Doctor Who news: Unmade Fourth Doctor story Return of the Cybermen to be adapted for audio

Return of the Cybermen – a story planned for Tom Baker’s debut season of Doctor Who but never made – will be released as a brand new audio adaptation from Big Finish!

Big Finish has released some extremely exciting news. Many of us know of Revenge of the Cybermen, the 1975 serial from Doctor Who‘s twelfth season starring Tom Baker as the Doctor. But what you might not know is that it was originally meant to be a very different story altogether.

Written by Gerry Davis – one of the Cybermen’s co-creators, along with Kit Pedler – Return of the Cybermen was extensively re-written by script editor Robert Holmes to eventually become Revenge. But how different was the original script compared to what was eventually put on screen? Well, we’re about to find out.

Today, Big Finish announced that Return of the Cybermen will be adapted for their range of Lost Stories: adaptations of serials that were originally planned for television, but for numerous reasons didn’t go into production. This has been a particularly interesting range, giving us numerous clear and distinct glimpses of bygone eras. But what will Return of the Cybermen bring?

Return of the Cybermen was originally written for Tom Baker’s debut season, which gave us classic stories such as Genesis of the Daleks.

(Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A different story

I have to be honest: I have many questions about this release. What immediately springs to mind is this: what makes Return so different from Revenge? Big Finish certainly wouldn’t be adapting it for audio if it was even broadly the same story as what was broadcast.

I’m easily reminded of The Foe from the Future. It was known that Robert Holmes used elements from this unmade story for the classic serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang. However, when Big Finish adapted Foe decades later, fans quickly discovered that it was an extremely different story altogether. So I’m confident that Return will stand out on its own terms. In fact, producer David Richardson gives us an idea as to how different the original script is.

"It’s rather different in tone to Revenge of the Cybermen – darker, scarier and more reminiscent of claustrophobic 1960s Cybermen tales like The Moonbase and The Invasion."

A different style?

I’m definitely excited about this already. While Robert Holmes is one of my favorite writers for Doctor Who ever, I’m not sure he truly “got” the Cybermen, at least if Revenge is anything to go by. Stories like The Moonbase and The Invasion are truly classic serials. Revenge? Arguably less so.

However, while those were classic stories, Return didn’t exactly suit the style of the era it was made for, as director Nicholas Briggs reveals.

"It was interesting working with Tom on this, because he noticed the difference in style immediately. This is Doctor Who as Gerry Davis imagined it in 1974, and it’s very much like he wrote Doctor Who in the mid-1960s. So the script didn’t quite have the same levels of emotional sophistication and wit that was present either in what Robert Holmes eventually crafted into Revenge of the Cybermen, or certainly the more recent Fourth Doctor Adventures we’ve made on audio."

With that kind of description, it’s perhaps easy to see why Holmes felt the need to re-write Davis’s script so heavily. Still, it’ll be fascinating to hear something much closer to what Davis originally intended.

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Season 12

We don’t know much more about this news just yet, which leaves us with a lot of questions. First of all: are Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan still companions in this new adaptation? Or have they instead been adapted out? Considering that both Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter are sadly no longer with us, and this story was originally intended for Season 12, it does make you wonder how Big Finish will handle this key aspect.

If the following comments by David Richardson are anything to go by, it does suggest that they’re still aiming for a story that fits Tom Baker’s debut season, specifically.

"John Dorney’s adaptation stays true to the original script and the era, though there have been some very minor changes to bring it in line with the kind of amends we believe Robert Holmes would have asked for. Little things that make it sit comfortably in Season 12."

So will this be presented as a kind of “what if?” story? An alternative take on a story many fans know well? It’s possible, but in the past, previous Lost Stories have been adapted to fit continuity better. For example, while the original intention was for Ace to be written out in the unmade Season 27, Big Finish’s adaptation of those stories had her stay with the Doctor.

We’ll eventually know more in the next issue of Doctor Who Magazine, due for publication on Apr 2, which will have further information for this release. But right now, it’s definitely extremely exciting news.

You can pre-order Return of the Cybermen now directly from Big Finish’s website.

Are you excited by this news? Are you a fan of Revenge of the Cybermen, or do you think it could have been better? Do you hope that Return will be a stronger story? Let us know in the comments below.