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                                                     CONTEMPORANEOUS (DOCTOR WHO)

(4 60-MINUTE EPISODES)

 OCTOBER 2005 - FEBRUARY 2006

off series and Doctor Who’s heavily-promoted fortieth anniversary, Big Finish began to flood the market with all manner of spin-offs series, each exploring a popular aspect of Doctor Who mythology with the kid gloves off. The fact that this practice not only continues to this day, but does so on an even greater scale, probably says a lot more about the qualities of series such as Cyberman than I’m likely to here. Still…

Inevitably it’s difficult to listen to Cyberman and not measure it against Dalek Empire. Both series were written, directed, scored and polished by Nicholas Briggs, and both look at war, necessity and even survival with the same keen masochistic eye. However, save for its cast (whose identities were kept secret until the release of the final instalment), there is much to set Cyberman apart from its acclaimed forerunner. Each of its four episodes were recorded live in the studio, for instance, lending the series an edgy, old-school radio feel that almost all other Big Finish productions lack. What really sets the two apart though is their remit: Dalek Empire was an ambitious and progressive piece, ahead of its time in many ways, whereas Cyberman is content to collect together Cyber-Planners, Cyber-Tombs, and all manner of 1960s Cyber-staples and look at them in the altogether darker arena of a Doctor-free tale.

The plot is essentially a riff on Briggs’ earlier Doctor Who play, Sword of Orion, which saw human beings turn to Cybermen to try and win their war against their own android creations for them. Cyberman has more scope, however, taking place over a much longer period and over a far greater distance. Right from the opening chapter, Scorpius, it’s evident to the listener that the true evil doesn’t lie with either the morally-vacant human government or their equally indefinite android opponents, but the Cyberman threat bubbling away beneath the ocean. The question asked is not whether the humans and androids will come together to combat this menace, but how they will, and how successful they’ll be when they do. And without the Doctor and the certainty that he brings, the listener isn’t able to take anything for granted.

The story unfurls over an incredibly tense four hours, carried almost entirely by a compelling core of characters. Initially we follow Karen, a determined starship commander who is surreptitiously shepherded into the Oval Office by “Cybrid” spin doctor Paul Hunt. Sarah Mowat vests the new President of Earth with a very convincing duality; much like her Dalek Empire heroine, Mowat’s character hates what she has to do, but she can’t see any other options. Barnaby Edwards’ Paul Hunt is equally impressive, albeit for very different reasons. Indeed, you’ll be hard pressed to find a villain as slimy and as sinister anywhere, which is really quite a statement when one considers who his cold masters are.

For me, the beating heart of the Cyberman series lies with Mark McDonnell’s Liam Barnaby and Hannah Smith’s Samantha Thorn. The Dalek War stars play a high-ranking human military comman-der and a similarly senior android spy who, over the course of the series, begin to see past their respective prejudices as they are forced to work together. I wouldn’t go so far as to call theirs a love story because it’s much subtler than that, and all the more forceful for it. Indeed, save for some truly cringeworthy “snogging” noises, Briggs does a remarkably good job of avoiding cliché, and Smith and McDonnell’s performances each feel startlingly raw and real. Whether this is a benefit of the play’s dynamic recording method I can’t say; all I can say is that the performances work, and work beautifully.

The production itself is very stylish. Briggs’ score and sound design are suitably sinister and unsettling, and I love how the line between dialogue and prose is blurred, with the characters’ introspective monologues often verging on the poetic. Most notably of all though, Briggs does a fantastic job of creating his own distinctive Cyberman voice. It’s not quite that of the 1960s, nor is it that that we’d later hear in Rise of the Cybermen and hence, but it’s chilling and effective throughout, and even haunting on occasion. I never thought that my psyche would be would be tormented by the dying laugh of a Cyberwoman, but thanks to this series’ chilling conclusion, I’ve had to think again.

If one can resist the urge to compare it unfavourably with its Dalek sister series, Cyberman is a series that does little other than impress. With Earth’s government falling under Cyber control, it has all the political tension of something like State of Play, yet, teeming as it is with Cyber-Planners and Cyber-Tomb raids, it still manages to evoke the very sights and sounds of the Cybermen’s 1960s heyday. Above all else though, I have to recommend this series for the allure of its four principal characters and the performances that their actors provide. Each and every one of them is vested with a painful sense of inevitably and dread that leaves the listener quaking at the thought of the inexorable calm that is to come.