Doctor Who/Recap/S25/E03 Silver Nemesis

"The Doctor: I don't suppose you've completely ignored my instructions and secretly prepared any Nitro-9, have you?

Ace: What if I had?

The Doctor: Naturally, you wouldn't do anything so insanely dangerous as to carry it around with you, would you?

Ace: Of course not. I'm a good girl, I do what I'm told.

The Doctor: Excellent. Blow up that vehicle.

Ace: *delighted grin*"

The Doctor and Ace, a crazy noblewoman and her sidekick from the 17th century, a bunch of Nazis, and Cybermen (making their last appearance on the original series) fight for control of a statue made out of living metal capable of mass destruction. Dark secrets of the Doctor's past are revealed... almost.

--

Silver Nemesis was promoted as the show's 25th anniversary special; the first episode of the serial aired on the anniversary itself.

Tropes
"Lady Peinforte: The bear will not pursue us. Such things only happen in the theatre."
 * Celebrity Star: jazz musician Courtney Pine and his band.
 * Chekhov's Gun: the chess set in Lady Peinforte's house, and the question of who is moving the pieces.
 * Comet of Doom
 * Continuity Porn: references to Rassilon and Omega, Earth becoming "New Mondas", and in the deleted scenes the Doctor hypnotises some security guards by wearing spectacles in an overt reference to "The War Games".
 * Creator Cameo: a number of contemporary and past Doctor Who cast and crew play the tourists at Windsor Castle.
 * Deleted Scene: A special-edition VHS release and the DVD provided deleted scenes which helped make a bit more sense out of things.
 * Doing in The Wizard: Taken on its own, this episode appears to claim that Lady Peinforte's powers are literal magic, making it the only Original Series episode to allow such a thing rather than handwaving it somehow ("Battlefield" doesn't really count, because the Arthurian characters are visitors from another universe with different physical laws). However, a throwaway line in "The Curse Of Fenric" establishes that, in fact, Lady Peinforte got her powers from Fenric. So there.
 * Exit Pursued By a Bear: Lampshaded.


 * Fish Out of Temporal Water: Richard spends most of his time in the future panicking about every single thing he comes across. It helps his Heel Face Turn towards the end, when he's just so happy that the Doctor can take him home that he resolves to change his ways.
 * Foreshadowing: Part of the plot involves breaking into the Peinforte family tomb -- where Richard, already a bit jumpy having come across his own gravestone, notes that there doesn't seem to be any sign of Lady Peinforte's body. She's too obsessed and blinkered for it to really register, because if it had then certain ominous implications for her future might have presented themselves...
 * Gambit Pileup: Between the Doctor, Lady Peinforte, the Neo-Nazis, and the Cybermen.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: In the first episode, the Doctor is briefly seen wearing a fez and holding a mop. Guess what article of clothing his Eleventh incarnation really liked?
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Cybermen. Makes one wonder why they carry guns in the first place.
 * Lampshade Hanging: Ace points out that the resolution is exactly the same as that from Remembrance of the Daleks, a story only two serials before this one.
 * Minion With an F In Evil: Richard, to the point where at the end of the story the Doctor and Ace take him home and let him play the recorder for them. He does seem a bit more sinister and thuggish at the beginning of the story, when he's at home and in his element, but his experiences as a Fish Out of Temporal Water go some way towards helping a Heel Face Turn along.
 * Mugging the Monster: the skinheads who try to rob Lady Peinforte and Richard.
 * My God What Have I Done: Ace has a minor one when she blows up the Cybermens' lander and they execute their human minions for allowing it.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast / Punny Name: Lady Peinforte is named after "peine forte et dure", a historic English torture method involving slowly crushing people to death with rocks.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: there are hints, especially on the DVD deleted scenes, that "De Flores" is meant to be a pseudonym for Martin Bormann, the most senior Nazi unaccounted for in 1945 who was widely believed in the 1980s to be still alive and hiding out in South America.
 * During the scenes at Windsor Castle, the Doctor and Ace encounter a woman who theoretically is supposed to be the Queen. Unfortunately the lookalike hired by the production team doesn't look all that much like the Queen, and in fact more resembles her daughter, Princess Anne.
 * Shout Out: Lady Peinforte says a bear wouldn't pursue them as such things only happen in the theatre.
 * Stunt Casting: 1950s-1960s Broadway star Dolores Grey shows up for... absolutely no reason whatsoever.
 * Those Wacky Nazis: the only twentieth-century TV Doctor Who story to feature actual Nazis, as opposed to evil fantasy cultures with a suspicious resemblance.
 * The Un Reveal: Lady Peinforte claims to know a dark secret about the Doctor's past, but doesn't get to reveal it; at the end, Ace asks the Doctor what she was on about, and he just smiles.
 * Word of God states that the writer intended the Doctor to be....
 * A later short story in the Expanded Universe
 * Villainous Breakdown: Lady Peinforte has a slow-burning one throughout the final episode.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: The Cybermen's vulnerability to gold - originally a difficult-to-exploit weakness where gold dust, if gotten into their workings, could take them out, and not instantly - is taken to utterly absurd levels in this story. While they at least regain the resistance to bullets that they somehow lost in "Attack of the Cybermen," you can now cause them to instantly die screaming by throwing a gold coin at their chest. Evidently the writer never stopped to think how absurd it was that the Cybermen could withstand high-velocity impacts without any trouble, but be instantly killed by a low-force impact with any gold or gold-played object.
 * Worst News Judgement Ever: Played for laughs; the Daily Mirror has a huge headline proclaiming that the meteor that kicks off the plot is returning to Earth. Ace, however, is more interested in the football results at the bottom of the back page, and the Doctor doesn't notice.