19x6. Earthshock
Writer: Eric Saward
Director: Peter Grimwade
Script Editor: Antony Root
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: The TARDIS materializes in an underground cavern on
26th-century Earth, where
a military team are searching for members of an archaeological
expedition that came under unexplained attack. The Doctor disarms a
bomb in the cavern and traces it to a freighter where a group of
Cybermen are planning to sabotage an interplanetary conference on
Earth where several species are likely to agree on a pact to fight the
Cybermen. In light of the bomb's failure, the Cybermen attempt to crash
the freighter
into Earth and cause a catastrophe that would likely wipe out humanity.
Review: "Earthshock" may be remembered primarily for Adric's
death, but it also deserves a mention for rehabilitating the Cybermen
as a genuine threat after their last appearance in the disappointing
"Revenge of the Cybermen." While the purely emotionless Cybermen that
we first met back in "The Tenth Planet" may be gone for good, this
serial does at least portray them as more detached from emotion than
humans or most of the other villains-of-the-week that we've seen on Doctor Who.
What makes them most intimidating is that while they may not feel
compassion or friendship themselves, they have clearly come to
understand what these things mean for others and are more than willing
to manipulate their enemies' emotions. In one scene, they are accused
of being deliberately cruel and their leader responds, chillingly, that
they are in fact testing human emotional responses. The Cyberleader
also explains that they are targeting the interplanetary conference
partly for the psychological impact that it will have when their
enemies' leaders are killed. They may not be quite as emotionless as
they claim to be (the Cyberleader seems to have a grudge against the
Doctor, among other things), but the script successfully gives them an
identity and viewpoint that differentiates them from Daleks, Ice
Warriors, Sontarans, or any other prominent enemy.
As for Adric,
both the script by Eric Saward and Matthew Waterhouse's performance
should be commended for not trying to soften the sharper edges of his
personality in his swan song, instead letting him exit as the flawed
but likeable person that he is. As the serial begins, Adric is actually
asking to return to E-Space to rejoin his own people, feeling that he
is too much of an "outsider" among the TARDIS crew. The Doctor
initially responds somewhat dismissively, simply stating that returning
to E-Space is too dangerous, but it's clear that Nyssa and Tegan are
actually partly on Adric's side, and the Doctor does later concede that
he could be more patient with Adric. All the same, Adric can, in fact,
be annoying, immature, and whiny at times, and the script doesn't shy
away from that, such as when he insists that the Doctor explain his
plan even when they are all scrambling to keep the Cybermen at bay. His
death scene appropriately reflects his multifaceted personality. At
once intellectually-driven, self-absorbed, and willing to risk his life
for others, he had nearly completed a logic puzzle that would have let
him unlock the ship's controls when a Cyberman destroys the console.
"Now I'll never know if I was right," he laments as he steels himself
for the fatal impact and clutches his lost brother's belt.
While "Earthshock" is an important entry in the Who
canon, I wouldn't quite call it a classic one. For starters, there are
a few plot or character points that don't make much sense or
feel contrived. The ship happening to travel 65 million years back
in time to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs feels like the script
trying too hard to be clever, and the justification for it - that the
Cybermen's device somehow accidentally caused it - strains suspension
of disbelief about as far as it can go. Ringway, the collaborator who
betrays the freighter to the Cybermen, never has his motivations
explained, and meanwhile Nyssa stays in the TARDIS for the entire
second half of the serial and is so slow to accept that something may
be going wrong outside that I started to wonder if she was under some
sort of mind control. Finally, the leaders of 26th-century Earth
are meeting with other species to form an alliance against the
Cybermen, and yet Lieutenant Scott's military squadron and the
freighter crew don't even seem to have heard of them - only the Doctor
knows who they are when they emerge from hiding on the freighter.
Adric's
death also contributes to a sense of the Doctor's real fallibility,
which can be a good thing, except that the serial ends so abruptly that
we're not sure how this turn of events has actually affected him and
his companions beyond the immediate shock and grief. It's worth noting
that he is pretty thoroughly outmaneuvered by the Cybermen in Episode
4, even to the point of having to let the Cyberleader board the
TARDIS. And what are we to make of the fact that he shoots the
Cyberleader twice after he's seemingly gained the upper hand by
attacking him with the gold badge? Are we meant to see this as a more
violent turn in his character? Did he see some sign that the
Cyberleader was still about to try to kill him or one of the companions
and thus feel compelled to fire in self-defense? Again, I'm not sure,
because neither he nor Tegan nor Nyssa really have anything to say
about it. I was left with the same uncomfortable feeling as I had at
the end of "The Brain of Morbius" - not only had I seen the Doctor
resort to more violence than usual, but I wasn't sure if the creative
team even realized what they were doing.
"Earthshock" is
certainly flawed, and it suffers a bit from the action-heavy style of
the third and fourth episodes that can't help but look hokey by
contemporary standards. But it has enough positive points for me to
give it a recommendation, and the creative team deserve credit for a
genuinely tragic ending even if they don't fully address its
implications.
Other notes:
- The theme of the more
emotion-driven approach of the protagonists vs. the detached frigidity
of the Cybermen is reinforced in the scene where the Doctor, having
failed to disarm the bomb on Earth via logic, announces that he'll try
"blind instinct" next.
-
This is nitpicking, but the script probably shouldn't have had the
Doctor use the term "spatial coordinates" to explain that the freighter
was still on course for Earth after traveling back in time. Given that
the Earth is in motion around the Sun, the Sun is in motion around the
center of the Milky Way, and the galaxies are in motion within the
universe, it seems literally impossible for Earth to have been in the
same place 65 million years ago as it would be in the 26th-century
timeline.
Rating: *** (out of four)
Back to the main Doctor
Who Reviews page.