MR 058: The Harvest

"Oh my god.... oh my god...."
"No, just the Doctor. But hello all the same!"

"Am I going to have to suffer through another bout of you saying 'oh my god'?"
"Very probably."

It's about time that the Seventh Doctor got an original companion. All of the other three Doctors have gotten one already and are on solid trajectories with them. Indeed, the Eighth Doctor now has TWO unique companions, although we still don't know that much about C'Rizz. The Seventh has been lagging behind. He was the true loser of the first fifty main range stories, even. There were only a handfull that of Seventh Doctor stories that I really liked and most of them were mediocre at best. It felt like they didn't really know what to do with this Doctor at the beginning. Now, perhaps, we can get a solid arc going.

We begin in the near future... 2022. The world seems to be divided between three superpowers: Europe, the Americas, and China. Funny how the UK is still in Europe. Hex, our new character, is a nurse in a hospital. One of his friends has just turned up in the ER and a doctor from upstairs has come to work on him. Only Hex hasn't heard what happened since then.

He goes upstairs to try to find out what happened. The computer system doesn't have his friend's name in its file, and so he asks about him. The doctor is rude to him at first, only to be nice and tell him that his friend died whenever he realizes that Hex knew him.

Not only that, but it's his birthday. He goes to his birthday party, but it's understandably ruined by his friend being in surgery and then dying. The mysterious McShane accompanies him as he leaves, only for them to get chased by some rather large men. McShane has Hex drop her off in an industrial area, which is strange. Naturally Hex follows her... into the TARDIS.

The Doctor and Ace are investigating this hospital because they have some sort of non-terrestrial technology that they're using. The Doctor says there's a space race going on between the super powers and Europe is trying to get a leg up with this technology. I like how he says "The Chinese pretty much run the moon." Kind of wild that we thought we'd have a bunch of bases on the moon in the 2020s, but nobody really cares about it in reality.

They go into full on infiltration mode. The Doctor giving instructions to Hex and McShane in an earpiece. But it goes wrong. McShane and another doctor friend of Hex's get caught. They find out what's happening. There are cybermen here and the cybermen are trying to go back to being human. Which is very strange. There's some gore and such as we see dead bodies cut up and vivisected to get at their organs. The hospital has been covering up deaths so as to use people's bodies as organ factories. It's all very gruesome and horrific as you'd expect from the cybermen. I'm not a big fan of scenes like this, obviously, from my reviews of the Projects, Nekromanteia, and Creed of the Kromon. It definitely drags the story down, for sure, but this one is not as insufferably gorey/dark/edgy for the sake of it as those stories.

It gets to the point where the head of security wants the doctor involved in all of this to kill McShane and Hex's doctor friend. He's about to do it, willing to do it to save himself ultimately, when they're saved by Hex who kills the cyberman watching over him.

The Cyberleader who is being converted back to human wants the Doctor's help to finish the process. The Doctor is sympathetic, but then the cybermen start killing all the humans and the Doctor is like lol nope. They see humans as a threat to the process since Hex killed one of them. If one human can kill one of them, all humans are a threat. Sure. Kind of extreme logic there Cybermen. They're not exactly known for being subtle. The Doctor then learns the truth. They're not actually trying to change back to being human for the sake of it. They've learned how to adapt and not be so logical all the time and are now using this hospital as a base to conquer the Earth. ect ect

The doctor who was working with them manages to get the password to shut down all the cybermen, the cyber leader begs for the Doctor's help as he and all the other human cybermen die of organ failure, and the Doctor gets a snappy one liner: "The flesh is weak."

And then the Doctor and McShane leave while Hex runs off to join them:
"Do you know what you're getting into?"
"No even slightly. Isn't that the point?"
"Quite possibly."
Welcome to the TARDIS Mr. Hex! He is definitely charming right from the start. You get the feeling that he will do well carrying stories as a series regular. Yeah, there's a reason why I didn't say too much about this story. There's not a lot to it. It's fun when you're listening to it, but it doesn't really have much to say on its own. Just a proceedural spy thriller, which is fine. It's entertaining in the moment, but ultimately forgettable. It probably would have been more interesting if the cybermen REALLY WERE trying to change back into humans and not just immediately turning it around as invasion #45210452221. That said, I definitely hope this leads to an improvement in the Seventh Doctor's stories with a new companion because he has been STRUGGLING so far.