Revenge of the Cybermen

Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen

Author	Terrance Dicks
Published	1976
ISBN	0 426 10997 X
First Edition Cover	Chris Achilleos

Back cover blurb: A mysterious plague strikes Space Beacon Nerva, killing its victims within minutes. When DOCTOR WHO lands, only four humans remain alive. One of these seems to be in league with the nearby planet of gold, Voga... Or is he in fact working for the dreaded CYBERMEN, who are now determined to finally destroy their old enemies, the VOGANS? The Doctor, Sarah and Harry find themselves caught in the midst of a terrifying struggle to death - between the ruthless, power-hungry Cybermen and the desperate determined Vogans.

• Gerry Davis' absence is not regretted... by Tim Roll-Pickering
• The Biggest Bang in History? by Andrew Feryok

Gerry Davis' absence is not regretted... by Tim Roll-Pickering 14/1/04

Gerry Davis apparently declined to novelise this story (although his prologue introducing the Cybermen is reproduced here) as he felt that it had been so heavily rewritten by Robert Holmes that it was no longer his. What his take on the story would have been we shall never know, but instead we get an adaptation by Terrance Dicks. Dicks' then-most recent novelisation, Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, felt very much like a product of novelisations being produced en masse, but here Dicks really works hard to make this book enjoyable. Many little touches are added, such as a brief explanation of what the Armageddon Convention was, how Harry came to be caught up in the Doctor's worlds or just why the Vogans are unable to use gold to tackle the Cybermen. Without resorting to massive character exposition in the way the Malcolm Hulke's novelisations so frequently do and instead sticking heavily to the televised story, Dicks manages to breath life into the tale, adding little character moments and descriptions that enhance the story.

The Cybermen are described several times as emotionless, though occassionally they let this slip, and wisely Dicks makes little effort to either expound upon them or develop the back story since the prologue and the brief explanations are sufficient. The Cybermen's presence in the story is telegraphed by the Doctor noting a Cybermat and then immediately announcing who the villains are when he learns the asteroid is Voga, but given the book's title, cover and back cover blurb it would be hard to avoid their presence and so it would have been a waste of time to try to make this a surprise element of the story. Instead the focus is on the human characters, especially Harry who gets some good moments, though he gets marginalised at the end of the story, exposing his roots as a character intended to carry the series' action were the Doctor to be played by an older actor. The Vogans also benefit from the printed page, with both Vorus and Tyrum coming across as driven individuals, each committed to their own vision of how the Vogans should deal with the universe beyond them.

Throughout the book Dicks also does well at describing events, making them seem truly dramatic and tense such as the moment when Kellman finds himself abandoned by his allies and forced into a dangerous tunnel or when the Cybermen's relay station is attacked and Lester deliberately sacrifices himself to destroy it. The Cybermen also come across as a strong menace throughout the book. However from a modern perspective there are some weaker developments, with the Beacon's use of cassettes to record radio transmissions standing out the most. Back in 1976 this was hardly noticeable but now it sticks out like a sore thumb. There are also a few continuity errors that could set the blood raging of fans who care about that sort of thing, such as the statement that the Doctor, Sarah and Harry travelled to Skaro via the Time Ring (which, IIRC, was in the early storylines for Genesis of the Daleks) when not only is this not how it happened on screen but a faithful adaptation of that story was the very next book to be released by Target. Despite this, Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen is an extremely good novelisation that succeeds in bringing the television story to life in the printed form and making it ever mroe dramatic. 8/10

The Biggest Bang in History? by Andrew Feryok 30/5/06

"Well what have you got? No home planet, no position in the galaxy, no influence, nothing. You're just a pathetic collection of tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in a worn out space-ship."
- Page 76, Doctor Who and The Revenge of the Cybermen

One thing I noticed right off the bat is that Terrance Dicks has been wise enough to not use the trick of holding off the presence of the villain in the story even though they are mentioned in the cover title. Dicks actually adds dialogue and action to certain scenes so that the Doctor encounters and identifies a cybermat almost as soon as he comes on board the station and discusses the impending approach of the Cybermen long before they are due to arrive and invade. This is actually sensible since the reader/audience is already anticipating their arrival and there seems no need to keep them mysteriously out of the action of the story for a supposed revelation later on.

Terrance Dicks also cuts out a great deal of material from the original story, but in this instance it actually helps the story. One of the biggest problems I had with the original television story is that it stalled a great deal during its middle episodes with numerous scenes of running through caves, riding water skiffs, watching the Doctor, Stevenson and Lester go through the cave with bombs on their backs, and watching Cybermen and Vogans shoot at each other. Most of this is cut back considerably so that the story can move at a much brisker and more exciting pace.

While the book is largely bland, it does manage to do some a few good things. It plays up the characters of Vorus and Tyrum much more and they come across as commanding political rivals. Tyrum seems to be a bit younger than the whiskered and whispering old man we see on screen and much more like a strong leader of the people, able to stand up to Vorus' bullying and keeping order on his planet. In fact, Dicks manages to make what I thought was the most tedious part of the television story into the most interesting. The war between Vorus and Tyrum is written with excitement and we get to see two experienced leaders clashing for the rule of their planet.

Dicks also portrays the Nerva Beacon crew rather well, showing the strain in the characters as they try to do the work of forty dead crewmembers to keep the beacon running and then having to go through the ordeal of the Cybermen. The Cybermats also come across as much more threatening in Dicks' book. Their eyes glow and they spring like cobras stabbing into the necks of their victims and spreading their plague with vengeance. In fact, Dicks almost wanders into Ian Marter territory on several occasions as he describes quite gruesomely how the cybermats bite their victims, the victims burning up under the poison, and even the Cybermen dying in pools of green goo as they suffocate from the gold dust. Dicks even makes the sequence with the cobalt bombs filled with tension. He constantly reminds the audience how much is at stake and how much the Doctor and Kellman are juggling in the air. If they fail at any point in their efforts, both Voga and the beacon will be destroyed and them with it.

Dicks even manages to embellish several parts of the story. He adds a sequence when the Cybermen first arrive on the beacon. Rather than have Kellman meet the Cybermen at the airlocks, he has the Cybermen rip a metal door clear off the bulkhead and surprise a cowering Kellman! The transmat is now a booth rather than a ring of orbs in the Vogan caves, and when the Doctor, Harry, and Lester attack the Cybermen with gold dust, Harry manages to succeed in destroying one of the Cybermen with it before Lester blows the other one up. The Cybermen's strength is played up much more than could be done on screen by having Cybermen flinging people against metal and rock walls with such casual force that they knock them out. Bizarrely, the Cybermen use their hand-held rod guns from the 1960s rather than their cool in-built helmet guns. This is even more odd since every cover for this story shows the Cybermen with the guns in their helmet. Finally, the ending scene in which the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry meet up outside the TARDIS is now moved inside the TARDIS and has the Doctor explaining about the message from the Brigadier and actually using the TARDIS's scanner to home in on an image of Loch Ness!

Unfortunately, despite all these positives, I wouldn't call this the best Doctor Who book. Several of its faults are actually due to the story it is based on. Kellman is way too obvious of a villain at the beginning and becomes a sniveling coward as the story goes on. The Cybermen are famously emotional in this story, and while Dicks does his best to make them emotionless and calculating at the beginning, once the Doctor starts provoking them and the Cyberleader gets ever closer to his goal of destroying Voga, very prominent emotions begin to appear. These include the Cyberleader "savouring" Sarah Jane's fear when he tells her she is going to get a personal view of the crashing space station while on board it!

I am willing overlook most of these problems as merely being part of the charm of the story, but what I can't forgive is the prose style. Now once again, I realize this is a children's book of a science fiction serial, but after having read The Myth Makers, Doctor Who and the Daleks, and even The Android Invasion, there is so much more the author could have done to bring this story to life. Many times, there is no break in paragraphs for shift of location so that events seem to mesh together in blobs on the page. The result is one second you could be on the beacon and the very next second on Voga without any transition. It makes for confusing passages to read. Not to mention that Dicks uses an unusually large font size, larger than even he has used in other novelisations. Perhaps he was trying to reach a deadline in a hurry?

The Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry are once more captured wonderfully by Terrance Dicks. In particular, the Doctor feels like the Season 12 Doctor rather than a generic Tom Baker as he wrote him in State of Decay. He jokes enormously and always seems confident in what he is doing, even when he doesn't know what he is doing. Sarah Jane is still capable, strong, and full of spunk. Harry surprisingly comes off as less of a comical buffoon than he was on screen. He actually orchestrates most of the plans and rescues during the middle of the adventure when the Doctor is more or less helpless with a bomb strapped to his back and having no plan. Harry proves himself to be a very capable companion in this story, and Dicks even plays the Doctor's shouting of "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile" as a harmless joke between the two of them. It is actually a shame when you reach the end of the story, only to realize that Harry is going to leave in the very next adventure since he finally seems to be settling into the role of time traveler by the story's end.

Overall, this isn't a bad book, although it takes a good long time to get the story starting. Once the politics of Vorus and Tyrum come up, the story starts to gain momentum and then hurtles at a breakneck speed after the Doctor, Stevenson and Lester are sent with the bombs on their back. The prose is rather hard to decipher sometimes and by the end of the story I could not help thinking it was a bit bland. I can pretty much sum this up as an average adaptation of an average Tom Baker story. 6/10

PS: This story sports one of my top ten favorite cliffhangers of all time: seeing the Cybermen break through Nerva Beacon's airlock and coldly gun down the crew and the Doctor! Unfortunately, the book doesn't play up this sequence as much, but it still remains one of the most memorable moments of the Tom Baker years that has stuck in my mind.