Who would have though it? David Warner - movie-actor from the legendary THE OMEN (1976), STAR TREK V (1989), AVATAR (2004) and television-actor from WALLANDER (2008-11) – not only appearing in the televised series (COLD WAR [2013]) but reading a DOCTOR WHO novel for AUDIOGO. It’s like having Christmas Day, Birthday and finding an errant shiny one Pound coin on the pavement all in one day. “River, I don’t believe it! Slap me!”
In one of the darkest novels in recent years, Warner effortlessly recounts the day the Eleventh Doctor unearths – literally – the truth that lies beneath the earth whilst the heavens above spark and arc with burning electrical lightening in Justin Richards’ DOCTOR WHO – PLAGUE OF THE CYBERMEN (multi-formatted releases from BBC BOOKS and AUDIOGO).
A chilling, heart-breaking and relentless (companion-less) adventure, that transports the reader-listener to 19 th-century Sweden that is riddled with incessant plague that dissolves flesh and calcifies bone leading to a remorseless death, but, if that wasn’t the end of the plague’s curse, inexplicably the deceased leave their final resting place. Voluntarily or is there a Nordic version of Burke & Hare retrieving the cadavers (each adorned with mysterious metal necklace Talisman) for experimentation or spare parts?
Old Nicolai: Doctor, thank God you’re here.
The tone of the novel, embraced by stoical David Warner’s reading, is truly macabre and traumatic with the Time Lord challenged at every turn and every (confident) preen of his (cool) bow tie. Certainly, this disquieting tone is laid-bare from the novel’s prologue which, as a warning for all ‘junior Time Lords’ - and their parents – is not for the faint-hearted or those who don’t want to recall the adventure as they sleep and dream.
Gruesome is apposite.
The Doctor: And you don’t need the Observer Book of Dead Bodies to tell you that one of his legs is missing.
Singularly foreboding in every inflection and with precision delivery of every consonant and vowel, David Warner’s subterranean tone is epically suited to PLAGUE OF THE CYBERMEN, minimalistic in attempt to mimic or delineate each of Richards’ Holmesian-like (see writer Robert Holmes contribution to DOCTOR WHO) characters, he imbues each, including the youthful Gallifreyan, with motive, drive, anxiety and verve that brings them to life. Surely, a masterly skill that many other audiobook readers would envy.
Cyberman: You belong to us. You shall be like us.
With the addition of Nicholas Briggs’ growling metallic drone of the cybermen, and a malevolent rumbling soundtrack that never distracts from Warner’s reading, the audiobook production is exemplary, and, like a cyber-arm tightly gripping around your throat, pulls you in to the story until you succumb.
An aural confection to gorge upon.
The Doctor: Cybermen don’t get plague. They are plague.
Throughout Justin Richards’ delivers an intriguing plot that unravels at a steady (fast)pace that would be only compromised if it was contracted into a 45-minute televised episode, and with the added benefit of a ‘companion-less’ Doctor the storyline is, literally, forward-focused and undiluted with no slipping sideways to account for the actions of the Ponds or Miss Oswald. And there are no complicated or convoluted story arcs that have become themselves ‘a plague’ within the television series.
Who are the Watchmaker, Lord Ernhardt and his thick-skinned, resilient Spouse? What is the truth that lays beneath their castle battlements?
With adroit back-references to the Time Lord’s previous adventures (THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS), casual appreciation of QUEENS’ ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1975), and a scene that could have been lifted from Terrance Dicks’ DOCTOR WHO – STATE OF DECAY, Richards’ PLAGUE OF THE CYBERMEN ultimately satisfies, quenching the readers-listeners’ thirst with his unique, honest, and salient storytelling ‘terroir’.
Whether it is the printed novel or audiobook (CD or download from AUDIOGO), DOCTOR WHO – PLAGUE OF THE CYBERMEN is thoroughly engrossing (like a rampant Cybermite, my 10-year old devoured the novel over the weekend), intelligently written and is pitch-perfect in representing the Eleventh Doctor’s eye-glinting, hapless yet heroic Time Lord.
But the major question that you will be asking is how has the weather-controlling Cybermen become Michael Fish?
