#7das

I love how this story introduces us to Hex. He’s a sweet guy, it’s his birthday and he’s already having the worst time of his life. Sorry king it will NOT get better

I also enjoy the trend of Seven stories where he’s just skulking around for most of episode 1. Ace is like this is my dad he loves lurking

It’s such an optimistic vision of 2021? I love the reference to “Big Ben and the Museum of Parliament”. I wish. That and the all the tech the hospital use feels so far in the future even now

That being said there’s a weird Brexity vibe later on? The whole program being run by the Euro-Combine and all. Seven even blames the whole thing on “Eurocrats in Brussels” at one point. It just feels strange. I had enough of that in 2016 thanks

“Sus”

Seven is absolutely flirting with System in part two. Oh my. I bet she loves him rewiring her insides

I like this take on the Cybermen too. The fact that these specific Cybermen want to be converted back into humans is really interesting!

I like how it makes the Cybermen kind of messy? I tend to see Cyber-conversion as a one-way, homogenising process but this story says so—there are those Cybermen who want it reversed. And i love how grotesque and body-horrory that reverse process is

Even the obligatory twist about how the Cyberleader was in control the whole time! doesn’t detract from that core idea too much—he’s still clearly finding joy in becoming human, even if it’s only with the end goal of completely Cyber-converting the rest of the human race

As a final thought—the sound design on this story is so… dense? So much is happening all at once it’s kind of hard to keep track of voices, especially near the end

Overall though I enjoyed this one a lot! It’s got a great, cold atmosphere with lots of gnarly stuff behind the scenes. I haven’t talked much about Hex but his dynamic with 7 & Ace is already great and probably my favourite part of this story. 8/10 overall i think!