Nightmare in Silver

Nightmare in Silver
by Neil Gaiman
Originally Broadcasted: May 11th, 2013

The Doctor is forced to take Artie and Angie, the kids Clara babysits, on an adventure into time and space. And so he picks Hedgewick's World of Wonders. Only trouble is, the theme park has long been abandoned. Rising from the ashes on the hallowed ground are the Cybermen! They're back to take command of the universe, and the Doctor...

Nightmare in Silver was definitely one of the more hyped up episodes of this season of Doctor Who. Writer Neil Gaiman is thought of as pretty legendary and perfect, and many a Doctor Who fan loved his first episode last year, The Doctor's Wife. I however wasn't too impressed with that story. It was good, but it definitely wasn't the best story of the season. So I had hoped Neil Gaiman would up his game for this one, and it looked like he was going to, but sadly I was wrong. Once again, he provides an OK script. Not great, but not bad. And certainly not up to the hype it got. Now while I was disappointed by the episode overall, there were some pretty awesome elements to it. The Cybermen have been redesigned with a sleeker appearance, and they are now able to move more freely and much quicker than ever before, really adding to the scary factor. Introduced in this story are Cybermites, a really great idea: Little cybernetic creatures that can form to control a human specimen long enough to be upgraded into a Cyberman. It is through this that the Doctor is actually under control of the Cyber Planner, who becomes known as Mr. Clever (a wonderfully silly name I thought). This led to some back and forth between the Doctor and Mr. Clever inside the Doctor's head, which I thought was played out for way too long. It was clever at first, but quickly became boring. Clara got an interesting role in this episode, where she was pretty much put in command of the incompetent battalion of troopers. She relishes in this and shows off her typical Clara charm. I love this girl. And I also loved Warwick Davis' performance in this episode, such an underrated actor. I read many complaints about the supposedly unnecessary inclusion of Artie and Angie, the two kids Clara babysits. But really, why not have them included? It was really creepy seeing them under the control of the  Cybermites, and just added extra severity to the situation. There were also some fun throwbacks to some classic Cybermen stories. One scene shows three rows of marching Cybermen, harking back to Earthshock (my personal all-time favorite Cybermen story), while another scene of Cybermen breaking out of their tombs is a clear tribute to The Tomb of the Cybermen. Nightmare in Silver was, overall, a pretty decent episode of Doctor Who. Sadly though, it just didn't live up to the hype that was built up for it, and so I was sadly a bit underwhelmed...

Luke's Rating: 7/10