So this is how it ends. Oh, not Series 12. I mean my patience with Chris Chibnall's plotting pace. I have tried, I feel, to be gracious and nice when it comes to his slow burn of an arc this series. Spyfall Parts One and Two set up some whoppers of future plot elements, and that was fine. A little questionable with snapping back to a destroyed Gallifrey, but I was willing to ride it out. Fugitive Of The Judoon came completely out of left field and raised even more theories and wonderings as to just what in the hell was going on. Look, it's been fun. It has been fun to spend some time in this period of temporal grace, wondering what the big reveals are going to be. Then comes Ascension Of The Cybermen, the penultimate episode. One would think that some of these questions would be addressed, or alluded to in any shocking way. All we have from this are more questions, more theorizing, more puzzlement, and it's here where I finally get fed up with Chibnall's teasing and express a demand for something to actually happen. I didn't expect every answer here, but I expected something. This is a nothing of an episode, 50 minutes of Chibnall spinning his wheels regarding any sort of arc resolution. There are things that happen in it, and I will do my best to explain them... but this really just feels like an extended trailer for the true finale next week. That should not be the case for the penultimate episode of the season, the Part 1 of 2. Good God. Let's analyze this bitch and get out.
We should start, then, with the Cybermen and the aftermath of the Great Cyber-Wars. I expressed my fears that this would be "big stompy robot" mode for the Cybermen, and that's not exactly wrong. I don't want to get too nitpicky here, but there's one unexplained thing I'm unsure about; if it's supposed to be just a thing I gloss over on the roller coaster ride, or an element left open to be elaborated on in the finale next week. That would be the Cyberium business from last week. Did the Lone Cyberman taking it change the future we see here, such that humanity is reduced to a handful of cynical survivors? Was this always the case and we just bounced back from it, the "indomitable humanity" trope recurrent in Doctor Who? I don't know. What I do know is we have a handful of Cybermen, led by the Lone Cyberman, working to go after humanity. The Cyber-Drones are at least an attempt to do something new and neat, but all it is is just explosions and kabooms. I praised the Lone Cyberman last week for being a body horror monstrosity that was still allowed to emote. He was properly spooky in Haunting Of Villa Diodati, but not here. No, now he's just... I properly do not even know. It's big stompy death robot Cybermen, who should be emotionless killers, but the hateful petty nature of the Lone Cyberman mixed with his arc warnings just feels off. Part of it, I think, is now he's a known quantity and a recurring foe. When he showed up last week, there was the sense of "WHAT THE CHRIST IS THAT?". Now it's just "Oh shit. The Lone Cyberman.". It's not playing to either of the modes of the Cybermen now (body horror or emotionless stompy death robot) and the beat is just "I'm a really mad bad guy and I'm gonna kill all you guys, rrr.". I don't like it. I also would like to add that "escalating" the threat on the Cybership by having a million billion Cybermen wake up is a trite attempt at escalation; you get the same effect of "we have no weapons and we're absolutely fucked" if it's just the Lone Cyberman and his two wingmen.
Let's chat about those survivors, then, as it's in their subplot involving Graham and Yaz that we get something that actually approached an interesting thought for my own personal resonance. The final survivors of the human race are a cynical despair-ridden bunch who believe their luck has run out and that they're about two seconds from their agonizing deaths and extinctions. Graham and Ryan are unyielding optimists who tell them to chin up, that with hope everything will turn out okay... and for a few moments there, up until a million billion Cybermen wake up and come after them, this approach actually seems to work on the survivors. I won't go too in-depth here, but bringing unyielding hope to a cynical despair-ridden worldview is the major thesis of a little project I have in the wings for this blog. Naturally, this made me perk up when I spotted it in the episode. It's nice. Unfortunately, not even that can save this mess because it's a half-baked bit of subtext that isn't weaved through the rest of the work. If the episode were about this, really strongly about this, then maybe we would have an Orphan 55 situation: a hot trainwreck boldly proclaiming an actual point it believes in. We do not have that. There's no room for it in between the big stompy robot stuff and the cryptic teasing arc setup. Which, let's get to that for a minute.
It really will be less than that, because the Ireland cutaway business with Brendan is absolute left field and is only there (at this moment) to raise questions. I could pad out this paragraph by asking those questions, like "who's Brendan?" or "why is he immortal?" or "why do they hook him to a thing at the end?", but next week will do that for me. Again, it all comes down to teasing and anticipation building. Iassume that's what Chibnall is going for, but that's the rub. We're on episode 9 of 10. It's time to stop doing the teasing and anticipation. I have passed the buck enough and given Chibnall enough benefit of the doubt. It is time for something to happen, and this is just as cryptic and confusing in this moment as the rest of the shit that's happened all season. We get the semblance of something tying all of this together at the very very end, with the Boundary leading to Gallifrey and the Master leaping out as the big surprise cliffhanger... but why did it have to be that? I'm working on half a story here, as Chibnall's written the godforsaken thing that way, but was this the best way to end Ascension Of The Cybermen? We'll see, of course, when the other part drops and where it goes from there... but I can't see how this does anything but make both parts of this story worse. Ascension Of The Cybermen is a teasing mess that resolves nothing and only raises more questions for 50 minutes. The Timeless Children now has just 65 minutes to cram that shit in and give it explanation. if Chibnall is planning a long game arc, a la Moffat and the Silence, that's even longer a time he's playing the "pass the buck" game and delaying his resolutions without substituting anything of equal satisfaction into his episodes in the meantime. We'll see how that pans out next week, but that still leaves us here. If this were a Netflix sow, you could just binge ahead immediately. Maybe shit will be better when we can do that on our Series 12 rewatches. Until then? All we're left with is a 50-minute teaser for next week with some big stompy robots. Thanks, I hate it.
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