Surely the Cybermen themselves are worth seeing? No, actually, they've got their fair share of problems, too. For example, despite the fact that Lumic has invented the Cybermen, when he's inevitably "upgraded", he's still (initially) wheelchair bound. What's more, he's conveniently posted human guards on his impregnable Zeppelin control centre, to allow Mickey and Jake to get on board using a form of lethal smelling salts; some of the most astonishingly lazy writing I've ever seen.

Beyond the writing, the carefully choreographed Cybermen actually start to look quite ridiculous. They move in perfect formation, marching in time to stompy, badly over-dubbed mechanical beats that sound like the start to a cheesy industrial dance track — a kind of "What if Trent Reznor made Cybermen" type scenario. I found myself expecting them to leap into some sort of camp rendition of "YMCA" after a while; they just look so incredibly silly. Towards the end of the episode, a stampede of humans actually manages to knock some of the cybermen off balance, another element that looks stupid. These things are supposed to be made of steel, and yet a few squiddy humans are capable of knocking them out of the way.

I mentioned a disappointing lack of specifics with regards to the Cyberman creation process in last week's episode. This week we get lots more detail. Sadly. The terrible CGI sequence (featuring awfully rendered Cybermen) is neither scary or imaginative, and is easily the worst effect I've seen this series.

Most of the dialogue here is pretty awful too, but the award for the worst line has to be the Doctor's "You didn't 'ave to kill 'er!" Tennant isn't terribly convincing for most of this episode either. Even his long-winded monologue to Lumic feels like little more than a forced device to explain Mickey's heroic feat of hackery. Said feat is yet another moronic aspect of this episode; Mickey hammers away on a keyboard for a bit as numbers inexplicably appear on screen, then (somehow) transmits the code to Rose's mobile phone, which, as luck would have it, can use Bluetooth to communicate with the Cybermen.

And while on the subject of the Doctor: it's a bit early to start taking him out of "uniform." This Doctor's outfit is nondescript enough without confusing the issue by having him ponce about in a dinner jacket.

Top all of this off with an ending that's supposed to be tear jerking, but which actually waves goodbye to a character we're all heartily sick of, and this episode is one big failure. Had I not been burned by my hope that part two would be better than part one, I'd hope that the season finale (in which the Cybermen are supposed to make another appearance) raises the bar a bit. It couldn't get any lower. So, less "Age Of Steel" and more "Age Of Morons" really.