Tony tries very hard
not to just say ‘Excellent.’
Hour of the Cybermen was
always going to be a very special release from Big Finish.
While Nicholas Briggs, one
of the Big Finish gods, has provided voices for 21st century
Cybermen, Daleks and other alien nasties, and has also given the Cybermen of
older generations his vocal talents, this is the first story that sees the
return of two particular actors who were
the Cybermen for a generation of fans. The Eighties brought the Cybermen out of
semi-retirement and made them arguably the equals of the Daleks in the
programme again. The two men responsible for the Cyber-renaissance were David
Banks, who played every Cyber-leader of the decade, and Mark Hardy, who played his
long-suffering, button-pushing sidekick, the Cyber-lieutenant.
Because of the nature of
the role, they were always most impressively vocal performances. Hour of the
Cybermen re-unites the Eighties Cybermen on audio.
Run away now and buy Hour
of the Cybermen.
OK, so it was always going
to be a big deal. Bringing them back to battle a Sixth Doctor played by Colin
Baker on the top of his form…Run away now and buy Hour of the Cybermen.
But the news on this
release is so much better even than
that.
They’re a canny lot, these
Big Finishers. They’ve given the task of bringing back the Lords of Logic to a
writer who, above all, takes care that his stories make sense on every level – Andrew Smith – which means that for
once, for once in their careers, the
Cybermen, ruled by logic, have a masterplan that’s actually logical. Think
about it for a second – there are probably two or three stories in the whole of
Cyber-history where you could run them through a basic logic algorithm and find
that they made sense. This story makes sense in both its Cyber-planning, its
human skulduggery, and its ultimate resolution. It’s a Cyber-tour de force.
Seriously, we’re not kidding, run away now and buy Hour of the Cybermen.
In terms of actual plot
details, this is the second in a loose trilogy of stories that introduce us to
an Eighties version of UNIT that we’ve never encountered before. It starts very
much in Jon Pertwee territory, with the Doctor, alone, arriving in an England
suffering from a particularly odd calamity – a drought without an accompanying
heatwave. Water-looters are afoot, but more than that, there are alien refugees
in the area, and the story builds in logical increments, so you feel you have
something of a handle on. In a nod to a couple of Sixties Cyber-stories which
in their own terms made some sense, the Cyber-plan here is significantly
advanced, and only the Doctor popping up at an inopportune moment has any
chance of stopping them. The Cyber-doohickey at the source of all the trouble
makes perfect theoretical sense, and the plan into which it fits makes sense in
terms of the Cybermen’s universal goals. The human (and alien) heartbeats along
the line make sense too, and there’s a story-strand here that brings an element
of the Cybermen to the fore that should have been exploited long before now,
and which Smith threads strongly through his script.
If you’re buying this for
nostalgia purposes, you’re in for all sorts of treats. The Cyber-Leader gives
more than one ‘Excellent,’ and there are several lines that aren’t replays of
the greatest hits, but are subtle enough reworkings to both feel fresh and
evoke the Eighties Cybermen in all their relatively chatty glory. In terms of
the Eighties Cyber-Leader’s habit of frequently explaining the Cyber-Plot to anyone
who would listen, this ticks that box too – he even stages a demonstration of
how the plot will work at one point here, and you don’t hear it as a fault in
the story, because now, as then, you just want to hear David Banks’
Cyber-Leader talk more.
As with all the best
Cyber-stories, there’s a fairly high body-count here, and a body-count
including people about whom you’ll care, which in itself underlines the
difference between the listener and the villain – the scary thing about the
Cybermen is they don’t care about the people who die, and we do.
There are other
significant nuggets of nostalgic Cyber-glory here too – including a moment
repurposed from Earthshock which will make fans smile. And before it all
becomes about Smith, Banks, Hardy and Colin Baker, listening to the music in
this release will also give you chills and grins if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool
Cyber-geek, because again while steering clear of actual riffs on previous
Cyber-themes, there’s enough here to trip your nostalgia-triggers into utter
geek meltdown.
Hour of the Cybermen could
well be the Cyber-story you’ve been waiting for, for decades – a tight, logical
story, with the Cybermen on the top of their terrifying form, incredible
Cyber-voices, human peril by the bucketload, a desperate fight for survival and
a Sixth Doctor that ultimately saves the day with an audaciously
straightforward bit of jiggery-pokery, and an act of important compassion.
We’ve told you already –
run away now and buy Hour of the Cybermen.
No comments:
Post a Comment