Hogan Reviews

The second half of the Audacity set is, as the title plainly points out, set during the “Great Cyber-War” that was all the talk during the Fourth Doctor’s only TV encounter with the Cybermen. In fact this is a prequel to that story, showing how the war came to an end and even explains some of sillier aspects of the Cybermen from that period away in a fittingly silly way, all leading to an unexpected reveal at the end of the story that flies in the face of this “new era” being advertised, but I was happy though! Let’s take a look.

The story starts with The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Audacity (Jaye Griffiths) exploring outside the newly landed TARDIS and discovering a space station with a gold hallway decorated with gold furniture and a short while later a party full of rich people drinking out of gold cups and eating food with gold specs on them. Audacity, who in her debut appearance held up a ball room and took from the rich to give back to the poor, is understandably disturbed by her first look at humanity’s future but The Doctor soon becomes disturbed for an entirely different reason as the party celebrates its main benefactor: Oberon Fix (Keith Drinkel), the man who engineered the glitter guns and brought about the end of the Cyber-War. The Doctor immediately tries to get Audacity out of harms way but the two get separated as an assassination attempt on Fix goes wrong and Audacity ends up in a shuttle going down to the surface of Voga with the would-be assassin while The Doctor is arrested for the deed (naturally…)

This is where we meet the rest of the cast as The Doctor is interrogated by station administrator Galta (Trudie Goodwin) and the head Vogan guard Vrull (Karen Archer) while Audacity meets some Vogan resistance members who want the humans to stop mining their planet dry and leaving them sick, led by Nelvin (James MacCallum), with Dellatine (Diana Yekinni) being the assassin who acted on her own. The Doctor is taken to Fix, who is unsurprised to find out he’s a time traveller as apparently he gets them all the time due to his involvement in ending the Cyber-War, and soon he gives The Doctor and Vrull permission to head down to Voga and recover Audacity and capture the assassin, though not before showing The Doctor his greatest weapon: the Golden Pulse, which he believes is what he uses to end the war. On the surface The Doctor and Audacity are eventually reunited and Dellatine is executed by Galta, but before anyone can get too mad about it The Doctor discovers she’s been talking to the Cybermen in hopes they’ll come and kill the humans but leave them alone, and a Cyber-Fleet is now approaching the planet, ready for a bombardment.

Another look at the overall Audacity cover. Obviously the Cyberman-heavy right side draws the eye more than anything, good thing its two-thirds of the set!

As the bombardment begins everyone manages to escape the surface and return to the space station, where we get some fun base-under-siege storytelling complete with a couple of side characters getting killed and a daring lift escape via both a ladder and later some anti-gravity shenanigans. At the same time The Doctor and Fix have to dodge a Cyberman that the latter had encased in gold and used as a statue only to see it come to life, as you do. Fix is injured by his own creation, so to speak, but it is eventually defeated. In the end everyone gathers around Fix’s lab but the Cyber Leader, who is exhibiting an unusual amount of emotion due to his emotional inhibitor getting “rusty” (a light-hearted jab at the overly emotional Cyber Leader from Revenge), along with his men are about to break into the lab via the windows…

In two one-hour episodes it manages to do some good scene setting before becoming a more straight-forward but still really fun adventure.

The Continuity:

Obviously the main one here is Fourth Doctor TV story “Revenge of the Cybermen”, which this is a prequel to, and explains a lot of continuity issues brought about by the story. There is also a, *ahem*, heavy continuity link to other Eighth Doctor audios by the reveal at the end, but I won’t spoil that here!

Overall Thoughts:

“The Great Cyber-War” is a fun two-part story (or the length of a four parter, if you will) that does some really good scene setting and side-character developing before getting to the more bog standard Cybermen base under siege stuff, which may be bog standard but is at least a good example of it. A really good story overall, and a great box set!

As the Cyber-Leader threatens to break in Fix reveals to The Doctor that his “Golden Pulse” will transform every Cyberman to have a deadly reaction to gold thanks to also simultaneously infecting all gold with special particles (so that explains why suddenly in the 80s a single gold coin hitting their chest makes Cybermen die…) and also reveals that it’s been ready for a while but by activating it will also kill all Vogans, making him commit genocide for the sake of every other race in the galaxy. The Doctor is horrified, especially as he confirms eventually the Cybermen create a work-around (explaining why every non-80s Cyberman story doesn’t have them so weak to the substance) but with the Cyber-Leader knocking on the door and about to wipe out Voga via bombardment anyway he doesn’t see a choice, but sadly Fix succumbs to his wounds and dies before he can activate it, putting the decision in the hands of The Doctor.

He plays around with some tech and tells the Vogans to go as deep underground as they can and then sets the planet off of its orbit (again, setting up “Revenge of the Cybermen” nicely) but before he has the “honour” Nelvin presses the button instead, setting about the destruction of most of his own people in order to take down all the Cybermen, at the cost of his life as well. The Great Cyber-War ends due to Fix’s Golden Pulse, just as history recorded it, but as usual there was more to the story. Audacity is a little shaken from her first TARDIS trip so The Doctor decides to take her to see “a friend” and that friend ends up being Charley Pollard (India Fisher), who The Doctor apparently accidentally left on Tibet instead of Hong Kong, placing this firmly in the early Charley / Doctor era. As a big nostalgic fan of that era this was great news for me but given this set was pretty much announced as “a new companion and a fresh jumping on point with the Eighth Doctor” revealing that its happening in between one of the more arc-heavily periods of the audio series is a bit of an odd decision!

Oh well, the two companions look like they’re going to get on as Charley says she’s feeling festive due to all of the snow, leading to the next, Christmas-y box set!