Holistic Review: Not as wretched as it's commonly made out to be — the first episode's quite interesting, and it's a surprisingly good story for Harry — but most of the story's elements fall short of greatness by varying degrees.

I must admit, I was dreading rewatching this story. It's always been one of my bottom-of-the-barrel Tom Baker stories, and as an adult, I haven't revisited it much at all. From what I remembered, it was little more than a cave-bound runaround and a depressingly dark re-use of the Nerva sets that influenced so many of my fond memories from The Ark in Space. Now that I'm looking at it critically and trying to give it a fair shake, I find that — as usual — my previous opinion hasn't changed dramatically, but there's more to appreciate than I've previously given this story credit for.

Revenge of the Cybermen does particularly well out of its episode 1 setup. The Nerva Beacon sets are as striking as ever, and it's interesting to see the station again at an earlier point in its timeline, when it was used as little more than a marker buoy for ships passing Jupiter. The discovery that almost all of the crew have been struck dead by a fast-acting plague is a very interesting hook, particularly as — yet again — it appears that the Doctor, Sarah and Harry are going to spend the episode wandering around an abandoned Nerva, but this time one that's littered with sprawling, undignified corpses. The immediate concern, of course, is: if the plague is still virulent, have the TARDIS crew been exposed to it?

The first issue with Revenge of the Cybermen rears its head when we discover that Nerva is not quite abandoned yet. It's still staffed by four people: Commander Stevenson (Ronald Leigh-Hunt), Lester (William Marlowe), Kellman (Jeremy Wilkin) and the short-lived Warner (Alec Wallis). They all seem to be competent actors, but not one of the characters is at all interesting. Of the four, Kellman stands out the most, no doubt owing to his identity as the traitor, which gives him the opportunity for lots of wicked knowing smiles. I noticed him mostly because of his absolutely awful combover, and for the fact — which I had forgotten until this viewing — that he's the spitting image of my insane uncle H. When I think of H, the first story (of many) that comes to mind is the Thanksgiving when he stole the homemade red velvet cake that my mother had brought, and hid it in one of the kitchen cupboards, for no readily-ascertainable reason. (We wondered if perhaps he wanted to save it all for himself, and hoped we wouldn't notice it was missing!) Then there was the time when he took my aunt's bed linens out of the closet and rewrapped them as her Christmas gift... or the time he took all the phones out of the house and boarded up all of the phone jacks so that she couldn't call anyone. So you can see why my knee-jerk reaction to Kellman is to find him unnerving and creepy! Anyway... the revelation that Kellman is actually a double-agent working for the Vogans is an unexpected twist, although sadly it doesn't really redeem Kellman at all. Sure, his heart was in the right place, but he had no problem committing atrocities for the Cybermen when they asked. It also doesn't explain why, when the crew finally discovered that he was working for the Cybermen, he didn't just admit to them that he was secretly trying to destroy them and save the Vogan civilization? Surely they would have been a little bit more cooperative than if they thought he was a Cyber-agent. Maybe he thought they'd blab the Vogans' plans to the Cybermen? Or he thought they wouldn't trust him? Which, given that he slaughtered 47 Nerva crewmembers with his plague-ridden Cybermat in order to maintain his cover, would certainly be an understandable reaction on their part.

Much the same problem afflicts the lackluster Vogans: Vorus (David Collings), Tyrum (Kevin Stoney), Magrik (Michael Wisher) and Sheprah (Brian Grellis). Here's where I begin to suspect that the underlying problem is not the actors, but Gerry Davis' script. I mean, just look at that cast list! Among the Vogans are Davros, Tobias Vaughn and Poul, all highlights of their respective stories. And yet I generally find the Vogans uninteresting, I think because their dialogue just doesn't draw me in. When I really made an effort, I decided that the actors were generally good, and were probably wasted on this story, particularly Michael Wisher. His performance as Magrik, complete with wheezing cough, is as convincing as possible under the circumstances, and he gives a fantastic death scene, but the role is otherwise unremarkable. Collings, at times, walks a fine line between dramatic and overdramatic, particularly anytime Vorus rants and raves, but I liked Vorus' attempts to defend himself to Tyrum. Key evidence for laying the blame at Davis' feet might be the much-maligned line "My Skystriker... my glory!" While I certainly don't hate it, I cannot defend it as great dialogue. Still, I can't defend Collings' delivery either, so I have to wonder how much the bland dialogue affected the actors' performances.

Three stories after her character overhaul in The Ark in Space, Sarah Jane Smith is back to her old self here. It's the last appearance of the aggressive, bad-tempered Sarah, but boy, is it a doozy. If all of their other stories together had been wiped, and this were the only extant example, it would appear that Sarah absolutely loathes Harry Sullivan. She belittles him, insults him, bites his head off, and ridicules his every suggestion; in fact, she barely says a kind word to him throughout the story. Actually, imagine Revenge of the Cybermen featuring Tegan and Adric. It's like that.

• Harry is excited that she's still alive. Instead of saying "thank you" for saving her life — which, incidentally, she never does — Sarah rewards Harry with:
  Sarah: "Ooh, stop bawling down my ear! You've got a voice like a foghorn."

• Harry discovers obvious gold on the cavern floor. Little Miss No-Imagination says:
  Sarah: "Don't be so silly, it can't be gold."

• Harry realizes that gold manacles will be easier to escape from, but before he can fully explain:
  Sarah: "Harry, will you just shut up about your rotten gold!"

• Harry has a clever thought!
  Sarah: "Well, don't [think]!"

• Harry comes up with an intelligent way to escape their golden prison.
  Sarah: (acidly) "Well, we can't just sit here glittering, can we?"

• Harry glumly observes that they're probably going to die.
  Sarah: "One thing about you, Harry, you never miss the obvious."

• Harry mentions that Nerva Beacon is approaching Voga rather quickly.
  Sarah: "Yes, we are aware of it, Harry, very much so!"

Most infuriating of all, after loudly grouching and complaining the entire time Harry was trying to free her, Sarah has the gall to attack Harry with "Honestly, I don't know why you're complaining! I got you free!" when he dares to imply that she might have hurt his ankle. Adding injury to insults is the fact that, aside from all this vitriol, Sarah gets absolutely nothing useful to do. The most that she contributes to the plot is getting bitten by a Cybermat, and — unprompted — spilling all of the Vogans' secret plans to the Cybermen as if she has diarrhoea of the mouth. Owing to the way Sarah's scripted, Lis Sladen is forced to throw herself wholeheartedly into making Sarah unlikeable again, but, being Lis Sladen, she does at least rescue a few lines with her faultless delivery: "It hurts!", her hopeful reaction to the Doctor's whistling, "The Cybermen have locked the gyrocontrols!" and "Don't argue!"

Oddly, the Doctor's role in the plot is nearly as minimal as Sarah's. On the plus side, he intervenes before the crew can outright murder the plague-afflicted Warner, he repairs the transmat and saves Sarah's life, he comes up with a (doomed) plan to sneak-attack some Cybermen with a handful of gold dust, he comes up with a (doomed) plan to sneak-attack some Cybermen with a gold-dust-infused Cybermat, and he comes up with a clever (doomed) ruse to threaten the Cybermen with one of their own bombs. And of course he also stops Nerva from crashing into Voga. This is slightly counter-balanced, however, by the fact that he seems to have a somewhat cavalier attitude about human life. First, he coerces Kellman into revealing the location of the pentallian drive by turning his own Cybermat against him, which is very clever but also, ethically speaking, extremely questionable. Should the Doctor ever threaten people with the words "...if you want to live"? Then, when the Cybermen start to board the beacon, he runs away, leaving Stevenson and Lester to defend the hatch and never once urging them to follow him and save their lives. Instead, he leaves them behind to get shot and (as far as he knows) killed. He's also unexpectedly okay with fleeing the scene while Lester turns suicide-bomber to blow up the Cybermen. One instance I could handle; but it's hard to watch the Doctor threaten a man's life and leave people to be killed three times in one story. On a less horrifying note, he also makes the incomprehensible decision to stand and watch for several minutes as the Cybership approaches Nerva; not until it docks does he rush off, announcing that "We've got to stop them getting in!" Too little, too late!

Worse yet, like Sarah, he treats Harry horribly. In episode 1, he gets annoyed at Harry — to the point of refusing to speak to him — for absolutely no reason except, as far as I can tell, that Harry wasn't the one who pushed his arm through the door to safety. Or possibly he blames Harry for not being able to hold the door closed, despite the fact that Sarah was right there next to him and couldn't stop it from opening either. In fact, Harry appears to be the one who does stop the door closing, while Sarah stands there and panics. In part 3, Harry unblocks a passage and causes a rockfall, which by utter chance happens to collapse directly on top of the Doctor, which Harry couldn't possibly have foreseen. Then, well-meaning, he unwisely tries to undo the Doctor's booby-trapped buckle, again in an attempt to help. From my point of view, Harry was being quite clever, and doing the best he could with the information available to him, so the Doctor's angry reaction is both insulting and unfair. Unbelievably, the Doctor even seems all set to blame Harry for the fact that Sarah, of her own free will, decided to go back to the beacon to rescue him. As if he could have stopped her; and as if Sarah would have allowed him to! Besides, Harry certainly didn't make her do it!

Poor Harry, constantly insulted and maligned by his friends. If he did half the things that the Doctor and Sarah accuse him of, it wouldn't be any surprise, because they constantly undermine his self-worth. It's so bad, in fact, that this story (and, to some degree, The Ark in Space) is mostly responsible for Harry's reputation in fandom as a clumsy oaf. The Doctor cries out "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" and he's been tarred with that description ever since. Yet every single criticism levelled at Harry by the Doctor and Sarah is misplaced. In Revenge of the Cybermen, Harry's the kind, funny, clever, resourceful one, which makes it all the more frustrating that nobody else seems to appreciate his awesomeness. Harry's medical training comes in handy, analyzing the dead body that (of course) they immediately come across, and so does his naval training, which gives him some insight into how to steer the Skystriker ("A touch more starboard rudder, Commander."). He's confident in his ability to reverse the transmat beam, having seen the Doctor do it. He realizes that gold shackles, made of a soft metal, might be easy to hammer through (which Sarah fails to appreciate). And, faced with a rockfall, he persists and manages to burrow his way through it (which the Doctor fails to appreciate). He's also rather adorably relatable, wanting to keep the Time Ring as a souvenir and joking about wanting to buy himself a solid-gold stethoscope. I love his apologetic "Cybermen, that's right. I'm terribly bad on names." Ian Marter is a delight throughout, and definitely the highlight of the story. Growing up, I was never a particularly big fan of Harry, but I find myself really warming to Marter's portrayal of Harry as good-humored, optimistic, caring, chivalrous, and quietly competent. He deserves better than he ever got.

The Cybermen, making their only proper appearance in the 15-year gap between The Invasion and Earthshock, actually look quite good. I really like the guns mounted in their head-lamps, particularly as they're unexpectedly impressive when they fire, with a big gout of sparks and a distinctive noise. The new suits look sleek, and the shiny silver belt is an appealing visual detail. It's a shame that the headpiece isn't more integrated into the suit — there's an obvious join at the base — but it doesn't really detract from the overall design. This story also confirms that the Cybermen do indeed like plagues just as much as the Daleks; it wasn't just a fluke back in The Moonbase! Their only real downside, I think, is Christopher Robbie's odd delivery as the Cyberleader. In a story that's often derided by fans because even the title hints at emotional Cybermen, it doesn't help that Robbie's lines usually come out sounding angry, or gloating. Other reviewers have commented on exactly how many emotions the Cybermen display in this story, and while I didn't find it that distracting, Robbie's delivery just doesn't feel quite right for a Cyberman, much less a Leader. Among his bizarre lines: the smug "Ohh, you are mistaken.", the cartoon-villainesque "When the beacon crashes into Voga, we shall be watching from a safe distance... but you will have a much closer view." and the nearly-poetic "You two are especially privileged. You are about to die in the biggest explosion ever witnessed in this solar system. It will be a magnificent spectacle. Unhappily, you will be unable to appreciate it!" Still, the story implies that this spaceship of Cybermen is a lone straggler in the universe, so perhaps these Cybermen have re-enabled their emotions for some reason. Highly improbable, but who knows? Oddly, they don't recognize the Doctor by face or by name; perhaps their records were corrupted along with their emotional inhibitors?

Revenge of the Cybermen's reputation is likewise not helped by the effects. When Warner logs the call from Voga, I just want to ask the effects people: if it's absolutely necessary to display a message on the monitor in giant lettering, can you at least be sure that the left edge of the message lines up with the left edge of the monitor? The Cybermat, clearly CSOed onto the set as it crawls around, appears to levitate off the floor when it attacks people. (And who decided to make it as big as a snake? Perhaps they thought that would make it less cute and more menacing.) The cave sets are often backed with an unconvincing CSO photograph of an actual cave, and Nerva's approach to Voga is shown by zooming in on a still photograph, which makes it look as though the stars are all approaching Voga too. The transmat pads on Nerva are ruffled around the edges, as though they haven't been stuck down properly. The launch of the Skystriker is represented, yet again, by stock footage of a US rocket launch. In the scene where the Doctor desperately tries to keep Nerva from crashing into Voga, the wince-inducing model of Voga's surface makes it look as if the asteroid is about as big as a large rolling pin. The Cyberleader claims that Cyberbombs are "the most compact and powerful explosive devices ever invented", such that he only needs two to blow up all of Voga, yet we see one explode in a tunnel, and it doesn't even affect the walls. Sigh. And for some props, time has simply not been kind, such as the giant reel-to-reel tape machine that Nerva uses to log calls, or the primitive radar that they use to scan nearby space for approaching objects.

The worst effect of all, though, is the Vogan masks. Technically speaking, they're fine; they seem to have a similar join around the mouth as the Draconian masks in Frontier in Space, but it's much less obvious. The problem, mainly, is the eyes, specifically the huge arched brows and giant bulging lids. Frankly, I've always found them ugly and a little creepy; the image of a Vogan on the cover of the Pinnacle novelization of this story was alone enough to keep me from ever wanting to read it. Sheprah, in particular, is so freaky that I can barely stand to look at him; he looks like a malevolent baby doll with grandma hair! When I can distance myself a little more from my emotional gut reaction, the masks simply look very fake. I find it impossible to believe that the Vogans are real people, partially because the masks hide every hint of facial expression, and I don't think this helps my evaluation of the actors' performances.

On the plus side, the CSO vision projector effect actually isn't bad (particularly the way that the screens are "wiped" when the call is terminated, and then appear to blend in with the walls). There's nice modelwork done for the hatch that the Cybership docks with. The pitiful Cyberbomb explosion is made up for somewhat by the excellent explosion of the Cybership, after its impact with the Skystriker. Apparently, the effects team also decided that they really liked the electricity effect from the Ark in Space blasters; it reappears here twice, when the Time Ring vanishes and again when the floor of Kellman's quarters is electrified. It's a nice effect, though, so I'm not complaining. The most successful one is the front-axial projection effect, used similarly in The Green Death, that creates the throbbing red veins on the plague victims.

The set design folks got off lightly with Revenge of the Cybermen. A big part of the story simply reuses the pre-existing Nerva Beacon sets from The Ark in Space, and while the sets are lovely and it's comforting to see them again, they're not quite as successful in this story. They've been touched up to look more "industrial", and it's not pretty. Many of the walls have been covered with grey roundelled panels, which make the sets look darker and more claustrophobic. They also cover up some of the view of space from the exterior corridor, which is a great shame. Aside from the Nerva sets, much of the story is filmed on location at Wookey Hole Caves. They're pretty, although not unusually stunning on screen, and they make an interesting change from the usual quarries. They're not quite as appropriate as they might have been for a story like, say, Earthshock, which was set in unexplored caverns. The Vogan caverns, by contrast, show next to no signs that they're home to an actual civilization. Aside from a couple sets of stairs, it doesn't appear that the Vogans have even attempted to make their enforced seclusion any comfier. The Vogans also have odd tastes in transportation; the skimmers that they use to cruise the river don't look very comfortable to ride, and barely seem to keep their riders dry.

More problematically, the Wookey Hole Caves are not full of gold, whereas Voga is most certainly supposed to be. There's a very funny moment where the Doctor examines a cave wall and says "This is pretty well solid gold" yet it clearly isn't. Even the studio sets, which could have been gilded up without threatening the preservation of a natural resource, look more like ordinary Earth caves than rocks streaked with gold. (Unless they were heavily gilded, and we simply have the lighting folks to blame that it didn't show up on camera?) Even Vorus and Tyrum's rooms are less full of gold ornamentation than one might expect. Vorus' guild chamber has four curvy gold sculptures, gold inlay on the table and solid-gold doors, and Tyrum's room has gold screens, a table with a sculpture, and more gold doors, but neither room is exactly opulent. It makes Vorus' claim that "we have more gold here on Voga than in the rest of the known galaxy" seem ludicrous. At least there are a few moments where the concept of "gold-rich society" bears fruit, notably the gold manacles and the gold carts (Harry's "dodgem cars") that they drive.

Of course, I should also mention the Seal of Rassilon designed by Roger Murray-Leach, here making its first appearance as a Vogan symbol. Certainly leads one to form interesting conspiracy theories about this story, doesn't it? Although it's also possible that the Time Lords had a similar relationship with the Vogans as they did to the Minyans. Perhaps they had need of a resource for gold (though Voga would seem to be an odd choice, given that it's only an asteroid, and couldn't possibly have the gold reserves of some planets despite what the Vogans claim).

Overall, Michael E Briant's direction is solid. I particularly like the shot of Sarah looking back at the Doctor and Harry, with a corridor full of dead bodies stretching away behind her; the Cybermat, out of focus in the background, sneaking up behind Sarah (and heard long before it's seen); the Doctor leaping out of Kellman's smoke-filled room; the shot of Vorus confronting Harry and Sarah, with Marter's face framed within the whorls of the gold statue; and the funny shot of Lester, the Doctor and Commander Stevenson playing "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" (although don't ask me what it's supposed to mean, because I have no idea).

However, I get the feeling that he wasn't particularly inspired by Gerry Davis' lackluster script either. There are a lot of boring talky arguments between the Vogans, not many quotable lines, and — where I see an obvious lack of synergy between writer and director — some ridiculous fight scenes. It seems to me that most episodes that include gunfights have to follow a set of silly rules whereby the fight affects the plot only as the story demands, not as logic dictates. You have a limited number of extras and can't afford to kill any of them off? Easy, then your alien race can't hit the broad side of a barn, even when the enemy is standing mere feet away or running through an open space with no cover. Inconvenient for the script if one of the regulars is killed? Okay, then when your trigger-happy aliens catch up to them, they will suddenly prioritize killing the regulars lower than, say, gloating, or possibly just staring at them. This is what happens time and again in the firefights between Vorus and Tyrum's men, when the Vogans pursue Sarah and Harry to the water's edge (as Harry asks, "Why don't they just finish us off?" rather than pointing their guns for 13 seconds but never firing), and when the Cyber sentries fail to gun down the fleeing Doctor and Harry. It seems to me that fights can be interesting, but only if you have an interesting set to film on, or interesting weapons, or genuine tension. It doesn't work so well if you choreograph your fight such that the two sides merely hide behind rocks and shoot wildly at one another. Davis also includes a couple of ridiculously clichéd moments in which the Vogans (Tyrum: "After the cataclysms of our ancient past, Sheprah, we've survived down here only by regarding all outsiders as hostile.") and the Cybermen (Cyberleader: "Even the Doctor believes they will be given time to escape before our bombs explode. They do not know the detonators will fire when the countdown enters the red zone.") explain things to one another that they already know, for the benefit of — respectively — the viewing audience at home, and Sarah Jane Smith.

One other perplexing story element is the Cybermen's bomb plot. Overall, I think it makes sense: they need three humans left alive on Nerva to transmat down to the gold-laden Vogan caves and carry three bombs to the asteroid's central fissure. However, some of the details don't quite work.

• If the Cyberleader asked Kellman to "preserve three animal organisms", then why did Kellman unleash his Cybermat on Warner? Sure, his spy status was in jeopardy, but that would've left only two humans alive, had the TARDIS crew not shown up. Adding even more confusion, earlier the Vogans appeared to be taking credit for this executive decision. Vorus claims, "When the plague had done its work, there were to be four humans left alive. That was the plan." Perhaps he's just repeating what Kellman told him about the Cybermen's objective; after all, the Vogans have nothing to do with the plague, and why would they care how many people were left alive? But, if so, he misremembered the number.

• If the whole point of this plan is for the few remaining Cybermen to stay clear of the deadly gold on Voga, then why does the Cyberleader send two Cybermen down to accompany them?

• The Cyberleader claims that "Once the detonator cycle commences, it cannot be stopped." However, he then tells the Doctor and company that once they drop off the bombs, they'll have 14 minutes to get safely away. But, 14 minutes from when? They start the countdown before the bomb-carriers transmat to Nerva, and the Cyberleader can't guarantee how long it will take them to make their way down to the center of Nerva. Surely it depends on how fast they walk, whether they get lost, and whether they get ambushed by Vogans? What would happen to the Cybermen's plan if the bomb-carriers didn't make it to the central shaft before the bombs exploded?

• The Doctor hints that the bombs are very sensitive, and even a drop from a low height will cause them to detonate. So what's supposed to happen when the bomb-carriers drop them down a giant chasm? They're going to hit the ground and wait another 13 minutes for the timer to count down to zero? Really? (Although, according to Kellman's map, the main shaft in Voga appears to run right through the core and back out the other side, so what's supposed to stop the bombs at the right point? Gravity in the core, I suppose?) And, for that matter, why doesn't the Doctor's bomb explode when he's caught in the rockfall?

• A Cyberman reports, "Distortion on our radarscope is increasing. The three humans who are carrying our bombs can no longer be identified by separate signals." So if the signal is muffled, how can the Cybermen guarantee that the bombs are still strapped on? Couldn't the bomb team undo the buckles and leg it? (Having said that, both Stevenson and the Doctor seem to believe that the buckles are still booby-trapped, so perhaps my assumption is flawed. Either the Cybermen can still tell whether the bombs are fastened, or they're wired to automatically detonate until the release signal is sent.)

• Once the Doctor and Lester go higher up the tunnels, in their attempt to sneak-attack the sentry Cybermen, wouldn't their separate signals reappear on the Cybermen's radarscope?

• When they lose radar contact, why do the Cybermen immediately try to detonate the bombs manually? They know (or think they know) exactly how far the party is from the central fissure, so they must surely know that they won't have reached it yet? If they detonate the bombs early, they'll only waste all that effort. Still, to their credit, they don't appear to be surprised when Voga continues to exist after their attempt.

I can't say that I was too fond of Carey Blyton's incidental score, either. To my ear, it has a little too much xylophone and tuba (although I assume what I'm hearing as a tuba is actually the rarer serpent that Blyton incorporated). There is some nice music, though, as Sarah escapes on the skimmer, and I like the heartbeat sound as the bombs count down.

There's one scene in Revenge of the Cybermen that sticks out as an early childhood memory: the moment when the Cybermat leaps off the floor and attaches itself to Sarah's neck. This memory has, however, thrown me into a sea of confusion about exactly when and where and how I watched Doctor Who as a child. I seem to remember watching the Cybermat scene in my grandmother's living room, but I don't know whether to trust that part of the memory. I think what's making me suspicious is that my Genesis of the Daleks memories are from her house too, as far as I recall. Then again, now that I think about it, if these memories are from when I was three to five years old, at the time we were living right next door to my grandmother... so suddenly it seems a little less improbable that I'd have been watching Doctor Who at her house rather than at ours. When I was five, we moved about an hour and a half north, and it occurs to me that (amazingly) we ended up within range of a different PBS station. I'd forgotten about this, but my cousin Gray watched and recorded a lot of Pertwee in Bluefield, which became all he had access to when their PBS station stopped showing Doctor Who a couple of years later. In Fayetteville, our PBS station eventually went back to the Hartnell and Troughton years (which thrilled me as I'd never seen those stories before), and later went right on up through The Caves of Androzani before I moved to North Carolina, where I saw the Colin Baker and McCoy years. To my surprise, BroaDWcast says that Doctor Who didn't start airing in West Virginia until January 1981 — which would put the start of my Doctor Who watching, when I was 3 years old, at around exactly the same time. But my father, who also grew up in West Virginia, had most certainly seen the show before... so how and where was he able to see it? I must ask him. And now I also want to know: what PBS stations were we watching at the time? It looks like Gray and I were both in range of WSWP-TV, out of Beckley. Did Fayetteville also get transmissions from WPBY in Charleston...? I must solve this mystery!

One element of the story that I will praise unreservedly — and this reflects much better on Gerry Davis' skills as a writer — is the quality of the cliffhangers. All three of them are shocking and effective. Episode 1, as you can see, has stuck with me for years. Episode 2 ends with the Doctor apparently being shot dead by the Cybermen, although this is swiftly explained in the opening dialogue to part 3. And episode 3 ends with a very tense scene in which Harry tries to undo the Doctor's booby-trapped bomb buckle. Very nicely done!

Minor points:

• What is it that enables the TARDIS to start drifting back in time to its crew? Did the Time Lords kickstart it, or does it automatically navigate to wherever the Doctor is, if he disappears from the current time zone? I think it must be the former possibility, because the latter seems very unlikely. If true, it would utterly defuse the threat of ever being stranded somewhere, and besides, the TARDIS never went in search of the Doctor on Skaro.

• The Doctor claims that the plague victims' bodies are in such good condition because of the "sterile atmosphere" that exists on Nerva. But, um, at this point in time, it's not a sterile ark, it's essentially a lighthouse. And even if it were a sterile environment, the bodies still had bacteria in their gut when they were dumped there, so they should still decompose and putrefy. If you put a piece of cheese in a sterile room, mold will still grow on it; you just won't get any foreign bacteria drifting in on the wind.

• What's creepy is the suggestion that whenever anybody contracted the plague, they were taken down to the quarantine area and left to die, with no medical help whatsoever. (Although I suppose that if the crew's medical abilities had zero effect on the plague, then it's understandable, but it still seems cruel.)

• Why does Sarah say "Look, are you sure we're in the right place, Doctor? I mean, this doesn't look like our Ark."? It looks very recognizably like your Ark! Sure, it's had a few cosmetic changes, but the transmat area and the corridor are practically identical. Has she seen that many similar space beacons that such subtle differences appear enormous?

• How does Harry fail to see the Cybermat that crawls out from under a dead man's body? He was just kneeling right there.

• How did the Vogans survive for centuries drifting through deep space?

• Okay, people. Let's decide. One minute Voga is just an asteroid, and the next, the Doctor (and, consistently, the Cybermen) is calling it the "Planet of Gold". Perhaps it's a dwarf planet, like poor Pluto?

• I really like the very realistic scene in which Sarah and Harry try (and nearly fail) to slow the door's opening so that the Doctor doesn't get his arm severed when it retracts into the wall. It's surprisingly tense, and frightening!

• Good Line #1:

  Kellman: "Commander, I'm afraid you'll have to kill these people too. They've brought the plague in here."
  Doctor: "Who's the homicidal maniac?"

• Sarah, a complete stranger, tells Lester "I'll help you!" and he immediately gives her his gun to carry, mere moments after he's stopped holding her at gunpoint. Script, honey, no.

• Good Line #2, as the Doctor discovers that Nerva's supposed plague virus kills people within moments, leaves scratches on metal, and removes tape from radio logs:

  Doctor: "It must be a very literate and inquisitive virus."

• Ooops. As of last count, in 2010, Jupiter has 64 confirmed satellites, with no doubt more yet to come. In fact, Leda — the 13th Jovian moon to be found — was discovered on 14 September 1974, seven months before Revenge of the Cybermen aired. (Mind you, the twelfth moon had been discovered way back in 1951, so it's understandable that the production team wouldn't have bothered checking for any last-minute amendments.)

  Doctor: "I thought Jupiter had already been thoroughly studied."
  Stevenson: "Yes, he's interested in its new satellite."
  Doctor: "What, do you mean there are now thirteen?"

• I like the touch that humanity thinks the Cybermen died out centuries before the events of this story. I'm a little perplexed, though, that they claim to have known nothing at all of Voga until 50 years ago, since it was clearly a major factor in the defeat of the Cybermen at the end of the last Cyber War.

• Why exactly does Kellman go back to his room while the Doctor is investigating it? All he does is look at his hairbrush, get suspicious, activate a trap for the Doctor, and leave again. Didn't he have a purpose in going back, or was he just planning to relax and read a book?

• A note on signs. The yellow "CAUTION" sign inside the door of Kellman's power compartment appears to read "Use fuse puller to change fuses" (an odd but interesting set detail), and the nameplate outside his door misspells his name as "Kelman".

• Once Kellman knows that the Nerva crew are coming after him, why does he take the time to dismantle and hide his surveillance brush? They're already convinced that he's the spy and saboteur. It wouldn't have made them any more suspicious if they found it on his desk!

• The corridors on Nerva don't appear to be at all labyrinthine, so how did Kellman evade Stevenson and Lester when he escaped from his quarters?

• What's the first thing that Harry and Sarah do after transmatting to Voga? Wander away from the transmat to look at some rocks. They don't even try to transmat themselves back, much less hang around and wait for the Doctor to fix it. Later, with great puzzlement, the Doctor can only assume that "They must have left the receptor circle." Ya think?

• I haven't had much to say about the actors portraying the Nerva crew, but at this point I must single out William Marlowe for the moment when Lester tackles Kellman and immediately grabs the gun in both hands, wrenching it away from being aimed at Stevenson while simultaneously immobilizing Kellman. That was very nicely staged, and executed with great precision by Marlowe.

• Why bother operating the Cybermat by remote control? As a cybernetic organism, isn't it intelligent enough to control itself? And how did Kellman operate it when he wasn't even in the same room? Surely his surveillabrush can't spy on every part of the beacon.

• Hilarious. During the chase after Sarah and Harry, in his flight through the caves, one Vogan takes a moment to pause for his close-up.

• If I were being pursued by homicidal gun-wielding aliens, and I found myself at a riverbank, you'd better believe I'd dive right in and try to swim to safety. Harry and Sarah just stand there and stare at it as if they've gotten "water" confused with "wall".

• When she's brought before Tyrum, why does Sarah say that they came to Voga by accident?! That's a lie! And then she starts "from the beginning" by offering the very helpful explanation "Well, our plan was to find the TARDIS..." That means nothing to Tyrum! Why not just say that you caught the plague on Nerva, couldn't cure it except by transmat, and then got stuck on Voga when the transmat malfunctioned?

• "Utterly destroying" Voga is different from simply blowing Voga up. If the Cybermen just detonate the planet, the gold they so despise will still exist in some form.

• How does Sarah know that the Cybermen were meant to have been wiped out ages ago? The Doctor discussed that with Stevenson while she and Harry were in the crew room with the dying Warner. If she knows about the Cybermen's history — unless she learned about it at some other time — then she should also be aware that Voga is chock-a-block with gold, and not scoff at Harry for finding it all over the cavern floor.

• I so want to see a war being fought with glitter guns.

• Good Line #3, with an awesome delivery by Tom Baker:

  Doctor: "Careful, careful. I might explode!"

• The Vogans, bless their giant curved brows, have developed weaponry that is absolutely no use against their sworn archenemies, the Cybermen. Don't they have any more of those glitter guns lying around?!

• Actually, as it turns out, glitter guns might be nonexistent on Voga. As they're exploring the caverns, the Doctor — having just witnessed the start of this massacre — laments to the Nerva crew, "If only they knew about the use of gold. ... It's the only thing that's effective against Cybermen." What, are you trying to tell me that the Vogans don't know that gold is deadly to the Cybermen?! Seriously? Then why do they think they played such a big part in the last Cyber War? How do they think the glitter guns killed the Cybermen? And why do they think the Cybermen are so concerned with blowing their planet to smithereens now? This seems like nothing but a lame plot-inconsistent excuse to explain why the Vogans don't massacre the Cybermen within moments.

• After 37 seconds of skirmish in which the Vogans have been blasting away at one another from either side of a hallway, following two episodes' worth of battles, Vorus finally shows up on the scene. But man, Tyrum is really gonna have to do some smooth talking to convince him to call a cease-fire and end the hostilities...

  Tyrum: "Vorus, call off your guards!"
  Vorus: "Enough."

• I don't know whether this question should go to the effects team or the director, but... why, whenever anybody uses the transmat on Voga, are they always filmed appearing and disappearing behind the central pylon? The transmat is huge and could be filmed from many other angles. They could even stand next to the pylon to be beamed up. But no.

• Oo-er, Doctor! What kind of plan is this?! (I think I'll call this Unintentionally Hilarious Moment #1.)

  Doctor: "If we can get back without being detected, and take the Cybermen from behind..."

• Pet peeve alert! The needle on the Cybermen's box-o-bomb moves very quickly toward the red danger zone when we're looking at it, but not at all — and twice in the reverse direction, once almost back to the very start of the countdown — when we're not. Also, in three shots, the red zone indicates the amount of time that's passed as the needle moves toward the detonation point, but in one shot, it indicates the amount of time remaining. How did that even happen?

• Why exactly does the Doctor climb up to examine the rockface that Harry inadvertently topples onto him? He had no reason to be up there. Clearly he's therefore just as much to blame for the accident as Harry is!

• Kellman is some distance behind the rockfall and, as far as we can see, only gets hit by one rock, which impacts his right arm. I don't know where it came from or why it was falling in that direction, but there you have it. At any rate, this one blow to the arm is apparently enough to kill him. (He possibly bumps his head on the ground when he falls, but surely not hard enough to do any permanent damage.) The Doctor, meanwhile, is under the rockfall, and we see a rather large rock slam right onto his stomach, but he merely winces and falls momentarily unconscious; Harry diagnoses his injuries as "just a bump on the noggin". Superior Time Lord biology at work? Or was Kellman's bruised skull the cause of his death, rather than a rock on the arm? Or do I just blame the script (and the director, and the effects team) for being inconsistent?

• In the Nerva control room, the Cybermen describe their plan to one another, for no reason other than to make sure that Sarah overhears them. Meanwhile, behind them, Sarah dashes from one side of the doorway to the other, for no reason other than to make sure that she's still in the camera's line of sight.

• Great plan, Doctor, assuming the Cybermen don't notice you doubling back on their radarscope, but... even if they're oblivious to the fact that you've turned around, don't you think they might notice when their two sentries blow up?!

• Hypothetically speaking, since the Cybermen's radarscope is physically on Voga with the sentries, doesn't this mean that if the Doctor had gold-poisoned the sentries the moment that they arrived, he could have switched off the radarscope and removed their bombs without any further delay?

• Unintentionally Hilarious Moment #2. From the "we have those lying around everywhere" file:

  Doctor: "There's just one other thing I need."
  Tyrum: "What's that?"
  Doctor: "A bag of gold dust."
  Tyrum: "Oh yes!"
  He leans down and picks one up off the ground by his feet.

• Why doesn't Harry go back to Nerva with the Doctor? If anything happened to Nerva, at least Harry would die along with the Doctor and Sarah, rather than being stuck underground on the Planet/Asteroid of Gold for the rest of his life.

• The Cyberleader tells his troops to "Carry the bombs to the nosecone", but... Nerva doesn't have a nosecone. Did the script editor fall asleep?

• Given the look of the severed rope that the Cyberleader picks up from the floor, it would appear that they tied Sarah up with a jumprope.

• Ahh, Vorus, see what being impatient gets you? Had he just waited literally one minute, until the end of the countdown, to launch his glorious Skystriker, he could have survived to see the Doctor outmanoeuvre both the missile and Voga. (Impressively, despite being launched a minute early, the Skystriker still manages to destroy the Cybermen, thanks to some clever steering by Stevenson and remarkably slow reflexes by the Cybermen.)

• Unintentionally Hilarious Moment #3: the best of all. Instead of putting him in a stranglehold, the Cyberleader gives the Doctor an extremely vigorous, and lengthy, shoulder massage. By the end of it, the Doctor doesn't appear to be fearful for his life, he just looks annoyed.

• Sarah looks barely tied up at all! She only has one bit of jumprope across her chest. She should be able to wiggle out of that easily. (Naturally, the next time we see her, Sarah has two bits of jumprope criss-crossing her chest. The Doctor, meanwhile, initially has no rope across his chest — it's down by his waist — and then he has one, and then none again. Sigh. Did they even try?! Or are we expected to believe that Sarah's attempts to disentangle herself keeps moving the rope around?)

• The Doctor sees the controls of the Skystriker once, briefly, when he visits Vorus' guild chamber, but he certainly doesn't get a chance to study them. So when he's trying to instruct Stevenson in how to steer the missile, he surely does seem to make an accurate educated guess!

• After all that insistence that wiping out the Cybermen would be a foolish thing to attempt, and their society would be much better off to simply lay low and not attract attention, Tyrum totally buys into Vorum's philosophy when it actually succeeds.

  Tyrum: "At least we can live without fear!"

• And now the TARDIS arrives, just after the nick of time! To my irritation, when the Doctor enters it, the ticker-tape prop that he's going to be holding when he exits again is very clearly visible hanging on the interior wall. Prop folks, couldn't you have hung it up behind the door?! For that matter, there's a cut between shots anyway, so it didn't have to be there at all.

• The ending is surprisingly abrupt. No goodbyes at all, or even waiting around to make sure that everyone's okay. I hope they at least got a chance to catch their breath before the Doctor plonked them down in Scotland!

Revenge of the Cybermen is a story with extreme contrasts. Sarah Jane Smith becomes unbearable, but poor mocked Harry is the hero of the story. The Cybermen make their only appearance in 15 years, but are portrayed as emotional and with an ill-thought-out plan. Some of Doctor Who's best-ever guest actors are gathered in the same story, then stuck dramatizing dull arguments. Interminable gunfights and cavern scenes are livened up by exciting cliffhangers. It all comes so perilously close to failing on every count, yet it manages to stay engaging despite itself.