Hour of the Cybermen

The elephant in the room needs mentioning without further ado: David Banks is back as the Cyber Leader! It’s difficult to imagine now, after Nick Briggs’s voice work on the new TV series but David Banks re-invented the Cybermen for the 1980s and became ubiquitous with the role of Cyber Head Honcho. It was a tremendous performance. And now in 2018, he’s back and it’s like he’s never been away. Thinking of other Big Finish 80s Cyber stories now (The Reaping, The Gathering, Sword of Orion, Kingdom of Silver) Banks seems conspicuous by his absence. Despite the Moonbase/Tomb voice incarnation being a personal favourite, there has been something missing for a long time from the Big Finish Cyber outings and Hour of the Cybermen proves all along that it was the artistry of David Banks.

If we were back in the years 2000-2003, arguably when Big Finish were in command of the Doctor Who landscape, David Banks’s return to the Who fold would have been front page news in DWM. He might have even garnered a cover feature. In short, it would have been BIG NEWS. It’s a sign of the times that his arrival at Big Finish has not met with the fanfare it might deserve. Over in TV corner, the San Diego Comic Can is generating all the press inches this month with exclusives on the eleventh television series (Still unbelievable!). Hour of the Cybermen, however, is diminished ever further by the other Big Finish content this month: The Time War 2, The First Doctor Adventures Volume 2, even Torchwood One.  It’s a shame because as traditional, back to the 80s tales go, this is a huge success.

It’s easy to imagine Hour of the Cybermen on television. There are scenes reminiscent of Attack, featuring part-converted humans. There are scenes on empty London streets reminiscent of Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Resurrection of the Daleks. There are Cybernised agents like those seen in Silver Nemesis. It feels quite tangibly like an 80s contemporary thriller. And so it probably should with Andrew Smith on writing duties, the youngest of the TV show at the time. Smith is one of Big Finish’s most underrated authors. He almost always delivers. The Star Men, Mistfall, The First Sontarans and Domain of the Voord are corking good stories and are as strong examples of Big Finish’s output as any Robert Shearman, Jacqueline Rayner or John Dorney story. Smith writes incredibly strong action-oriented tales and displays a natural instinct for when to throw the next curveball at the listener. His plays are extremely well paced and Hour of the Cybermen is no exception. Its secrets and mysteries are wheedled out one at a time, sending the play off in unexpected directions. What a shame he only managed to deliver Full Circle for the TV series. I’d much rather have seen another Smith script than a Terence Dudley effort.

Smith’s verisimilitude extends to the not-so unemotional 80s Cybermen. Lieutenant Price cannily observes the paradox of our favourite tin men: “Cybermen might have no emotions. But have you noticed? They still scream when they die.” The metal meanies are gifted emotionless lines such as “Indeed he has,” “They will tear you limb from limb” and “Humour. Ah yes. A pointless indulgence.” David Banks imbues them with menace though and the threat of the Cybermen is felt sharply throughout. The Leader threatening the world through a tannoy system (a la the Master in Logopolis) should feel silly but it absolutely doesn’t; the danger of the Cybermen here is real.

Colin Baker’s Doctor is pushed to the front and centre of every scene he’s in and his dialogue shines. “No knock knock jokes for you then,” he replies to the above reflection on humour. This is a Doctor believed in by the show’s writers, rather than one to be side-lined. And Colin Baker proves his worth every step of the way. Hour displays the sparring between Doctor and Cyber Leader that Attack should have enjoyed but shied away from. It’s an historic meeting.

It must be noted, however, that the new UNIT team hasn’t really landed this year. Blake Harrison and Russ Bain do not a UNIT family make. Although Daniel Hopkins’s story is the more affecting of the two, and very well explored by Andrew Smith by way of its relation the Cyber threat, we didn’t really gain a strong enough idea of who he might actually be in The Helliax Rift and so it’s difficult to truly care about his fate here. Lieutenant Price was similarly ill-served previously and his exit from proceedings here is similarly unworthy of note. Perhaps if the actors had been a little more charismatic, the fellows might have felt more alive? As it stands, they’re more akin to the Colonels Faraday and Mace than the Bamberas and Osgoods of the Who world. 

However, we end with a promise of more to come from one of our UNIT boys and hopefully, this particular story will meet its conclusion in Warlock’s Cross come November. Despite the slightly fumbled character work, there’s an intriguing hook for a very different type of story on the horizon…

On the sound design front, Steve Foxon's is suitably emblematic of the period, his score mirroring Dominic Glyn's Trial of a Time Lord synthy successes. There are bleeps and clicks from Earthshock machinery adding to the sense of place. If there's a complaint, it's that occasionally the sound design gives way to the occasional longueur, notably at the end of Part Two. What a punch-the-air cliff-hanger that would have been were it not for the strange overlong musical stab that precedes the last line. Overall though, it's lovely hearing a score that so faithfully captures the period in the same way that the script does. 

All told, Hour of the Cybermen is a superbly well-structured, very faithful 1980s Cyberman story. We get full-bloodied set-tos between Colin Baker’s Doctor and David Banks’s Cyber Leader. There is a world-spanning plot and a genuine sense of peril. We even get a brilliantly memorable death scene for the Cyber Leader. Hour is a story with a very particular agenda which it tackles head-on and can be counted as nothing less than triumphant in meeting its aims. This is the Cyberman story Colin Baker should have had.

8/10

JH