February 11th, 2025
3 comments
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Black Archive #75 Silver Nemesis
Available to order from www.obversebooks.co.uk
BLACK ARCHIVE #75: SILVER NEMESIS By James Cooray Smith
“This is my favourite kind of jazz, straight blowing.”
Doctor Who faced, rather than celebrated, its twenty-fifth birthday with a reduced episode count, an even further reduced budget and with a question mark hanging over its very existence. Silver Nemesis was the official anniversary story, a curious, thematically complex mix of Cybermen, sorcery, jazz and chess, with the Doctor facing off against fugitive Nazis against a backdrop of then contemporary England in all its opulence and decay.
The 75th Black Archive looks at the anniversary story’s uniquely troubled production circumstances, and how a creatively united production team overcame the odds to achieve significant creative renewal, and pointed the way to its as yet unimagined far future
James Cooray Smith is a freelance writer and critic whose credits include the New Statesman and Doctor Who Magazine. He researched and wrote the production information subtitles for several official BBC Doctor Who DVD and Blu-ray releases, and is the author of several well-received Black Archives. His Doctor Who newsletter ‘Psychic Paper’ can be accessed, read and subscribed to https://buttondown.com/cooray_smith.
BLACK ARCHIVE #75: SILVER NEMESIS is available for-pre-order now in paperback and electronic formats, direct from Obverse Books and from selected online retailers.
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David Minter
February 11th, 2025 - 2:22pmThis story is definitely NOT one of my favorites, but I always get the Black Archive releases on Cybermen stories. The solicited behind the scenes production troubles might make for an interesting read here. The DVD Info Text provided some insightful tidbits about the intended nature of the future of the “secret” of the Doctor. Maybe this Black Archive will expand on that.
Peter
February 11th, 2025 - 10:40amLove the other Black Archives by James Cooray Smith, and I have very strong memories of seeing this story on first broadcast when I was 4 (episode 3 in particular, with the statue coming alive and ‘screaming’ as the tower explodes…). I’ll need to get this one. 🙂
Fred
February 11th, 2025 - 10:26amOf all the stories to try and pretend to read something significant into, this might be the maddest yet.