Plague of the Cybermen (AudioGo)

Plague of the Cybermen
Released by AudioGo
Produced by Big Finish
Written by Justin Richards
Read by David Warner, with Nicholas Briggs
Released: April 2013

Hot on the heels of his appearance in series 7B’s Cold War, here David Warner reads and performs Justin Richards’ recent 11th Doctor adventure. Warner has had many Doctor Who incarnations, of course, playing the Doctor himself in Big Finish’s Unbound range and currently facing off against Tom Baker’s Doctor as the villainous Cuthbert. In Plague of the Cybermen, Warner sells melodramatic moments particularly well and paces his delivery for maximum effect without ever sounding too actorly. He can be counted on to lend a certain dramatic heft to proceedings, offering a safe pair of hands for this sort of thing. 

The story is set between The Snowmen and The Bells of Saint John, and as a result Justin Richards introduces a one-off companion for the Doctor, Olga the local schoolteacher. I did wonder whether a female voice might have helped characterize and embody Olga more effectively. She is already a fairly insubstantial character, though, and it’s a state of affairs that's left unchanged by this reading. Difficulties with the material are a matter of source content rather than Warner’s rendition.

Plague of the Cybermen concerns an invented nineteenth-century village, Klimtenburg, where mysterious deaths have been caused by “Plague Warriors”, and where strange new metallic trinkets have become a kind of local currency. The Doctor is very soon on the case, and Richards’ traditional Who story opts for an almost steampunk rendering of Cybertechnology. Perhaps implausibly, the Cybermen have been able to embed their techniques into clockwork machineries and devices built by locals, leading to a resolutely Cyber-retro feel that’s at odds with the TV upgrade of Nightmare in Silver. These Cybermen deliberately belong to another era, and are very differently hybridized. There is a nod towards Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with one important character – Lord Ernhardt’s son – being named Victor. And Frankensteinian body horror is never far from the storytelling agenda, as Richards teases us with a game of ‘spot the Cyber agent’.

The real strength of this AudioGO production lies in how David Warner and Nick Briggs (playing assorted electronic voices) are able to capture and convey the story’s emotional heart. For it is the Ernhardt family who eventually lie at the centre of events, with Lord and Lady Ernhardt as well as the ailing Victor all encountering Cybertechnology in a series of ways. In a sense, Plague of the Cybermen tackles head-on, and in a fashion that may even be too daring for the TV series, what happens when themes of “family entertainment” and matters of Cyber-conversion are mercilessly fused. It is a subject matter that’s been tackled fleetingly in the parent show (whether via Jackie Tyler’s alt-universe fate or Nightmare in Silver’s threat to its child characters), but here it becomes the thematic core of events.

If Olga seems rather under-developed, then there are other identity problems, all of which fall beyond David Warner’s vocal reparations. “Classic” Who contented itself with telling adventure romps marked by atmosphere and suspense, whereas it’s starting to feel as if the current era of the programme is marked by what could be dubbed a “tyranny of the reveal”: major plot twists have to be served up, no matter what. As a result, several characters find themselves undergoing revelatory shifts in self-identity – and the tactic is no more convincing here than it was in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. This time round, one character is exposed as something other than human, whilst another is ultimately half the person we assume them to be. But these “reveals” hinge on generic science fiction logic, and don’t quite hit home as a result, even with Warner doing his very best to sway the listener. Plague of the Cybermen might have flowed better as a story without feeling the need to incorporate “X was Y all along”-type “shock” moments. And its many reveals – what’s the collective noun for these? A “startle”? A “game-changer” of reveals? – all too clearly expose the narrative machinery of Richards' creation.

Although this is a lengthy listen (it’s spread across 6 discs, each running between 43 minutes to an hour or so), Warner’s performance constantly keeps the energy levels up. And when Nick Briggs joins the fray then his vocal contributions remain as vital as ever. But it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that this is essentially a run-of-the-mill affair. For an original novel published in the 50th anniversary year, and skillfully converted into audio by AudioGO, this somehow seems to lack ambition. Perhaps brand managers didn’t want the TV series to be overshadowed, but whatever the planning that went into this, Plague of the Cybermen still feels a bit like an anniversary year non-special. That’s not to say it’s bad: quite to the contrary, it is a solid Who story enacted with relish by David Warner, who will no doubt further endear himself to discerning Doctor Who fans with this work. But Plague presses so many familiar buttons that it comes across as a Cyber-mashup of tropes, body horror moments, Doctor-ish foibles, romantic subplots, and techno-creepiness. Stitched together from standard-issue sources before finally sparking into dramatic life, this production of Plague is ably carried by Messers Warner and Briggs.