| Doctor Who book | |
|---|---|
| Killing Ground | |
| Series | Virgin Missing Adventures |
| Release number | 23 |
| Featuring | Sixth Doctor Grant Markham |
| Writer | Steve Lyons |
| Publisher | Virgin Publishing |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-426-20474-3 |
| Set between | The Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani and after Time of Your Life |
| Number of pages | 246 |
| Release date | June 1996 |
| Preceded by | 'The Sands of Time' |
| Followed by | 'The Scales of Injustice' |
Killing Ground is a Virgin Publishing original novel written by Steve Lyons and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Sixth Doctor and Grant Markham with the Cybermen.
As with all Doctor Who spin-off media, its relationship to the televised serials is open to interpretation.
Contents |
The Doctor returns his companion Grant to Agora, the human colony planet where he was born, and upon arrival discovers that Agora has been conquered by the Cybermen, who have enslaved the population and return every three years to take the five hundred fittest humans for conversion in order to add to the Cybermen's galactic army. At the same time, Agora plays host to another time traveller, ArcHivist Hegelia, and her novice research partner, Graduand Jolarr. Hegelia is obsessed with the Cybermen and intends to become one, and she has used the sanctioned excursion of Jolarr as an excuse to meet them and arrange the fulfilment of her ambition. Agoran rebels plan an attack on the Population Control building set up by the Cybermen as a herding centre for conversion selectees with the assistance of Grant, but the Doctor is trapped in a cell inside the building, and the Cybermen are due to return in person within a matter of days.
The design of the Cybermen explicitly described in this story is the design used in the 1975 Doctor Who television serial "Revenge of the Cybermen" as developed by BBC costume designer Prue Handley.
Details about the Cybermen including the term "CyberNomad" and references to Cyber-history, as well as the character of Hegelia and the Arc Hive from which she operates were originally conceived by David Banks for "Cybermen", a study of the Cybermen both as a concept and a factual possibility and used with Banks's permission.