David Banks
Born	24 September 1951 (1951-09-24) (age 58) Hull, England, UK

David Banks (born 24 September 1951 in Hull, England) is a British actor.

As a theatre actor he has played many leading roles in London and throughout the UK. His numerous TV appearances include long-running portrayals in Brookside, playing the wrongly convicted murderer Graeme Curtis, and 181 episodes of L!ve TV’s drama series Canary Wharf as Max Armstrong, head of news, who was finally abducted by aliens. During the Eighties he was the Cyberleader in the science fiction series Doctor Who in all stories featuring the Cybermen: Earthshock (1982), The Five Doctors (1983), Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and Silver Nemesis (1988). In 1989 he played the part of Karl the Mercenary in the stage play Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure, except for two performances when he appeared as The Doctor, replacing Jon Pertwee who had fallen ill.

He also writes and directs and has worked extensively as a voice artist, recording over 100 audiobooks – including an unabridged version of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (Talking Books, 2006). In 2007 he revived his portrayal of Karl the Mercenary in a Big Finish Productions audio adaptation of Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure with Colin Baker as The Doctor.

[edit] Writing

David Banks is the author of several published books. In 1988 he wrote Doctor Who - Cybermen, illustrated by Andrew Skilleter (Who Dares Publishing, hardback, WH Allen & Co, 1990, softback), which encompasses the history and conceptual origins of cybermen. He adapted the book into four audio cassettes which he narrated, Origins of the Cybermen (1989, released on CD in 2004), The Early Cybermen (1989), The Cyber Nomads (1990) and The Ultimate Cybermen (1990). He later wrote the novel Iceberg (Virgin, 1993) for the Virgin New Adventures range of Doctor Who spin-off novels, which was set in 2006, when an inversion of the Earth's magnetic field is threatening to destroy human civilization, and featured the Cybermen and the investigative journalist Ruby Duvall. His play "Severance", about the 12th century lovers Abelard and Heloise, was first performed in 2002. In 2007 he was invited to the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne, where he delivered a paper about cyber emotions, with reference to the recent television reappearance of Cybermen after a long absence. The paper was entitled "Life as an emotionless killing machine: Cybermen in a strange state".

[edit] External links

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0052134/