Neil Gaiman writes a 'Doctor Who' episode that will bring back a creepy villain

Neil Gaiman's 'Doctor Who' episode is his second after his award-winning season 6 installment.

|
Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
'Doctor Who' actor Matt Smith is currently starring on the show as the time-traveling character.

Behind the Daleks, the Cybermen are easily Doctor Who‘s most iconic villains. For over fifty years – ever since their first appearance in the classic Who serial “The Tenth Planet” – the Cybermen have threatened death and assimilation to the Doctor and his many companions. Recently, the metal monsters have gotten short end of the stick, appearing rarely and often only to serve as punching bags for whatever larger threat the episode writer wants to puff up in the process.

Next year, we may see a reversal of this pattern. It looks, as previously reported, that noted genre author Neil Gaiman has scribed an upcoming episode of Doctor Who that will (hopefully) restore the Cybermen to their classic, creepy glory.

In a post featured on their Doctor Who blog, BBC announced that Neil Gaiman has penned an episode that will feature a new appearance by the Cybermen. This is the second script by Gaiman, who wrote the season 6 installment “The Doctor’s Wife” – an episode that netted Gaiman the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The episode will be directed by Stephen Woolfenden, who makes his Doctor Who debut after a career as second-unit director on many feature films, including the last four installments of the Harry Potter series. The episode will also sport guest appearances by Warwick Davis (Harry Potter, Willow), Tamzin Outhwaite (EastEnders), and Jason Watkins (Being Human).

Since Russell T. Davies revived Doctor Who from its decade-long dormancy in 2005, Cyberman-centric episodes have been something of a mixed bag. They’ve ranged from the flawed-but-decent “The Age of Steel” to the eye-rolling filler of “Closing Time” (their most recent appearance). As noted earlier in this article, the writers of the past six seasons have had the habit of treating the cybernetic creatures as second-tier villains. In several episodes, the Cybermen have either been defeated by ridiculous plot developments or placed in the path of stronger enemies to be steamrolled in a naked attempt to oversell the new danger.

As such, one has to ask whether this new appearance by the robotic hordes will be able to sell them as a credible threat. Fortunately, I have faith that Neil Gaiman can pull this off. The author has created some rather iconic villains of his own during his long career. For example, during his run on the comic book The Sandman (one of the all-time great graphic novel experiences), he introduced readers to nightmare creatures such as The Corinthian – a serial killer with gnashing mouths for eyes. Despite being a novel for young readers, Coraline presented a rather grotesque antagonist in the False Mother/Beldam. And more germane to the subject at hand, Gaiman’s previous Who outing “The Doctor’s Wife” brought us House, an unsettling extra-universal horror whose sadism matched its immense power.

All this is to say that if anyone can take the time and care to craft an effective new interpretation of the Cybermen, there are few writers as qualified to do so as Neil Gaiman. It will be very interesting indeed to see how he goes about it.

Doctor Who will travel back to television on December 25, 2012 for its annual Christmas episode and appear again in Spring of 2013 for the remaining eight episodes of season 7.

Kyle Hembree blogs at Screen Rant.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Neil Gaiman writes a 'Doctor Who' episode that will bring back a creepy villain
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2012/1107/Neil-Gaiman-writes-a-Doctor-Who-episode-that-will-bring-back-a-creepy-villain
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe