“Cyberwoman” review

I’ve finally watched Cyberwoman. That was so badly written and poorly put together to the extent of abject hilarity.

So Ianto somehow managed to conceal a partly converted lover of his within the basement of Torchwood itself. Are these people always this moronic and hopeless as to allow this to slip past them? Was there never any apparent sign of such an instigation taking place beforehand?

And why the fuck is her design so exposed? Even if she was partly converted, why in the midst of conversion would they not conceal the torso and the more vulnerable parts of the body? And why does she still have tits? I always presumed the original process of Cyber conversion was to completely change and distort the human physiognomy and re-arrange it to suit the uniformity of the Cybermen (even NuWho stuck to this “We think the same. We are uniform...Cybermen will remove sex, colour...creed”), so why would they be distinguished by sexual features? Did Chibnall just feel obliged to insert these elements arbitrarily for a more idiotic audience? And why does Ianto keep it a secret anyway? Surely he’s well aware that someone else involved with the Torchwood team might have the knowledge to help her out? Yes, Jack does later say that a reversal is impossible, but Ianto doesn’t know that yet.

Wow- she breaks out and kills the guy without any restraint, only to subsequently chase the Torchwood team around in the most redundant way possible (with a shoehorned pterodactyl for good measure). Jack decides to hold Ianto at gunpoint due to his reluctance to kill her, and it must be said that his melodramatic responses throughout the episode are hilariously awful. In the midst of this bullshit, Owen decides to have sex with Gwen whilst hiding from Lisa for absolutely no reason whatsoever (the fuckwit is on the brink of being massacred- his adrenaline response will be to hide himself away- this makes no fucking sense whatsoever), followed by the utterly stupid response “Well, you weren’t exactly struggling”. What a prize twat. Such a scenario edited alongside Jack’s intimate kissing of Ianto makes for a truly painful viewing experience.

Prior to Ianto returning to the base and uncovering Lisa’s body (followed by a laughably overplayed reaction that had me laughing my arse off), the pizza girl arrives and is killed by Lisa, only for Lisa to transfer her brain into the girl’s body. I suppose Chibnall had to find some purpose for the Pizza outlet amidst their inexplicable internal knowledge of a secret organisation like Torchwood. It must be said that the editing of the scene is as disjointed as to showcase Ianto’s arrival almost in conjunction with that of the pizza girl, making the flow of events appear incredibly choppy to the point where the transference could have only taken place within mere seconds. That aside, how the hell was the process successful within this space of time when the physical conversion process itself overtly failed previously? Surely they could have tried this long beforehand with a suitable donor if they planned on doing it at all? Fuck me- none of this makes any sense. It’s incomprehensible.

The Pizza girl attempts to sway Ianto by recounting one of their past experiences, which would have been poignant to some degree were it not for Ianto continuously reacting melodramatically amidst the girl telling him about a dog pissing on their tent once. It’s just hysterical, yet Chibnall clearly views this as some sort of crushingly emotional drama. Amidst all this, he shoots her several times, and the episode comes to an end.

Who the hell approved of this absolute bloody mess? Rob, you were too generous in comparing this to Timelash. At least Timelash wasn’t laden with awful mawkish melodrama and made some semblance of sense even if it was very poorly made and acted. This episode was a masterclass in inept television, and a testament to Chibnall’s utter emotional and logical vacuity as a writer.

I’m also curious to ask: Does Torchwood get even more inept than this in future?

Bernard Marx wrote:I’m also curious to ask: Does Torchwood get even more inept than this in future?

Great review. I agree with all of that. Cyberwoman also marked a ghastly trend where the Feminist Fitzroy crowd reimagine monsters, robots, asexual villains and even objects into being wank fantasies.

After Cyber Boobs, we get the Titlurian the Tardis that calls itself sexy, and the ultimate abomination the oversexed Mary Poppins Master, Missy.

All of these characters aren't just overly sexualised, they are written as embarassing teenage male fantasies as well.

The Cyberwoman's whole thing is she wants to be with her boyfriend forever, Missy just wants the Doctors big D, the TARDIS can't keep her hands off the Doctor, whilst Vastra gets he hot ninja girlfriend in tight leather (who the Doctor mimes an erecton over) to pose for lesbian paintings.

It's hlarious that the feminist, right on crowd write the most pathetic female characters.

Also yes Torchwood does get worse. Well till you get to the cannibals episode. If you think Owen and Gwen are painful now, well wait till Owen utters the cringiest line in the history of the franchise.

Its a shame as Burn Gorman is a great actor, and a really nice guy. I met him at a comic con, but Owen was a terrible character. Its like Michelle Gomez all over again, they waste a good actor to live out their own pervy fantasies.

burrunjor wrote:

Bernard Marx wrote:I’m also curious to ask: Does Torchwood get even more inept than this in future?

Great review. I agree with all of that. Cyberwoman also marked a ghastly trend where the Feminist Fitzroy crowd reimagine monsters, robots, asexual villains and even objects into being wank fantasies.

After Cyber Boobs, we get the Titlurian the Tardis that calls itself sexy, and the ultimate abomination the oversexed Mary Poppins Master, Missy.

All of these characters aren't just overly sexualised, they are written as embarassing teenage male fantasies as well.

The Cyberwoman's whole thing is she wants to be with her boyfriend forever, Missy just wants the Doctors big D, the TARDIS can't keep her hands off the Doctor, whilst Vastra gets he hot ninja girlfriend in tight leather (who the Doctor mimes an erecton over) to pose for lesbian paintings.

It's hlarious that the feminist, right on crowd write the most pathetic female characters.

Also yes Torchwood does get worse. Well till you get to the cannibals episode. If you think Owen and Gwen are painful now, well wait till Owen utters the cringiest line in the history of the franchise.

Its a shame as Burn Gorman is a great actor, and a really nice guy. I met him at a comic con, but Owen was a terrible character. Its like Michelle Gomez all over again, they waste a good actor to live out their own pervy fantasies.

Agreed with all of the above. As I said on my Partners in Crime thread, the idea that the likes of RTD, Moffat, Chibnall etc write good female characters is utterly laughable considering how caricatured they all are. And I agree about Burn Gorman- a very fine actor forced to deliver shite dialogue and play an utterly awful character. I do not look forward to what comes later in this series.

Awful for near all the reasons you listed.

But on top of that I just found it utterly mean-spirited. Shock and awe, or indeed shock and shock seems to be all the story has going for it.

Did the story really need that creepy professor to cop a feel of Lisa like some sick reprobate?

Did the story have to rub in the absurdity of them having a pizza delivery service by killing the delivery girl off?

Why exactly does Ianto have to be tasked with killing his Cybernized ex? And the final confrontation itself is weird. The girl talks like she's still Yvonne. Still has humanity to her. Suggesting she either wasn't fully Cybernized or has been cured. Or that Chibnall didn't even read through his own bloody script properly.

And then Torchwood just executes her, despite her being unarmed and despite it being possible to imprison her in her much more frail form.

It was pretty much as unpardonably cynical and nasty as the worst of JNT and Saward. So much for RTD 'reforming' the tainted franchise, I guess....

Bernard Marx wrote:So Ianto somehow managed to conceal a partly converted lover of his within the basement of Torchwood itself. Are these people always this moronic and hopeless as to allow this to slip past them? Was there never any apparent sign of such an instigation taking place beforehand?

And why the fuck is her design so exposed? Even if she was partly converted, why in the midst of conversion would they not conceal the torso and the more vulnerable parts of the body? And why does she still have tits? 

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Laughing my fucking arse off here!
Lol, it's complete stupidity on overload!

I can see the brainstorming meeting now, "Hey, let's have a classic series monster like the Cybermen", "But it's meant to be an adult series", "Well let's have a Cyberwoman with tits, sex it up a bit!", "Hell yeah, that sounds much better!"

Bernard Marx wrote:Who the hell approved of this absolute bloody mess? Rob, you were too generous in comparing this to Timelash. At least Timelash wasn’t laden with awful mawkish melodrama and made some semblance of sense even if it was very poorly made and acted. This episode was a masterclass in inept television, and a testament to Chibnall’s utter emotional and logical vacuity as a writer.

Fantastic review, the incredulity at the utter dumbtardness on display is conveyed well. Ha ha ha ha. I think I like it because it's just so incredibly fucking stupid to be true, Ianto's over-emoting over his cherished Lisa has me in stitches each time I watch this rubbish. I have literally ZERO sympathies for ANY of the inept moronic characters in Torchwood. It is admittedly car-crash tv.

I do think however the worst Torchwood episodes are those which are tediously dull rather than inherently dumb.

Oh, the cannibals episode is again incredibly dumb, but has it's moments too.

Bernard Marx wrote:I’m also curious to ask: Does Torchwood get even more inept than this in future?

The next one is funnily enough one of the better episodes of Torchwood (written by PJ Hammond of Sapphire and Steel), then we're back to complete dumbness again with Chinballs and the cannibals episode.

Rob Filth wrote:

Bernard Marx wrote:I’m also curious to ask: Does Torchwood get even more inept than this in future?

The next one is funnily enough one of the better episodes of Torchwood (written by PJ Hammond of Sapphire and Steel), then we're back to complete dumbness again with Chinballs and the cannibals episode.

I’m glad you found my review amusing. There really is so much wrong with that episode- there’s probably loads of other shite aspects that I forgot to cover or just didn’t notice altogether.

I’ll bare that in mind. Also, I must say, I find Owen as a character incredibly annoying at best and decidedly creepy at worst.

Tanmann wrote:Awful for near all the reasons you listed.

But on top of that I just found it utterly mean-spirited. Shock and awe, or indeed shock and shock seems to be all the story has going for it.

Did the story really need that creepy professor to cop a feel of Lisa like some sick reprobate?

Did the story have to rub in the absurdity of them having a pizza delivery service by killing the delivery girl off?

Why exactly does Ianto have to be tasked with killing his Cybernized ex? And the final confrontation itself is weird. The girl talks like she's still Yvonne. Still has humanity to her. Suggesting she either wasn't fully Cybernized or has been cured. Or that Chibnall didn't even read through his own bloody script properly.

And then Torchwood just executes her, despite her being unarmed and despite it being possible to imprison her in her much more frail form.

It was pretty much as unpardonably cynical and nasty as the worst of JNT and Saward. So much for RTD 'reforming' the tainted franchise, I guess....

Thanks for picking up on those details. As I’ve already said, there is so much wrong with that script that one would have to write a dissertation to cover it all. It’s such a clusterfuck on Chibnall’s part, and far from his last.

Cyberwoman - Probably the worst Doctor Who/Doctor Who related thing ever created.

And I'm including Dimensions in time, a fix with the Sontarans and the birth of Russell T Davies.

Bernard Marx wrote:I’m glad you found my review amusing. There really is so much wrong with that episode- there’s probably loads of other shite aspects that I forgot to cover or just didn’t notice altogether.

I’ll bare that in mind. Also, I must say, I find Owen as a character incredibly annoying at best and decidedly creepy at worst.

Ha ha, yeah Torchwood is an abject lesson is wrongness. On first viewing I was gobsmacked given the potential premise of such series(as I say, Caballistics Inc is how to do an ex-Govt secret alien/paranormal busting outfit in an adult way right) just how they could get it so repeatedly wrong?

Owen gets worse before he gets better, he has a few "redemption" stories in a hamfisted attempt to make his rape-monkey-faced character more sympathetic, but by then most people couldn't give a shit. How can anyone possibly empathise with such a cluelessly inept bunch of utter base-instinct thicko moron characters?

Loads of people claimed Series 2 was better after loads of valid criticisms levelled at Series 1 but personally I detected zero improvement at all. It was still fucking dumb shit written by largely clueless hacks.

Burrunjor wrote:
Great review. I agree with all of that. Cyberwoman also marked a ghastly trend where the Feminist Fitzroy crowd reimagine monsters, robots, asexual villains and even objects into being wank fantasies.

After Cyber Boobs, we get the Titlurian the Tardis that calls itself sexy, and the ultimate abomination the oversexed Mary Poppins Master, Missy.

All of these characters aren't just overly sexualised, they are written as embarassing teenage male fantasies as well.

The Cyberwoman's whole thing is she wants to be with her boyfriend forever, Missy just wants the Doctors big D, the TARDIS can't keep her hands off the Doctor, whilst Vastra gets he hot ninja girlfriend in tight leather (who the Doctor mimes an erecton over) to pose for lesbian paintings.

It's hlarious that the feminist, right on crowd write the most pathetic female characters.

Isn't it just a tad creepy and inappropriate, also? And the fuckers that wrote this shit make out that they're all progressive and "woke" and into feminism. Total hypocrites...

Bernard Marx wrote:pterodactyl

Fucking hell. Talk about a visual non-sequitur.

"How can we make a cyberman story better? I know, a pterodactyl!" Typical Davies logic...

Loathe as I am to defend Davies, apparently he had little to do with the showrunning of series 1 of Torchwood.

It was basically all Chinballs, baby.

Explains a lot doesn't it...


Was more hands on with season 2 though. Which still looks shit.

Well yeah, but let's face it; Chibnall is a total unthinking adherent to the Davies "House-style". Davies set the template and tone for the bloody thing, without him it wouldn't even have existed. Anyway, bollocks to the pair of them...

Ah the days when I though swearing and cybertits made a show more mature, and that this show was good...

God I was a stupid little c@~t back then wasn't I.

UncleDeadly wrote:

Burrunjor wrote:
Great review. I agree with all of that. Cyberwoman also marked a ghastly trend where the Feminist Fitzroy crowd reimagine monsters, robots, asexual villains and even objects into being wank fantasies.

After Cyber Boobs, we get the Titlurian the Tardis that calls itself sexy, and the ultimate abomination the oversexed Mary Poppins Master, Missy.

All of these characters aren't just overly sexualised, they are written as embarassing teenage male fantasies as well.

The Cyberwoman's whole thing is she wants to be with her boyfriend forever, Missy just wants the Doctors big D, the TARDIS can't keep her hands off the Doctor, whilst Vastra gets he hot ninja girlfriend in tight leather (who the Doctor mimes an erecton over) to pose for lesbian paintings.

It's hlarious that the feminist, right on crowd write the most pathetic female characters.

Isn't it just a tad creepy and inappropriate, also? And the fuckers that wrote this shit make out that they're all progressive and "woke" and into feminism. Total hypocrites...

Absolutely. Most celebrity feminists are hypocrites though as we all know.

I always remember a quote from Terry Nation where he says that he loved writing DW as he could come up with his own planet. He ran through all these fantastical things like the rocks having eyes, the trees being alive etc.

Compare that with Mofftwat on DW confidential saying that the Empty Child is all about sex, because the Doctor wants to bang Rose, and the cringey lines about dancing "You go out and you dance!" (God the delivery of that was almost as painful as "I CAN DANCE AGAIN)

Then there is also Mofftwat saying Jack and the Doctor arguing about the sonic gun and screwdriver is a metaphor for them arguing whose dick is bigger.

You get an idea of why one show was more mature. Of course too morons New Who is more mature because its obsessed with sex.

Burrunjor wrote:Compare that with Mofftwat on DW confidential saying that the Empty Child is all about sex, because the Doctor wants to bang Rose, and the cringey lines about dancing "You go out and you dance!" (God the delivery of that was almost as painful as "I CAN DANCE AGAIN)

Then there is also Mofftwat saying Jack and the Doctor arguing about the sonic gun and screwdriver is a metaphor for them arguing whose dick is bigger.

So edifying, isn't it? In nuwho, allegory loses to phallegory every time.

Torchwood, season 1 in particular, is the early Pertwee era of Classic Who with a complete misunderstanding of what 'adult' sci fi is.

Mott1 wrote:Torchwood, season 1 in particular, is the early Pertwee era of Classic Who with a complete misunderstanding of what 'adult' sci fi is.

It was also desperately trying to be Xena and Angel too, but lacking in both areas that made those shows brilliant.

On the one hand it's drama was laughable, like Ianto crying, compare that to the Callisto episodes of Xena, or Doyle's death in Angel.

On the other the way it was filmed, the episodes themselves, the setting was so fucking dreary, it couldn't do the campy episodes well like Xena and Angel either.

What we were left with was a show too stupid to be serious, and too miserable to be a camp classic.

Had it not been for its connection to DW, then I'd say Torchwood would be completely forgotten about.

I think I actually saw the first half of Torchwood series 1 before series 2 of New Who.
It was really my first real sinking feeling that the Emperor might have no clothes.