1)So, he actually took the two little kids with him. It wasn't that long ago that he dropped off Amy and Rory because traveling with him was too dangeroeus, now he's dragging two kids along.
2)"Cybermites" - This, I imagine, was what the Cybermats were supposed to look like, if the technology had existed back in the 60's.
3)"I trust the Doctor." "You think he knows what he's doing?" "I'm not sure I'd go that far."
4)Ah, a Cyberplanner, another callback from the Troughton era.
5)"The Cyberiad" - that sounds like the title of an epic poem.
6)I do like that look of the upgraded Cybermen. One can imagine that they're from "our" universe, and not more of the "Pete's World" types.
7)"You could be reconstructed by the hole you've left." Exactly. By this point, he's too big a part of history to "erase" himself from it.
8)The Doctor/Cyberplanner argument is amusing.
9)The 'tombs" are almost like a combination of elements from "Tomb of the Cybermen" and "Attack of the Cybermen".
10)"Upgrade in Progress". I'm not sure I'm quite so wild about the change in their voices, however.
11)"The Time Lords invented chess." Yeah, yeah, your people invented everything. He's starting to sound like Pavel Chekov.
12)"Do you think I"m pretty?" "No, you're too short and bossy, and your nose is all funny."
Overall:
Not a bad effort from Mister Gaiman. An interesting attempt to re-invent and toughen up the Cybermen. Not quite as good as "The Doctor's Wife", I'd say, but not bad.
Replies
Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of stories that appeared in English as The Cyberiad.
I liked the emperor. I'd like to see him again, assuming he wasn't killed in the sequel.
Interesting. I've never read any Lem. I'll have to see if I can find some.
I liked the Emperor, too. I hae to admit that I totally did not guess that that was who he was. I knew he had some secret, but I didn't figure out what it was.
Lem's works include comedic tales, fables, and more serious-toned stories. The stories in The Star Diaries are comedic; I remember the opening one as funny, but I'm not sure how many of the others I read. I've read some of the stories from Tales of Pirx the Pilot and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot. These are serious-toned stories about a professional space pilot whose problems might include keeping his craft going while his crew are all sick. I like "The Inquest" from the latter volume, partly because there's a Polish film version called Test pilota Pirxa which I saw when I was a kid. My recollection is the opening story in The Cyberiad is an antiwar fable and others in the volume are comedic. Lem wrote the novel Solaris, of course, but I've never gotten to that, or any of his other novels.
I have a collection of his critical writings on science fiction. He was critical of some US SF but he liked Philip K. Dick.
Obviously the Borg owe a great deal to the Cybermen.
Matt Smith did a great job as hero and villain.
Warrick Davies was very poignant as Porridge/The Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies. Not a bad friend to have!
"She's a mystery over an enigma wrapped in a skirt...that's a bit too tight." So much for "I don't pay attention to things like that."
I really didn't like this one very much. The whole thing with the kids makes no sense--so it's already bad to start--and then I thought that Clara suddenly becomes much more in control of things than she had been in previous episodes.
It felt like a story assembled from used parts of old DOCTOR WHO serials. Now, if those bits had been assembled into a better whole then we might have had something. There are a few bits about the Emperor that could go somewhere in the future--but I doubt that will come off.
Great acting from Matt Smith, however.