Ascension of the Cybermen

During last week’s unsettling scenes of Ashad the Cyberman stalking the dark Villa Diodati, I leant over to my wife and whispered, “This is how I remember the Cybermen of my childhood.” It was true of course, but in actuality, the metal meanies had never been as truly frightening as they were last week. The Tomb of the Cybermen, a story I lapped up as an adoring seven-year-old fan in 1992, whilst purporting to be the stuff of nightmares, is actually more an exciting run-around with added ridiculousness by way of the Cybermats. The silver giants in their icy tunnels is a frightening memory but it’s not a real one. Whilst still a towering masterpiece of Doctor Who storytelling, at least to my mind, Tomb is admittedly fairly bereft of tension.

Here, in Ascension of the Cybermen, we have all the tension one could ask for, with helpful lashes of 60s silliness to boot. Whoever came up with the Cybermats, be that Kit Pedler, Gerry Davis or Victor Pemberton, Chris Chibnall seems to be pretty much on the same wavelength, engineering his own addition to the Cyber mythos in the form of the almost laughably ridiculous but equally strangely malevolent Cyber Drones, flying metal heads with a monopoly on the lethal. Opening this space-thriller, they make for a strong summation of what’s to come: pulpy and silly but with a genuine sense of threat, oppression and pace.

We open with the stark image of a floating Cyberhead, classily seguing into the title sequence and from there on in, we don’t stop. Just as Praxeus took us round the world, Ascension takes us across the galaxy: from a near extinct planet, to a Cyber Carrier Ship (with pleasing echoes of The Wheel in Space) and finally to the seeming utopia where Ko Sharmus resides, cross-cutting with what would appear to be Ireland. Separated from the TARDIS and with our crew split up, there’s a genuine sense of peril and the Cybermen have never felt this relentless. As they wake and approach Graham, Yaz and their party at the close of the episode, despite Yaz’s optimism in the face of adversity (and isn’t she brilliant here?), I’m worried for them.

Like the Cybermen, Chris Chibnall’s dialogue and plotting doesn’t half clunk along, but for once this seems appropriate. It feels as mechanical as the monsters it explores. See for instance, how the Doctor’s technology is proven to fail within the first ten minutes. It’s played out in such an obvious, direct contrast to the tech she took to Ranskoor Av Kolos with such confidence and quickly she’s seen to be a lot more vulnerable than usual. You can see it being set up, as each of the TARDIS crew ploddingly carry a separate device which they can handily explain to the guest cast, before it gets blown up. As cynical and obvious as the plotting and distribution of dialogue is, the upsetting of the team gives this story the drive it needs to propel it into space and beyond. The sci-fi dialogue is hokey throughout, as if the writer doesn’t really “get” sci-fi or is writing for an audience less familiar with it and who need it popularising. See for instance, the discussion in Graham’s ship as the crew decide how to pilot their vessel to the carrier ship. They do everything to avoid saying, “Re-route the auxiliary power!” and it ends up feeling clunkier than the cliché would. But Chibnall isn’t writing poetry, as Maxine Alderton was last week. He’s writing schlock; exciting, tense, brilliant, unbeatable schlock. And this tart, a self-confessed fan of Cyberwoman, loves it.

I’m intrigued to discover more about the disturbing mystery of Brendan and to find out precisely to what the “Ascension” of the title relates. The image of Ashad cutting into a sleeping Cyberman as it screams is weirdly upsetting and like the death of the kebab man in Chibnall’s very first episode of this new era, suggests the writer can have a biting, vicious streak. The arrival of the villain of the season seems a little obvious and his self-dramatising entrance just a bit annoying after the more off-kilter, more original and savage nature of his threat in Spyfall. But as we take a breath before plunging into a finale which promises so much, it seems opportune to take a moment to reflect on what this season has given us: huge ups and downs, some extreme highs, a brilliant Master, a couple of bona fide classics, some irritating polemics, the companions at their best and worst, and in one instant in Ascension, as the TARDIS crew turn on the Doctor as her plans fail, we see Jodie Whittaker at her peak. “I know!” she shouts and in that moment is the most real she has been since she took over as the Time Lord.

Ascension is essential viewing, an encapsulation of all that is terrific about the Cybermen – from the design of the ships to their unstoppable numbers. Their total strength feels as vast and immovable as the space in which their terrifying corpses float.

8/10

JH