Cyberman 2 has been a long time coming. While the Dalek Empire series seemed to churn out four seasons in the same number of years, the gap between Cyberman and the aptly named Cyberman 2 was long and ominous. Would C2 ever happen? Was the formula of 60s cyber-story mixed with West Wing in Space not to the public’s liking? Well, eventually it did happen and the delay – as explained in the extras – was simply that Briggs was too snowed under with other work to get round to writing it. Eventually it was decided that fellow cyber-author James Swallow would write the four chapters of C2 and that instead of four monthly releases it would come out in a shiny boxed set with an embossed Cyber-head on the front. Most of the excitement in the podcasts seemed to be about how pretty the box was rather than how exciting the series was but might just be that it’s easier to be jolly about a shiny box than it is about the rather grim and depressing story continued on the CDs.

It picks up six months after the events of Cyberman 1 with Liam and Samantha still a long way from Earth in their crippled space ship and events on the mother planet taking an increasingly harsh turn. The Earth has been invaded by stealth but the natives don’t yet realise it. Special Commando Units – Cybermen to you and I – patrol the streets and enforce martial law but the public are still convinced that the androids of Orion are the real enemy and accept the need for public order crackdowns to prevent android spies and saboteurs from gaining the upper hand in the war. It can be taken as something of a satirical swipe at the increased security we’ve all embraced (most quite willingly) since the "War of terror" was trademarked by the previous White House administration.

For me it didn’t open well. We were introduced early on to Hazel – the new character of the piece who demonstrates the fundamental difference between Doctor Who related productions pre-Rose (Cyberman 1) and post-Rose (Cyberman 2). Hazel is very down to earth, very regional accented, very has-a-normal-job-and-normal-problems. The C1 gave us suave, high ranking people with power and staff. C2 gives us ordinary people who rise (or don’t rise) to the challenge in extraordinary situations. For the two different stories C1 and C2 are telling, this change from high to low is absolutely spot on. C2 is all about what it’s like on a world patrolled by Cybermen – a world where if your car stalls in the wrong place you might end up shot by the SCUs for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not quite Dalek Invasion of Earth grimness but it is pretty nasty stuff. The media is pumping propaganda down everyone’s eyes, whole families are disappearing and people don’t really notice because all they want is to win the android war and then everything will be fine.

After my initial reservations about Hazel, the sudden ordinariness of everything and the way a grand, swooping epic had become all soapy as Hazel and her blind sister talk about children, domestic bliss and how Hazel doesn’t have a boyfriend, things picked up a bit as the various elements of the story began to inexorably head towards Earth because that’s where whatever was going to happen was going to happen.

As with C1 this is a three way story. You have the humans, the Cybermen and the androids. The androids want to wipe out all life on Earth because that’s the only way to stop the Cybermen. The Cybermen want to convert all the humans and use Earth as a base from which to revive the army that lies scattered round the galaxy in tombs. The humans are less single minded – some want to help the Cybermen, some don’t believe in Cybermen and the rest want to beat the Cybermen and get back to normality. Differentiating between the various factions is easier second time around. Partly because there isn’t the Karen/Samantha confusion which ran through C1 for me and partly just because we’re more familiar with the set up this time round because things are more in the open and people aren’t pretending to be on X’s side when really they’re in Y’s camp.

The only thing I really didn’t like was a moment which I suspect is heavily influenced by the New Series. One of the cast – I won’t say who – thought someone they loved might’ve been turned into a Cyberman. All fine and dandy. Except that said person who might’ve been turned into a Cyberman was standing in the room at the time and confirmed that they had in fact been turned into a Cyberman. Cybermen seem to have this strange ability all of a sudden to remember who they used to be but only some of them and only at certain moments. It’s absurd and I nearly swore at my iPhone when I heard that bit. It doesn’t give the scene poignancy – it’s just stupid.

The ending was interesting. I say that not to damn it – there is no significant pause, a raised eyebrow and the carefully chosen but heavily laden word ‘interesting’ – but because it was interesting. They threw us a swerve because we had ending 1 which failed and ending 2 which failed – both of which could conceivably have been the ending because as mentioned in the C1 review, the lack of the Doctor means the good guys could quite easily lose this one – and finally ending 3 which seemed to succeed very easily. After out-manoeuvring everyone for 8 CDs the Cyber-planner is told something that we already know and it is shocked by it. It seems so anti-climactic that something we wouldn’t even think to mention because it’s so obvious would be as gold to the Cyber-planner. It’s not even the related big thing that we know – it’s something much more ordinary and borderline speculative. That said, there is logic in the Cyber-planner’s decision so the more I thought about it, the less of a disappointment the ending became.

Cyberman 2 concludes the story begun in Cyberman 1 – they may do a C3 at some point but C2 doesn’t end as C1 did with an imagined "To be continued..." in large, friendly letters on the screen. If you didn’t like C1 then you won’t like C2. If you did then you probably will. Neither miniseries is ground-breaking or essential stuff but if you fancy a story that is bigger than a regular Doctor Who adventure and less obviously heading for a happy ending then you could do worse than Cyberman 1 and 2 (or should that now be Cybermen 1 and 2?)