Friday, 8 April 2011

Doctor Who Of The Day - The Pandorica Opens


In The Pandorica Opens, the disembodied Cyberman head tells Amy, You will be assimilated. Modern viewers may think this a line borrowed from the Borg, it is really a line from The Tenth Planet.

5 Comments:

liminalD said...

The Borg were a rip-off of the Cybermen anyway, though arguably better executed, as the Cybermen were always portrayed a bit inconsistently.

Moffat's very brief treatment of the Cybermen in 'The Pandorica Opens' did more to make them scary again than anything in the last six years... the headless cyberman was one of the absolute highlights of Series 5 for me (I've always liked the Cybermen better than all the other recurring monsters and villains - they have so much body-horror potential).

Can't wait to see what we get next from them ;)

MrGrumpy said...

Agreed.
In recent years (latter parts of classic series included) they have been little more than blokes in stompy boots standing around.
What a let down the battle of Canary Wharf was! No doubt a case of ambition let down by budget, but we wanted a full on battle between Daleks and Cybermen.
Instead, we got some CGI duplicated shots of half a dozen cybermen menacing a street in Bridgend, or taking a stroll down the avenues in front of the Taj Mahal.
Millions of Daleks having a relaxing fly around.
Cybermen were at their scariest when they were insidious and manipulative, rather than marching morons.

The dart that shot Amy would (in another storyline) have infused her with Borg-like nanobots which transformed her from the inside out.
Classic Dr Who scare fodder: 'they turn you into something else'
The Doctor Who games had a human/cyberman zombie hybrid lurching about. How I'd like to see some of that in the show next year!

10thPlanet said...

I quite liked "The Age of Steel". There were some properly horrifying moments in that, but itbws all meant to be built upon, not forgotten in episodes like "The Next Doctor", which probably would've been better off without the stinky blokes.

liminalD said...

I do like 'The Next Doctor', mostly for Mercy Hartigan's red dress and innuendos ;)

I agree with MrGrumpy anout the Cybermen in the Adventure Game - that actually was pretty cool - and I liked that those were 'our' (ie: Mondas) Cybermen, complete with Cybermats, though I'm not so keen on the new logo - it'll be interesting to see if future shows use that design or stick with the alternate universe Cybers ;)

And yeah, 10thplanet, I wish the Cyber Controller would make another appearance - not John Lumic, necessarily, but another Cybercontroller with glowing eyes and a visible brain (it was AWESOME!!!)

10thPlanet said...

I wrote my response on my iPod, and I'm only now realizing how wrong it was! "The stinky blokes"? I guess my iPod doesn't know what "stompy" means.