Written by Terrance Dicks, based on Gerry Davis’ scripts for the 1975 TV serial.

Revenge of the Cybermen is the least-loved story from Tom Baker’s barnstorming debut series. It’s serial so roundly considered a failure as it stands that Big Finish have released an alternative version based on an earlier set of Gerry Davis’ scripts. Still, it wasn’t always so. Back in 1983, by popular demand it was the very first story to be released on home video. So, does the novel reveal this to be a neglected gem?

In short: no. Stripped of Michael E Briant’s effective TV direction and scenes famously shot on location in the spooky caves of Wookey Hole we are left with a barebones story that could easily have fit into Patrick Troughton’s first or second series. An isolated space station in orbit of Voga, the planet of gold, is softened up by plague-carrying Cybermats (a conflation of The Moonbase’s space plague and The Wheel in Space’s alloy-eating Cyber critters) before the Cybermen themselves make an appearance in the second half. This would have been tired had it been broadcast in 1968 and was exactly the kind of story Terrance Dicks scrapped when he became script editor for Troughton’s third year.

Perhaps this explains why Dicks’ novelisation feels brisk, almost impatient, with the material. There are few embellishments, and little attempt to flesh out the story compared to Dicks’ earlier novels. Which is not to say this is a poor job. The opening sequences of the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry exploring the apparently deserted Nerva Beacon are effectively creepy, and the jump scare as the Doctor opens a door to have a dead body drop on him is, ironically, brought brilliantly to life on the page. Sarah Jane’s harrowing journey through Nerva’s corridors, edging past the horribly contorted corpses of the Cybermat’s plague victims, is an astonishingly vivid sequence that is more frightening in print than would ever have been allowed onscreen.

Dicks’ instincts on what is interesting for younger readers are very clear. Scenes of the squabbling, gnome-like Vogans arguing internal politics are dealt with as briefly as possible. The focus is instead on the dramatic sequences of the Doctor and the captive Nerva survivors turned into walking bombs and turning on their Cyberman handlers, or Sarah Jane evading capture on the invaded space station. Still, I suspect Dicks can’t help show his opinion of the material in a line like, “Unaware that he was using one of science fiction’s immortal cliches, Kellman said, ‘Take me to your leader'”. In the final pages the author seems as keen as the Doctor to slip away from this and get into the next adventure with the Brigadier and the Loch Ness Monster. Grade 3.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Genesis of the Daleks.