A near perfect cyberman story for me.

In my option, there's three core elements that make the cybermen great, and by extention are needed for a great cyberman story:
1. Conversion: The threat of conversion is extremely important. If you're not terrified of conversion, might as well be a robot.
2. Inevitability: The cybermen should be able to come from anywhere, a 'natural' next step in human evolution.
3. Unstoppable: The cybermen can be beaten, they can be defeated, but they can never be vanquished. Going back to point one, they should be almost a fact of the universe.

Supremacy of the Cybermen has all three of these in spades.

Conversion is a major factor in all four of the split stories we're presented with here: Nine watching Rose being converted and killing Jack, Ten having to fight to prevent the cybermen from seizing a cloning factory which would let them infinitely reproduce, Eleven getting pseudo-converted himself, and of course Twelve seeing Gallifrey having been converted.

Inevitability is less of a factor here, the cybermen already existing in all the timelines we see, but there's something to be said for their conversion of other species, the seed being planted that not only could humanity succumb to this, but as could the Silurians.

And of course, how Unstoppable they are.

Nine in an apocalyptic London as the Cybermen have taken over, Ten fighting for his life, siding with the sontarans, being forced into an actual war, and succumbing to his worse impulses, Eleven watching as the Cybermen have taken over from the dawn of life on earth, failing to prevent them from lauching out into the stars, and Twelve, at the head of it all, seeing how it was all done, watching the conquest of time from where it's begun.

The cybermen presented here truly are unstoppable, and I adore it.

Each Doctor's story takes a different route in showing the attempts to stop the cybermen, and each doctor but one fails. The scale of the story is magnificent, and I think the fact that the doctors never end up meeting adds a lot to that scale as well.

The only thing keeping me from rating this a 10/10 is the ending. Some interesting designs for a cyber controller and potential far future cybermen is unfortunately not enough to distract from the fact that the story concludes with a big old reset button. On the one hand it did kind of have to, with how large scale it is, but the fact there's no consequences for it whatsoever does leave you somewhat unsatisfied.

That said, every single moment before that point works.

Another couple of time jumps here, though these ones I feel have enough attention drawn to them that they do really work, and on top of that this story has some really interesting ideas.

The opening where the daleks are seemingly being driven back, with our characters realising that there's more to it than they're letting on, and that there's some connection to project infinity.

Seeing what Alby's become now, not only because of Suzan's death, but because of the little he does know about project infinity.

The mental link that the daleks used from last episode being used again here is neat, I especially like the way that it's used tactically, it makes sense for all dalek positions to be put through the pathweb for tactical reasons, so our characters using that to their advantage is great, and gives a solid explanation as to why they're not all just immediately killed.

And of course, the reveal of project infinity itself. Multiverse stories are all the rage now, but I can appreciate the fact that they weren't as much when this released, so it doesn't fall into the tropiness that can often be associated with them. The fact they're not wanting to use it to pull resources from another universe to destroy the daleks, but instead wanting to just see what they did and how they can replicate that is a small thing, but I think adds a little touch of realism to it which I appreciate.

Then the ending, out heroes all being captured, the reveal that Susan isn't dead but is one of many ready to be turned into a dalek, the same thing that's going to happen to our heroes, and the parallel daleks seemingly being somewhat heroic? it's an interesting place to end, setting things up for the next season.

Unfortunately however this falls into one of the same pitfalls its three predecessors did, that being that it's just a bit too long. At 74 minutes, you get the impression that at least 20 minutes could easily have been shaved off, bringing more attention to the actual meat of the story rather than the many long discussions that surround it. I'm definitely not one to complain about taking a moment to talk (see my 11/Valarie reviews), but here it does feel like it drags at times, which unfortunately brings the story down somewhat

Meh.

I mean like, that was fine, but there's not really anything to hook you. You'd think that the slavers might react to another person of colour in a place where they're 'gathering slaves', but Tara's presence, at least for now, seems to be mostly there for Rose to get jealous at.

Jack and Rose's story in this issue seems to just be even more setup fro future events, which promises to be interesting, but historically hasn't been. So the main thing to really focus on here is Tara and Nine's story which is... fine.

The idea of mer-creatures helping slaves because they were also slaves, and then their slavers coming back to help them is neat, but it's just a bit too fast paced, I think a little less action, a little more talking would do this story a world of good, maybe another issue to work with?

As it is, this story is fine, nothing horrible, but nothing to write home about at all.

There's a lot to like about this story, a Brig era unit story involving a villain doing some political scheming. Harry, Benton, The Brig, references to the UNIT dating controversy and UNIT's change of name in the revival. Giant Monsters!

But overall, I don't know, this story felt somewhat forgettable, and the connections back to the previous story kind of felt tacked on. In fact one of the references to said story doesn't make sense in context The Doctor saying they were sent here thanks to Rose's boyfriend an her remarking that "he's not my boyfriend", even though part of the point of that story was that Rose and Jack weren't meant to know that Mickey was there.

The teases for the next story, a new companion and Jack's backstory, seem interesting... but that's the last two pages, and cant' really give it credit for that.

So yeah, overall a story that I did really enjoy, but I think I think I should've enjoyed more than I did.

More actual location shooting, hooray!

The giant arrows on screen to point to the obvious CGI is hillarious, and the continued use of the same shots is just really funny.

There's an attempt to add a sense of danger talking about drugs, protitution, and murder, but it's all talked about in Bagg's same monotone voice. The same monotone voice that persists when he's been captured, and his physical acting is just as bad, if not worse. The moment where he says 'Josh has invited me to his gaff, presumably to do drugs' mad me laughing out loud.

There's also just a lot here that doesn't make sense, why does 'Josh' let Giles keep his camera in prison, why does he need Giles' permission to take his form, also just that entire conversation is unintentionally hillarious, and the way that 'Josh' just lets him leave/?!??!!!

ANOTHER ACTOR?!?!?!?

Also links to The Stranger are interesting, I guess I'd maybe get more out of it having watched more of The Stranger... Then again, other Case Files with links back to BBV products just made me wish I was watching those instead.

The actress unfortunately also has extremely flat line readings, which is even more of a shame here. Psychic characters are really interesting and there's a lot of ways you could imagine them going about the world differently, imbuing the performance with some of that.

The way her powers work, and how PROBE hides her away for now are also both just really unclear. Saying she's somehow letting other things in, and implying that she's seen a future where Giles dies and then just not expanding on either of those?? I just don't understand what this one was going for.

"You may remember" HUH? No I do not??

The inconsistent footage/photo quality is a constant of PROBE, but I think is especially notable here. No wonder they put weird filters on everything most of the time.

Baggs films himself while walking the same way older parents did over the pandemic, his forehead is constantly cut off the top of the shot, and sometimes his eyes are.

Again though I do have to at least credit the fact that there's location shooting and establishing shots, they're at least seeming to figure out the format a little more as time goes on, and linking this back to cyberon and the shadow people makes this more interesting than most of the case files just from that continuity standpoint.

Cyberon being a locked up alien informant is also a kind of interesting idea.

Overall though, as much as I'm singing some praises for this case file, it's still a case file, and comes with all the pitfalls the others have

On the one hand, it's nice to get another of these that isn't just Baggs talking to camera, back against a wall. Hell, we even get some establishing shots.

On the other..... This is so clearly just so his holiday was a tax write-off.

This story isn't especially more interesting than any of the previous case files, there's maybe some interesting ideas in there but only if you spend time thinking about them, and Baggs just doesn't seem interested in doing so. Honesty it seems he doesn't realise how interesting some things could be, almost making an interesting concept by mistake.

Haha, silly worm

I slightly struggled to follow the action at one point, the logistics of how the team disorientated me a bit and I had to reread those lines a few times to get what was happening... but honestly that kind of works for this story.

Prologue is a short, three page story that honestly does a really great job of setting the groundwork for both the PROBE team, and presumably the thematics of the things to come. The vibes here are great, the sense of mystery and intrigue do a surprisingly effective job of, well, intriguing you, making you want to know more about who these people are, what's are they doing, what are they about, etc.

And honestly, that opening paragraph has hooked me more than any other opening to a PROBE story I've experienced so far.