Iceberg

The Doctor takes a side-trip away from the TARDIS on board a life-boat within the time machine; it outwardly resembles a Chinese version of the London Polive Box the rest of the ship is modelled on. Leaving Ace and Bernice, the Doctor arrives on Earth in 2006 just as a team called FLIPback is working at averting a reversal of the Earth's magnetic field in Antarctica. Nearby is the pleasure cruise ship SS Elysium. And even closer, under the ice, are the Cybermen.

Loved it. LOVED it.

It's a different kind of take on the Cybermen this time, and despite the action taking palce in Antarctica and the family tradition of military service in the Cutler family, this one actually owes more to The Invasion than it does to The Tenth Planet. Chronologically, Invasion would have been the first real Cyberman attack on Earth as it was contemporary to when it was broadcast - the late 60's - whereas Planet was placed in the future (at the time) in 1986. But hold up - wouldn't the Cybermen on Mondas have been recognized? And how would Cybermen have made it to Earth ahead of the planet? And the vast differences in technology (despite the passage of time on television) are a bit jarring as well.

David Banks explains it all. At least, in his words. There's never been a deep look into the Cybermen and their origins in the classic series; they came from Mondas, Mondas went boom, they took over Telos, they started to die out, and then the Doctor wiped out what was left with the Nemesis statue. David Banks, however, having played a Cyberleader on television in every one of their appearances from 1982 to 1988, wanted to get into the heads of the Cybermen more than he already did, and he began to draft his own history of the Cybermen in a book called, simply, Cybermen. Iceberg, his only contribution to the New Adventures range (and the one with the most gratuitious use of the word "fuck"), takes his theories on Cyber-evolution and Cyber-proliferation and winds them into the threads left dangling from the two 60s invasion stories, with brief revisits to each of them from the points of view of simple citizens at the time. And then he takes a Cyberman survival unit that escaped Zoe's deadly rocket strike, drops them under the Antarctic ice, and then brings in the Doctor without companions to deal with them.

Yes, Iceberg was actually written to run parallel with another novel, Birthright, where Ace and Benny are stranded with a dead TARDIS and have to reconclie some of their own differences plus Ace's lingering distrust of the Doctor. But that's about all that I can say about that one; the actual story escapes me. The Doctor always needs someone along for the ride, though, so enter one Ruby Duvall, journalist, along on board the cruise ship to report on the work of the FLIPback team. Ruby's not a bad one to have along; she's plucky, she's smart, she knows how to pull her t shirt down to cover her bum (so the book says) and she's the first companion in any continuity to visit the loo.

And speaking of innovation - the concept of the Jade Pagoda as a sort of half-TARDIS for the Doctor to leave in when he pleases is an interesting one. It must be a character quirk of his, though, as nothing on Gallifrey resembles anything vaguely Japanese. It only comes up again one more time in this series before the idea is forgotten in the mists.

I never really found any flaw with Iceberg. It was enjoyable right through to the end. It drew a lot of fire for the swearing, most of it from fanboys (yes, the term includes girls too) who actually thought it made the series too adult. This from an audience largely in their 20s and early 30s by this time. I was 22 myself when it was published and I found it refreshing to be treated like an adult. But, hey, I was never one to sit around at fanclub executive meetings and giggle when someone said something naughty - I think one time when I did show up someone took exception to my Madonna Blond Ambition World Tour t shirt because she was cleverly naked on it.

But what do I know. I just liked Iceberg.

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