Doctor Who/Recap/S28/E06 The Age of Steel

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< Doctor Who‎ | Recap‎ | S28

Mickey: Let’s go liberate Paris.
Jake: What, you and me? In a van?
Mickey: Nothing wrong with a van. I once saved the universe with a big yellow truck.

When we left off, in "Rise Of The Cybermen", Rose and the Doctor were unsuccessfully trying to surrender to Cybermen. The Doctor uses a trinket from the TARDIS to give the Cybermen a dose of Agony Beams. Pete reveals himself to have been The Mole for the good guys all along, and Ricky reveals himself to be much less of a badass than his friends thought he was (Britain's Most Wanted... for parking tickets) and promptly manages to get himself killed. The gang flees for now, but massive cyberconversion is already under way.

The Doctor decides that the best way to stop the invasion is to cancel the emotional inhibitors on the Cybermen, which would drive the humans inside insane and kill them. Rose and Pete infiltrate the factory by posing as brainwashed people, and encounter Jackie, who's already been turned into a Cyberman. Mickey and Jake (Ricky's boyfriend) infiltrate the zeppelin that's parked right on top of the factory, and watch from a screen as the Doctor, Rose and Pete are all taken in for questioning. When the Doctor realizes that Mickey can see and hear him, he and Pete surreptitiously give Mickey the code needed to hack the system. Mickey texts the solution to Rose's cell phone, the Doctor jams it into the control system and the Cybermen, including Jackie, regain their full consciousness and sanity. The ensuing Body Horror causes them to overload, and they die in anguish.

Mickey stays in the alternate reality with his not-dead grandmother and helps the now-dead Ricky's friend destroy the rest of the Cyberfactories. Rose and the Doctor return home.

Tropes

  • Arc Words: The cracks in time make an appearance.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Ricky's group of freedom fighters. Despite claiming to be freedom fighters, stock-piling weapons and hacking into various organizations, the group and their leader Ricky are only known by authorities for his numerous parking tickets in London.
    • The Doctor actually backs them on the "park anywhere" thing, for obvious reasons.
  • Assimilation Plot: As Cybermen are known to do.
  • Behind the Black: Parodied. "I've been captured, but that's okay, Pete and Rose can save me - oh, no."
  • Big Cyber-No: Cyber-Controller / Lumic
  • Bury Your Gays: Ricky and Jake are boyfriends. For some reason, the scene where Jake says this explicitly was cut.
  • Chain Link Fence: When Mickey and Ricky are running away from a squad of Cybermen, they have to climb a chain-link fence to escape. Mickey makes it. Ricky doesn't.
  • Continuity Nod: Rose recognises the Cybermen from the museum piece she saw back in Dalek, while Mickey is fed up with being "the tin dog", and later mentions how he once saved the universe with a big yellow truck (The Parting of the Ways). Then there's Lumic's "EXCELLENT!" Also, the "above, between, below" nod all the way back to The Five Doctors.
  • Deadly Dodging: Mickey takes out a Cyberman this way.
  • Disney Villain Death: John Lumic falls from the rope-ladder he was climbing into a burning building and to his death when the alternate Pete Tyler cut it.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Ricky, who dies onscreen.
  • Fanon: The Discontinuity Guide site attempted to start a fan-rumor that the last shot of this episode shows Mondas, not the moon, hanging in the sky. The rumor never picked up steam.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: The army of Cybermen once their emotional inhibitors are switched off.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Lumic's use of Plug N Play Technology is what allows Mickey and the Doctor to broadcast the code deactivating the Cyber-army's emotional inhibitors.
  • I Choose to Stay: Mickey, because it's a world where his grandmother's still alive and he wants to honor the memory of the fallen Ricky. Also because in this world he has a purpose which has helped him to no longer be 'useless'.
  • If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Mickey tells Jake that killing a guard would make them no better than the Cybermen.
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Mickey sarcastically responds to his acquired zeppelin skills with: "PlayStation".
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: Poor Sally Phelan. "Why am I so cold?"
  • Indy Ploy: Mickey calls the Doctor on it.

"You're just making this up as you go along!"
"Yeeep! But I do it brilliantly."

"I will upgrade only with my last breath."
"Then breathe no more."

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