MR 017: Sword of Orion

First use of the Cybermen... yaaaayyyyy..... Yeah, this one is fairly procedural. If you've ever seen a classic who Cyberman story, you've seen this. It's like Apocalypse Element and Genocide Machine, just standard Dalek faire that I checked out of. No surprise that Nick Briggs wrote both this and Mutant Phase, which was also pretty boring.

The Doctor and Charley go to a space station bazaar, which is definitely the most interesting sequence in the whole story... only to accidentally go onto a scrap ship that runs into a Cyberman ship. It turns out the captain of the scrap ship is a double agent in the Orion war between the humans and androids, who are trying to be treated as equals. The captain is secretly an android in disguise, looking to steal Cyberman conversion secrets to convert humans they capture in war.

It's not as interesting as it sounds. All of that comes out in the last twenty minutes. The rest of it is just by the books. There's a cybermat infiltrator and then there's a mutiny against the captain and then the Cybermen convert and mind control people ect ect ect. The bits that would make for an interesting story are not until the end, but by that point we no longer care.

It's a shame too because the idea of an android war is interesting. Like if Data from Star Trek inspired a revolution rather than tried to work legally for android rights. Ah well.

I do like seeing Charley adapting so well and so immediately to travel, though. Charley is from the early 20th century and here she is on a space station and space ship and she rides in a hovercar and she doesn't miss a beat. She adapts incredibly well, even arguing for android rights for a hot minute at the end. That's a great characterization for her as this person who has such a wanderlust that she's willing to just accept whatever. That's why we love her.