Oh dear. Not even Tom Baker's Doctor can revive the terminal script malaise in this tinny adventure...

Hangovers. The older I get, the worse they get. When I wake up with a hangover (which is very rare these days, I hasten to add), it’s like someone’s been whacking me over the head with a shovel and leaving me with the inability to walk and talk in a straight line. It’s funny, in my 20s, I would have been able to deal with this, but now I’m accelerating well into the later part of my 30s, hangovers are now about as easy to handle as a swarm of bees.

"Hangover" was once used by Philip Hinchcliffe to describe the closing story of season 12, called Revenge Of The Cybermen. Originally, it wasn’t even meant to be the closer, but since Doctor Who was about to move to the September slot for the first time in seven years, the original closer Terror Of The Zygons was put on ice for a few weeks – ready to do battle against Prentis Hancock’s droopy moustache in Space: 1999. Unfortunately, Revenge closes what’s been a pretty damn good season with all the grace of a one-legged elephant on a trampoline. And given the hangover metaphor, Revenge is even worse than that horrid achy, dizzy, queasy feeling that you get at two in the morning.

It’s strange – Revenge should, in theory, be quite good. For one thing, it’s a Tom Baker story, and virtually all of his stories have at least some grain of merit – even the so-called turkeys like Underworld or The Horns Of Nimon. A truly bad Tom Baker story feels wrong – a bit like anyone over the age of five liking weird wailing bowlcut foetus Justin Bieber. Even in sub-par stories, you can always rely on Big Tom and his unique brand of wit to inject some sort of life into proceedings.

"Despite the jokes and engagingly goofy persona, Big Tom can’t raise this story from the dead. But he’s easily the best thing in this mess"

So what about in Revenge? Evidently, Baker’s trying his level best to make the story come alive with frequent verbal pot-shots at the rubbish Cybermen and angry jibes at luckless companion Harry, who’s now about as useful as a wig in a Right Said Fred lookalike competition. “Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!” he bellows after the hapless toff’s nearly blown the Time Lord to kingdom come without realising. But despite the jokes and engagingly goofy persona, Big Tom can’t raise this story from the dead. But he’s easily the best thing in this mess.

For another thing, Revenge boasts the return of the Cybermen. After an absence of six and a half years, the tinpot men are back with a vengeance. Except now they’re rubbish. The original creepy concept of half man/half machine has just been thrown out the window, and now, they’re basically men in futuristic boiler suits and tin helmets. There’s nothing scary about these Cybermen at all – admittedly their head guns are quite cool, but they’re considerably tamer than before.

A few reasons for this. One is the ridiculous Cyberleader, who for reasons known to himself talks in a cod-South African accent, as if to distract the viewer from all the bullshit that he’s been given to speak. “Cybermen do not conform to a theory of morality in war, Doctor!” he booms at one point. The Cyberleader is also as camp as Christmas, stomping around with his hands on his hips, like a metallic Larry Grayson. The Cyberleader of the 1980s may be a walking cliché, but at least he’s something resembling a credible threat, unlike the one in Revenge. Another problem with the Cybermen is that they’re deeply stupid. If they’re allergic to gold, then why on Earth beam down to Voga in the first place where there’s even more gold than around the neck of Mr T? Sure enough, by the final episode, the Cybermen are dropping like metallic flies after The Doctor’s craftily injected their pet Cybermats with a handful of gold dust.

What’s with the Cybermats by the way? They haven’t exactly been a credible threat at the best of times, but this is now beyond the pale. The Cybermats now resemble futuristic metallic slippers and what’s more, are very badly CSO'd onto the action. The sequences in which they attack their victims are a real hoot. Basically, the victims are called upon to hug the Cybermats like no tomorrow in a vain bid to convince the viewer that they are being attacked. But they’re not fooling anyone – and it’s odd that these sequences are directed so badly, considering Michael E. Briant is behind the camera.

Briant is, of course, one of the best directors of the 1970s. Give him a bad script though, and his work isn’t quite as impressive. Compared to classics like The Robots Of Death or The Green Death, Briant’s work on Revenge is tepid and uninteresting. For example, when the Cybermen are first introduced, there’s no suggestive shot or arty close-up – no, it’s just a boring wide shot of the metal meanies that adds little in the way of drama or tension.

In Briant’s defence, the location filming at Wookey Hole is actually good, and is a suitably convincing double for Voga. The sequence of Sarah on the mini-speedboat is well done, as are the ominous shots of The Doctor, Lester and Stevenson treading their way through clammy mud with bombs on their backs. It’s just a shame that the rest of the production looks so cheap and uninspiring. The Nerva shots look less effective than in The Ark In Space – camera angles account for a lot, I guess, while the studio Vogan tunnels are all plastic boulders and fake backdrops.

"Kellman is the Poundstretcher Bond villain – his face seems to be stuck in permanent sneer mode, as if he’s just tasted a rancid piece of cheese and egg flan during a change of wind"

And Briant’s casting decisions are surprisingly off the boil – especially when you consider how the actors have been excellent in other Who roles. The humans on Nerva Beacon are a pretty faceless lot, even though Ronald Leigh-Hunt and William Marlowe do their best. Kellman is the Poundstretcher Bond villain – his face seems to be stuck in permanent sneer mode, as if he’s just tasted a rancid piece of cheese and egg flan during a change of wind. Still, at least Kellman’s got a handful of handy gadgets to aid him in his double dealings with the Cybermen and the Vogans. A Pentalian Drive. A communication device that looks like a cardboard box typewriter. A heater for sneaking out pesky Doctors. Clearly, the Generation Game conveyor belt was missing some of its goodies that day.

The Vogans too are rubbish. Which is sad when you look at the three talents playing the principal characters. David Collings. Michael Wisher. Kevin Stoney. Collings is about the best of the three, but he’s groaning under the weight of hammy clichés and crap dialogue (“You have the philosophy of a cringing mouse, Tyrum!”). Wisher is shamefully underused and is only there to cough into a fancy hanky while looking like a cross between Alec Guinness and a walking prune. Poor old Stoney though. With two great performances under his belt, Stoney bumbles along sounding like he’s had all his teeth knocked out. Tyrum is a mumbling, shambling old goat who seems curiously unmoved by all that’s going on around him. But who could blame him? That said, it’s annoying when he’s meant to react with sheer panic at the point when Nerva’s about to crash into Voga. “It’s going to hit! It’s going to hit!” says Tyrum with all the urgency of a pensioner who’s misplaced his reading glasses. And there’s not even a “Peeeeaaaacckkkaaaaahhh” to be had either.

Still, it’s unfair to lay the blame at the doors of the actors. The script of Revenge Of The Cybermen is awful – the casualty of several rewrites. Unfortunately, it’s been flogged within an inch of its life, since the end result lacks both drama and any attempt at coherence. Now, we all know that the Cybermen fear gold. We also know that the Vogans fear the Cybermen. So you would think that the Vogans are clued up enough to assemble a whole load of gold bullets to wipe out the Cybermen in one fell swoop. But no. They traipse around shooting at the Cybermen using ordinary bullets. No wonder so many of them end up dead. It’s such a blindingly obvious mistake that you have to wonder whether Robert Holmes had given up trying with the script. Or whether he’d just fallen asleep at the typewriter.

"A big problem with Revenge is that it follows on from Genesis Of The Daleks, which is supreme in every respect"

Which wouldn’t surprise me, since most of Revenge is taken up with to-ing and fro-ing between Nerva Beacon and Voga. It’s like The Doctor’s yo-yo, except on a larger scale. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry transmat between the two destinations with alarming frequency – so much so, that I lose count of what they are actually doing. There’s also the question of why Stevenson and Lester are hostile to the trio one minute and then just accept their story at face value the next. It’s all written and produced with a complete absence of urgency or tension – even the potentially dramatic bits like the near-crash into Voga are so casual, it wouldn’t surprise me if the actors broke off halfway through to sip from a cup of tea. The aforementioned sequence is terrible, with Tom and Lis trying not to laugh at lines like “We’re heading for the biggest bang in history” and then gazing at a giant revolving Ferrero Rocher chocolate on a CSO screen. No wonder Stoney sounds bored out of his wits.

A big problem with Revenge is that it follows on from Genesis Of The Daleks, which is supreme in every respect. The problem would crop up again when The Twin Dilemma followed on from The Caves Of Androzani some nine years later. Revenge has none of the drama, production values or intelligence of its predecessor, but these problems are magnified as a result. It has a script that feels like it’s been assembled by a thick child on a stencil set. The production’s generally poor. The Cybermen have lost their mojo. And the actors were clearly more concerned about joining Big Tom down the local pub for a crafty pint.

And judging by the poor script, clearly they were due to have very bad hangovers the next day. Welcome to my world.

John Bensalhia limbered up for this mammoth task with a full four-series review of Blake's 7, and writes professionally and recreationally all over the web. Check out his portfolio of work at Wordprofectors.

Check out John's previous Doctor Who review, Genesis Of The Daleks