Audio Review: Legend of the Cybermen

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Doctor Who: Legend of the Cybermen by Mike Maddox


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I gather that this story has divided fans and it's easy to see why. Fans who were hoping to see Jamie McCrimmon reunited with the Doctor for some fun adventures, or fans who were hoping to see Jamie regain his lost memories of the Doctor and perhaps gain some closure on his adventures in the TARDIS may well be disappointed in this story. On the other hand, fans who like their Big Finish when it gets funny, metafictional, and just plain weird are probably going to be delighted by this audio.

Personally, I find myself stuck in the middle. I really was hoping for some straightforward fun adventures with Jamie and the Sixth Doctor. But I also love my funny, metafictional, and weird Big Finish. So, I just tried to go with the flow and enjoy this story for what it was. I can always hope that Big Finish will return to the Sixth Doctor and Jamie pairing later in a more straightforward mode.

The basic setup of this audio is: Characters from The Land of Fiction (as seen in "The Mind Robber") battle the Cybermen. ("What's a Cyberman?" asks Rob Roy MacGregor at one point. "A silver Englishman," Jamie replies, to Rob's delight.) The Land of Fiction is ruled by a new Mistress, whose identity is a mystery that provides much of the tension in the play. The Doctor and Jamie are soon reunited with Zoe, who manages to restore Jamie's memories, and our heroes get on with battling the Cybermen, with assistance from (among others) the Artful Dodger, Count Dracula, and Alice Liddell.

Probably the story's most gloriously metafictional moment is when the Cybermen manipulate the nature of reality to trap each of our characters in a fictional context, and Jamie finds himself in what is recognizably a Big Finish recording booth, being directed to read words from a script by Nick Briggs...who then morphs into a Cyberman. I know that the level of in-jokery involved in that scene is beyond self-indulgent, but I personally found it hilarious.

There's also a glorious moment later when Jamie and Rob Roy begin narrating their own adventures in rather bad verse.

There are some flaws to temper my delight, however. First, I didn't really follow all of the technobabble about how the Cybermen were manipulating reality, although that was partly my own fault for allowing myself to be distracted during moments of exposition. Second, the ultimate unreality of the whole thing makes it all feel somewhat inconsequential. Even though the story was very cleverly constructed to justify it, I can't help but feel disappointed that it leaves Jamie right back where he's been since we last saw him at the end of "The War Games".

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