The novella “Made of Steel” by Terrance Dicks was published for the first time in 2007.
The Tenth Doctor brought Martha Jones to the Cretaceous to watch dinosaurs but a T.rex approached a bit too much for their tastes and especially for their safety so they got back in the present. When the Doctor brings Martha back to the Royal Hope Hospital to greet her old colleagues, two Cybermen try to capture them.
The Doctor looks for information about abnormal events to understand something more about the Cybermen activities and discovers that they’re stealing very sophisticated devices. During his investigation, he gets found and arrested by military intelligence to force him to defeat the threat.
“Made of Steel” is in some ways a sequel to “Army of Ghosts” / “Doomsday”, the double episode that ended the second season of the new series. It ended with Cybermen sucked into the Void but during the period that they had spent on Earth they had started creating more of them, who were left on the planet.
These surviving Cybermen obtained various equipment with the aim of reopening the portal to let their army out of the Void but to do that they need the Doctor. The British Military Intelligence investigate the attacks carried out by the Cybermen and they also want the Doctor but to defeat them for good.
Terrance Dicks chooses the British Military Intelligence as a partner for the Doctor instead of Torchwood or UNIT. They’re supposed to be allies against the Cybermen but the relationship throughout the story is really complicated: the officers in command of the operations are described as very intelligent but they don’t show it.
The Doctor has collected information on the Cybermen activities on his own and is willing to cooperate with the military intelligence to defeat them. On the other hand, he’s treated essentially as a criminal and is not the type of person who bends to bullying.
In novellas such as those of the “Quick Reads” series there’s not much space to develop the characters so the military intelligence officers are characterized in a rather rough and somewhat contradictory way. The Doctor is the only character that shines because reading his actions and dialogues you can really imagine David Tennant. Poor Martha is quite sacrificed to a secondary role: this is consistent with at least part of the third season of the new series but I always hope that in the novels she gets treated better than in the television episodes.
In the end, “Made of Steel” tells a story that I found average. Terrance Dicks has a wealth of experience with “Doctor Who” accumulated in decades but in this case appears to have just written a very simple story – which turns out quite flat – whose main merit is to have many references to “Army of Ghosts” / “Doomsday”.
“Made of Steel” is part of the “Quick Reads” series, consisting of very cheap books around 100 pages each. Buying those books connected to “Doctor Who” makes sense for fans who want to have anything related to the saga, for those who want to try to go beyond the television episodes and for those who want to just try to read a book that’s not too challenging.
