Release number 23 Pages 246 Genre Speculative fiction Preceded by The Sands of Time | Publication date June 1996 Originally published June 1996 Page count 246 Publisher Virgin Books | |
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Series Doctor Who book:
Virgin Missing Adventures Subject Featuring:
Sixth Doctor
Grant Markham Set in Period between
The Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani and after Time of Your Life Similar Steve Lyons books, Virgin Missing Adventures books, Speculative fiction books | ||
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, as well as popular enemies the Cybermen.
Contents
Synopsis
The Doctor returns Grant to his home planet Agora. Upon arrival they discover 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. As rebellion is plotted, there is another time traveller at work: the Cybermen obsessed Archivist Hegelia, and her novice research partner, Graduand Jolarr. Can the Doctor save the day when locked away in a cell?
Influences
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.