Iceberg (New Doctor Who Adventures) [Paperback]

Apart from some Cyberhistory at the very beginning of the story, the plot rattles along for quite some time without the Cybermen becoming overly involved. This allows David Banks to slowly begin with details about the supporting characters. Despite the very leisurely pace, I was never bored by any of the actions. Indeed, as the story progressed, I found myself very interested in what was being built up around these people, especially Ruby the undercover journalist (she probably would have made a fine companion, though having two in a row who were named after WIZARD OF OZ references possibly would have been stretching things a little).

More than anything, I was quite impressed by the quality of the writing. I assumed that since Banks was primarily known as an actor that he probably wasn't terribly adept at the art of weaving sentences together. But that isn't the case here. True, there are a few places where Banks walks on just the wrong side of pretentiousness, but for the most part I found his writing style to be quite appealing. The plot gets a little rushed at the end, but after the deliberate pace of the beginning, I enjoyed the more frantic parts of the conclusion. Still, there probably could have been a little more care taken in having the plot reveal itself in a controlled manner.

The awaited return of the Cybermen actually turned out surprisingly well. There are a handful of information dumps to bring the uninformed reader up to speed, but they don't become too overwhelming. In many ways, this is a sequel of sorts to two of the 60's Cyberman stories, however it certainly isn't a case of just pulling all the same old characters out of mothballs to do the same things they did in the first story. Instead we merely have echoes of those stories appearing in this one. We meet people who were affected by previous events, but who didn't actually appear before. This is an effective way of drawing in the previous tales without treading over the same ground. Kudos to David Banks for pulling this off so skillfully.

While the book is primarily an action-adventure, there are more than enough little moments of introspection to keep the reader interested. The theme of dehumanization that has been present in so many other Cyberman stories is also on display here, but there is enough of a new spin on the old idea to keep it from feeling tired. There are also little nods and references to other stories in various mediums, and I was quite amused at every WIZARD OF OZ joke that would pop up. On the other hand, there are numerous places which would appear to betray ICEBERG as being a terribly cynical book. The view of Earth's near-future is a grim one, with environmental disatsers looming, and death and disease rampant. Yet, at the very end there's a simple statement of hope that substantially alters the final tone of the piece. It's very simplistic, and it doesn't get a lot of the focus of the book, but I found it to be effective, especially given the exact placing in terms of what had come before in the narrative.

All in all, ICEBERG was a bit of a surprise for the first time I read it, and again during my recent reread. The Cybermen return with a lot of menace, and are just as ominous on the page as they were on television.

Iceberg took me a bit longer to read for one simple reason. There is no Doctor until page 113. Most of the action (or lack of it) revolves around 21 year old reporter Ruby Duvall. Banks does a fairly good job of building up the charecter, but the question is why? Ruby is built up like a companion to be. There may be some "hidden" story behind this, but not one that comes through in the book.

The Doctor charecterization is pretty good. It feels like a cross between the Season 24 and 25 McCoy. My take on it is that the Doctor is more based on "the real McCoy" and less on the telvevised charecter as Banks has worked often with McCoy after Who's cancellation and prior to the publishing of this book.

As soon as the Doctor enters the story, it changes gears as well as feel. The Cybermen left over from the Tenth Planet are back and are planning to use the bodies of people on a cruise ship to convert to Cybermen. This is timed to coincide with the reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles, which will cause civilization to collapse. Of course, the project meant to combat this resides in the old polar base seen in the Tenth Planet. The story also hearlds the birth of the Cybercontroller (evolving from the controller we saw in Invasion. Banks has fun with the Cybermen. He has an excellent grasp of their history and all the contridictions within televised who. For example, he has the Doctor getting confused about if these Cybermen are vulnerable to gold or not (he makes a poke at Revenge of the Cybermen in doing so).

Once the story wraps up we get a nice bit of Timeflightish fun with Ruby going to join the Doctor and just missing the TARDIS (Jade Pagoda, whatever). Her reaction is pretty much the same as Tegan's.

Overall, pretty good. One gets the feeling that Banks would have been a great Target author. The first 100 pages feel like filler material for the rest of the novel. I enjoyed it enough despite this that I would definately pick up another one of his weoks if he ever did one for the BBC.

The other half of a pair of novels with the TARDIS crew separated ('Birthright', which features Ace and Benny is the other), this solo adventure of the Seventh Doctor is written by David Banks, best known to Who fans as the actor who played the Cyberleader in several of the TV shows. He also wrote a book called (somewhat unoriginally) 'Cybermen', which detailed the history of the silver giants.

Now, as a writer, Mr Banks makes a great actor... Unfortunately, the text is slow moving and the characters largely uninspiring. The end result is somewhat uninvolving, and unfortunately bogged down in cyberhistory.

The most redeeming feature is journalist Ruby Duvall, a character who was a possibility for a future companion. But sadly, this was not to be.