First broadcast 11 May 2013.

The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) take the children Angie (Eve de Leon Allen) and Artie (Kassius Carey Johnson) to an alien theme park far from Earth – only to find it almost entirely abandoned and ruined. They soon discover a plot by the Cybermen to return to menace the galaxy, and to turn the Doctor into their Cyber-Planner.

Every television series, when tasked with generated multiple episodes each season, sooner or later produces entirely forgettable and banal instalments. Rewatching “Nightmare in Silver” for the first time, thirteen years after its original broadcast, was an interesting experience chiefly because I could not actually remember much about the episode at all. It certainly was not interesting due to the episode itself, which is underwhelming and demonstrably forgettable. “Nightmare in Silver” is the second of two Doctor Who episodes written by Neil Gaiman. His first, “The Doctor’s Wife”, won him a Hugo Award. This second one did not. It is largely Doctor Who at its most ordinary. Harry Potter second unit director Stephen Woolfenden makes his Who directing debut here. Like Gaiman, he did not return.

Part of this episode’s stated goal was to make the Cybermen scary again. I always have a mild problem when people attempt this sort of thing, because they often misinterpret what makes people scary in the first place. For one thing, being more elaborate is not scary: a super-fast ‘bullet-time’ Cyberman is a surprise, definitely, but it isn’t scary. A Cyberman that can remove its head as a distraction isn’t scary either – it’s actually slightly silly. A Cyberman that removes its hand, which then scuttles about like a hand-shaped robotic spider, is so silly they already used the gag in an episode of Red Dwarf.

On the other hand, a mass of Cybermen stamping relentlessly towards Clara and the soldiers, calmly telling them they will survive and live on as Cybermen, is damned scary. When they all suddenly shut down and remain very still, like statues but with the potential to start moving again at any moment, that is scary. Crucially, these sorts of things are exactly what have made Cybermen scary since 1966. They’re inhuman, emotionless, unstoppable and will make you be like them. All of the other flourishes and twists Gaiman adds are unnecessary and potentially counter-productive.

Some of the new elements do work. The Cybermites are brilliant, and brilliantly creepy. Doubling Matt Smith up as the Doctor and Cyberplanner gives the episode a visible, engaging sort of villain. The new Cyberman design is great, as are their new voices – provided once again by Who stalwart Nicholas Briggs. There are also a bunch of nice Gaiman-esque touches, from the inclusion of a Cyberman as the Turk (an 18th century mechanical chess player that wound up to be a fake) to the wonderful Chess visual metaphors as the Cybermen advanced upon the castle.

I am particularly impressed by Warwick Davis’ performance as Porridge. I’ve always been a fan of Davis, particularly his starring performance in Willow (1988), but there is a maturity and a nuance to his acting here that really stands out. It would have been nice to see the character return some time, although thirteen years later it seems likely that ship has sailed.

Neither particularly good nor particularly bad, “Nightmare in Silver” really feels like an act of passing the time before the seventh season finale drops a week later.