As the story begins, Cybermen are coming out of the sewers. A squad of them gather at the top of some stairs, which I presume are near St Paul's Cathedral. One tries to traverse the steps but falls on its Cyber Butt. Laughs all around on the set of a movie portraying the Cyberman invasion of Earth.
The Doctor is the scientific advisor on the film and, in between offering suggestions for the plot, he meets the director's young daughter, Kate. She is not happy with life on the film set. For his part, the Doctor is attempting to diminish the script's verisimilitude by offering scenarios that the Cybermen did not use in "The Invasion" and ones that probably wouldn't be all that handy for another Cyber invasion of Earth.
The Doctor realizes that Kate isn't just an introverted, withdrawn little kid. Rather, like the girl in "Remembrance of the Daleks", she is under the control of aliens. But instead of Daleks, it's the Cybermen who have a reconnaissance outpost on Earth gathering intel for another attempt at taking over our fair planet. She is using Kate essentially as a bug, gathering all of the Doctor's suggestions.
Once the Doctor uncovers what's going on, he threatens the Cyber reconnoiterers with revealing their presence to U.N.I.T. so they release their hold on Kate and leave Earth.
While the Doctor is the central protagonist here, we do have a little girl in a prominent role which keeps in line with the previous few tales. The Doctor occasionally checks in with the Brigadier and those meetings are rather funny. I could see the Brig's eye rolls coming off of the page. Ian Atkins used a neat style here with the main Doctor-driven plot line alternating with Kate's interior monologue and the Cybermen noting the Doctor's script doctoring suggestions. Just a nice variety.
A fine little tale made all the more fun by picking out references to "The Invasion".
When was the last time we had Jamie in one of these Season 6b short trips?
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