Iceberg (Doctor Who)
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| Author | David Banks |
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| Series |
Doctor Who book: Virgin New Adventures |
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Release number
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18 |
| Subject | Featuring: Seventh Doctor |
| Publisher | Virgin Books |
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Publication date
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September 1993 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Birthright |
| Followed by | Blood Heat |
Iceberg is an original novel written by David Banks and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was number 18 (of 61) in the Virgin New Adventures range and featured the Cybermen, being a sequel to the serials The Invasion and The Tenth Planet. The events of the novel run concurrently with those of Birthright. Banks as an actor portrayed the Cyber Leader in several Doctor Who serials. A prelude to the novel, also penned by Banks, appeared in Doctor Who Magazine #204.
This was the first original Doctor Who novel to feature the Cybermen, and the first New Adventure to feature a recurring foe from the television series.
In 1994 David Banks recorded his novel for Talking Books. It contains 35 chapters, and runs to around 9 hours.
Following their betrayal by Tobias Vaughn and the failure of their planned invasion of Earth, a group of Cybermen crashes in Antarctica while fleeing the destruction of their mothership. Some years later, in 1986, a second Cyberman incursion is foiled and their home world Mondas is destroyed in the process. But the truth is covered up, and life goes on. Software engineer Philip Duvall is paralysed in a hit-and-run accident, but the fleeing motorcyclist knows that he will bear the guilt for the rest of his life. Scientist Pamela Cutler learns that her unresolved issues with her domineering father will never be resolved; he has been killed in action at the South Pole, and the events leading up to his death have been classified. And Sergeant Dave Hilliard arrives in Antarctica to clean up after whatever it was that happened at Snowcap Tracking Station—and finds more than he bargained for.
Twenty years later, investigative journalist Ruby Duvall, Phillip’s daughter, sets off on an Antarctic tour on the SS Elysium, a pleasure cruise sponsored by the Australian billionaire Sir Stanley Straker (“The Wizard of Oz”). She is going undercover to avoid attention, but it will be a working holiday; she will be writing about the cruise for the Sunday Seeker, and testing her Nanocom dictation machine and a tiny holocamera as she does so. Ruby soon makes new friends on the cruise; a Canadian woman named Barbara teaches her the martial art Pah T’wa, and the ship’s entertainers, Diana and Leslie, tell her about the Wizard of Oz cabaret they’ll be staging. However, Ruby finds it difficult to get close to moody artist Michael Brack, who has been hired to sculpt icebergs into caricatures of the ship’s passengers using a decommissioned Army laser. Brack is studying Heidegger, and believes that society should work towards becoming more efficient and machine-like. As the cruise proceeds, Ruby also finds him studying a book on cybernetics, and comes to suspect that he’s up to something secret in the ship’s hold. Diana and Leslie eventually learn Ruby’s true identity and blab it about the ship before realising that she wanted to avoid attention, and when Brack realises who she really is he begins to act even more strangely. He seems to go out of his way to avoid her, but when she catches a glimpse of his cocktail napkin she finds that he’s been obsessively drawing her face along with blueprints for a large cybernetic machine…
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Wikipedia