Scourge of the Cybermen

Audio Novels #1

Released: 2 July 2021

Listened: 7/8/21

This is the first of the Audio Novels series, of which the prototype was “Terror of the Master,” just a bit previously in this project. Because it’s a full audiobook, it’s much longer than most stories: in this case, six parts, adding up to around seven hours. Like “Terror of the Master,” it’s read by John Culshaw, but in this case, the only TV character he’s impersonating is the Doctor, as the UNIT characters aren’t around, and the Cybermen voices are supplied by Nick Briggs, as is right and proper. However, Simon Guerrier has captured Sarah’s tone very well: she’s by turns inquisitive, clever, impatient, vulnerable, and sometimes childishly cheeky. The novel format also gives us better insight into her thoughts; she’s the primary POV character because you can’t really get inside the Doctor’s head ever. As for the story, it’s set up to be a “base under siege,” specifically an undersea base on an alien planet, but it doesn’t go exactly where you’d expect from there. The Cybermen aren’t implacable monsters with a “invade and convert everybody” agenda; they’re actually in a bad place at the beginning, and kind of victims of circumstance. There’s a bit more of their “gold allergy” than I like, but at least it’s played with somewhat. The base has its usual bureaucracy that you often find in these stories, but nobody’s opposed to the Doctor because they’re blindly loyal to some faceless corporation, at least. Most of the secondary characters have personal, human reactions to him: some are grateful for his help, some are turned off by his “smartest man in the room” act, and some dislike him personally but respect what he can do; it’s nicely well-rounded. Exactly who’s behind the larger plot and why is more complicated than in a standard-length story, and takes a while to tease out, but the longer format allows for that. If anything, it almost takes too long to evolve, and you may be in danger of forgetting the hints that were dropped in Part 1. Unlike most Big Finish stories, this takes several sittings to get through instead of one or two, and it did strain my patience a bit, but I think this is a good experiment for Big Finish.