Doctor Who review: Mary Shelley meets the Cybermen in The Silver Turk

The Eighth Doctor and his new companion Mary Shelley face an old enemy in Vienna, in the classic Doctor Who audio story The Silver Turk!

With the current rumor that’s flying around about Mary Shelley and the Cybermen possibly appearing in Series 12, I thought it was worth looking back to when the Eighth Doctor traveled with her across several Doctor Who stories. One audio in particular sprang to mind: The Silver Turk by Marc Platt.

Released back in 2011, The Silver Turk was the first four-part story that featured the Eighth Doctor and Mary. Set relatively early on in the Eighth Doctor’s life, it gave us a radically different tone and style of storytelling compared to The Eighth Doctor Adventures with Lucie Miller, which had ended earlier the same year. Unsurprisingly, the Mary Shelley audios featured a tone darker and more horrific than what came before.

The Silver Turk works as a great opener for several reasons. First, you’ve got a really solid script by Marc Platt. I’m always more of a fan of Platt’s longer stories than his shorter ones. For every single story he has, he has so many ideas and distinctive characters that it’s impossible to explore that in full in just one hour. So a longer story length always allows time to explore the characters and themes as well as the overall plot in a satisfying manner.

Early Mondasian Cybermen feature in The Silver Turk, giving them an extra level of creepiness.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

Rich characters

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And there are a number of very distinctive characters that feature in this story, set in nineteenth-century Vienna. There’s Alfred Stahlbaum, a man who thinks he’s found his fortune with his “Silver Turk”, failing to understand the sheer danger he’s in by using it. There’s Ernst Bratfisch, a rather likable cabdriver who finds himself caught up in these strange events. And then there’s Dr Johan Drossel, a sinister character with some rather creepy puppets…

These characters are brought to life both through Platt’s strong script as well as excellent performances from the cast. Through these characters, we get a story that explores themes such as greed, pride, horror, unrequited love and tragedy. It’s a very rich world that’s presented in The Silver Turk.

Mary Shelley and the Cybermen

It’s also a story that’s beautifully appropriate for the Doctor’s new companion. Mary faces a lot in this story, as she encounters the Cybermen for the first time. They’re presented as both monstrous and tragic in this story, something that Platt has done previously in their origin story Spare Parts. Unsurprisingly, it’s extremely early Cybermen that feature in this story – ones that have some vestiges of humanity left, at least externally.

This is a great first trip for the famous author of horror and science-fiction. Mary’s presented as a believable human being of her time. One who can make mistakes, but also someone who’s extremely intelligent, and is introduced to many new ideas and strange sights. Julie Cox plays the role extremely well, and gives us a very different companion to what we’re used to.

The Silver Turk is a really solid story. The combination of Mary Shelley, nineteenth-century Vienna and Cybermen is an extremely effective one, and the number of well-written characters in this story help to make it even stronger. If we are going to get a story in Series 12 with Mary Shelley and the Cybermen, it’s going to be extremely difficult for it to match this classic.

Next. Why we’re surprisingly lucky with the Eighth Doctor. dark

Have you listened to The Silver Turk? Are you intrigued about the idea of Mary Shelley meeting the Cybermen, regardless of which Doctor she’s with? Do you think we should see more of the early Mondasian Cybermen? Let us know in the comments below.

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