Book description
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and his friends to a space tracking base
in the Antarctic - and straight into trouble. A space mission is going
badly wrong, and a new planet has appeared in the sky.
Mondas, ancient fabled twin planet of Earth has returned. Soon its
inhabitants arrive. But while they used to be just like the humans of
Earth, now they are very different. Devoid of emotions, their bodies
replaced with plastic and steel, the Cybermen are here.
Humanity needs all the help it can get, but the one man who seems to
know what's going on is terminally ill. As the Cybermen take over, the
Doctor is dying...
This novel is based on the final story to feature the First Doctor,
which was originally broadcast from 8 to 29 October 1966. This was the
first Doctor Who story to feature the Cybermen.
Featuring the First Doctor in his very last adventure as played by
William Hartnell, and his companions Ben and Polly
Gerry Davis was an experienced television writer when he came
to Doctor Who as Script Editor in 1966. Wanting to explore
stories rooted more closely in real science, Davis contacted Dr Kit
Pedler. The resulting collaboration resulted in several notable
Doctor Who scripts, and in particular the creation of the
Cybermen. Gerry Davis returned to Doctor Who in 1975 and
novelised several of his and Pedler's Doctor Who stories for
Target books. Gerry Davis died in 1991.
Christopher ('Kit') Pedler was a medical researcher, and head
of the Electron Microscopy Department at the University of London when
he was recommended to Script Editor Gerry Davis as someone who might
be useful as an adviser to Doctor Who. Davis presented Pedler
with hypothetical, fictional problems and asked to extrapolate what
would happen, the answer to which formed the basis of Doctor
Who stories. Pedler told Davis that as a doctor his greatest
phobia was a time when spare part surgery had reached the stage where
it was commonplace. There would come a point where it was impossible
to tell how much of the original human being remained... From this
fear was created the Cybermen. Kit Pedler died in 1981.
