Doctor Who: Legend of the Cybermen

Big Finish: Monthly Range #135

by Mike Maddox, Colin Baker (Narrator), Frazer Hines (Narrator)

The Cybermen are on the march through the Hundred Realms, 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?

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction, Time Travel

Audio CD

First published June 30, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Stavroula · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What is it that you are always running away from?"
"Boredom, mostly."

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of my favorite Sixth Doctor adventures! So much fun! And it’s a sequel to one of my favorite story-arcs from the original series ( Doctor Who: The Mind Robber ). It’s great to have Jamie and Zoe together again; and ,while it’s not Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker does a fine job actringnlike he remembers all those fun adventures. And another highlight for me was having Alexander Siddig/Siddig El Fadil (one of my favorite characters from Star Teek: Deep Space Nine, Dr Julian Bashir) back again playing Captain Nemo! Such a wonderful story!

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gather that this story has divided fans and it's easy to see why. Fans who were hoping to see Jamie McCrimmon reunited with the Doctor for some fun adventures, or fans who were hoping to see Jamie regain his lost memories of the Doctor and perhaps gain some closure on his adventures in the TARDIS may well be disappointed in this story. On the other hand, fans who like their Big Finish when it gets funny, metafictional, and just plain weird are probably going to be delighted by this audio.

Personally, I find myself stuck in the middle. I really was hoping for some straightforward fun adventures with Jamie and the Sixth Doctor. But I also love my funny, metafictional, and weird Big Finish. So, I just tried to go with the flow and enjoy this story for what it was. I can always hope that Big Finish will return to the Sixth Doctor and Jamie pairing later in a more straightforward mode.

The basic setup of this audio is: Characters from The Land of Fiction (as seen in "The Mind Robber") battle the Cybermen. ("What's a Cyberman?" asks Rob Roy MacGregor at one point. "A silver Englishman," Jamie replies, to Rob's delight.) The Land of Fiction is ruled by a new Mistress, whose identity is a mystery that provides much of the tension in the play. The Doctor and Jamie are soon reunited with Zoe, who manages to restore Jamie's memories, and our heroes get on with battling the Cybermen, with assistance from (among others) the Artful Dodger, Count Dracula, and Alice Liddell.

Probably the story's most gloriously metafictional moment is when the Cybermen manipulate the nature of reality to trap each of our characters in a fictional context, and Jamie finds himself in what is recognizably a Big Finish recording booth, being directed to read words from a script by Nick Briggs...who then morphs into a Cyberman. I know that the level of in-jokery involved in that scene is beyond self-indulgent, but I personally found it hilarious.

There's also a glorious moment later when Jamie and Rob Roy begin narrating their own adventures in rather bad verse.

There are some flaws to temper my delight, however. First, I didn't really follow all of the technobabble about how the Cybermen were manipulating reality, although that was partly my own fault for allowing myself to be distracted during moments of exposition. Second, the ultimate unreality of the whole thing makes it all feel somewhat inconsequential. Even though the story was very cleverly constructed to justify it, I can't help but feel disappointed that it leaves Jamie right back where he's been since we last saw him at the end of "The War Games".

[Jean-marcel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm afraid I'll have to discuss spoilers quite a bit here. If you want this play to deliver big, juicy revelations, you have been warned; stop reading if you dont' want to be saved...

I like The Mind Robber. I don't think I'd put it in my top five television stories (if I made such a list, but I don't believe in them), but it's eminently rewatchable, fun, full of a sense of wonderment and not at all obsessed with its own idea: namely, a fictional TV serial about fiction, whose guest stars can, for five weeks, admit that they're in a story, where literally anything can happen, especially if it's already been in a book. I appreciate how straight they all play it..I mean, oh yes, it's funny, but it's naturally funny, and not once do you think the people involved are nudging you and telling you to point and laugh.

But this is a pretty self-referential, inward-looking time we live in. SO many people can access so many stories all over the world. Millions of movies have been made. All the great adventure plots seem to be used up. Now we have adventure movies about being in an adventure movie, slasher movies whose cast of characters are actors playing in a slasher movie, blockbusters that essentially tell us that the world is one big video game. Your modern horror movie isn't cool with the kids unless its characters know all the clichés, spout wisecracks about the foolishness of their situation, and then get axed anyway, in the most gratuitous and bloodyminded fashion. Parodies are everywhere and reboots of things we cherished as children are done so that the things that we thought made the originals great in the first place can be broken down and made fun of, because, oh, yeah, that might have been a gripping yarn when you were ten, but isn't it great, as an adult, to point out how you can see the boom mike; how fake the monsters look; how rampant the plot holes?

No, I say, with desperate frustration. No, honestly, it really is terrible. It's not that I find these old cracking stories (from Doctor Who and many, many other sources) to be hallowed, untouchable institutions. It's not that I think we shouldnt' have a sense of humour about our favourite things sometimes. It's basically this simple...I don't think we ought to be smug and self-satisfied about it all, because really, what better have we to offer but post-modern digs and jabs, if we're going to descend to that level, and worst of all, do it professionally, and not just over a few drinks with our buddies (yeah, admit it, we've all probably done it with Horns of Nimon, A Nightmare on Elm Street or similar "awe-inspiring" elements of our childhoods).

There's a certain danger in being a "superfan", one who's seen, let's say, every episode of Doctor Who (because we are, after all, mostly talking about Doctor Who here, but this could equally apply to any comic book franchise, long-running television series, or huge multi-part novel epic), read most of the novels, listened to the audios, subscribed to the magazines. We tend to spend a huge amount of time analysing things that nobody else would analyse, thinkign about "what if" scenarios that would never enter anyone else's heads, internally (and vocally) debating the merits of this or that writer/director, looking for ways we could have done the stories better. I have a theory that some people come out the bottom of this period of intense scrutiny feeling a little self-conscious, a little embarrassed about how much they've devoted to dissecting a cliquy series of fictional exploits. This probably happens most to people of a certain age, who have passed the initial stage of desperately wanting to be accepted by their peers and having to do things in secret so that the other kids won't know the extent of their obsessions, , gone into their teen and early adult years of proud isolationism and a certain practised sharpness, and into the "working adult" phase of attempting to be settled, and a sort of re-surfacing/re-tooling of that childhood desire, "oh god, I really wish I was cool"", which is, as an older, socially established person, , supposed to be represented, among other things, by a discarding of childhood things or, at best, keeping them out of a sense of nostalgia and pleasant complacency. I remember first stumbling across Blakes' 7 fandom on the Internet. I was pretty excited because I didn't know many Blakes' 7 fans at all, and I thought it'd be cool to see how other people talked about this amazing show. Well, I did find plenty of theorising, fanwanking and other stuff, but what shocked me the most was how disparaging some of these apparent fans were of episodes that I had seen once or twice in my childhood and remembered as being great. Luckily, this prompted me to get the videos from my one friend who was into the show as well and I realised that my memory wasn't faulty and that, in fact, yes, these episodes really were good, gripping television. What I realised was simply this: These people who wrote acidic commentaries on the Internet were fans..they had immersed themselves in the show, its lore, its fan theories, its production foibles, to such an extent that suddenly part of the fun disappeared and a large helping of the wonderment and joy with it.

Now, I've no doubt, really, that Mike maddox loves Doctor Who (you wondered when I'd get round to Legend of the Cybermen, didnt' you?) I've no doubt, in fact, that Legend of the Cybermen is at least in part his expression of love for Doctor Who, and that he, and other fans, perhaps, would call *me* the cynical one for lambasting his story. The truth is though that this seems like the self-agrandising, self-congratulatory sort of love, the revelling and wallowing in one's own knowledge of all the tropes and traditions, coupled with some idea that, as a grown man, these things have been perfectly understood and overcome. It's the sort of stuff that someone might make you feel bad for dismissing because they'd say, "look man, you're just saying that because you're not in on the joke; you don't realise that the writer knows how bad it is and he's inviting you to laugh along with him".

I'll tell you exactly when I realised that this story had well and truly plunged off the cliff, though I certainly was grumbling some beforehand. It's when Zoe comments that so far they've gone through "the pseudo-historical, and the base under siege story". It didn't stop there. Zoe has a bunch of novels on her shelves with titles like: Doctor Who and the Dominators, Doctor Who and the Krotons, and some acknowledged-to-be-scripted-but-never-filmed story from the Troughton era whose name I can't recall. There's some question over whether the Doctor is "really real" or "just another fictional character", and Zoe says something like, "don't worry, Doctor, you're far too eccentric, far too unpredictable, to be captured well in print". The knowing wink in Wendy Padberry's voice as she delivers these lines is really too much to bear. Elsewhere, Jamie "unknowwingly" repeats lines he earlier used in The Mind Robber, and then asks the Doctor why, if they're really in a white void, they can hear their footfalls. At another point the Cybermen are rambling about narrative continuity and talking about what sound like "alignment points" used to direct magic, as though they were involved in a D&D session. This stuff, remember, is supposed to be funny, cute; give the fans a warm glow in their hearts.

And yeah, maybe a large part of my problem with this story is that it's all so damn fluffy, so sweet and saccharine. There is every element you'd expect from the Land of Fiction from the past, and every element you'd sort of expect to be in the land of fiction that wasn't before, like, oh, I don't know, pirates, because, yeah, pirates are cool! There are supposed to be hard-hitting revelations in here, but they're weak, because things haven't really seemed right from the very beginning of this trilogy, and because the storytelling here just isn't very good at all, something which you should take particular care with when you're writing a story that's, well, about stories themselves! And here, everything just falls down. I liked Conundrum because it was aware of the same clichés, adventure and science fiction tropes and cardboard characters that Legend of the Cybermen uses, but it was subtle enough about it that its pokes actually did bring a few smiles, and didn't have any hateful elements that stacked against it right from the start (well, it did have "New Ace", but for the record I only really hated her in the stupid wankfest NO Future). We knew what the Master of the Land wanted to do and it made sense that most of the characters there didn't have any free will because that would have killed the plot. IN Legend of the Cybermen, the new Master has given them all free will. That's nice; they can become "real" people now, right? Then, why all the stupidity in the last story? Why hold Jamie at ransome and vow to kill him unless the Doctor helps out, while refusing to tell him what to do and dropping him off in the void rather than somewhere else in the Land just so they can encounter the White Robots? Sounds like bad story logic to me. Weren't they already in the Land anyway?

And again, as with the last two stories, stuff just happens, "because". The Cybermen convert Oliver Twist! Why? So it can go wrong and he can utter eerie, distorted lines from the book. We're told that the Cybermen have started converting magical creatures. Oh no!!! What do they do with this? Nothing....there's no discussion of the ramifications for the creatures themselves, nor how the Cybermen really react to having magic in their midst and working in their favour (well, apart from the cute RPG stuff), no sense of struggle to adapt to this new situation. The focus of the question of whether these people being fictional really matters or not (I.E., are they real individuals?) or not seems to shift depending on the needs of the story. One moment Dracula (yeah, the vampire Dracula this time, complete with a shaky faux-Transylvanian accent) and Alice chastise the Doctor for being too literal-minded in his interpretations of characters and their motives, the next the Doctor's telling Jamie that these people are their friends, and the next he's saying "will the real so-and-so stand up?" But you see, none of these people seem real. They're all, including the TARDIS crew, defined by one word character traits, and you don't even have to imagine the brainstorming of these traits because in large part we get it delivered to us in the play itself, once Jamie gets his memory back. Zoe does this too, because, you know, she's been in the Land a long time and has adjusted to its principles....yeah, sure, that's the reason. Honestly, is this a celebration of the Troughton years or a condemnation?

There are two Zoes wandering around, and for some reason it seems to matter which of them is real, even though Legend of the Cybermen is practically a goblin sitting on our shoulder as we listen jabbing us every now and then and saying "pssst...you know this is just a story, right? Right?" One Zoe is supposed to be older, the other placed in the Land a month after her initial adventures in the TARDIS (or something). Initially I had no trouble telling them apart, but later on it becomes impossible. I suspect this was done purposefully to show the merging of the two characters. But then, Jamie goes all weird at the end and starts insulting one of the Zoes for no reason I can think of. There's another of those cringe-inducing, awful and unsubtle moments that stands out here, and unfortunately it involves Zoe, a character I rather liked in television and in her few print appearances. The older Zoe informs everyone of her clever plan to bring the Doctor back to the land, and the younger one goes all starry-eyed, laughing and cooing over what a genius "she" is. Gods...Zoe was just never this annoying before, and I don't think even Terance Dicks would have put those awful lines in her mouth. Yeah, we know Zoe's proud of her abilities and is maybe a littel full of herself, but there are other ways for her character to show this aside from screaming it at us in the most pointed, grating way imaginable. This would be too unsubtle even for children, and really, I doubt many children are listening to these plays, because they involve a Doctor and companion who haven't been on the television or in the consciousness of non-fans for as much as forty years! While on the subject of Zoe, Wendy Padberry unfortunately sounds like a sixty year old trying to imitate an exciteable little girl when she plays younger Zoe, which is exactly what hse is doing. You get the feeling, too, that she's definitely reading her lines, which you could argue is natural for a story involving people getting themselves caught up in stories, but which just conveys to me that perhaps Wendy hasn't been acting much lately. Gosh, I hate saying bad things about her, and I've been traumatised ever since seeing her character get raped and then daggered in Blood on Satan's Claw! "Oh no, what have you done to poor Zoe!"

There's a short, harrowing bit where the Doctor examines the possibility that perhaps he's been in the Land ever since his first adventure; that he never truly left. It's a moment that is pretty heavy for such a maudlin tale, but in the end comes to nothing, or does it? I mean, the story is so hell-bent on making sure we silly fans know it's "just a story", and it seems that by the end the Cybermen, supposedly a force from "Outside", have been willed out of existence, just like, jeez, fictional creations! Talking of that ending, I really have no idea... a bunch of stuff happens, the Cyber Planner goes nuts and has a nervous breakdown, and suddenly Alice becomes the new Master of the land. What? How? Damned if I know. Hey, if a fictional creature can become Master just like that, why didn't the first Master just install Gulliver way back when and get out of dodge as fast as possible? How come Zoe's mental blocks are reinstated as soon as she leaves the Land, even though they were removed before she even got there? She's narrating the last minutes of the play...narrating, if you can believe this, something she doesn't even remember, which I guess doesn't matter because (say it with me) "it's just a story!" It's supposed to be a tender, tear-jerking scene because we all know that having Jamie and Zoe's memories erased was one of the douchiest and most maddening moves the Time Lords made in the television series, but it just comes off like some sentimental slop. I think it's mostly in the execution; I might have expected a scene like this, only better direction could have made it come out poignant. At this point though it seems even douchier of the writer to take her memories again after putting her through all that. Hell, the Doctor got his back; why keep these mental blocks around just because the Time Lords put them there? Doesn't Zoe deserve better? It's like one of those deliberately set-up endings designed to make teenage girls cry (sorry about the stereotyping, honest) that you find in overwrought novels sometimes, and the worst thing is that I think with Legend of the Cybermen that is actually the point! Gah, I think this story has made my brain leak through my ears.

You know, I can tell that Legend has its heart in the right place after all, because I feel bad about how much I've slagged it here, and I wouldn't do if it was genuinely as smug and arseholeish as it sometimes appears. Yes, it probably was a labour of love, but it occurs to me now that setting up the story as the finale to a big trilogy of reunited companions and so on was a bad idea. There's a segment where Zoe recounts her time since the Wheel, and it made me realise that certain elements of the story could have made a great Companion Chronicle about Zoe Hariet. I mean, the adventure of how she came from the Wheel, got abducted by Cybermen, sabotaged their ship and ended up back in the Land (another truly improbable element, but never mind; I feel that the writer's laughing at me for even pointing these out now because, this is, after all, just a *story*, and a Doctor Who story at that, and we know how full of plot contrivances those normally are) would have made a far, far more engaging and exciting tale than what we actually got. The story could even have ended on a wistful note as Zoe tries desperately to do whatever possible to get the Doctor back because she realises she needs him so badly. It would have been haunting and effective bit of storytelling all right, even if we know that Zoe could probably handle being completely isolated better than most companions could, because she just seems like that kind of girl. But no...we had to have our cataclysmic closure, our Cybermermaids and Dracula and the pirate ship and all the other things that all combine to tell us that this is "big, epic stuff here, man!" It reminds me of all those pointless Star Trek episodes on the holodeck that would happen every time picard got a hard on for Shakespeare or dime detective novels, only this one purports to have a huge budget and a dizzying cast from legend and fantasy.

This whole trilogy feels like a vast, wasted opportunity. Jamie was great on television but he and Colin Baker just don't seem to have much chemistry together despite the Doctor's obvious tenderness toward him. And, how can they, really? Jamie doesn't remember a thing about the past, and then when he finally does during this story he can't believe how many monsters are out there and is mostly upset that the Doctor, supposedly a friend through thick and thin, never came back for him or even dropped in to see how he was doing. It's maybe the one sensible thing in the play, describing Jamie's understandable emotion and less than overjoyed reaction to getting his memories back, but it still doesn't feel that great.

This story also made me think, more than any other play, of Zagreus! That's a really bad thing as that was possibly representative of the low point in Big Finish's ouevre. They didn't go as overboard with the self-referential crap here, but at times I definitely got the Zagreus feeling, and in some ways this story might have been even worse. It's funny when you can use the Land of Fiction for an excuse for bad storytelling, but not *that* funny, and certainly not the very principle on which to base your tale. I feel a great affinity for Big Finish and what they are doing. I'm very critical of some of their stories and I feel they play it safe a little too much sometimes, trying to appeal to certain pre-established fan demographics rather than trailblazing in a way that the television series couldn't, but audio is a great medium for Doctor Who and the team's professionalism and classy productions deserve all kinds of praise. Every series has runs of good and bad stories and I'm not going to jump ship because sometimes there seems to be more bad than good, but I would ask Big Finish to carefully consider their audience, don't talk down to us and remember that we're well aware that we're fans of a fictional universe and probably get out enough that we don't need to be reminded of it.

[Emilija · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 50 Prompt Eighth Doctor Reading Challenge - Historical Adventures - 28) A Tale With A Twist On Arthurian Legend

This was a really enjoyable Sixth Doctor story. It was lovely to see the Doctor with Jamie and Zoe again, and being surrounded by different fictional characters, it was really cool. I did also like the meta aspect of the Cybermen twisting reality and Jamie ending up in Big Finish.

My main problem with this story, as it is with all Cybermen stories, I really struggle to understand what the Cybermen are saying.

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Really great right up to the very end, when it just sort of...peters out. But until then it's the best kind of Cybermen story -- one they are barely in -- and a fantastic and creative use of the Land of Fiction. I loved Dracula in this. There's a sentence I didn't think I would write!

[Anne Barwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting conclusion to the 6th Doctor/Jamie series of adventures. I enjoyed it, although disappointed that Jamie wasn't 'real' per se, although the comment about the Doctor looking him up at some point did leave it open for more interaction.

Some of the storyline, although it was with the Cybermen twisting reality/fiction, made me think yeah right. Someone was having a little too much fun with this especially with some of the injokes.

All in all though it was great to 'see' Jamie again and I hope there will be more, as he and 6 played off each other very well.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before buying this one, I was unaware that it was the end of a trilogy. So I had no idea how Jamie was back. But the explanation for Jamie that we got in this was very satisfying to me. The Mind Robber is my favorite Second Doctor serial, so I loved getting this distant sequel of sorts, and finding out how Zoe was involved in this. I also love that Jamie called out The Doctor for not checking in on Jamie once he had his TARDIS up and running again. It feels very sad and tragic. There are also some good meta things in this, such as novelizations of The Doctor's adventures. Having listened to The Kingmaker, I know that this is not the first time that The Doctor has seen Doctor Who in book titles.

[Gary Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final story of the trilogy climaxes in a crescendo of greatness. A beautiful written story full of emotional moments. Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor shines as the brightest star, far beyond his portrayal on the TV series. His Doctor truly come to life in the audio Big Finish production. I was limited to a five-star rating, but this story deserves a ten hands down.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the lacklustre set-up, this carries the Land of Fiction trilogy. This was such a fun story with Cybermen destroying all of fiction. Cyber-Oliver Twist. Cyber-Mermaids. General Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Dracula.
Jamie and Zoe reuniting. 6 reuniting with Zoe. The twists with Jamie and Zoe. All make such a great end to the trilogy.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where was Manbearpig? This felt a bit like a Doctor Who version of South Park's Imaginationland. Entertaining I suppose, and it was nice to "see" Jamie again, but an odd one.

[Frank Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You were slipping into meta fiction. Lucky I found you when I did, you were about to talk yourself out of existence."

The first story of the trilogy was all drama, the second was all comedy and this final story is a reasonable mix of the two.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry really didn't like this one. It took me ages to finish listening to it.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six, Jamie and Zoe are a Tardis team I never knew I needed until now. The cybermen invading the land of fiction to stop imagination was a brilliant concept.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the idea, but it was a bit of a mess

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A continuation of Wreck of Titan. Action, twists and turns around. Bittersweet ending

[Jamieson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, let me start with the fact that this was one of my first two Big Finish stories, so it holds a special place in my heart. Anyway, the 135th Doctor Who Monthly Adventure concludes a trilogy that features the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines). After the big reveal at the end of the previous story Doctor Who: The Wreck of the Titan, we spend this story defending the Land of Fiction from the Cybermen.

We soon are reunited with Zoe Herriot who, along with the Artful Dodger, Alice Liddel, Dracula and others lead us through the Land as the Doctor and jamie attempt to keep the Cybermen from gaining access to the Mistress of the Land, who is revealed to be the real Zoe Herriot (Wendy Padbury). In the end, the Cybermen are defeated and the Land of Fiction saved. After that we get some heartfelt moments with the Doctor and his companions.

In the end, I just found this to be a really fun story. It uses the Cybermen well as well as the setting. Sure, it's a bit silly. But when is Doctor Who not silly at times? Sometimes, a fun, silly action adventure story is just what the Doctor ordered. The story is fun and the cast is excellent. It seems like everybody's just having a blast. If you can get past the somewhat silly premise of the Doctor saving the Land of Fiction from the Cybermen, then you'll probably have a fun time with this story.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's no surprise who the villains are here, given the title and the fact that they're rather obviously on the cover. However, the fact that it's a sequel to the Troughton story The Mind Robber does give away the ending of part two of the trilogy, so I'll try to avoid further mention of that in the review.

I didn't feel that this story was quite so good as its immediate predecessor, lacking the sense of gradually increasing oddity that that had, and many of the twists being rather obvious in advance (or so it seemed to me... maybe I just got 'lucky'). However, it does have a similarly great sense of fun, playing about with a slew of guest characters along the way.

In fact, the story has a good mix of pathos and humour, and some interesting twists on the setting. Some parts provide some lovely mental imagery - the cyberwhale fitted with torpedo launchers, for instance - while others very much take advantage of the audio format to do things that would never work on screen. Whether you're going to like this kind of thing is very much a matter of taste; the story is very meta-fictional, and some won't like that. Nor, one suspects, does it give the kind of closure many might be looking for on the Jamie/Doctor relationship.

Personally, while I didn't find it perfect (as noted above), I did find it very enjoyable. The meta-fictional elements, for instance, are, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, yet they don't overshadow the whole story and make perfect sense in context.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm in the camp that does not find it anywhere funny or entertaining when Big Finish goes all meta and intellectual and clever at the expense of plot and characterization. Once again we have a trilogy that is not a trilogy: they're not three self-standing but interconnected stories, but a very long 12-parter made mostly of padding. Once again we have bold-faced lies: the Doctor is not 'reunited with Jamie' as the flap says, unless you can pretend that a fictional Jamie clone with no memories of the Doctor is anywhere near the real deal. Once again there's a "downer reset button" at the end, where things return pretty much like they were at the beginning, only worse: fictional Jamie is trapped in the land of fiction and apparently happy for it; fictional Zoe is dead; real Zoe loses her memories again (and is possibly very old and half cyber-converted). And in all this, the menace has no real weight to it -everyone who's dying is fictional- and seems almost an afterthought for the clever character reunion.
If anything saves this story it's the character of Dracula, that manages at least to attract some sympathy and have a satisfying and complete character arc.

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before enjoying this adventure, make sure that you have seen Doctor Who, The Mind Robber. This serial featured the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe. There are several plots points that are easier to understand if you are familiar with that story.

It is an interesting idea to have the Cybermen in the Land Of Fiction. However, it is irritating that they choose to use the original cybermen voices from the 60's serials. I much prefer the later versions of their voices. I did enjoy Jamie and Zoe together again. They work well with the 6th Doctor.

Parts of the plot are a bit muddled. But, worth a go for Doctor Who fans.

[Maj · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one better than I eventually did. I would have loved for a "proper" arc with real Jamie...some issues were addressed in this but the revelation of Jamie being from the Land of Fiction kind of took away from them. It's shame, I love the combination of Sixie with Jamie.

In general I'm not too fond of these kinds of Who audios inspired by British children's/fantasy writers from Oxbridge who took way too many drugs but I have to give credit where credit is due: Count Dracula flippin owned this one. Ian Gelder, you are the one reason I'm giving this audio 3/5.

[Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixie's reunion with Jamie McCrimmon, his Companion from a previous incarnation, comes to an end. Having run three full adventures and a Companion Chronicle, it all comes down to a run-in with the Cybermen in the land of fiction. Captain Nemo, the Artful Dodger and Count Dracula, along with another former Companion, Zoe Heriot, join forces with Sixie to combat the threat. What could have been terribly silly is handled very well leading to an enjoyable of stories.

[Debra Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor and Jamey end up in the fictionalized world he was at with Jamey and Zoe. There the Doctor discovers the world has been taken over by the Cybermen. They run into Zoe but also find out the world is being maculated by the real Zoe. Can the Doctor get everything back to normal and beat the Cybermen.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was lots of fun. I loved all the meta jokes, how Zoe got to be so clever, the storytelling aspect, the artful Dodger, how fierce Alice Liddel was, the singing cybermen voice being used again, Dracula being on the side of good, it was just excellent.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Doctor and Jamie are reunited with Zoe, as the Cybermen attempt to conquer The Land of Fiction.

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I honestly think Jamie would make an interesting companion for sixy. If only they'd actually done that.

[Chrissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caps off one of my favorite Big Finish trilogies. The writing incorporates elements from the past, yet is entirely its own thing. Seeing Jamie and Zoe together again is an absolute treat!