Day 628: Attack of the Cybermen Part 2

As of this moment in time, there are five Doctor Who stories that have garnered an M rating in Australia, advising that the content should be suitable for audiences aged 15 or older. In most of these instances, it's easy to see why this has occurred. The Waters of Mars is an incredibly violent and frightening story, and isn't the most child-friendly of Doctor Who episodes. Another story that gets this classification is Attack of the Cybermen, and it does most certainly deserve it.

This story, as well as having a sizeable contribution from Ian Levine, also wears its contribution from Eric Saward on its sleeve. It's a thoroughly violent episode with guns being fired, Cybermen having their heads blown off, massive explosions occurring at various points, and characters feeling the true power of the Cybermen's hands by having them crush various objects such as Lytton's hands in the scene depicted above. Now, a portion of the credit of this should go to Matthew Robinson, the director, who makes the scene feel truly gruesome with blood coming from Lytton's hands, showing the true pain that he's going through and adding to Maurice Colbourne's excellent performance. But I can't help but feel that there's something not quite right about it.

Maybe it's the fact that Doctor Who, in my opinion, needs to have a feeling of the fantastical about it that differentiates it from other series in the genre. The Waters of Mars, another story that is intended for mature audiences, certainly has a lot of violence and horror in it, but that all comes from water zombies. Yes, it's frightening, but it's also a little bit weird and worth watching anyway. But that argument doesn't exactly work, because there are other stories that are more realistic and violent that I absolutely love, like The Robots of Death or The Caves of Androzani that don't necessarily have that element of the fantastic about it but still engage me as an audience member. Adding to the counter-point against that argument, this story does actually have elements of the fantastic within it, like a race of creatures that had their home invaded by the Cybermen because they wished to use the cryogenic tombs that they had developed because they can't survive above around 0 degrees. This is a wonderful little concept, and shows that there are good ideas that Saward can bring to the series.

Perhaps it's not the violence, then, but who is dishing it out. There's a scene where the Doctor, after being suddenly attacked by the Cyber-Controller, picks up a gun and shoots the Cyber-Controller several times before it dies. It feels odd and not like the Doctor, in my opinion, with such violence occurring and, more to the point, it being glorified so much. Contrast with Deep Breath, where even the possibility that the Doctor killed the Half-Face Man was dealt with very seriously and became an underlying emotional crux of the rest of the series. But this is what we now have to deal with with the era of Doctor Who that is the Eric Saward era. An awful lot of violence, coming from the Doctor, that leaves an uneasy feeling in one's stomach.