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 | continuity drenched gory and well writen |
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It should not be much of a shock that the cyber leader should write a book. Its a good one as far as im concerned its suspenceful, well thought out, as its woven into the history of the cybermen (and much better than the dire attack of the cybermen)so continuity junkies will be pleased,characters are interesting and well developed the doctor a little bland as if theres no feel to him. The cybermen are first rate there menaceing appperences are a real treat although gory in places its not gratuitous and has a point to it a sprincle of new ideas here,a dash of the old there and you get a damn good story highly recomended get out an buy it
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| Boring, overlong and course |
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| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Thursday 16 June 2011 |
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| Rating: |   1 |
I was really looking forward to reading this book. I had been searching for it to buy in a multitude of places and finaally resorted to buying it online when I found it on Amazon. Here was me thinking that a Cyberman story by that best ever Cyberleader David Banks would be engaging and brilliant with the Cybermen in from the word go.
Boy, just how wrong can a man be?
I was truly shocked to find that this story is basically a total mess, peppered with nothing but rubbish and idiocy and just plain over the top violence. Its the curse of too many of these virgin new adventures. Theyve turned the Doctor is a psycho, Ace into a pleb, and Benny Summerfield as just a spare part who doesnt really fit in. In this story we get two of the three left out, but this still doesnt save this story.
I was also surprised by the lack of any serious cyber action and the lack of the Seventh Doctor until about more than half way through this dull and tedious and foul mouthed novel. I thought David would have done far better than this, what with being such a brilliant Cyberman in the classic Who series run.
It was a true letdown of the highest order. The cybermen hardly appear, and all the characters are rather bland and soulless. The thing is just so limp and bland its unbelievable. Very very sad shock indeed for me. Doesnt come recommended at all. The plots rediculous, trying to follow on the heels of the Invasion but failing dismally.
Shocking.
| By: | Clive T Wright, St Lawrence, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 7 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
David Banks has carefully studied all the 1st & 2nd Doctor's Cyberman stories and then cleverly weaved another between them.
The first half of Iceberg unfolds pulling together in an interesting story around the life of our main characters and a sense of mystry.
But as the boat sets sale this original and clever idea, starts to fall flat becoming just a basic copy of every classic plot device you expect with the cybermen, loosing much of it's strength as the book continues.
In the end Iceberg is simply an easy going story, our heroine however is strong and would have made a good companion for the 7th Doctor shame she missed the boat!
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 23 September 2023 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Iceberg suffers from first novel syndrome. Actor David Banks, who had played the Cyber Leader on TV a couple of times and written a good non-fiction book about the Cybermen, here tries to write a Cybermen story set, for them, between "The Tenth Planet" and "Tomb of the Cybermen," with a few references to "The Invasion" and one or two oblique references to "The Wheel in Space." Because of the historical setting on Earth, 2006, there are also a few references to later Cybermen stories. Banks relies upon the timeline he created for his "Cybermen" book. As far as the Cybermen go, there is not much original in this novel. They are hiding away with a secret army frozen ready for use, waiting for the opportunity to nab a bunch of humans and convert them into Cybermen. This novel also fits into the Virgin Books story arc for 1993, which is basically that the TARDIS crew can't really stand each other, and certainly can't work together, so The Doctor has, without telling the other two, separated everybody so they can have a good think, while still fighting some monsters of course. In Iceberg, we get The Doctor on his own, sans Ace and Benny. He picks up a new temporary companion in plucky young journalist Ruby Duvall. The story follows the standard 2 1/2 plot lines writing that is usual for long-form TV drama. Plot line 1 involves the impending magnetic flip, Earth's magnetic field swapping poles. To prevent this disaster, Earth governments are using the same base in Antarctica that was the scene of "The Tenth Planet" to launch a new technology called FLIPback. For this mission, they have chosen General Pam Cutler, the daughter of General Cutler from "The Tenth Planet." Plot 2 involves Ruby Duvall, daughter of a crippled computer programmer, now a journalist given the job of writing puff pieces about a cruise to Antarctica. The half is The Doctor confronting what he has become. The novel is reasonably well written, with decent characterization, naturalistic dialogue, and enough energy at the end to make up for some slowness at the beginning.
The problems of this novel rest in all the things Banks wants the novel to do. He has a pretty good idea of what a novel, as opposed to a TV episode, should have. He just cannot quite make it all work. Because this is a novel, Banks feels he has to give his original characters a full background, plus has to show them in normal circumstances. The problem is that he takes too long to do this. Far too much of the novel is made from scenes of life on the cruise ship and life on the base, without the details getting to anything meaningful in terms of the larger plot. Thus, the arrival of The Doctor and The Cybermen is delayed to well after half the novel is already done. There are little vignettes of The Doctor wandering in the TARDIS and the Cyber Controller thinking to itself just to remind the reader that, yes, this is a Doctor Who novel about The Cybermen. Yet, the vignettes serve no other function, and only highlight the idea that maybe Banks was writing some other kind of novel. Banks also tries hard to create thematic connections, such as conceptually linking The Cybermen to the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, and thus having a running Wizard of Oz theme (The Doctor is like the Wizard, an actor dresses as the Tin Man for the OZ-themed costume ball, and so on). He also focuses on the environmental damage humans are doing to Earth, suggesting that similar actions on Mondas are what led those people to turn themselves into the Cybermen. Here, the ideas are sound, but the connections not well made. The tie-ins to previous episodes are first-thought tie-ins rather than carefully worked out plot connections. Why should the commander in Antarctica be the daughter of the original commander? There's not a good plot reason, and once the Cyber plan is in action, the character is pretty much an irrelevancy. Why use the old base anyway? Once again, there is no good internal logic for doing so, just that it makes a nifty tie-in to "The Tenth Planet." There's a side character named Barbara who could be, perhaps, just maybe, but probably isn't, Barbara Wright. Big portions of the plot are there for convenience and misdirection. For example, Mike Brack's ice sculpture in the iceberg is the location of the Cyber invasion force, yet, since he is not, as it turns out, a Cyber agent, and no one on the cruise liner is, how would the Cybermen know that he would use that exact iceberg?
So, while Iceberg has much going for it, the novel still does not hold together well enough for a high rating.
