The Great Cyber-War (audio story)

The Great Cyber-War
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Audacity
Featuring:	Charley
Main enemy:	Cyber-Leader
Main setting:	The Aurum, Voga
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Tim Foley
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Howard Carter
Sound:	Benji Clifford
Release details
Number of parts:	2
Release number:	2
Part of:	Audacity
Release date:	2 November 2023
Format:	2 CDs Download 2nd of 2 stories
Production code:	BFPDWDR0803
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-896-7 (physical) ISBN 978-1-83868-897-4 (digital)
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
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The Great Cyber-War was the second and final story in the audio anthology Audacity, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Jaye Griffiths as Lady Audacity Montague and India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard.

Publisher's summary

Part one

The Great Cyber-War. Humanity and her allies versus the horror of the Cybermen. This is no place for the Doctor to take his new best friend. But on the Aurum, the war seems far away. There are parties and cupcakes and all the gold of Voga - and not a Cyberman to be seen...

Part two

The Cyber-War has come to the Aurum. The best hope of survival lies with the great Oberon Fix - the finest scientific mind of his generation, working to protect humanity. But the Doctor is worried that his own presence will affect history's outcome. And for Audacity, life with the Doctor will never be the same again...

Plot

Part one

The Doctor sets the TARDIS's controls at random for Audacity's first adventure and they land on the Aurum, a space station seemingly made of gold and which is orbiting a planet the Doctor recognises. They find that they have arrived during a party in honour of Oberon Fix, a scientist working to end a war, and go to leave when the Doctor realises that they have arrived above Voga during the Great Cyber-War, inadvertently sabotaging Dellatine's attempt to assassinate Fix during his speech. Audacity chases Dellatine and is separated from the Doctor when a lockdown is initiated and he is arrested whilst Audacity, already believed to be an accomplice, leaves in a shuttle with the would-be assassin.

Station administrator Galta interrogates the Doctor until he offers up undiscovered mathematical proofs to get the attention of the elite and finds that the arrival logs were corrupted by somebody using brute force. Vrull, one of the Vogan guards, releases the Doctor and takes him to Fix, who has confiscated the TARDIS and believes that the Doctor is a time tourist from the Causeway. Fix has been building the Golden Pulse, the device with which he intends to wipe out the Cybermen, and agrees to let the Doctor join Galta and her team in travelling to Voga to capture Dallatine and recover Audacity. Before he leaves, the Doctor mentions the data breach to Vrull.

Dellatine sedates Audacity and takes her to a hangar near the city Grey Divers so that she and Nelvin can use the implant given to the guests on the Aurum, but they soon find that she does not have one and Dellatine has to make do stealing and uploading Aurum data without it. The Doctor arrives and finds Audacity, who directs Galta and her team into a maze in search of Dellatine whilst she takes him to Nelvin in an underground ward of Vogans suffering from mining sickness. The rebels' objective was to steal resources from the Aurum to help the Vogans overworked for the construction of the Golden Pulse and not to assassinate Fix, which Dellatine attempted without permission.

Galta has Dellatine executed and the Doctor, having learnt from Audacity that Dellatine had made contact with potential allies, confirms that she had already sent a copy of the Aurum's information using alien technology which he destroys. The Cybermen make contact to confirm receipt of the data and, finding that they had been compromised, the Cyber-Leader orders a bombardment of Voga and for the Cyber-Fleet to launch its attack on the Aurum, where Fix's entire team starts collapsing.

Part two

The Cybermen bomb Grey Divers and the Doctor, Audacity, Galta and Nelvin depart in the shuttle, leaving Galta's team of Vogans to assist their people. The bombardment ends, however, when the Doctor reveals his identity to the Cyber-Leader and the attackers' attention is redirected to the shuttle, aboard which Galta is killed when a Cybermat inside her metal leg is activated. The Cybermat accelerates the shuttle's engines to make it collide with the Aurum, forcing the Doctor to take control and steer it into an open dock where it burns. Vrull, Nelvin's mother, explains that all humans with an implant have been made unconscious, that she has shut down the power and that Fix called for help despite being at the most secure part of the station.

The Doctor sends Audacity, Nelvin and Vrull to barricade against the Cybermen and climbs a lift shaft to reach Fix and get the lift working again so that the others can get to safety as well. He saves Fix from a Cyberman coated in gold, which had been tortured for his research, and reactivates the lift, but the Cybermen use a disruptor to stop it as it ascends and Audacity and Nelvin climb whilst Vrull remains inside to buy them time when the lift inevitably descends. She is killed and the Cybermen enter the lift, leading the Doctor to access the gravity generators to let float Audacity and Nelvin upwards before reversing it and disrupting the Cybermen's disruptor.

Fix explains that the Cybermen are not actually allergic to gold and that he intends to create the allergy by way of the Golden Pulse, which will alter their design and convert all gold within a large radius into sub-space particles which will destroy them. The reason he has not yet used it is that it will kill all Vogans due to the large content of gold in their blood, but he now sees no other choice and the Doctor has Nelvin warn the Vogans to retreat underground in the hopes that it will protect them. Fix, who knows from visits from time tourists that his legacy is one of death, has been infected with a virus by the gold Cyberman and dies, leaving the Doctor responsible for the pulse.

The Cybermen climb the outside of the Aurum and the Cyber-Leader contacts the Doctor, threatening to wipe out the Vogans and jettison the unconscious humans aboard the station unless they are given entry through the window with the help of a force field. The Doctor believes that the Cyber-Leader is bluffing, but the humans are indeed jettisoned and he realises that the emotional inhibitors are failing as a result of the war, causing the Cyber-Leader to feel anger and pride. The Cyber-Leader himself was a time tourist prior to conversion and intends to change time by stopping the pulse from being activated, but Nelvin activates it and the Doctor boosts it to knock Voga out of orbit and save the Vogans. Nelvin is shot and the Cybermen wiped out.

Audacity wakes up in the TARDIS and learns that the Doctor has been assisting the Vogans, whose planet will one day enter the orbit of Jupiter, whilst she has been unconscious. He feels that he has lost his way by failing to save anyone and pilots the TARDIS to somebody whom he did once save: Charley, whom he left in Tibet for a fortnight instead of Singapore. The Doctor arranges for the three of them to stay at a monastery, but Charley, feeling festive because of the snow, asks that they go somewhere cosy and the Doctor gets an idea of a destination.

Cast

• The Doctor - Paul McGann
• Audacity Montague - Jaye Griffiths
• The Cybermen - Nicholas Briggs
• Oberon Fix - Keith Drinkel
• Vrull - Karen Archer
• Nelvin - James MacCallum
• Dellatine - Diana Yekinni
• Galta - Trudie Goodwin

Uncredited cast

• Charlotte Pollard - India Fisher

Worldbuilding

• The Doctor has a perpetual teapot.
• Audacity mentions the Prince.
• Audacity sees Charley's bedroom.
• Audacity bought a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica for Ignatius.
• The Doctor mentions Napoléon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt.
• Audacity can fence.
• Expecting tea, the Doctor asks for milk and no sugar.
• Galta was part of the Earth Interstellar Fleet and fought in the Winter system, serving as vice-commanding-officer for the third unsuccessful assault on Haven. She was found by Martians.
• The Doctor does not think that he has met Oppenheimer.
• Nelvin mentions Brennan.
• Simeon and Targreaves serve Oberon Augustus Hettica Fix.
• Apex is an operating system.
• Fix shows the Doctor a prototype of the Glittergun.
• Glitterguns are said to be responsible for the Scarlet Victory.
• Audacity says that the rebels are tidier than the Marquess of Hexley.
• Nelvin is a medic.
• Dellatine thanks Minerva.
• The Cybermen avoid Glittermines.
• The Doctor stuns a Cybermat with a fire extinguisher.
• The British government claimed that carrots could help people see in the dark.
• Fix worked with Earth Security.
• Audacity can ride a horse one-handed.
• Charley is in Tibet.

Notes

• The Great Cyber-War explains why the Cyber-Leader in Revenge of the Cybermen ^[+]Loading...["Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)"] is emotional, the explanation being that the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors are getting "rusty" because of the length of the Great Cyber-War. (BFX: The Great Cyber-War)
• As a nod to Christopher Robbie's performance as the Cyber-Leader in Revenge of the Cybermen ^[+]Loading...["Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)"], Nicholas Briggs sometimes strays into an American accent whilst playing the Cyber-Leader. (BFX: The Great Cyber-War)
• The Cybermen appear in The Eighth Doctor Adventures for the first time since 2007's Human Resources.

Continuity

• The Doctor mentions that he has encountered live mummies, which he did with Charley in The Mummy Speaks! ^[+]Loading...["The Mummy Speaks! (audio story)"]
• Audacity remarks that she should have brought her pistol, which is actually a novelty fire-lighter, to threaten the people at the party into handing over their valuables. She did this in The Devouring ^[+]Loading...["The Devouring (audio story)"].
• The Cybermen have not yet found Voga, which they attempt to destroy in Revenge of the Cybermen ^[+]Loading...["Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)"].
• The Doctor was recently caught out by androids pretending to be human in Sword of Orion ^[+]Loading...["Sword of Orion (audio story)"] and Heart of Orion ^[+]Loading...["Heart of Orion (audio story)"].
• The Doctor say that humans are indomitable, which the Fourth Doctor said in The Ark in Space ^[+]Loading...["The Ark in Space (TV story)"], and the Tenth Doctor will say in Utopia ^[+]Loading...["Utopia (TV story)"].
• The Doctor previously visited Voga, fought the Cybermen on a space station and saw the effects of the Cyber-virus in Revenge of the Cybermen ^[+]Loading...["Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)"].
• The Doctor saved Charley's life in Storm Warning ^[+]Loading...["Storm Warning (audio story)"] and they have been saving each other's lives ever since.

External links

• Official The Great Cyber-War page at bigfinish.com