Legend of the Cybermen (Mike Maddox)

June 2010 sees the third, and final, of three stories starring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon.

Sixth Doctor

This trilogy concludes with "Legend of the Cybermen" by Mike Maddox which was recorded on the 19th and 20th October 2009.

In this story the travellers are joined by Wendy Padbury, reprising her role of 1960’s assistant Zoe Heriot. Nicholas Briggs is also on double duty of directing and playing the Cybermen, while the cast includes Ian Gelder (Torchwood: Children of Earth). Also starring are: Steven Kynman, Abigail Hollick and Charlie Ross.

‘It was a personal thrill to have Wendy playing Zoe for the first time in a full-cast adventure’ Nicholas Briggs has revealed. ‘Jamie and Zoe were my companions from childhood, and I had a tingle down my spine when we came to record the scene in which they were reunited. It was like stepping back in time 40 years’.

Zoe

The big question is just what happens in this story that allows the plucky young astrophysicist to be reunited with her old friends from the TARDIS? ‘What progresses throughout this story is the question of what is and isn't real’, Wendy Padbury has revealed. ‘In this wonderland place, what has been happening? Who is in control?’.

If you have already listened to the previous story, "The Wreck of the Titan", then you will already know that story was a set-up for this story. ‘Like all brilliant creative ideas about what we're going to do with each season, it came from Alan Barnes’, Nicholas Briggs has revealed. ‘He is a genius-a grumpy, curmudgeonly genius, but definitely a genius - and an amazing writer. I said “Yeah, shut up”, and dismissed his pitch out of hand - but he wrote me a long proposal for how it might work. I sat down and assessed his idea, and suddenly I shared the excitement I'd heard in his voice’.

On the Back Cover:

The Cybermen are on the march through the Land of Fiction, killing and converting as they go. Resistance is useless.

Trapped on the outermost fringes of the battle, the Doctor and Jamie are astonished to encounter an old friend: astrophysicist Zoe Heriot.

It's the happiest of reunions. But what hope is there of a happy ending against the unstoppable Cybermen?

The Cybermen were created by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler. I was lucky enough to meet Gerry back when I was a student. He came to my tiny room in the halls of residence one stuffy afternoon. He sat on the edge of my bed while I hovered nervously, making tea with powdered milk and offering chocolate hobnobs. His daughter, Felicity, was in a room at the end of the corridor and, spotting a fan a mile off, had kindly brought him to say hello when he came to visit.

We sat and talked for a while, about the Cybermen, about Pat, about Jamie and Zoe and the pictures of Colin Baker blu-tacked to my bedroom wall. The man who created creatures that terrified me as a child, and he was sat there in my room. With biscuits.

We were never close friends, never hung out with the same people or anything, bit wherever you are Felicity, this one's for you and your dad.



Director’s Notes: Nicholas Briggs

Now, I refer you to the Director's Notes I wrote for the first story of this trilogy, City of Spires. There you will see how dewy-eyed I got about the fact that I was directing a story with Jamie in it, because I am a child of the 1960s. So imagine how joyously my fan genes were agitated when Zoe joined Jamie. I was actually moved to tears. I could have saved myself any embarrassment, but such was the emotional force of my feelings, I felt compelled to confess them to Wendy and Frazer after a take... and, as is often the case, it's the act of confessing an emotion that makes you all the more emotional.

What a total softie I am! Fancy getting all tearful and nostalgic about some daft old TV series! I mean, it's just a daft old TV series that has taken over my entire life. Just a daft old TV series that continues to give me the opportunity to live out my dreams and spend every day at work having fun.

So, maybe not such a daft old TV series after all then, eh?