DAVID BANKS has played many parts, but none so demanding as the Cyber Leader. 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 Cyber Leader 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 Cyber Leader and how escape has proved impossible. The recollections are his. They are the memoirs of a Cyber Leader.
‘Man and Cyberman is a brilliant memoir because it is about much more than a notable Doctor Who character. Instead, it’s an exploration of how childhood fascinations and a love of imagination, curiosity, acting and creativity can shape an entire life. Banks has written a fitting bookend to his long relationship with the Cyber Leader and how escape has proved impossible. Thoroughly enjoyable’ Steve Claringbold, Celestial Toyroom
‘I’ve read a lot of Doctor Who memoirs, and I put Man and Cyberman firmly up there with Who on Earth is Tom Baker? and Anneke Wills’ Naked as one of the very best. If you’re a fan of the classic series, you’ll discover new things for sure.’ Greg Ellwood-Hughes, Amazon
259pp. 6×9 paperback book. Contains 16 pages of black and white photographs.
ISBN 978-1-84583-269-8
Published 15 November 2026
NOTE: We are now SOLD OUT of hardback copies.
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 Cyber Leader 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 Four Quartets by T S Eliot, performed by Peter Wilson. His production of Alan McMurtrie’s The Prisoner’s Pumpkin (Old Red Lion) won LNPF Best Play award.
His voice work embraces radio, commercials, and video narration. His many audiobooks include J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and a number of Doctor Who books for the BBC. Re-inhabiting the Cyber Leader in the Big Finish audio plays, Hour of the Cybermen and Warzone/Conversion, he was again destroyed by the Doctor. Twice. Most recently, in The Trials of a Time Lord, he briefly became Tiffany Jenkins. Or was it the other way round?
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 Englishwoman to earn a living writing plays.
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