This episode should have been so much better than it was, especially considering Neil Gaiman was writing it. The human characters took too much of the screen time here. The easiest solution to make this episode better would have been to axe the Maitland kids - something which thankfully happened in the eighth series. That said, when the Cybermen were used, they were used brilliantly. Their upgraded form gave them several new abilities, a deeper voice, and the power of super-speed. Added to this was a more insectile version of the Cybermats, a Cyber-Planner to dictate proceedings, and a collective consciousness for the Cybermen known as the Cyberiad. This one story changed so much about the Cybermen, and made them altogether more scary. They just failed to appear properly until midway into the episode. Perhaps it should have been a two-parter? The Cybermen here employed the use of tombs, indicating that the Mondasian menaces had returned to Doctor Who. Either that, or the Mondasian and Cybus versions of the Cybermen had amassed into one. Either way the new design was streamline, brutal, and beautiful.
