The Reaping

"They won't stop until every single living creature is like them."

Writer: Joseph Lidster
Format: Audio
Released: September 2006
Series: Main Range 86

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Peri

Synopsis

On the morning of 9 May 1984, Peri woke up. She was expecting to spend the day relaxing in Lanzarote and, that evening, leave her mother and stepfather to go travelling with some guys she'd only just met.

But things don't always go as expected as her friends and family discover when, four months later, she returns home having travelled further than anyone could have imagined.

Meanwhile her friend, Kathy Chambers, mourns her father and Peri finds herself meeting some other familiar faces.

Verdict

The Reaping was an outstanding audio adventure! It really was absolutely brilliant from start to finish which was a real treat. I was quite excited prior to listening as the CD cover tells us that the Cybermen were back and even though I watched Earthshock yesterday, there's nothing quite like a new adventure with the metal men. I did not expect them to provide so much emotion to the story though and that was some really beautiful irony. The Doctor and Peri arriving on the Gogglebox was good and I liked how of all the things from Earth's history she could witness, Peri wanted to see the news from back home. This audio was fantastic in revealing to us some backstory on Peri's character and with the inclusion of her mother, it was a sort of loose sequel to Planet of Fire. I really loved how the era of the Sixth Doctor and Peri was captured and the use of the story being just two parts only added to that. Peri trying to explain to her mother where she had been for the last four months (actually years for Peri) was interesting and I also liked how she was reunited with her friends in Kathy and Nate. The fate of the latter was quite horrific and the whole story centring on the murder of Anthony ended up being incredible. The Cyber Leader, who was badly damaged, had looked through the Cybermen's history on the Doctor and as he came from the future, he knew all about the Doctor and Peri, presumably from the events of Attack of the Cybermen, so he conducted a plan to draw the Doctor in. It worked. But the damage of the Cyber Leader was too great and after being stranded on Earth for over 600 days already, he wanted to go back to Earth's pre-history and convert the first humans into Cybermen. I'm not sure how the Cybermen would be able to reproduce from there on but it would certainly have a devastating effect on humanity's future. The way the Doctor tricked the Leader into thinking he had gone back, changed things, and then returned to a new 1984 was brilliant and the fact that he actually took him to Mondas was just somehow poetic. The cameo appearance of the Mondasian Cybermen that we would first see in The Tenth Planet was magnificent and their reaction to this futuristic Cyberman was spectacular. The Cyber Leader recognised their inferiority but he was too damaged to do anything. He went for reprocessing and that was the end of him. I thought Kathy Chambers was a brilliant character and I also enjoyed Daniel Woods prior to his demise. I thought the Cybermen, whilst desperate, were at their very best here as they were quite monstrous. The story had such an effect on Peri that at its conclusion she decided to leave the Doctor. Now, with this audio being set prior to The Trial of a Time Lord we know this was not her final goodbye but it was still a pivotal occurrence. However, the legacy of the Cybermen lived on with their technology and van Gysegham and that would see Peri's mother murdered. I was quite stunned by that but it just showed that the Cybermen were not to be messed with. She rejoined the Doctor after he returned from witnessing the events on the Gogglebox and where things for this pairing go from here I'm not quite sure. But I am very interested to see! Overall, a simply stunning audio adventure.

Rating: 10/10