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2025-06-02T23:54:19Z

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| file = 2006-05-09 Belfast Newsletter.jpg
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| date = 2006-05-09
| author = Graham Kibble-White
| pages = 26
| language = English
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| text = DOCTOR Who's garrulous executive producer and lead writer, Russell T Davies, is fielding questions from a room full of journalists. And he's doing it with aplomb. That is, until something distracts him. "Noel Clarke is mooning!" he declares, collapsing into laughter as he catches sight of the actor's bare backside through the room's glass partition.

This impromptu display is just one of the many highlights from a press launch celebrating the return to our TV screens of the Doctor's second-best baddies, the Cybermen. It's been nearly 20 years since the metal meanies last menaced the Time Lord, but in this blistering two-part story they prove age has not withered them. All who stand in their way are either swiftly "upgraded" into new Cybermen to swell the ranks, or "deleted". Terminally.

Understandably, not everyone gets out of the encounter alive, and events prove pivotal for the Doctor's companion, Mickey.

For a now trouser-wearing Noel Clarke, who plays the hapless mechanic-turnedtime traveller, the past year has been building up to this tale.

"I was told what was going to happen in this story right after the screening of the first episode of the series in 2005," says the 30-year-old. "From the moment Russell revealed it to me I was like, 'Yeah, most definitely'. "Getting the scripts I was just amazed, really, because there were times when Mickey was just a buffoon. But he's clearly developed from getting stuck in a bin in episode one, to becoming progressively braver.

"For me that's been fulfilling to see a character go from being loathed, to people saying how they love this guy now."

Set on a parallel Earth, the story presents Noel with an interesting challenge as Mickey runs into a duplicate version of himself, a grizzled freedom fighter named Ricky. Naturally, the actor takes on both roles.

"It was good being able to play a macho, gruff version of the character," he smiles, "and when I saw we had scenes together, I just couldn't wait to do it." The Cybermen return to menace the Doctor and his friends in Doctor Who on BBC One on Saturday.

Caption: TENSION: Noel Clarke as Ricky and Mickey in BBC's Dr Who

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Trouble ahead for Dr Who - Revision history

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