Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Colin Baker, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Lucy Liemann, Kieran Hodgson, Nicholas Farrell, Nicholas Briggs.
The Cybermen are never more dangerous than when completely and utterly defeated. Time and Time again from the edge of extinction, from the void between realities and the darkness of space they have survived, regrouped and in some cases have even nearly rivalled the Daleks for their natural predisposition to conquer and enslave; for they are a monster that never quite knows when to finally give up.
Alan Barnes’ sixth Doctor audio adventure Last of the Cybermen neatly takes the idea that the Cybermen have finally been vanquished in a terrible war Humanity is now able to see them as more of a oddity, a collection piece, something that any relic found hiding in the dust should be polished and placed into a museum. It is then that the Cybermen truly become the stuff of nightmares, for they have fallen into the hands of humans.
Perhaps taking a leap from the television episode Dalek in which the megalomaniac businessman and alien artefact collector Henry Van Statten sits in his bunker far below the Utah desert and proudly displays the severed damaged head of a Cyberman, Last of the Cybermen takes a once proud sentient being and places them in the most dangerous place of all, a citadel trapped with another scientific megalomaniac and a whole bunch of Cybermen waiting for revenge; for this is the fate of the Doctor as once more he faces reliving a past regeneration surrounded by people who don’t know him.
If there is one thing the sixth Doctor can rely upon though is the near ready acceptance of his past companions to look beyond the facial features of the man from Gallifrey and place their trust in the one person who can, if not save the day, then at least postpone the fight by about a decade.
To that end to have Wendy Padbury and Frazier Hines relive their time on Doctor Who as Zoe and Jamie is a big plus for this particular episode, especially in the case of arguably the greatest and popular male companion of them all in Frazier Hines. Not for the first time the energy that is created in the studio between Mr. Hines and the exceptional Colin Baker come to the fore, there really is a lot of respect between the two after working on the television series and in three audios in the last few years and it carries through to this particular audio episode as well.
Last of the Cybermen shows with great care the stupidity that sometimes lives on in the world around us, by collecting and preserving the things that kill us, for example the bacteria Yersinia Pestis, as a culture in a deep underground lab, it only takes one rogue element hiding in the shadows to release the spores and create havoc and death on a large scale once more; it is the lessons we never seem to learn that hurt us the most. By seeking to preserve the Cybermen as a museum piece, humanity sows the seeds of its own inevitable destruction.
A telling piece, a graphic and calculating couple of hours for which Alan Barnes should be congratulated in bringing to the world; Last of the Cybermen is a warning from beyond time.
Ian D. Hall