the editor spliced in a bit of Ballykissangel.
After the good effort that was “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” Doctor Who comes down to Earth with a bump. The opening action with the Cybermen was well done but Chris Chibnall carries on with his skill of making Doctor Who dull.
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