Return of the Cybermen (audio story)

Return of the Cybermen was the first release in the sixth series of The Lost Stories. It was based on the original drafts of the TV story Revenge of the Cybermen originally written by Gerry Davis, the scripts were adapted by John Dorney and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith and Christopher Naylor as Harry Sullivan.

As it is written from the original scripts, the story is, in essence, a retelling of Revenge of the Cybermen. featuring the same characters and overall plot. The main difference is the excision of Voga, the Vogans and their civil war from Revenge. In Return, Voga is replaced by a gold-rich asteroid inhabited by a lost tribe, who play a much smaller role. Most of the action takes place on Nerva Beacon, where the original plot from Revenge is expanded.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan return to Space Station Nerva in search of the TARDIS. Instead, they find peril, disease and... Cybermen!

These cybernetic monster s have devised a plan to eliminate the greatest threat to their existence. And if the Doctor and his human compatriots do not play their part in this scheme, they are to be destroyed.

Part one
to be added

Part two
to be added

Part three
to be added

Part four
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Tom Baker
 * Sarah Jane Smith - Sadie Miller
 * Harry Sullivan - Christopher Naylor
 * Commander Stevenson / Pietersen - Nicholas Asbury
 * Bill Lester / Bandenhorst - Robert Whitelock
 * Kellman - Nickolas Grace
 * Anitra / Coetzee - Amanda Shodeko
 * The Cybermen / Cyberleader / Jim Warner - Nicholas Briggs

The Cybermen

 * The Doctor states that Cybermen are logic al. The best way to survive Cybermen is to be useful to them, so that they keep you alive for longer. When a person's usefulness is over, the Cybermen will simply destroy them.
 * Upon discovering a body, the Doctor tells Harry that it wasn't a Cybermen as they do not simply murder for gain.
 * The Cybermen do not understand the word "insane".
 * The Cybermen do not understand "pacts" or "giving your word", claiming them to be merely humanoid constructs.

Individuals

 * The Doctor claims he is good friends with Rudolf Nureyev.

Original ending
The story tells a different version of the events of Revenge of the Cybermen, but contains no in-universe attempt to reconcile the conflicting accounts. John Dorney had originally factored this into his original adaptation of the script, although it was ultimately not recorded.

The scene in question saw the reappearance of the Time Lord messenger from Genesis of the Daleks, explaining that the failure of the Doctor's mission on Skaro had caused history, and the Doctor's own timeline, to rewrite itself as a result of the fallout of the Last Great Time War. While offering an explanation for how Return could coincide with Revenge, it also brought up other continuity issues, including:


 * Friends leaving in different ways, recalling numerous different stories depicting Liz Shaw's departure.
 * Mary Shelley ("a famous author") both travelling and not travelling with the Doctor.
 * The meeting between the First, Second and Third Doctors playing out very differently.
 * The Seventh and Tenth Doctors experiencing the same event, referencing the original novel and the televised adaptation of Human Nature.

The Time Lord would have then vanished after insinuating that the Doctor's actions had caused a Time War.

Although the scene was not included in the final product, being deemed "too silly", Dorney nevertheless shared the pages on Twitter on 24 October 2020, the day after Big Finish first revealed the cover and cast.

Some similar ideas were present in A Device of Death, a novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures, which takes place between Genesis and Revenge. It established that the fallout from Genesis resulted in changes to the timeline, and had the Time Lords follow up the Doctor in an attempt to make the best of his mission's shortcomings.

Continuity

 * When trying to identify the Cybermat, the Doctor refers to his Five Hundred Year Diary, (TV: The Power of the Daleks) but struggles to remember that "C" stands for "Cyberman" and "T" for "Telos". (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
 * The Doctor has seen a Cyber-Virus before. The last one was Neurotrope X. (TV: The Moonbase)
 * The team uses gold dust against the Cybermen and Cybermats. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen, Nightmare in Silver)
 * The Doctor finds out from his diary that radiation works against Cybermen. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
 * The Doctor insinuates that not only has he met Sherlock Holmes, but that Arthur Conan Doyle was Holmes's real identity. (COMIC: Funhouse; PROSE: All-Consuming Fire)
 * The Cybermen use humans as workforce. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
 * The Doctor shows a fondness for buttons. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, A Christmas Carol)
 * Harry climbs through the service ducts in the Nerva Beacon. Sarah previously did the same. (TV: The Ark in Space)
 * One crewmember compares the TARDIS to "a convenience". (PROSE: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast; COMIC: Terrorformer)
 * The Doctor has left a Space-Time Telegraph to the Brigadier in case of emergencies. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen, Terror of the Zygons, The Day of the Doctor)