Monday, October 19, 2009

4D3 - Revenge of the Cybermen 3



Finally we get to the highlight of this story - Cybermen walking menacing through the caves of Wookey Hole, wasting Vogans with their uber-cool head guns. Many people have criticized the appearance of the Cybermen in this story, mostly because of the fact that they have flares on their trousers (something that the Cybus Cybermen of the new series seem to have borrowed for their own look).

I'm still a fan of this look, to be fair. This being their first appearance in colour (barring the brief, CSO-fringe marred, unfastened helmet appearance of one in Carnival of Monsters), they look as bright and shiny silver as any Cybermen ever have before. Their chest units are recycled yet again from the costumes made originally for The Moonbase, and their head design, only seen in this story, was popular enough to be used again in 2005's Dalek. The gun where their "lamp" once was is another one-off aspect of the Cybermen's costume, but one that is rather effective.

These Cybermen also set the standard for what was to come in the series. A new rank of Cyberleader was introduced, completed with black painted headgear, a trend that would continue throughout the rest of the classic series run. Another recurring characteristic of the Cybermen that started in this story was the fact that the voices were now provided by the actors in the costumes as opposed to voice artistes positioned off camera, which is how the Cyber-voices were portrayed during the 1960s. For the various Cybermen drones, this new technique works well. For the Cyberleader, though, well...

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