Answering a call from UNIT, the Doctor arrives in London to find the streets deserted, apart from looters in possession of a valuable commodity – water.
Britain is suffering an extreme and bizarre drought. The cause is suspected to be extra-terrestrial.
The discovery of a signal being transmitted into space, and of a spacecraft whose crew are desiccated corpses, provides a possible answer. But the true enemy is an old foe of the Doctor’s.
The Cybermen have been patient, setting their plans in place over a number of years. As the final stage is implemented, in the darkest hour, the Doctor must identify who among his allies he can trust.
HOUR OF THE CYBERMEN
One of the enduring mysteries of Big Finish has been their refusal to return to the Cybermen of the 1980s. Even before adopting the “new series” style of Cybermen, they were much more apt to use 1960s and 1970s Cybermen – but now, with Andrew Smith’s “Hour of the Cybermen,” we’re firmly back in the ‘80s, complete with David Banks.
“Hour of the Cybermen” isn’t particularly interesting. It doesn’t do anything new with the Cybermen, it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and it only makes a token effort to make its new UNIT characters compelling. I don’t think Smith is going for “interesting,” though – I think he’s going for a brutal action story, and on those grounds, he delivers. Characters stomp around the scenes yelling clichéd dialogue at each other, so clichéd that I’m sure Smith is doing it on purpose. The Cyber-plan is comic book supervillainy: they have built a weapon that evaporates water, and they can use Earth’s satellite network to target it at individuals or at entire bodies of water. This means they can either torture individuals by dehydrating them, or threaten entire populations by taking their supply of fresh water. All of this is obviously in service of getting humanity to surrender to Cyber-conversion. It’s a suitably apocalyptic plan for a story like this, though it’s also the sort of thing that’s easily resolved, meaning the plot is largely four episodes of trying to get the Doctor to a computer so he can stop the whole thing.
The big story here is the return of David Banks to the role of the Cyber Leader, and he’s every bit as delightful as you’d expect. In keeping with his ‘80s portrayal, there’s absolutely no pretense of “emotionless cyborg” here: he practically growls out his dialogue, each line dripping with menace and foreboding. He doesn’t sound much like he did 35 years ago, but that’s okay, because this take on the character is every bit as entertaining. Mark Hardy also returns as the Cyber Lieutenant, and these two voices coupled with Steve Foxon’s period-appropriate sound design and music makes you feel as though you’re right back in the ‘80s on TV. Admittedly, I often criticize Big Finish for prioritizing nostalgia above all else, but this is the first time they’ve revisited this era: if we start getting endless David Banks box sets, I won’t be as forgiving.
“Hour of the Cybermen” also features the return of the new UNIT team established in “The Helliax Rift.” In that story, they were set up as antagonists: they were hostile, violent, and generally mistrusting of the Doctor. Here, that’s all out the window, as they’re a much more standard UNIT team seeking out the Doctor’s help. It makes for a more comfortable story, and it makes more sense for the Doctor to be helping them, but this is yet another example of taking potentially interesting character development and ignoring it. They even kill off one of them in an odd decision that doesn’t resonate nearly as much as it should. The only interesting element here is the return of Blake Harrison as Daniel Hopkins, the UNIT medic and only member of the team that actually liked the Doctor. He’s suffered a great loss, and as a result he’s secretly working for the Cybermen, wanting to wipe out his own emotions to eliminate his all-encompassing grief. The story doesn’t take his side, but Smith clearly views Hopkins as a sympathetic character, too consumed by his own grief to think clearly. The problem, of course, is that Hopkins is working with the Cybermen to wipe out humanity, which is the point at which any sympathy for his plight vanishes. I’ve discussed many times before how much I dislike stories that show alien races with legitimate grievances conspiring to commit genocide. Doctor Who is a series often involving apocalyptic threats to humanity, but you can’t tell those stories and simultaneously expect the listener to respect the struggle of those making those threats unless you are a very, very good writer.
Overall, “Hour of the Cybermen” is a solid story that does what you’d expect: brings back the ‘80s Cybermen and puts them in a downbeat action story. As I said above, it’s enjoyable to finally return to this era, but the story itself isn’t that great. I hope we get future appearances from Banks and Hardy, but if we do, they’ll need better material to maintain my interest.
6/10