NB: For all of the "new series" multi-part episodes, reviews are relevant to the complete story, and the name of the first part is used as a story title.

Having never had much of a problem with the presentation of the Daleks, certainly from their trio of 1980s appearances, the new series' "Dalek" never quite wowed me. It was just a matter of doing something a little different with the race, amping up the effects budget a little and managing to have a bigger audience. That's not to say I dislike the episode, but I do think it was more of a logical progression, rather than a brave reinvention. So when the Cybermen were announced as returnees for the second series, it would be more of a test for the production team.

You see, the Cybermen have yet to appear in a particularly decent story, and unlike the Daleks, whose poorer appearances were usually to do with whichever plot they were dropped into, they were often one of the major reasons their past stories failed. And to be fair, the Cybermen are pretty good in this two-parter. It's helped by the budget for the first time making us believe that there really is an army of them, while the redesign is excellent. While they aren't pitched against many particularly strong threats, they are made to seem rather tough - no-one clobbers them with a shovel or a pound coin or anything, which always helps the creditability of any threat.

Sadly, the problem with any monster is how to make it seem powerful and find a decent way to get rid of them in the last five minutes. Sadly, this is where Tom MacRae's script really falls down, as we have what seems to be the obligatory plot device. Thankfully, the Cybermen have easy-to-access emotional inhibitors, which a single code can overload, making the whole bloody lot of them blow up. Great.

The worst thing about this piece of slapdashery is that it's an alternate Earth. With several red herrings about the overall shape of the second "new" season floating around the Internet, in the week between episodes I had this wonderful picture of how the season could have panned out - Mickey killed on a parallel Earth thanks to The Doctor's neglect; the Cybermen victorious, conquering this Earth; The Doctor and Rose barely escaping the timeline with their lives, and losing their air of cocky invincibility. Now, I can't possibly get too pissed that the season hasn't turned out according to some half-formed thoughts I had, but it was certainly a bit of a missed opportunity. It means that the parallel universe setting was effectively wasted, after some good work in that area in the first part. We're left with the same old 'problem solved' feel we would have had in the regular universe.

I'd guess the desire was to update the Cybermen's rather dated origin and relocate it to Earth, so when the Cybermen reappear in the regular universe, the viewer assumes that they were created in the same manner, while the production team don't have to contradict the established "Tenth Planet" continuity.

Mickey's redemption seemed a little hollow too, due to the rather muddy state things are left in - are there armies of Cybermen in cities all over the world at the same stage as those in London were? Or are there just a bunch of dormant factories Mickey and Jake just need to blow up? Sadly, it comes just as Noel Clarke was really getting into the swing of things, and it seems odd that he'd join up actively with The Doctor and Rose (having had firsthand experience of how cliquey they are beforehand) and then jump off at what's basically the first opportunity.

The two main leads were rather good. Tennant finds the balance a little better in both episodes, stepping back from the blustering idiot The Doctor has been on occasion this season. It was nice to see him genuinely in a bit of a corner when the Cybermen first appear, though the handy use of a TARDIS energy cell to wipe out a dozen of them undermined that a little (as others have said, I wonder if The Doctor will remember this handy function next time he comes across the Cybermen with a fully working TARDIS?). Rose wasn't too brattish - at least not unbelievably so. However, over the past three episodes the contrast with the amiable Mickey hasn't been in Rose's favour. Billie Piper's really only as good as her material, I suppose, and if Rose is scripted as a petulant child, Piper can't make her likeable. The worrying thing is that with, so far, no sign of a comeuppance for either character's smug excesses, this would seem to be the way the production team think they should act - arrogant, superior and insular. Two likeable actors will only be able to do so much with that sort of scripting.

Shaun Dingwall's return as Pete Tyler was also a little pointless - all I can really think of is the production team's need to have Rose at the centre of episodes more often than not, and to bring out a few alternate universe clichés. The actor's performance was good, but just the return of Pete undermined "Father's Day" to some extent.

The guest cast was a little varied. Andrew Hayden-Smith did a very good job as Jake, while Helen Griffin was passable as Mrs Moore. It may have been that he was trying so hard to distance himself from his place in the public consciousness as Trigger from Only Fools and Horses, it may have been an attempt to make the character sound robotic, or it may have been a genuine lack of acting range, but Roger Lloyd Pack was remarkably stilted as Sidney Lumic. Colin Spaull did much better as his wily sidekick Crane, however. Don Warrington, who frankly isn't on television enough, did his usual smart job with the short-lived President of the UK, imbuing a lightly sketched character with an air of decency and dignity. Camille Coduri did a fine job of making Jackie a total bitch, but then she manages that even when it seems that isn't the idea, so maybe those plaudits should be put on hold.

As with all of this season's episodes so far, the two parter managed a fair old pace. It was a shame so many of the areas of the parallel universe weren't delved into (why are Zeppelins the transport of choice - seemingly the only option, in fact?), and that lazy satire (earpods = iPods, for the children of brother and sister) and class war ("Up there with the toffs") had to seep in somewhere. Things did start moving faster than the plot could bear at the end, with the Cybermen seeming to explode just so the episode ended with a nice big explosion. Crane's death was a little rushed, too - while I could basically piece together that he didn't want to be turning into a Cyberman himself, was able to remove the earpiece before the download started, attempted to escape and was caught, what exactly his plan in the control room was meant to achieve I don't know. A final bitter gesture, maybe? Speaking of the control room and the script dropping logic in favour of expediency, why exactly did the Cybermen stand back and let The Doctor just wander around the place with easy access to important computers?

There are lots of great parts - The Doctor's washed-out mood when the TARDIS is seemingly dead, and his joy when he finds the power-cell; the great imagery of squads of Cybermen stomping around London; the Cybermen storming the party; the underground sequences; The Doctor's rage at Mrs Moore's pointless death and the preceding conversation with the dying Cyberman. They just don't really add up to much.

The much-trumpeted return of Graeme Harper in the director's chair fell a little flat, but this is more likely to be because the new series has featured several very good directors - James Hawes and Euros Lyn being standouts. That said, I'm personally of the opinion that Graham Harper was never so much a visionary, but more just a little ahead of his time in regard to 'Who (and inferior to Lovett Bickford, who sadly only showed his skills on "The Leisure Hive") - "The Caves of Androzani" and "Revelation of the Daleks" benefit somewhat from being positioned among standard mid-1980s 'box-on-the-wall' stuff like "Planet of Fire" and "Timelash". Several McCoy-era stories are as well directed (those by Alan Wareing, Nicholas Mallet and Andrew Morgan standing out especially), and seeing Harper's work failing to stand out when there are others willing to put the same thought in making episodes in the same circumstances shatters the myth.

"Rise of the Cybermen" does give away its' lineage. Much like "Earthshock", it's Doctor Who's equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer film - a fun enough way to kill an hour and half, but turn your brain on or watch it more than once, and you're in trouble.

Review written: 31/05/2006