Doctor Who: Season 12, Episode 9 – “Ascension of the Cybermen: Part 1” (2020)

Premise spoilers for this episode, which also gives nods to last week’s “The Haunting of Villa Diodati.”

The first part of the season finale reads a little to me like the first part of the season premiere: some interesting threads and some good character moments hampered by too much plot messiness, but the ending has my excited for next week’s conclusion. I loved “Spyfall: Part 2,” so hopefully Chibnall will pull off the same trick and the season finale will be great.

The Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan head to a war-torn ruin near the end of the Cyber Wars in search of the Lone Cyberman, a Cyberman caught halfway between human and conversion with human emotions fueling the zealotry of his deadly rampage. They meet and attempt to help a small group of human survivors while the Doctor works to figure out the Lone Cyberman’s ultimate aim and stop him.

Honestly, once I hit on the “Spyfall: Part One” comparison, I couldn’t stop seeing it. There’s a lot of cool, intriguing stuff here. The Lone Cyberman is a neat concept, and I’m interested to see where the show goes with it. While it’s a lighter episode for Ryan, both Yaz and Graham make a strong showing, having to fend for themselves a bit as they help the survivors, and all three companions have some good lines/moments. We visit an interesting new locale, and there are some nice if perplexing interludes in what looks like maybe early(-ish?)-20^th-century Ireland. The Doctor gets some fun bits, my favorite being her ramble down memory lane while she hotwires a spaceship.

But again, like “Spyfall: Part One,” there’s an unfortunate amount of flab and inconsistencies too. Given the setup of the episode (that the Cyber Wars have drive Cybermen and humans alike to near extinction,) it doesn’t make sense that the Cybermen are so trigger-happy with our heroes and the human survivors – surely their interest in their own continued survival would prompt them to capture/convert rather than shoot? And while I like a number of the different threads, they don’t gel together at this point. Not even in an “I wonder how this is all going to fit together!” sense, more like a “good luck getting all this to fit together!” sense. Now, maybe it’ll come together magnificently next week, and I’ll eat my words. I hope it does. But for now, this aspect of the episode has me scratching my head, not waiting with bated breath to find out what happens next. Finally, it’s not an especially strong episode for the Doctor. It’s one where she doesn’t get to feel particularly effectual for much of the time, and those episodes always get me feeling a little nervous.

Yet, there’s that ending, kicking my anticipation for the finale into high gear. Maybe Chibnall is a bit like Suzanne Collins. Sometimes the Hunger Games books were great, sometimes not so much, but goodness gracious, that woman knows her way around a cliffhanger. I had to start actively choosing to stop reading those books when I had a page or two left in a chapter, because I knew that the final paragraph would send me scrambling to read on and find out what happened next. Bring on the conclusion to this season!