Ascendency of The Cybermen by Chris Chibnall

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Ascendency of The Cybermen by Chris Chibnall

Ascendency of The Cybermen is unique in that it is mindless bombast. Half of this story is superfluous, and that’s interesting when so much of part two, is so compacted. This story builds up to the Master showing up again, but face it, we know he’s coming back. Come on, he’s the Master. And when the cliffhanger is more vague promises like we got in Spyfall, (so essentially the same cliffhanger, without the plane crash and reveal, which is what made that cliffhanger great), you start to have a problem. You see, nothing about this story is inherently Cybermen. It’s action packed finale bait where the classic monster runs around shooting things randomly, and this is something every finale since RTD has done, except it works for the Daleks. That’s what Daleks do. They run around and shoot people. The Cybermen are sinister, working from the shadows, converting one by one. Expanding, insidiously working at conquering the human race, one person at a time.
In this, they are “shooty, shooty, Dalek thing” and although this episode does do one thing right, show the power of the cyber-army, it does it in the opposite of how I like it done.
The UNIT audio drama, Code: Silver, does this very well. It shows how the Cybermen are a threat as a group because they focus on expanding rather than killing. Really, most of this episode could be scrapped so we could have more time to do literally anything in The Timeless Children, and Brendan’s B-Plot is doubly frustrating, because as soon as you get into the A-Plot, with its awesome violent end of the universe edginess, Brendan comes by to reinact Scottish Countryfile.
My mood about Series 12 is often positive, but in all seriousness, regardless of how I feel about the other episodes, this one is without a doubt, a hidden clunker that no one ever recognizes for it’s terribleness, because they focus on the far more controversial and daring part two. Part Two however, is so much of a different tale that It doesn’t redeem any of this ones many Numerous flaws.
Five points for Ashad and Jodie. 5/10

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