Nightmare in Silver Review

This is probably my favorite Cyberman story. I generally don't like the Cybermen, I don't like anything where humans or human society becomes "more perfect," but this episode was good.

It appears that the Cybermen have never actually fully upgraded their software. They've never done a full rewrite of their operating system, they've just stuck on a series of patches. The fact that the Cyberplanner fixed the gold bug probably means that we're never going to see that trick used again. That's too bad, because I wanted to see someone use a makeshift glitter gun like what was mentioned in Revenge of the Cybermen.

I want to know what the 0.238% of the Doctor's brain that neither of them could control was. The Doctor initiated a complete mental block against the Cyberplanner, but was unable to block that tiny portion of the brain. It was probably either some low-level processing section, like the brain stem, or some special Time Lord thing with some unique purpose.

The Cyberplanner's comment that "he's had some cowboys in here" in reference to the Doctor makes it seem like the Doctor has undergone some sort of brain scan. Now, seeing as this was followed by a bit about "ten complete rejects", that could be referencing all the previous regenerations that have inhabited his mind, or it could be ten different mind probes that he's forced out. If it was the mind probes, I just want to know what happened to the 11th (was it successful?). This may be connected to the 0.238%, they could have stuck something into him that he couldn't control.

I really don't like just pointlessly reinventing the Doctor's enemies. I feel like the only reason the writers upgraded the Daleks and Cybermen was so that Matt Smith could have a new version. I suppose there is a point in that they don't want the bad guys to get too predictable, because that's when the ratings plummet. The problem with doing it with the Cybermen, is that they don't have time travel technology, but the writers are probably going to ignore that and put the Cybermen in the 21st century in the next episode. Without time travel, it's going to take some sort of extraordinary plot device to get the Cybermen back in time. Either that, or they're just going to put the Cybermen back in time with no explanation. Either of those is going to subtract from the story because the viewer is going to be distracted by these elements. The only other solutions are either limit all the stories to the distant future (after Nightmare) or give the Cybermen time travel capability.