Rate & Review Nightmare In Silver

What are your thoughts on this story? Rate and review it in here.

I enjoyed the episode, but felt an instinctive disappointment, perhaps just because my anticipation of Gaiman + Cybermen couldn't really have been fulfilled.  It annoyed me a bit that the kids were just there and we didn't get to see Clara having to explain to the Doctor he was going to have to give them an outing.  I gave it a four in the end.

There are some things that are amazing. Chocolate is amazing. There are also things that are wonderful. Chips are wonderful. But chocolate and chips together just don't work. That is what this episode was like. Something amazing (Gaiman) and something wonderful (Cybermen) should go together well. They just don't (or at least they didn't on this occasion).

The attempt to 'collectivise' the cybermen was a reasonable one, except it has been done by Star Trek (much better). Matt Smith's performance was strangely off-key and unsuited to the story. Poor Tamsin Outhwaite must have turned up expecting a reasonable part and was ridiculously killed off. A huge dramatic moment totally wasted. Why is Warwick Davis hiding - and did he really kill off half of his platoon just because he didn't want to be Emperor? Why is the controller of a species famous for eradicating emotions portrayed as taunting the Doctor (Ok, that can be explained as his possession of the Doctor, but still seems a poor choice). Finally (not my point but one that occurred to me immediately) was why do we get a planet explode when the whole point of the bomb was that it was an implosion device?

These are instances, which - in isolation - might have been overlooked. But, in truth, the whole story was a bit of a mess. The characters were indeterminate, the plot was sketchy and the direction was a bit weird. I was amazed that in the space of one season we have the resolutely pacifist Doctor ("there should have been another way", "I don't like guns", "But thats Murder etc") executing a salvage dealer and actively complicit in the detonating of an implosion device to destroy a planet. Also, yet another incident of Dr. SexPest (was the tight dress comment really necessary?)

Neil Gaiman occupies a God-like place in my heart. He is arguably the best fantasy writer on the planet. Yet this story was so messy and had so many plot issues that I really couldn't do better then 2/5. But that's ok because it looks like everyone in the production team thought this was "good enough". Maybe it was. But is "Good enough" really good enough? Especially given the standards we have been used to.