Big Finish Doctor Who/Recap/135 Legend of the Cybermen

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Note: The following recap contains an unavoidable and fairly major spoiler for the two preceding Big Finish audio plays, City of Spires and The Wreck of the Titan. Read at your own risk if you haven't listened to them yet!

The Doctor and Jamie, having realized that their previous adventures since meeting again have taken place entirely in the Land of Fiction, find themselves drawn into a war between two factions of fictional characters. On one side are the troops loyal to the Land's Mistress, fighting to save their home; on the other side... the Cybermen, and their growing army of cyber-converted characters. The Cybermen have a new plan to destroy emotion and imagination by destroying fiction, and the only hope of stopping them lies with the Doctor, Jamie, and another old friend.

Legend of the Cybermen contains examples of:

  • Alien Blood: The denizens of the Land of Fiction bleed ink. This is how Jamie figures out that he is fictional.
  • Body Horror: With the Cybermen doing what they do best, the Trope's pretty much given. We are treated to a half-converted Oliver Twist, who gets "aborted" by the Cybermen, as well as partly converted Valkyries, Giants turned into Cyber-siege engines and Moby Dick serving the silver interlopers as a submarine with holes for the cannons drilled into its side.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: All over the place, as is expected in such a meta story; of particular note is the moment when Jamie finds himself playing the role of a voice actor in an audio drama, taking direction from Nicholas Briggs (in a cameo as himself).
  • The Eeyore: Dracula is repeatedly called out on being an extremely depressing person (vampire?) to be around.
  • The Ending Changes Everything: The ending of this arc not only reveals that the settings and characters of the two previous plays were fictional, but also that Jamie was fictional all along, and the Doctor never reunited with the real Jamie.
  • Inner Monologue: Invoked/parodied when the characters lose their free will thanks to the machinations of the Cybermen, and Alice and Dracula start narrating a scene in which the vampire is about to prey upon the young girl resting alone by the water. Luckily they are shaken out of it before it gets too far, although with Dracula it takes some doing.
  • Intrepid Fictioneer: The Doctor and Jamie play this role, and turn out to have been playing it since the beginning of City of Spires.
  • Meta Fiction
  • Public Domain Character: Lots, most notably Dracula, Alice, and the Artful Dodger.
  • The Reveal: Several, including the revelation that Zoe is the Mistress of the Land of Fiction and that Jamie is not the real Jamie, but a fictional version.
  • This Is Wrong on So Many Levels: Alice says "That's just wrong" when she hears that the Cybermen have begun cyberconverting mermaids.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Jamie's realization that he is fictional.
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