Reviewed: Last of the Cybermen

Tony Jones is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

With Last of the Cybermen, the Big Finish main Doctor Who range clocks up release#199. Written by Alan Barnes, it is part of the so-called locum doctors trilogy. The idea is capable of description in a few words — an incarnation of the Doctor ends up in an adventure with the companions of an earlier incarnation, possibly displacing the normal flow of events. April gave us the Seventh Doctor teaming up with Jo Grant, this month’s story has the Sixth Doctor joining forces with Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot.

In some aspects this story follows the pattern of the previous. The Second Doctor was outside the TARDIS, stumbles, Jamie and Zoe go outside and find someone they don’t know in place of the Doctor. He claims to be a future Doctor, their is some doubt, the local plot takes over, the Doctor worries about having no memory of this version of events, there is some anxiety over why he has been dropped into his own past, the plot is resolved, everything returns to normal and nobody remembers anything about the swap over. This leaves most of the two discs available to have a 1960s style story with the Colin Baker as the Doctor.

The style point is important, this is made as though for the Troughton era and Barnaby Edwards does a good job of directing and Nigel Fairs turns up in charge of the sound design and music. It is fair to say this all works very well. What also works well is the chemistry between Colin, Wendy Padbury and Fraser Hines. We knew this from a previous trilogy and although enjoyable, there was less of Jamie than we might have had, particularly towards the end. A slight gripe — there is much here that does give insight into the Doctor looking back at the time he spent with dear friends, something not addressed in the previous story.

The story is set in a gap in the story of the Cybermen and Alan Barnes introduces some plausible history into the available space. He also goes out of his way to place this in the continuity of all the characters involved, then drags in a lot of Big Finish continuity as well. The story is at heart (ignoring the exchange of Doctors) a standard one. There is a planet with a huge Cyberman relic, a scientific expedition, an array of larger than life tally-ho fighting types and even a decent excuse to connect to Zoe’s back story. All jolly good fun, though the first three discs start off almost comic before become more and more intense. The fourth disc confuses; even after some analysis it jumps forward and pivots the story around in a way that feels discontinuous. Once the listener understands what is happening it is really rather clever but does make this feel like two styles of story oddly juxtaposed.

The other oddity is very much the spectre at the feast; just what is going on with the Doctor? Why is he back in his own timeline? This is not explored and, like last month’s The Defectors, this part of the story doesn’t convince.

As Big Finish has leaked the overall concept, we expect next month’s release #200 to sort things out when the Fifth Doctor meets Vicky and Steven. I hope we are not disappointed.

Astute fans might also have spotted the August Fourth Doctor adventure Return to Telos has the Fourth Doctor re-visiting the Tomb of the Cybermen and meeting Jamie. Coincidence or actually a secret episode of this trilogy? Who knows?!

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