Live-blogging Doctor Who, Season Two: The Age of Steel

This live-blogging brought to you by the fact that someone threw a hubcap onto our roof last night. Or perhaps by the fact that we didn’t notice that someone had thrown a hubcap onto the roof until Nick spotted it from the bus-stop across the road this morning. Seriously, how did we not hear that? We perhaps did, and thought it was an unusually rambunctious possum.

And who throws hubcaps onto somebody’s roof? We’ve had people try to kick our fence over (after it was on its last legs, post someone driving through it), we’ve had people punch holes in our fence (unfortunately, a new fence after someone else had driven through it), we’ve had people photograph themselves next to our stricken fence, we’ve had people drive through our fence (four separate people, so far), we’ve had people wander in and urinate on our driveway when we forget to close the gates, and on one memorable occasion I had an authoritative but ultimately kind conversation with some very young boys who had woken me up by trying to use my fence as a bottle-opener.

Much of this is the price you pay for living on a direct route between the colleges and the closest pub.

But a hubcap on the roof is something entirely new in my experience.

Actually, if Nick doesn’t get back from the shops fairly soon, this live-blogging will be brought to you by the fact that I don’t know how to turn our television on, and will have to make it all up based on my last viewing of this episode three years ago.

That could be interesting.

No, he’s back. So as long as nothing thoroughly weird happens, it will be a proper, legitimate live-blogging.

Doctor Who at the Proms? Now there’s a clashing of high and low culture.

Okay, Tropical Cyclone Hamish makes me giggle and giggle every time I see news on it. Hamish, Auntie Treena thinks you rock, and if you could read, I wouldn’t have made this joke on the blog. Now we need a Tropical Cyclone Jack.

Ack! Explosion! Ah, it’s a flashback to the previous episode. Startled me a little, though. I’d stopped paying attention.

Now, the Doctor is trying to surrender, but the Cybermen don’t really want anyone to surrender. The Doctor doesn’t really have a plan here, does he?

Credits.

So we pick up where we left off, except that the Doctor manages to kill a huge number of Cybermen with the power cell from the TARDIS that he had in his pocket. Why it bounces from Cyberman to Cyberman in a chain effect, I don’t know.

Rose and Pete want to go back for Jackie, but the Doctor tells Pete that Jackie is already dead and tells Rose that she’s not actually her mother.

During the getaway, Rickey and the Brummie attack Pete, suggesting that he’s part of the conspiracy to place Lumic in charge of the goverment and that Pete has been working with Lumic for years. Apparently, they have a government mole called Gemini—which Pete says is him.

They introduce themselves:

DOCTOR: I’m the Doctor, by the way.
ROSE: And I’m Rose.
PETE: Better and better. That’s the name of my dog.

The Doctor is in favour of stopping Lumic, of course—and he removes Pete’s earbuds, in case Lumic is listening. In fact, Lumic, chatting to his Cybermen about their uniformity, is using the earbuds to control the population of London.

News reporters are trying to get people to remove their earbuds—and Rose, seeing the zombified humans wandering through the city, plans on just pulling the earbuds off, but the Doctor tells her that she’ll cause a brainstorm.

Ah! Rose mentions the head in Von Statten’s museum, and the Doctor says yes, there are Cybermen in our universe, and mentions a brief version of their origin—so that answers some of the questions that came up on the comment thread last week.

With the Cybermen coming, Rickey and Mickey scatter from the others, and there’s rather a painful scene where Mickey is seeking validation from the alternative-universe form of himself, poor sod. He really has had all his confidence sucked out in his time in the TARDIS, hasn’t he?

Meanwhile, the people controlled by their earbuds wander into the Cyber factory, including Jackie.

Elsewhere, Rickey fails to make it over a chainlink fence, and is deleted by the Cybermen in front of a horrified Mickey.

Mr Crane wanders into Lumic’s room—Lumic doesn’t know why Crane isn’t controlled, but Crane claims his earbuds must have malfunctioned and requests an upgrade. This is an attempt to get close enough to detach some of Lumic’s life-support systems. The Cybermen kill Crane, but instead of reconnecting Lumic’s systems, they take him off for a forcible upgrade, despite him insisting that he will upgrade only with his last breath.

The Brummie is devastated to hear of Rickey’s death, and insults Mickey as a worthless substitute.

And there’s a gorgeous shot of Battersea Power Station.

The group look out over Battersea, and think of ways to take out the production lines. Rose and Pete will wear fake earbuds and go in through the front door, Jake will take out the earbud transmitter on the zeppelin above the factory, and the Doctor and the woman whose name I have already forgotten will enter through the tunnels.

The Doctor, of course, completely forgets about Mickey, who volunteers to go with the Brummie, Jake, despite Jake’s vicious rejection of Mickey’s offer.

The tunnels are full of Cybermen, pre-converted by “put on ice,” the Doctor says. Still, he wants her to keep an eye out for trip systems, which seems as though it would be good advice.

Pete and Rose, though Pete is bewildered by Rose’s reasons for wanting to help rescue Jackie, join the end of the queue of people being sent in for “upgrading”: Billie Piper does a good job of looking like someone who is trying not to show any emotion while actually being terrified.

Jake and Mickey head up to the zeppelin, where they find two guards. Mickey doesn’t want to kill the guards, and Jake eventually agrees—they have a gas, one of Mrs Moore’s little gadgets, apparently—and they knock them out. They’re human guards, not Cybermen.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is asking Mrs Moore (which I originally heard as “Muir,” with the Brummie accent and all) how she became involved in the Preachers. She tells the Doctor that her real name is Angela Price, and she ended up on the run after reading the wrong file on the mainframe.

Meanwhile, something triggers the Cybermen where they are, and they end up frantically trying to climb out of a hatch before the implacable cyborgs can reach them.

In the other plotline, Rose is stopped just before entering the upgrade machines: she can hear the noises and we can see something of what’s happening in the booths. But there’s no screaming at all, as there was with the homeless men. That’s even creepier.

Meanwhile, Rose and Pete are identified by a Cyberman who says that it was once Jackie Tyler, much to their horror. They think that maybe the process can be reversed, but, of course, when they look back to her, they can’t tell which one she is in a sea of Cybermen. The Cybermen plan to “reward” Pete forcibly for his work with Cybus Industries.

On the zeppelin, Jake and Mickey look for the transmitter controls.

The Doctor and Mrs Moore are ambushed by a Cyberman, but Mrs Moore manages to take it down with some form of electromagnetic bomb.

The Doctor looks inside: the Cybermen have a central nervous system and a human brain, but they have an emotional inhibitor, so they can use the human brain without the risk of the Cyberman going insane during the process.

The Doctor, fiddling around, breaks the emotional inhibitor, so the Cybermen tells us that it is a woman called Sally, who simultaneously wants to know where her fiance Gareth is and doesn’t want him to see her on the night before their wedding.

A little manipulate-y, there, Doctor Who. It could have been traumatic without the wedding angle.

The Doctor thinks if they could override all the emotional inhibitors at once, they would be able to kill the Cybermen. I have a problem with that, but no time to go over it now.

Suddenly, Mrs Moore is electrocuted from behind.

Mickey and Jake plan to crash the zeppelin, because they can’t get to the controls—they’re behind a safety screen. And the Cyberman in the zeppelin isn’t actually dead, after all.

But Lumic has been upgraded—to a Cyber Controller, complete with visible brain.

Mickey and Jake do manage to take the Cyberman out and simultaneously electrocute the transmitter controls, so that the humans still in the factory freak out and break away.

And now is the time for the Doctor’s monologue; this one is about imagination, emotion, and how much he likes humans. (He also manages to point out that other people aren’t as clever as he is, but that’s not unusual.)

Lumic challenges the Doctor with the pain of emotions, but the Doctor won’t be taunted—he talking now to Mickey, whom he seems to know can hear him from the zeppelin, and tell him to find the code to override the emotional inhibitor.

Mickey does. The Doctor uses it. And everyone celebrates the fact that the Cybermen are so horrified, so traumatised by what has been done to them while they were unconscious that, apparently, their heads explode.

To be fair, the Doctor is not celebrating.

I’m not sure why the Cybermen freaking out also sets fire to the power station, but perhaps they’re pulling out cords and things?

Jake wants to leg it, but Mickey refuses—he calls Rose and tells her, and Pete and the Doctor, to head to the roof. They do, but a furious Lumic pulls himself free from his Cyber-couch.

I’m impressed with Rose’s ability to climb a rope ladder. I don’t think I could do that. Maybe if a Cyberman was chasing me and I was on the roof of a burning Art Deco power station. It’s all about finding the inspiration, really.

Speaking of Cybermen, Lumic the Cyber Controller is climbing up after them, but Pete very slowly severs the rope with the sonic screwdriver, and Lumic falls back into the now seriously burning factory. Isn’t Battersea heritage listed? I think there might be some questions to ask about that.

In the aftermath, Rose is offering to show Pete the inside of the TARDIS, but he refuses, especially after she hints that she’s his daughter. When she pushes it, and calls him “Dad,” he really freaks out. I can’t blame her, with all her longings to see her father, but he’s not set up to cope with this, especially given what just happened to his wife.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has got his suit back.

But Mickey—he’s staying in the parallel world. He says they’ve lost their Rickey, and his gran needs him.

Rose irritates me by asking what if she needs Mickey? (I’d be more irritated, but she’s already a bit fragile about her parallel-dad’s rejection.) Mickey points out that she doesn’t need him—and, bless you, Mickey, you’re quite right. She’s been quite horrible to you, and I can’t imagine what it must be like living in the TARDIS when its other two occupants keep forgetting that you’re there.

Rose is crying, but Mickey is absolutely making the right decision here.

Mickey and Jake watch the TARDIS disappear—and we cut to Jackie filling the kettle, to find that the TARDIS has materialised in her living room, and she’s being embraced by a semi-hysterical daughter. (And I can’t blame Rose for being freaked out.)

Mickey, meanwhile, is off to liberate Paris in a van.

Bless him.

Next week, “The Idiot’s Lantern.” Ah. Well, that will be fun.