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Silver Nemesis is the third serial of the 25th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One in three weekly parts from 23 November (the 25th anniversary) to 7 December 1988. In New Zealand, all three parts were broadcast on TVNZ on 25 November.
In the serial, the Neo-Nazism De Flores (Anton Diffring), the 17th-century sorceress Lady Peinforte (Fiona Walker), and the Cybermen fight for control of the Nemesis, a statue containing a living metal which crash-landed near Windsor Castle in 1988.
The serial marks the final appearance of the Cybermen in the original run.
In 1988, a Neo-Nazi group led by a man named De Flores is on a mission to begin the Fourth Reich. They are in possession of a bow from the statue and are monitoring its eventual descent back to Earth from an asteroid the Doctor had trapped it in. The Seventh Doctor and Ace are in England, and survive an assassination attempt by two unknown men. The Doctor determines that Earth is in danger, when he remembers the statue is due to descend there. This asteroid has been approaching Earth at twenty-five yearly intervals since 1638, leaving a succession of disasters in its wake, and has now crash-landed near Windsor Castle.
At the crash site suffering some suspicious power outages, and evidence to support involvement of a third party, De Flores arrives with his men. Lady Peinforte watches from a distance armed with gold tipped arrows dipped in poison. When the Doctor and Ace arrive, a ship full of Cyberman show up and the three rival groups start to battle one another. Only De Flores and one of his men, as well as Lady Peineforte, Richard, the Doctor and Ace survive. The Doctor seizes the bow, but Peinforte fires an arrow which hits the TARDIS and remains there. The Cyber leader takes control of the statue.
The Doctor and Ace take the TARDIS back to 1638 and retrieve a bag of gold coins after discovering a suspicious chess set with an invisible player. They return to 1988 to destroy the Cybermen's ship. Lady Peinforte, using the arrow, approaches where the Cybermen are in possession of the statue. De Flores makes a deal with the Cyber leader and seizes the arrow from Peinforte. Going back on their deal, the Cyber leader prepares to have De Flores converted to a Cyberman before the Doctor and Ace temporarily unite the statue with the bow, scattering all groups. The "Asteroid" takes off with the statue and the arrow to a nearby hanger, awaiting to be united again.
The Doctor and Ace take the TARDIS to the hanger, where the Doctor unites the statue and gives it instructions to destroy a fleet of Cyber warships that are hiding next to the moon. Using a sling and the gold coins, Ace takes out the Cybermen until only the Cyber leader remains. De Flores and his last man approach the nemesis statue but are killed by the Cyber leader. Peinforte and Richard arrive laying claim to the statue from the Doctor on threat of revealing 'his secrets. She mentions Gallifrey. The Doctor ignores this threat as the Cyber leader does not care about these secrets and gives the statue to the Cybermen. The statue wipes out the fleet, but not before Lady Peinforte attempts to seize the statue by merging with it herself.
Finally, the Cyber leader attempts to kill the Doctor only to be killed by Richard using the gold arrow that was recently shot at the TARDIS. The Doctor and Ace then take Richard back to 1638, the destruction of Earth having been averted.
Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "A bit of a mess, really. Some passable scenes, but the story lacks pace and character involvement. Its plot is virtually identical to Remembrance of the Daleks only two stories previously." In 2012, Mark Braxton of Radio Times said that the story had "a certain comic-strip effervescence" despite many of the plot points not going well together or missing the mark. DVD Talk's Ian Jane gave Silver Nemesis three out of five stars, describing it as "phoned in" and a remake of Remembrance of the Daleks. However, he felt that the story was still enjoyable due to the chemistry between McCoy and Aldred, as well as the faster pace. SFX reviewer Ian Berriman said that the story was too ambitious, and criticised the Cybermen. Despite this, he noted that the serial still had "a great concept, ... some cool moments, a couple of enjoyably awful puns and one superb character: nutjob Jacobean villainess Lady Peinforte". Alasdair Wilkins of io9 wrote that it is "not an unmitigated disaster, but it's definitely the worst of classic Doctor Who creative resurgence in its final two seasons". He also felt that the story packed in too many elements and did not do much with the Cybermen. Den of Geek listed the Cybermen's reaction to jazz as one of the "great things in not-so-great ''Doctor episodes".
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