The Tyrants of Logic

In the far future on the mining colony of Burnt Salt, a mysterious object has arrived at the spaceport. Burnt Salt has been all but abandoned, its resources failing and its infrastructure crumbling, so to receive an unexpected delivery is something of a novelty. But there are more susprises for the remaining colonists - the Doctor and Jo also arrive in the TARDIS, at the same time as a man who can only be described as a Cyberman hunter. These are the days after the Cyberwars where the Cybermen have been driven back, their numbers decimated, but their drive to survive remains, and whatever is in the crate on Burnt Salt is key to that survival.

It's release number two from the fourth volume of Third Doctor Adventures and in keeping with the usual pattern it's an off-world adventure to balance out the previous one which was set on Earth. It is also something of a first: the first full length encounter between the third Doctor and the Cybermen. They have been back in The Blue Tooth which was arguably more of a Liz Shaw story since it was told through her perspective, and there's a fleeting encounter coming up in a few years in a multi-Doctor story, but here we have it, at last, the third Doctor meeting one of the series' most famous monsters. I don't know why it has taken this long really; not even the many novels published by either Virgin or BBC Books have brought the two together over all the years. It might have something to do with the writers and all; here we have a script delivered by Marc Platt who has written some brilliant stuff for the silver monsters and with Nick Briggs as the director and the Cyberman voices, it's bound to work. The voices are the creepy ones from The Invasion even if the weapons effects are from a different story coming up soon, probably an intentional way to bridge the evolution of the Cybermen as they will be a bit different when they next appear on screen..

The story is set in an era which gets alluded to here and there in Doctor Who - the time just after the Cyberwars where the galaxy took on the Cybermen and won. Their armies demolished the Cybermen are scattered all over the galaxy but there are agents still hunting them down much like the post WWII Nazi hunters. The Cybermen are, after all, determined and driven to survive and convert other species into them, and so long as there are still Cybermen active in the galaxy the threat that they will return is there as well. Enter a new threat: the Cyber Leveller, which can't be good news for anyone.

And not only is this the third Doctor's first proper outing against the Cybermen, it's also Jo's, although
she's a pretty old hand at dealing with alien monsters by now. To have her up against these ones at last is just ticking another box on the long list of Jo's accomplishments as a companion. And Katy Manning too, bless her - does anyone ever give this woman enough credit for her service to the series? The truth is this is the last audio for now with her and Tim Treloar standing in for "her" Doctor, Jon Pertwee; we're headed back to the TV series next and it's going to be the end for Jo on screen. I never really used to rank Jo as one of my favourites, honestly, but as Katy Manning has returned to her time and again to bring her back, I gotta admit she's risen in my estimation right up there.

NEXT EPISODE: THE GREEN DEATH