Reviews

"For me at least, this Cyber-tale fails to be horrifying in any way at all."
- 'Meglos' (number 4), September / October 1981

Miscellaneous

Author

GERRY DAVIS

Gerry Davis has engaged in almost every branch of show business, from English provincial repertory theatre to writing (and making) documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada.

During seven years at the B.B.C., he wrote and edited a variety of television drama shows, including 'Softly, Softly', 'Doomwatch' and, of course, 'Doctor Who', for which he and scientist Kit Pedler created the famous Cybermen.
The author is now a full-time writer. He lives in Sussex and lists his hobbies as music, walking, sailing and tennis.

Gerry Davis served as script editor on Doctor Who from The Celestial Toymaker to The Evil of the Daleks, overseeing the critical transformation of the First Doctor into the Second. His first script was The Highlanders (from an idea by Elwyn Jones), he then teamed up with Kit Pedler to create the Cybermen. He adapted a number of stories that he had worked on as both writer and script editor for publication by Target between 1975 and 1986.

Doctor Who and the Cybermen
Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet
Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen
Doctor Who - The Highlanders
Doctor Who - The Celestial Toymaker (written with Alison Bingeman)

Also in the sixties, Davis worked on the soap operas Coronation Street, 199 Park Lane and United! Working largely in the United States from the mid-seventies on, Davis contributed to the film The Final Countdown and TV shows such as The Bionic Woman, Vegas, and Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.

In the late sixties he and Kit Pedler teamed up with producer Terence Dudley (later a Doctor Who director/writer) to create the show Doomwatch (broadcast from 1970 to 1972). In 1971 Davis co-wrote (with Pedler) Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eater based loosely on a Doomwatch script. In 1974, the two teamed up again to extrapolate their Doomwatch ideas for the novel Brainrack. In 1975, Davis joined up with Pedler again to write The Dynostar Menace, in which the end of the 20th century's fuel problems are solved by building a giant nuclear reactor in space.

None of Davis' Doctor Who novelisations were translated into Dutch, but one of his Doomwatch novelisations was translated as Mutant 59: De Plasticvreter and was published by Zwarte Beertjes 1500 in the Netherlands in 1972. Translated by Kees van den Broe, it cost 3 guilders and 50 cents.

He suggested another Who script to editor Eric Saward in the early eighties, entitled Genesis of the Cybermen (the outline for which can be found in David Banks' book Doctor Who - Cybermen). When the BBC stopped making Doctor Who in 1989, Davis teamed up with Terry Nation and approached the BBC with a view to relaunching the show.

Gerry Davis died on the 31st of August, 1991.

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Illustrations

All the versions featured 8 illustrations by Alan Willow.

Countries

Turkey

The book was released in Turkey as Doktor Kim ve Sibermenler. It was translated by Reha Pinar, published by Remzi Kitabevi and released in June 1975. The cover used the Achilleos artwork and the spine was black (as the original Target edition). This was the last of seven Target translations, none of which included the illustrations.

Cover artist: Chris Achilleos
1975 Remzi Kitabevi edition