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

When I was first reading the Target books in the mid-1980s, the fact that The Tomb of the Cybermen was missing from the archives was neither here nor there. Horror of Fang Rock was never lost, and yet I had about as much chance seeing that on TV in 1986 as I did Tomb. Whether the BBC had a copy or not, these novelisations were the only copies that I could keep on my shelf. I received Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen for Christmas 1986 and ate it up.

Re-reading, I get the sense that Gerry Davis likes the story, and is trying to get down a definitive version. It’s slightly longer and denser than a Terrance Dicks book, and picks Victoria as the viewpoint character. In his hands it becomes a proper introduction story, with Victoria reluctantly dressing like “Alice in Wonderland” in Polly’s cast-off clothes, or explaining her un-Victorian forthrightness: “Victoria didn’t say that they need have no fear even without Toberman. She came from a lively Victorian family brought up by an unconventional scientist father.” There are some lovely incidental touches, like Victoria remembering that Michael Faraday once visited their home and enjoyed carrots, and her scenes with Kaftan and the Doctor are given much more focus than Jamie, who’s mostly described as a red-headed and belligerent Scot.

Davis, like Dicks, can’t help script editing himself as he goes. When recovered, the TV serial was occasionally criticised for the the fact that, once they come out of their tombs the Cybermen go back in again. Here, Davis stretches the creepy, Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb scene-setting to a full third of the novel (page 54 is the Episode One cliffhanger), and the Cybermen don’t emerge until page 88, two-thirds of the way through. This means that the TV serial’s third and fourth episodes are condensed to about 40 pages, and therefore the relatively static back end of the story is dealt with quite swiftly. I’m not totally convinced it was the right call – Terrance Dicks always had a sense for the child readers wanting to cut to the chase and so holding the Cybermen back for so long seems counter-intuitive, but as an adult reader I quite enjoyed the slow burn, and the extra time spent on the human villainy of Klieg and Kaftan.

Elsewhere, Davis is as much influenced by his own previous novelisations and the most recent Cyberman TV serial, Revenge of the Cybermen. His last novelisation was Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, and here the Doctor remarks, “The last time we had the pleasure of their company… They lived on the ‘Tenth Planet’ Mondas”, skipping Doctor Who and the Cybermen, a later TV story but novelised earlier. His Cybermen are explicitly the ones introduced in Revenge of the Cybermen, with the Controller/Cyberleader (the terms are used interchangeably) having a bulky black helmet – Jeff Cummins has been unjustly criticised for including the “wrong” Cyberman on his sophisticated cover, with its tombstone motif, but it’s the critics who are quite wrong: Cummins is much more in tune with Davis’ vision than the naysayers.

While less brisk than a Dicks book, this wins on atmosphere and characterisation. Grade 2.

Next Time: Doctor Who and the Time Warrior.