The Cybermen are on the march through the Hundred Realms, killing and converting as they go. Resistance is useless. Trapped on the outermost fringes of the battle, the Doctor and Jamie are astonished to encounter an old friend: astrophysicist Zoe Heriot. It’s the happiest of reunions. But what hope is there of a happy ending against the unstoppable Cybermen?
LEGEND OF THE CYBERMEN
After “City of Spires” and “The Wreck of the Titan,” Mike Maddox’s “Legend of the Cybermen” completes the most overtly linked Big Finish trilogy yet, picking up right where “Titan” left off in the Land of Fiction. What follows is a tribute to “The Mind Robber” coupled with some of the most audacious storytelling in Big Finish history – but does “audacious” necessarily equal “good?”
I’ll put my cards on the table right off the bat: I have never cared for “The Mind Robber.” It has some fantastic ideas on display, and engages in some entertaining play with fiction versus reality, but the plot has always seemed far too esoteric and metafictional to truly grip me. The same is true of “Legend,” and my suspicions were concerned when, early in the second episode, Jamie asks why on earth it matters if the Cybermen conquer the Land of Fiction. Yes, there’s an explanation provided about how this is a threat to humanity’s very ability to imagine, but if a character in the story has to ask why any of it matters, something is amiss. And, ultimately, the mass of concepts on display tries valiantly but fails to obscure the fact that very little actually happens over the course of four episodes. Oliver Twist has been turned into a Cyberman! So has Count Dracula! The Cybermen have transformed Moby Dick into a submarine! All interesting in theory, but all largely included because they’re cool and/or ridiculous – what “Legend of the Cybermen” boils down to is characters panicking while Cybermen sit in a castle and announce invasion plans, over and over again.
I did enjoy the points at which the story pushed at the boundaries of the fourth wall, however. I grinned when Zoe showed the Doctor a series of Target novelizations and described the past two stories as a pseudo-historical and a base-under-siege tale. Best of all, though, was Jamie appearing in a recording booth, reading a script under the direction of Nicholas Briggs – after which Briggs transforms into a Cyberman! This is much more interesting than Captain Nemo teaming up with Count Dracula and the Karkus to invade Camelot and defeat the Cybermen, and I would have preferred more of it.
Leaving the fictional shenanigans aside for a bit, this story also marks the reunion of the Doctor and Zoe for the first time since “The War Games,” another reunion complicated by circumstance. Wendy Padbury can’t disguise her age, unfortunately, but apart from that she easily recaptures her old role. The few scenes with Colin Baker, Frazer Hines, and Padbury sound like they’ve been performing together for ages – I saw another reviewer comment that one could be forgiven for thinking Baker, not Troughton, had been their Doctor, and I agree completely. I like the concept of the ending – the stories have taken place in the Land of Fiction, after all, so Jamie and Zoe have to go back to reality – but it falls down in a rushed execution with no time to breathe. Two hours of insanity and the Doctor returning Zoe to the Wheel gets a little over one minute? Really? Better is the scene where Jamie confronts the Doctor over never coming back – Troughton’s gleeful reaction to Jamie’s fate in “War Games” always bothered me, and this story doesn’t shy away from it.
The supporting cast is on top of things as usual, but this leads me to another complaint: giving these fictional characters free will transforms them into faceless ciphers. Only Dracula maintains any uniqueness, and he mostly does so through an outrageous accent. Gulliver in “Mind Robber” was believably the character from the story, but who is the Alice we see in “Legend?” She’s a girl with a gun, no matter Zoe’s later references to white rabbits. Even Captain Nemo loses much of his ambiguity from “Titan,” though Alexander Siddig’s performance is again excellent. The production, though, is genius, especially Jamie Robertson’s sound design, among the most ambitious BF has ever put forward. Credit to Briggs’ direction as well – a story like this can easily fly off the rails, and for all its faults it never becomes confusing or boring.
Overall, “Legend of the Cybermen” just isn’t my type of story. I’m normally a sucker for atmosphere and ideas, and strongly prefer those to a rigid plot, given the choice – but here I’m mostly forced to shrug. This, more than anything, is a comic book story: Moby Dick as Cyber-submarine is begging for a two-page splash panel, not a character yelling out an abrupt description. I understand why so many people enjoyed this story, but I was never once convinced that any of it actually mattered. After “The Wreck of the Titan,” that’s disappointing indeed.
Sad.
4/10