DAVID BANKS has played many parts, but none so demanding as the Cyberleader. Despite leading roles in theatre and many appearances on TV, including long stints on Brookside and Canary Wharf, despite the plays he has directed and authored and the books he has written, despite creating a highly successful client management system called AgentFile – despite all this, the Cyber Race will not let him go.
On television as Cyberleader in BBC TV’s Doctor Who, on stage in The Ultimate Adventure fighting the Cybermen as the mercenary Karl and as the Greenpeace Doctor, as voice artist on The ArcHive Tapes and many other audiobooks and dramas exploring the Cyber world, as author of best-selling sci-fi novel Iceberg and the trailblazing book Doctor Who – Cybermen, he has been pulled back again and again into the Cyber orbit.
In Man and Cyberman David traces the arc of his life: what led him to be an actor, how he first became the Cyberleader and how escape has proved impossible. The recollections are his. They are the memoirs of a Cyberleader.
250pp approx. 6×9 hardback limited edition book. Contains an eight page colour section.
ISBN 978-1-84583-268-1
Published 5 September 2026 (at the Whooverville Doctor Who event in Derby)
NOTE: We are HOPING that David Banks will sign all the hardback copies, but this depends on logistics and timings, so we’re not PROMISING that every copy will be signed… it’s something we want to do though.
Cover by Andrew-Mark Thompson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Banks studied drama at Manchester University and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Stage roles encompass Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Andrew Aguecheek, Falstaff, Mowgli, Aslan the Lion, Gandalf the Wizard, Karl in Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure – and briefly, when Jon Pertwee fell ill – the Doctor himself.
As the Cyberleader throughout the 1980s he was destroyed by a succession of Doctors. As singing teacher Ray, in Melvyn Bragg’s A Time to Dance (BBC TV), he was described by Simon Hoggart as ‘the ugliest man on television’. He was ‘axe murderer’ Dennis Smalley in Going Under (BBC TV), ‘suspected murderer’ Graeme Curtis in Brookside (Channel 4) and, as Max Armstrong in L!ve TV’s ambitious soap Canary Wharf, he was finally annihilated by aliens.
Plays he has written and directed include Severance, an intimate story of Heloise and Abelard, and Five Marys Waiting, a tragicomedy of grief and belief. He directed Jimmie Chinn’s Talking to John, Simon de Deney’s Between the Lines and, most recently, Four Quartets by T S Eliot. His production of Alan McMurtrie’s The Prisoner’s Pumpkin (Old Red Lion).won LNPF Best Play award.
His voice work embraces radio, commercials, video narration and many audiobooks (including J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings). Recently re-inhabiting the Cyberleader in the audio plays ‘Hour of the Cybermen’ and ‘Warzone/Conversion’, he was again destroyed by the Doctor. Twice.
His published books include Iceberg, Doctor Who: Cybermen and Not Somehow, the story of Mina Banks and her lifelong career in nursing.
His latest play is A New Way to Play an Old Game. David claims it was penned in 1674 by the spy Aphra Behn, the first Englishwomen to earn a living writing plays.
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