Written by Gerry Davis, based on Kit Pedler’s scripts for the 1967 TV serial The Moonbase.

This opens with what will become Davis’ standard prologue, a new creation myth for the Cybermen which ret-cons Telos’ place in their history and may have proved more influential in the long term than anything in the TV scripts.

For the most part, this is an accurate and faithful reproduction of the TV serial covering all its plot points and capturing it’s standout moments (the shadow of a Cyberman looming against the Moonbase wall; Troughton mucking about gathering evidence, bluffing Hobson on the progress of his investigations and standing firm against a threatened Cyberman missile attack). The TARDIS crew dynamics, a highlight of the episodes, comes across strongly, with the three companions working well as a team despite some macho squabbling between Ben and Jamie over Polly, and Polly’s tendency to cry much more readily than one imagines Anneke Wills ever doing. On TV, like the Cybermen themselves, this was a rather more polished, if less idiosyncratic, piece of work than The Tenth Planet and the novelisation retains the sense of being the holotype of both Cyberman and Base Under Siege stories.

Where it differs is in the sense of place and immediacy Davis creates – the Cyberman attack happens “at exactly 4.30 a.m. on October 15th in the year 2070″ which feels very H.G. Wells. Ben and Polly are said to come from the 1970s, and Ben’s Royal Navy background informs his character as he is quick to follow the Moonbase commander’s orders and thinks of the Doctor as his “captain”. Jamie’s background as a Highland rebel from Culloden is similarly referenced, although suggesting he was “thick even by 1745 standards” and therefore accepts things without question seems harsh. I think Davis is at his best nailing the wolfish character of Doctor Patrick when the bumbling facade slips and he talks sternly about battles to the death with the evils of the universe: “Normally dreamy and a little absent from the proceedings, in a gentle, charming sort of way, the Doctor occasionally showed a different nature underneath the easy-going pose. Now his green eyes became steely, his face hardened.”

It’s also evident that Davis was writing this around the same time as his involvement in the Tom Baker serial Revenge of the Cybermen. There is a Cyber-Leader (called Krang, in a link to The Tenth Planet) with a black helmet, as in Revenge (and in Davis’ later novelisation Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen). Both stories have strong horror movie overtones, particularly in the early scenes of unseen Cybermen stalking the darkened Moonbase and picking off its crew. If the novel has a flaw it’s that, just as the TV serial, the second half sacrifices a lot of this suspense for various scenes of the Cybermen’s Wily E Coyote attempts to conquer the Moonbase, and the ending is a bit of a “hexachromite gas” no-brainer. Still, without the kind of radical surgery that wasn’t normally attempted in the early Targets, it’s hard to see what more Davis could have done with the material. Grade 3.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Giant Robot.