‘SILVER NEMESIS’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
Nemesis and the Cybermen with the Seventh Doctor
23rd November 1988. It’s time to celebrate 25 years of ‘Doctor Who’ (back then)!
‘Silver Nemesis’ is a three-part story by Kevin Clarke. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. It’s a fun adventure celebrating 25 years of ‘Doctor Who’ with the Cybermen.
This adventure doesn’t just feature the Doctor and Ace. It also features neo-Nazis, Cybermen, two Jacobean characters, Courtney Pine and the Jazz Quartet and an appearance by ‘the Queen’.
I’ve had the DVD cover of ‘Silver Nemesis’ signed by Sophie Aldred at the ‘Science of the Time Lords’ event in Leicester, January 2016. I had a nice chat with Sophie about this story with the Cybermen.
Kevin Clarke was inspired by the idea of ‘What if the Doctor was ‘God’ and what if he mucked it up?’ This is a notion I’m not comfortable with, but that was the premise for Kevin Clarke’s original story.
The Doctor and Ace have to sort out a comet that comes back to Earth, containing a deadly statue made of a living metal, It’s carved in the image of Lady Peinforte from 1638 and is called ‘Nemesis’.
The statue affects Earth after coming back 25 years during various periods of history. I was hooked into this idea as the statue causes trouble in Earth’s with the First World War; Hilter; Kennedy, etc.
The Doctor and Ace have to stop the statue from getting into the wrong hands and that’s three villains. These include Lady Peinforte with Richard; neo Nazis and the silvery Cybermen who want it.
Sylvester McCoy is great as the Doctor. His Doctor has that humorous edge to this character. He also balances that with a darker and manipulative side when concerning the statue and with his enemies.
Sophie Aldred is great as Ace. It was interesting to discover the Cybermen scared Sophie when she was a kid. I enjoyed the action-packed stuff with Ace when she fights the Cybermen with gold coins.
Fiona Walker guest stars as Lady Peinforte with Gerard Murphy as her servant Richard. Lady Peinforte is a sorceress who wants the statue badly. Both she and Richard work well as a double act.
There are also neo Nazis, led by Anton Diffring as De Flores. It was exciting to see Nazi-like characters in a ‘Doctor Who’ adventure. It was interesting to see the Nazis wanted the statue too.
I enjoyed it the battle scene between Nazis and the Cybermen in ‘Part Two’. It’s pretty intense and action-packed. I liked that scene when De Flores and Karl meet the Cybermen to make an alliance.
The Cybermen are good in this too. They’ve been redecorated and look more silver than ever. It’s nice the Cybermen were chosen to be the monsters for the silver anniversary story of ‘Doctor Who’.
The ‘gold’ element is used in this story. I really don’t like this, as the Cybermen are killed too easily in an instant, making them less frightening. Even with gold tipped arrows and gold coins didn’t do it for me.
I liked it when Cybermen’s spaceship touched down on Earth at the end of ‘Part One’. The moment when the Cybermen marched out of the spaceship with catchy music was very exciting and thrilling.
Jazz music is a key theme in this story. I like jazz music. So does my dad. Kevin Clarke also loves jazz music. It features with Courtney Pine and his Jazz Quartet and with blocking the Cybermen’s transmissions.
The Queen also appears in this. It’s not the real Queen sadly. It’s someone who’s an actual lookalike of Queen Elizabeth II and she has a fleeting cameo appearance. But it was a funny moment to watch.
The DVD special features are as follows. There’s a making-of documentary called ‘Industrial Action’; trailers and continuity announcements; a photo gallery, an info-text commentary option; a music-only option and a commentary with Sylvester McCoy; Sophie Aldred; script editor Andrew Cartmel and director Chris Clough and a ‘Radio Times Listings’ PDF. There’s also some ‘deleted and extended scenes’ featured on this DVD. Fans complained that there wasn’t an extended version of the story. I would have liked there to have been an extended version of this story too. There’s a ‘coming soon’ trailer for ‘Time and the Rani’ with Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford.
‘Silver Nemesis’ is a lovely story with the Doctor and Ace, the Cybermen, neo Nazis and Lady Peinforte with Richard to celebrate 25 years of ‘Doctor Who’. It’s a fun, action-packed adventure to enjoy!
The ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’/’Silver Nemesis’ DVD box set is good collection of Cybermen stories with the Fourth and Seventh Doctors. They’re not the best Cybermen stories in anyway. For me, ‘Silver Nemesis’ is better than ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’. They’re certainly worth the entertainment and are a great addition to add to your ‘Doctor Who’ DVD collection.
‘Silver Nemesis’ rating – 8/10
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Bradley's Basement 
Brilliant review Tim, i like this story & how it hints the Doctor isn’t necessarily good according to Lady Peinforte, the only thing which annoyed me was when this was released on Vhs it was in the extended 85 minute format but the DVD only released the transmitted episode versions & stuck the deleted scenes as extras, very strange as Fenric & Battlefield were released in both transmission & extended versions.
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Hello Timelord Simon! Very pleased you enjoyed my review on ‘Silver Nemesis’.
I too thought this was a good story and had so much going on it to make it exciting with the Cybermen, Neo-Nazis and Lady Peinforte.
I agree. I wish this had the extended version of ‘Silver Nemesis’ with the deleted and extended scenes from the DVD added in. They’re such great scenes and would have made the story more enjoyable and clearer to follow. Yes, it’s strange that they did that with the special editions of ‘Battlefield’ and ‘Fenric’ but not with ‘Silver Nemesis’.
Thanks for your comments, Simon. Glad you enjoyed this! Tim. 🙂
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Despite the critical flaws of Silver Nemesis, I liked how it enhanced the restored mystiques of the Doctor that helped make Sylvester’s era much better. I don’t think too much for how gold as an ultimate weapon against Cybermen was a creative problem. Since the first Cyber story I ever saw was Revenge Of The Cybermen, I just absorbed the notion as easily as much that I found fascinating as a kid by Dr. Who. But I can certainly understand why they found a way to finally write out the ‘golden weakness’ for Cybermen from the modern series. Thank you, Tim, for your review.
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Hi scifimike,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on ‘Silver Nemesis’. This is a ‘Doctor Who’ story that I enjoy watching now and again and I’m looking forward to revisiting it sometime soon this year.
If you didn’t have a problem with gold being used as a weapon against the Cybermen, that’s fair enough. I just think it’s an easy way to thwart them and it makes them less threatening as opponents. I’m sure this is something I’ll readdress when it comes to updating my review on the story based on a Season 25 Blu-ray box set. I’m pleased that the ‘gold weakness’ was taken out in ‘The Power of the Doctor’ and that the Cybermen are now immune to the stuff when Ace and Tegan fired their gold-bulleted weapons at them. 😀
Many thanks for your comments.
Tim 🙂
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See, I always had trouble with the narrative explanation for *why* gold was effective against the Cybermen. Suffocation. Given the amount of power that would be required to run a Cyberman’s systems — why not combustion, instead?
There are a great many good reasons why you don’t stick metal in the microwave. Gold, especially, is an excellent conductor. A slab of gold will melt, but gold flakes and similar will spark and create plasma. Like a firecracker. Effectively destroying the microwave in the process.
Now, if a Cyberman’s respirator unit runs hot in the same way… Gold could be used to essentially start a fire in the cyborg from the inside out. Very nasty. But quite effective. Gold would also probably be a readily available resource due to its pre-existing value as a conductor in a variety of electronics and computer technologies.
Narratively, death by glittergun? That could work. We do tend to assume that the weapon fires pure gold, but there could be more to it than that (as with real firearms, unfortunately, see dumdum bullets). Other methods… It’s a stretch for me in terms of feasibility. A creative use of molten gold would earn a hand-wave from me.
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Hi Wolfie,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on how ‘narratively’ gold could be used as an effective weapon against the Cybermen. If the TV series found time to explain why gold would be effective as a weapon against the Cybermen, that would have been fine. I still think it makes the Cybermen less threatening if that were still the case, but at least it would be a way of understanding why gold would be effective in causing the Cybermen to suffocate, or as you’ve suggested, cause them combustion. I suppose me thinking of the idea that ‘gold used as a weapon as Cybermen is stupid’ sounds harsh, but I don’t think the TV series ever goes into great extent as to why gold would be effective as a weapon. At least I can’t recall a vivid explanation off-hand. I don’t think it’s in ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’, nor ‘Silver Nemesis’ nor ‘Nightmare In Silver’. I can’t recall if it’s in the ‘Doctor Who’/’Star Trek: TNG’ crossover comic story ‘Assimilation2’ either. Anyway, like the Borg in ‘Star Trek’, I’m glad the Cybermen have found a way to adapt and overcome their gold weakness recently in ‘The Power of the Doctor’.
Many thanks for your insight into this topic about the Cybermen.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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