| KILLING GROUND by Steve Lyons |
| Story ? Synopsis: The Doctor shows Grant a little of Agora's history, before they land in 2191. The Cybermen run the colony, harvesting 500 young men every so often, and leaving brutal Agoran Overseers to ensure they get their way in their absence. The Doctor is captured, but Grant remains free. He is working with a group of rebels, who have devised a way to fight back - through a similar process to Cyber-conversion, they have created Bronze Knights, biomechanical warriors who will help destroy the Cybermen. Two alien observers arrive, Hegelia and her student, Jolarr. He believes they are just on a routine study, but she seems keen to get close to the Cybermen. They get captured, but Jolarr is freed. Hegelia volunteers to be converted, but her wish is refused. She is kept prisoner with the Doctor. A small group of Cybermen arrive to take stock of their new recruits. They get wind of the rebels and send two Cybermen to investigate. The Bronze Knights rout them, and march on the control centre. In a short struggle, the superior numbers of the Knights give them victory. But the Doctor, who has got free, reveals that the Cyberleader will have transmitted a call for reinforcements - which soon arrive in a stolen Selachian spaceship. Though the Doctor thinks he has halted the conversion process, Hegelia starts it up again. He asks Grant to create a computer diversion, and Jolarr helps. The Cybermen use a plasma beam to raze a village to the ground. Hegelia gets to become a Cyberman. The Bronze Knights demand the Doctor takes them to the Selachian ship, but he refuses. He goes alone, sabotaging the plasma beam so that it backfires. As radiation leaks onto the ship, the Cybermen succumb to its effects. The Cyberleader tries to kill the Doctor, but he escapes. Racked with pain, he makes it back to the TARDIS. Grant uses the freon chemical in the conversion factory to send the revived Cybermen back into hibernation. The Bronze Knights accept they cannot contribute to the future of Agora, and board the Selachian craft and head out into the galaxy. Grant decides he has no future on Agora. The Doctor returns Jolarr home, then he and Grant head off once more. |
| Review:- A homecoming and the Doctor's 2nd most dangerous enemies? Lyons brings his created companion Grant back to his homeworld of Agora, to flesh out the clues we picked up in his first appearance (in Time Of Your Life) and detail the harsh realities of Cyber-occupation. It's actually both a good book, and a good look at the Cybermen, which doesn't always happen. Agora is visited every 3 years by the Cybermen, who then take 500 Agorans to turn into Cybermen. The colony is geared towards meeting this quota, and obeying the rule of the Overseers, whom the Cybermen leave in charge during their absence. The Overseers are also in fear of their masters, but can exploit their power in the meantime. As always, there are dissidents, who with Grant's help, have a doozy of a plan to fight back - their own cyborgs, the Bronze Knights. The Doctor struggles as a prisoner for a good part of the book, failing to convince anyone that he could save everyone from the Cybermen if he was free. A little colour is added with the presence of the ArcHivists, first seen in David Banks' legendary textbook, Cybermen. Hegelia herself comes to investigate, with her assistant Jolarr along for no apparent reason (maybe she expected he would get converted, too?). The pace of the book is good, with the Cybermen arriving after 1/3 of the book, and getting beaten by the Bronze Knights. This leads not to the saving of the colony, but the arrival of Cyber-reinforcements, who thrash the Knights, raze a village, and show who's boss. Hegelia's reckless efforts to get converted nearly lead to disaster, but Grant's computer prowess comes good when he makes it cold. Meanwhile, the Doctor cements the victory by putting his own neck on the block, aboard the stolen Cyber-ship. It's fun to note that this is a Selachian craft, a new race that Lyons brings in for a proper appearance in his later book The Murder Game. The Bronze Knights are a worthy aspect of the book, showing the desperate lengths that the rebels have sunk to, to try and save their people, and when it appears that they have achieved only a temporary victory, it's soon clear that they intend to be little better than the Cybermen. At least they get some sort of closure at the end of the book, rather than total annhilation. So, Grant goes home, makes a good new friend, finds his father (in a gruesomely schmaltzy part of the book), and brings his computer skills to bear. The Doctor finally seems to accept his company and they head off into adventures unknown. When the BBC took the licence to make these books off Virgin, they put a block on reuse of new characters that Virgin had created (or something) which prevented Lyons giving Grant another show. He did return in short stories, though. This is a quite a good book, really, exploring what nasty pieces of work the Cybermen really are. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |