There’s not a lot to this episode. It’s basically all setup for the Cyberman reveal and the next episode. This isn’t necessarily a problem, the first half of a two-parter should include a lot of the story setup. I just don’t think there’s a whole lot of story here to setup. Once you’ve setup the world and the villain (both adequately setup in the first 15 minutes or so) then the episode doesn’t do a lot until the Cybermen turn up at the end.

It may not do a lot but it doesn’t do nothing. This is a very good Mickey story. We get to learn his backstory, how his parents were absent and he was raised by his Gran, who died 5 years ago. The scene where Mickey goes to visit his Gran (who is still alive on this parallel Earth) is lovely. This is easily the best scene of the episode. He’s then kidnapped by the Preachers who mistake him for their leader Ricky (this universes version of Mickey). If I’m being honest I don’t find the preachers that interesting in this episode (I like them more next episode). This is probably largely due to Ricky. He’s just a scowling, unnecessarily angry version of Mickey. Admittedly his main role in the story is to contrast with Mickey, probably to make Mickey look better, and then to die. I’d have to say the character achieves all of that. But he’s such a boring character, and it’s such a 1 note, cartoonish performance. It’s honestly a weird week for Noel Clarke. Because up until the Ricky reveal, Noel Clarke is doing excellent work here. I’m completely sold and fully invested in Mickey’s journey. Then Ricky shows up and Noel Clarke gives two cartoonish performances, as Mickey becomes this wide-eyed, cowardly caricature for the rest of the episode. I understand that this is a show that is supposed to be easy for even children to understand, so they probably decided Noel Clarke should over act and play both characters so broadly so that everyone, even a child can instantly tell who is who. But I think this is still dumb, because alternatively you could just have Mickey wear a hat or whatever. The characters don’t need to be underwritten and overplayed just so we can tell them apart.

This is also another bad episode for Rose unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, I always like the Rose and Pete dynamic, and it’s fine here as well. The issue is that this episode doesn’t do anything that ‘Father’s Day’ didn’t already do better. Also the fact that Rose has another story where she decides she’s going to talk to her Dad, despite the Doctor telling her she can’t because it’s too dangerous is not only repetitive, but a little dumb. The last time Rose did this she nearly ended the world. I admit there’s no such threat this time, but she doesn’t know this. In fact I’m not sure what was so dangerous about her talking to her Dad here. She also has a small exchange with the Doctor where she acts jealous because he talked to another female character. One of the other servers at the party tells the Doctor that the President of Great Britain is in attendance and Rose gets all catty because the Doctor talked to a woman who wasn’t her. I really dislike the jealous Rose we get for a lot of this season.

All that’s left to talk about really is the Cybermen. I’m not sure how I feel about these Cybermen honestly. Taken on their own I think they’re fine. The design is sleek and they look intimidating. But, they don’t really feel like CyberMEN, they just feel like robots to me. They don’t have a huge amount of personality beyond being robot killing machines, so when compared to many of the classic Cybermen stories, the Cybermen here feel different and for me at least, less interesting. I also don’t like that these Cybermen have their own catchphrase of “Delete”, just like the Daleks “Exterminate!” catchphrase. It’s not a particularly good catchphrase, but also it makes me compare them to the Daleks, and it’s not a flattering comparison for these Cybermen.