Doctor Who (TV Series) Silver Nemesis: Part Two (1988) User Reviews

It's a tarnished tankard with a hole in the bottom.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 5/10 · 9 March 2020]

Everyone wants to gain possession of the comet, and make use of its powers. Lady Painfort is in possession of an impossible amount of knowledge.

I'll start with the positive, Fiona Walker, she is absolutely terrific, I love the character of Lady Painfort, she's intriguing, smart and slightly wild, the stars I've awarded are all pretty much for her. The scene with the two thugs assuming Lady Painfort and Richard are Social Workers is very funny.

The Cybermen..... They are just awful here, it's one of their weakest stories, their presence is almost meaningless, it could have been any race in their place, compare this to Earthshock, they are clunky and generally dull, the dialogue is awful.

No manner of explosions can mask the lack of quality. 5/10.

An uneventful runaround.

[poolandrews · 5/10 · 29 February 2008]

Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis: Part Two starts as the Cybermen, Lady Pienforte (Fiona Walker) & Richard (Gerard Murphy) along with De Flores (Anton Diffring) & his Fourth Reich soldiers battle it out over the Nemesis meteorite containing the Validium statue, in the confusion the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) & Ace (Sophie Aldred) manage to steal the Validium bow & escape in the TARDIS. Lady Pienforte still has the Validium arrow & retreats, thinking he still has the Validium bow De Flores & his men retreat leaving the Cybermen with the Validium statue. Individually they are useless on their own but when combined will give the owner the power of the Validium, a weapon created by Rassilon & Omega as the ultimate defence for Gallifrey, which side will gain possession of all three components first?

Episode 9 from season 25 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during November 1988, directed by Chris Clough the reasonable build up from Part One has been more or less dumped & ignored in favour of an aimless wander around the English countryside. The script by Kevin Clarke has suddenly fallen apart even though it wasn't great to start with, for instance there is never any reason given for the two Cybermen controlled men at the start of Part One to open fire on the Doctor & Ace. Once the Cyberleader appears at the start of Part Two he says that the Doctor has changed appearance since they last met (Colin Baker in Attack of the Cybermen (1985)) so how did the two men know he was the Doctor? The Cybermen know nothing of Ace either. If the Cybermen were controlling them they wouldn't have known what the Doctor looked like why did they order them to kill him? Also what about those three police officers knocked out by the Cybermen gas? As soon as the police headquarters stopped hearing from them the place would have been swarming with cops. Then there's the bit when the Doctor steals the Validium bow from De Flores, I'm not being funny here but wouldn't De Flores have at least checked it's case to make sure it was still there? I also have to mention the scenes with the two thugs who try to rob Lady Pienforte, they are utterly hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Finally one has to mention Lady Pienforte's gold tipped arrows, as everyone knows (look it up on Wikipedia) pure gold is one of the softest metals & on it's own is almost useless for any purpose so unless Lady Pienforte was able to fire the arrows at her target from point blank range they would have been useless & would barely cause a scratch. The story really stagnates here in Part Two, at the very start there's a big battle between Lady Pienforte, the Fourth Reich & the Cybermen which goes nowhere as they all retreat & then the rest of the episode is spent going round in circles with the various parties trying to get hold of the three Validium pieces they need.

Large parts of Silver Nemesis was filmed at the Greenwich Gas Works in London which was subsequently torn down in the 1990's & the much maligned Millennium Dome was built there, for anyone who complains that the Millennium Dome was a waste of money I urge you to go & watch Silver Nemesis & look at what a sh*thole it was before! There's a continuity error in Silver Nemesis in regard to the original transmission order of season twenty five, in this episode Ace blows her backpack up yet it features in the next story The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988) because that was filmed first & was initially intended to be shown first as well but the two stories were switched around. The special effects have been reasonable so far, while not up to todays CGI computer masterpieces they ain't too bad actually considering the tight BBC budget.

Silver Nemesis: Part Two is a largely uneventful runaround where three individual parties just stand around a lot doing nothing in particular. A pretty forgettable episode if the truth be told.

Silver Nemesis: Part Two

[Prismark10 · 7/10 · 21 December 2022]

All that glitters is not always gold. In the case of the shimmering Cybermen that have newly arrived.

Lady Peinforte has been prepared for them. Gold tipped arrows dipped in poison. How convenient that one arrow goes astray and lands near De Flores.

Everyone is after various components relating to the comet and the tomb of Lady Peinforte. The Doctor tells Ace that every time the comet arrives in its 25 year cycle, it brings disaster.

By the second episode, the story is becoming too derivative of Remembrance Of The Daleks. That was shown just a few weeks earlier during the same season.

There is still a lot of energy, more hints of a darker doctor, he makes a few more chess moves and gives the impression that he knows a lot more going on.

Lady Peinforte and Richard Maynarde provide some humour. Bizarrely getting mistaken as social workers by two skinheads.

It is still a lot better than episodes dished up in the previous two seasons.