Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis Part One

Silver Nemesis is President Donald J Trump's favourite Doctor Who story.
It is the third story of season 25 and was specially themed around silver to celebrate Doctor Who's 25th birthday, which is why it has cybermannys in it because they are silver, or at least look silver. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace.

Silver Nemesis has an unusual structure in that there are three separate sets of baddys as the antagonists to the Doctor and Ace. We are introduced to two of these groups at the beginning of the episode but the third is kept back for a surprise reveal at the cliffhanger ending, although I have already given away who they are.

The episode begin with a caption:

South America
22nd November 1988

We hear Wagner's music playing and see a manny with an '80s computer. Herr De Flores is about to shoot a birdy with a bow and arrow when he gets some "wonderful news" from the manny with the computer. We don't get to know what the news is yet, maybe his computer game has finally loaded? (I am too young a cat to get this joke, but I am reliably informed that it makes sense if you are old enough to remember the 1980s.)

In

Windsor, England
1638

(thanks to a second on-screen caption for keeping us informed) Lady Peinforte and Richard - played by Fiona Walker and Gerard Murphy, the former was in I Claudius as Agrippina and was also in Doctor Who all the way back in Sentence of Death, the latter was the Narrator of The Lord of the Rings - are also playing with bows and arrows and about to shoot a birdy. This cleverly parallels what De Flores was doing in the previous scene and establishes a thematic link between them, even though they haven't met.

Lady Peinforte has a silver arrow. They are about to leave her house but we don't find out where they are going yet, just as we don't know what De Flores's news was. This helps build up suspense over the first few scenes.

De Flores makes a speech to his henchmannys in which he mentions "the fuhrer" and then they toast "the fourth reich" so as to make it as clear as possible that they are Nazis. De Flores has a silver bow as well as a special case to keep it in.

The Doctor and Ace are listening to music when the Doctor's alarm goes off to remind him to do something that he has forgotten to do, but then he can't remember what it is he has forgotten, silly Doctor! Then they get shot at by some mannys (perhaps to encourage them to get on with the plot, there are only three parts to this story after all) and run away back to the TARDIS.

Lady Peinforte and Richard plan to kill Lady Peinforte's other henchmanny just to make it clear that they are baddys as well, since you have to work quite hard at that when one of the other factions in your story is Nazis. They drink a magic potion to travel in time from 1638 to 1988, but to cover up the fact that this makes no sense they make one of the best jokes in Doctor Who evar:

"Afraid?"
"Yes, my lady."
"When I employed you, you lead me to believe you were a hardened criminal."
"As my lady knows, before I entered your service I was found guilty of a large number of offences."
"Then have the courage of your convictions."

LOL!

The Doctor and Ace travel to Windsor to look for the silver bow, not knowing the Nazis have it. The Doctor finds a fez instead.

Now in 1988, Lady Peinforte and Richard are confused by technology. Richard is scared again but Lady Peinforte is not, which helps to further differentiate and develop their characters.

The comet Nemesis lands. The Nazis are on the scene but need to wait for the comet to cool down before they can capture it. Lady Peinforte and Richard also need to wait to get their paws on the Nemesis, but the local police arrive and capture it first.

The Doctor and Ace take the TARDIS back to Lady Peinforte's house in 1638 where they find the dead henchmanny. Ace (and through her, we the viewers) start to get the backstory from the Doctor about how he has known Lady Peinforte before, and how the Nemesis is made from "a living metal" called Validium and is a weapon of mass destruction. The Doctor is careful to let the exposition out a little at a time so as to not confuse us, but this does make this feel a lot like the sequel to a story that I haven't seen because it doesn't really exist - and while that sometimes works, it is not a technique that stands up to scrutiny because it is really just the writer cheatily avoiding introducing his setting and characters properly.

The policemannys get gassed, which is why they are not a fifth faction involved through the rest of this story.

Now it is time for some completely unnecessary padding - the Doctor and Ace go to Windsor castle in 1988 for some hijinks where they nearly meet the Queen and then get chased around the castle for a bit by some mannys. This couldn't be more irrelevant to the plot if it tried.

Lady Peinforte also isn't doing very much at that moment, but she is by far the most interesting character we have seen because she knows the Doctor and has a mysterious past relationship with him, and she talks to Richard about how she wants the Nemesis in order to have revenge on him.

The Nazis decide it is time to capture the Nemesis. De Flores is not very clever as he doesn't think it is important that the police have already been gassed by some unknown third party. He is more concerned with the arrow being missing from the statue, which makes him annoyed. So now we know the answer to the question "how do you make a Nazi cross?"

The Doctor and Ace arrive to get back into the plot. The Nazis capture them and De Flores thinks the Doctor has the arrow (presumably because he is the only other main character that he has met at this point), while the Doctor has noticed the gassed policemannys and tries to point out that this is important.

The Nazis threaten to shoot Ace unless the Doctor gives them the arrow that he doesn't have, but then a spaceship arrives and distracts them. It is the cybermannys, who have arrived just in time for the cliffhanger!

If we ignore the pointless padding scenes, this is a fantastic first episode. All three factions of baddys have their own character and points of interest for us viewers, especially the mysterious Lady Peinforte who knows the Doctor's secrets and so has the potential to be one of the Doctor's greatest adversaries... even if her past history with the Doctor isn't a "real" past history (one from previous television stories) but a cheat, somehow that only adds to the mystery.