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| The Cybermen Logo |
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 During the first three years of Doctor
Who the Daleks reigned supreme, as the monster viewers most loved
to hate, capturing the imagination of both young and old alike. Over
the years, successive Doctor Who production teams have tried
very hard to come up with a race of aliens to duplicate this success,
with such creatures as the Zarbi and the Mechanoids, but nothing came
close to the Daleks in popularity. Nothing, that is, until the very
last William
Hartnell story "The
Tenth Planet". Broadcast in October 1966 this
story introduced a villain that was to become the only really serious
challenger to the Daleks' crown. They were the Cybermen.
But who are
they? What is their history? And why did the Cybermen have such an impact?
After all, there is, on the face of it, little to distinguish them from the
many and varied man-in-a-silver-suit robots which have been in many countless
1950's 'B' movies.
THE
IDEA
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| Tenth Planet Cyberman |
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The
Cybermen were created by Doctor Who's unofficial scientific adviser, Kit
Pedler, and story editor Gerry Davies in 1966. The concept of the Cybermen came
from a phobia that Kit Pedler had regarding what if the replacement of limbs
and organs were to go to the extremes thus creating dehumanised creatures that
were once human but were now more plastic and metal with no emotions or
feelings.
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| First Type of Head Piece |
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Kit Pedler was also interested in the differences
between the human brain and advanced computers, the science of cybernetics and
the concept of cybernetically enhancements creating pure logical
thoughts.
The idea behind the origins of the Cybermen was based on a
race of men on the planet Mondas who sought immortality. They perfected the art
of cybernetics - the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As
their bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced, limb by limb, with
plastic and metal. Finally, even the human circulation and nervous systems were
recreated and computers replaced their brains. The first Cybermen were
born.
The idea of cybernetics being used to take
over humans has been used in other fictional programmes. The most
obvious, and more recent, example is the Borg in Star Trek
with their desire to assimilate other races. They are less fussy in
who they assimilate whereas the Cybermen are only interested in using
humans to populate their race.
THEIR DESIGN
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| The Chest Unit |
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From the initial idea from Kit Pedler and Gerry Davies it was
up to director Derek Martinus and costume designers Sandra Reid and Peter
Kindred to create the image that was to become the Cybermen. In the initial
scripts they were described as being: "tall, slim, with one-piece, close
fitting silver mesh uniforms". On their fronts they would have "a mechanical
computer-like unit consisting of switches and two rows of lights". The actor's
heads were disguised using a grey fabric mask with holes cut into the material
for the eyes and mouth. Silver makeup was applied to the actor's faces. As
suggested in the original scripts the actor's hands would be left bare so as to
remind the viewers of their true origins and that they were not just robots.
Towering over the rest of the cast (the actors hired to play the Cybermen were
all over six feet tall), they dominated every scene in which they appeared,
commanding the viewers' total attention.
The early
voices were not provided by the actors but were provided by specialist voice
artists - Roy Skelton and Peter Hawkins. In "The Tenth Planet" the Cybermen
were given a disjointed singsong drawl. However from the very next story, "The
Moonbase" a grating electronic monotone was used.
THEIR EVOLUTION
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| Moonbase Cybermen |
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After their first appearance brand new costumes were
designed, for the Cybermen's second story - "The Moonbase", to improve on the
originals in terms of impact to the viewer and also for the comfort of the
actors.
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| Earthshock Cyberman |
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The costumes were less bulky and more streamlined
silver body suites, with much smaller chest units and lightweight fibreglass
helmets. A flap was operated by the actor to activate a moving mouth so as to
distinguish which Cyberman was talking. Also the Cybermen no longer had bare
hands but they were covered in gloves.
The biggest
change in the Cybermen's appearance though came in the 1982 story "Earthshock"
where they became much more impressive. Their costumes were radically
redesigned and updated using an airforce pilot's G-Force suite. Although their
speech remained more conversational than in the Sixties stories their lack of
emotion was still used to great effect. As is evidenced by the CyberLeader's
now notorious exclamation of delight, "Excellent!"
Following
their return to the series in the Tenth
Doctor's era, the Cybermen were
redesigned once more. Their bodies, originally a combination of metal and
apparent plastic, were recreated as metal suits. Their appearance now resembled
suits of thick armour, with a greater emphasis on the machines they had
become than the men they used to be. Their voices were now more robotic,
lacking the previous emotional comments of "Excellent!" that
had been used in the past, and they act convinced of their
superiority to the common human; they initially even referred to themselves
as 'Human
2'.
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THEIR
HISTORY
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The Tenth Planet
(1966) |
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The first story the Cybermen appeared in was the 1966
story
"The Tenth Planet" where they attempted to capture a Space Tracking Station
at the South Pole. The Cybermen's home world of Mondas -
the 'Tenth Planet' of the
story's title was a mirror image of Earth which had returned
to the Solar System after drifting away to the furthest
reaches of space. Their invasion of
the base is a one of necessity to them. The
Doctor still managed to defeat the Cybermen despite being
in a weakened state, his companion Ben discovering their weakness to intense
radiation
and managed to kill several of them with hand-held uranium
rods, culminating in Mondas exploding after too much energy was absorbed
from Earth. This
story is of course special for a totally different reason
being the last story of the First Doctor's era and so containing, at the
end of episode
four, the famous first regeneration scene, apparently caused
by a combination of old age and The Doctor’s own energy being ‘leeched’ by
Mondas.
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Tomb
CyberController
(1967) |
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Certainly another invasion of Earth is their purpose when the
Cybermen try to take over a base on the Moon in the 1967 story "The Moonbase".
They are interested in the Moonbase's weather control machine,
the Gravitron. However, The Doctor's companion Polly worked out a chemical
solution that dissolved the plastic units in the Cybermen's chests (Affectionately
nicknamed ‘Cocktail Polly’ by Ben), and The Doctor was able
to use the gravity field of the Gravitron to shoot the Cybermen ships off
into space before they could land.
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| Cybermats |
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It
was not until the
Second
Doctor made arrived on the planet Telos, in the 1967 story "The
Tomb of the Cybermen", that he encountered the real power behind the Cybermen -
the CyberController. In this story the Cybermen are in hibernation
but members of an archaeology team, who are interested in
locating the whereabouts of the
Cybermen, inadvertently awaken them; however, it turns out
that this was deliberate, as a group called the 'Brotherhood
of Logic', who believed in a purely logical way of life,
wanted the Cybermen's aid
in spreading their beliefs. However, with The Doctor's intervention
the CyberController is apparently destroyed and the Cybermen
are refrozen within
their tombs, the doors electrified to kill anyone who tries
to open them. This story is the first appearance of the
Cybermats - small, mobile machines of undefined origin; it was never revealed
whether they were converted animals or totally mechanical, although later
stories hinted at them being partly alive themselves.
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The Wheel in
Space
(1968) |
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The
Cybermen did not get very far with their attempted take-over of a Space
Station, in the 1968 story "The
Wheel in Space", which they intended
to use as a staging post for another attack of Earth, but
The Doctor destroyed them by enhancing the TARDIS's
Time Vector Generator - the device that
allowed the TARDIS to be bigger inside than it was outside - to such an
extent that the entire fleet was 'crushed'. The Cybermen were again assisted
by the Cybermats, and the Cybermen themselves were seen to hatch from giant
eggs, although these were probably just another form of stasis that the
Cybermen were being kept in until they were ready to launch their attack.
When the Second Doctor teamed up with the fledgling United
Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), in the 1968 story "Invasion", he
found himself involved with a full-blown invasion of Earth.
With the help of
International Electromatics' Managing Director, Tobias Vaughn
the Cybermen used the sewers to hide their army of Cybermen.
However, when Vaughn realised that the Cybermen had duped
him he changed sides and helped
The Doctor defeat the Cybermen's invasion fleet, with Zoe
managing to calculate a missile trajectory that would destroy
the formation of Cyberman ships
approaching them (However, Vaughn's betrayal at their hands
drove him to resent all alien life, to the extent that,
thanks to a robotic body granting
him virtual immortality, he returned in to plague the Seventh
Doctor a thousand years later ("Original
Sin") in an attempt to acquire
the TARDIS to be used as another 'anti-alien' weapon).
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The Invasion
(1968) |
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Patrick Troughton's Doctor is the one who will always be most
associated with the Cybermen, partly because he appeared with them in more
stories than any of the other Doctors, but also because it was during this
period that the creatures first became established as firm favourites with the
viewers. It is on the strength of these superb Sixties stories that the
Cybermen's reputation rests.
Despite
their popularity it is very surprising that the Cybermen did not feature in
another story until some six years later. At the end of the 1968 story
"Invasion" the Cybermen suddenly vanished from The Doctor's life and our
screens. But they were never forgotten. Their only appearances during the
Third
Doctor's era was as part of The Doctor's 'nightmare' in "The
Mind of Evil"
(where a still photograph of one was flashed up while The
Doctor was plugged into a machine that made him relive traumatic memories)
and a cameo shot on the screen of Vorg's Miniscope in "Carnival
of Monsters" as one of the other life forms trapped in the Miniscope.
Whatever the reason for this lengthy absence from the series, fans of the
Cybermen soon began to clamour for further adventures featuring them and
eventually it was announced that the Cybermen would be returning in 1975.
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Revenge of the
Cybermen
(1975) |
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When they did finally reappear again, in the
Fourth
Doctor's story "Revenge
of the Cybermen" they were to be seen for the first time in colour.
It is some years after the CyberWars of the mid-twenty-sixth century and
the treacherous human Kellman has lured a surviving group of Cybermen towards
the planet Voga, the planet of gold, which had now drifted into our solar
system to become a moon of Jupiter. Although Kellman was aiding the Vogans
in their plan to destroy the Cybermen, he was also aiding the Cybermen
who want to destroy Voga. However, the Fourth Doctor was able to ruin both
Kellman's and the Cybermen's plans by reprogramming the missile, that would
have destroyed Voga, to miss the planet. This story again has the Cybermats,
who are used to spread a deadly disease in a space station (This disease
infected Sarah Jane Smith, but The Doctor was able to transmat the infected
cells out of her body before the disease killed her), and also the revelation
that gold is lethal to the Cybermen as it clogged up their respiratory
systems.
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Earthshock
(1982) |
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There was another gap of some six years before the Cybermen
were to return to our screens again. This was in the 1982
Fifth
Doctor story "Earthshock". This story again has the Cybermen trying
to destroy Earth. Firstly by using a bomb which The Doctor managers to
defuse and
then by smuggling a whole army of Cybermen aboard a space
ship enroute to Earth. Fortunately, the ship was caught in a temporal anomaly
and sent back in time by several million years, with the result that the
Cybermen not only failed to destroy humanity, but actually succeeded in
creating it; the ship that struck Earth was the 'meteor' that rendered
the dinosaurs extinct. Unfortunately, this resulted in the death of The
Doctor's companion Adric, who had remained on the ship in a foolish attempt
to disarm the bomb, not realising the potential consequences if he'd succeeded.
The Cybermen in this story were of a much more futuristic design, and "Earthshock" succeeded
in re-establishing Kit Pedler's creations as top favourites with the viewers.
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Spare Parts
(Marc Platt) |
|
Following
this, The Doctor and Nyssa were forced to endure the most
terrible confrontation with the Cybermen of all; a confrontation
that revealed the full details
of the Cybermen's origins ("Spare
Parts"). After Mondas left
Earth's solar system, the atmosphere faded and the surface
froze, leaving the population forced to retreat into vast
underground caverns to survive.
Unfortunately, this made actually leaving the caverns and
stepping onto the planet's surface impossible; having spent
so long underground, the
entire population had become, essentially, claustrophobic,
incapable of going onto the surface without collapsing in
screams. With Mondas having
developed a means of steering the planet, the people needed
to go onto the surface in order to start the 'engines' before
they hit a dangerous
special anomaly known as the Cherrybowl Nebula, and thus
the Cyber-process was the only means of ensuring their survival.
However, the process was
not without its problems; for example, it required their
emotions to be removed as it was too traumatic otherwise,
and success rates for Cyber-conversion
were only 19% of the total converted, thus necessitating
continuous conversion. When The Doctor and Nyssa arrived
on Mondas, The Doctor was scanned by
Doctorman
Christine Allan - the scientist responsible for originally
creating the Cybermen - who discovered that The Doctor had
a third lobe in his brain
that controlled his body functions, which gave her the idea
to duplicate the process for the other Cybermen - in other
words, the entire Cyber-race
was based on The Doctor. Resolved to fight this, The Doctor
managed to activate Mondas's engines and render the conversion
process unnecessary,
sending the planet back towards Earth and away from the
Nebula, but, even as he and Nyssa departed, they had no
way of knowing that Cyber-commander
Zheng - the 'leader' of the Cybermen - was still active,
and resolved to continue conversion...
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The Five Doctors
(1983) |
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A
year AFTER “Earthshock”, in the 20th anniversary story "The
Five Doctors", the Cybermen made a welcome return to help celebrate
this special event in the shows history. In this story two small
groups of Cybermen find themselves within the Death Zone on Gallifrey.
A Raston Warrior Robot destroys one team while the other ended up
being slaughtered by The Master's trickery, although his actions
did provide the First Doctor and Tegan
Jovanka with much-needed information
about a trap in the Dark Tower, the Tomb of Rassilon. Even though
they are not central to the main plot their presence leads to some
magnificent action scenes. The Third Doctor at last gets a chance
to come face to face with the Cybermen, when he witnesses the Raston
Warrior Robot slaughtering the attacking Cybermen as he and Sarah
Jane tried to enter the Dark Tower - which must rate as one of the
best ever cyber battles ever seen in Doctor Who.
While investigating a strange energy ‘spike’ that,
according to an enthusiastic ‘fan’ of The Doctor’s,
accompanied most of his visits to Earth, the Fifth Doctor was reunited
with his old companion Tegan while investigating a spike in 2006
("The
Gathering"), while his current companions Peri
and Erimem spent some time in Monte Carlo ("The
Veiled Leopard").
After Tegan was abducted at gunpoint by her friend and employee Katherine
Chambers, a woman who The Doctor would apparently meet in his future
and her past, Katherine revealed that she was trying to save her
brother Nate using Cyber-technology. However, her goals went further
than that; Katherine’s new ‘grand plan’ was to
use Cyber-technology to cure all illnesses, believing that the continued
life was worth the sacrifice of being under the control of technology.
In the end, however, The Doctor and Tegan managed to appeal to all
that was left of the original, human Nate, convincing him and Katherine
that what she was doing was wrong, causing the Nate-Cyberman to activate
the computer’s self-destruct system. Having taken Katherine
away to get help in coping with her past, The Doctor said one last
goodbye to Tegan before departing, reassured that she had enjoyed
her time with him.
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Attack of the
Cybermen
(1985) |
|
The Cybermen made another attempt to avert the destruction of
Mondas, their home planet, in the 1985 story "Attack of the Cybermen". While
chasing an alien in distress the
Sixth
Doctor became embroiled in a plot by the Cybermen to destroy Earth
by using the approaching Halley's Comet, thus averting Mondas's destruction
by destroying Earth before Mondas itself could be destroyed in their encounter
in "The Tenth Planet". The Cybermen took The Doctor back to Telos
where he encountered a recovered and rebuilt CyberController, masterminding
the plan. With the help of Telos' native inhabitants, the Cryons, as well
as a former adversary-turned-ally in the form of the bounty hunter Lytton
(Last seen working for the Daleks), The Doctor was able to thwart the Cybermen's
plan and destroy the CyberController. The biggest problem with the Cybermen
in this story is the ease in which they could be shot, blown up and decapitated
which made them seem very vulnerable as never seen before.
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The Reaping
(Joseph Lidster) |
|
During
a return visit to Peri's home time to allow her to attend
the funeral of the father of one of her friends ("The
Reaping"), The Doctor and Peri were pitted against a race of
Cybermen from the distant future, who were so weakened by
recent wars that, despite having been in the past for almost
two years, their only convert
was the father of Peri’s friend. The Cyberleader attempted to force
The Doctor to take him back in time to ensure that the human
race would become a new breed of Cybermen, thus averting
Mondas’s
destruction, but The Doctor tricked the damaged Cyberleader
into leaving the TARDIS
on a version of Mondas in the distant past, where the Cyberleader
was taken away by the contemporary Cybermen to be ‘repaired’.
As The Doctor and Peri departed, The Doctor was left unaware
that Peri’s
friends were actually Nate and Katherine (Presumably he
had forgotten about them due to his traumatic regeneration),
and was left unaware of the terrible
fate that awaited the two of them in his future and their
past.
Some time
later, after Peri had departed the TARDIS, The Doctor took
his new companion, Grant Markham, back to Grant's home planet
of Agora in an attempt to investigate the cause of Grant's
long-standing robophobia ("Killing
Ground"). Discovering that the Cybermen were converting
every male on the planet into a Cyberman - indeed, they’d
been doing so for years - Grant nearly allowed himself to
become partly cybernetic to fight the Cybermen after they
killed his father, but he was convinced not to forsake his
humanity. He also learned that the reason for his robophobia
was due to repressed memories of his escape from Agora,
when his mother was killed by a Cyberman. When the other
members of the anti-Cybermen resistance - known as the Bronze
Knights - were slaughtered by the Cybermen, Grant deactivated
them by turning down the temperature, taking advantage of
them having been designed to be cryogenically frozen. The
Doctor subsequently destroyed the frozen Cybermen using
a cannon on the Cybermen’s stolen Selachian warship,
tricking the Cyber-leader into firing the gun after it had
been reprogrammed to backfire.
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Silver Nemesis
(1988) |
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The Cybermen's
final television encounter was in the 1988 story "Silver Nemesis" were
they are planning to invade Earth again in force.This time around, the
main action centres on their desire to possess the statue of Lady Peinforte
made from the powerful living metal Validium, although they end up being
forced into conflict with a group of Nazis attempting to establish The
Fourth Reich. They form a temporary alliance with the Nazis to acquire
the Validium - with Peinforte possessing golden arrows, the Cybermen are
at a disadvantage that the Reich soldiers would not possess - but they
eventually betrayed the Reich having acquired the Validium. The Seventh
Doctor subsequently uses the Validium to destroy the Cybermen's invasion
fleet, while The Doctor's companion Ace used her catapult to kill the remaining
Earth-bound Cybermen using gold dust.
While investigating
strange occurrences in London during the Blitz, The Doctor and
Ace discovered a group of Cybermen hiding in the sewers ("Illegal
Alien").
The Cybermen in question were a group of sleeper agents sent
back from the future to prepare Earth for an invasion, but damage
in a German raid forced
a small rescue mission to be sent back, and the damaged Cyberman
now required blood to restore the balance between its organic
and mechanical components.
After destroying one of the Cyber-conversion facilities by turning
on the lights during an air raid, a Nazi attempt to gain control
of a group of
dormant Cybermen was averted when the command unit was destroyed,
devastating the entire Cybermen army. The Cyber-technology here
was subsequently used
by a secret government branch who was experimenting with early
cybernetic implants ("Loving
the Alien"), but the group was shut down after
Earth was nearly invaded by an alternate version of itself when
the actions of The Doctor’s old foe George
Limb resulted in the barriers
between alternate worlds breaking down.
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The Harvest
(Dan Abnett) |
|
During their
first meeting with their future companion, Thomas Hector ‘Hex’ Schofield
("The
Harvest"), The Doctor and Ace found themselves confronting
another Earth-based group of Cybermen. Hiding in a hospital
that was using experimental medical technology to provide cybernetic
implants to badly-wounded
people, the Cybermen were also undergoing a reversal of the
Cyber-conversion process, allowing themselves to turned back
into human beings to experience
organic life once more. However, their real motives were far
less appealing; by providing medical technology, the Cybermen
had created a conversion factory
right in the heart of London, and, with the Cyber-Leaders coordinating
the situation from there, Earth would be dominated by the Cybermen
in under three weeks. As The Doctor confronted the converted Cyber-Leader,
Ace and
Hex activated a termination protocol that shut down all Cyber-humans,
leaving the factory in ruins as The Doctor and Ace departed
with Hex as
a new companion.
When the TARDIS
was nearly used by a race called the Charrl to travel to Earth
from their home planet ("Birthright"),
it suffered a breakdown that caused it to materialise on Earth
in the early twentieth century. As a result of the attempt,
The Doctor's companions Benny and Ace were left with two different
versions of the main TARDIS shell - now reverted to a simple
police box after the
Time Vector Generator was removed, with Benny holding the main
TVG - while The Doctor took the Jade Pagoda - the TARDIS 'escape
pod' - and found himself
in the Arctic ("Iceberg"),
where an Antarctic tour discovered a group of Cybermen who had
crashed there following their failed attempt
to conquer Earth in 1986. Even worse, the 'tour' was actually
there to test a device
called FLIPback, that had been developed in the event of Earth's
magnetic polarity reversing; FLIPback would reverse the Earth's
magnetic polarity
back to the way it was... but could just as easily cause the
disaster it was designed to avert. Aided by investigative journalist
Ruby Duvall, The
Doctor confronted this small group of Cybermen as they attempted
to convert the people on the Antarctic tour, managing to bring
them off-balance by
reversing Earth's polarity before they were ready for it, allowing
Ruby to destroy the Cyber-army with a cobalt bomb. Ruby briefly
tried to join
The Doctor on his travels, but the Jade Pagoda returned to the
main TARDIS while Ruby was busy collecting her personal effects,
leaving her behind.
On
a later trip to the planet Tasak - while searching for some
tea, which was said to particularly good on Tasak, most likely due to it
still being a
steam-powered society - the Seventh Doctor encountered an undercover
operative called Temeter, investigating a strange energy trace from the
city of Ardent.
Arriving in the city, The Doctor discovered that the ruling
House of Argentia was attempting to arrange a peace conference that would
stabilise the society
after a recent devastating world war, using alien technology
discovered on the sacred island known as the Heart to cure sicknesses with
nanotechnology.
However, after investigating the Heart himself, The Doctor realised
that Tasak was a Cyberman tomb-world, the Cybermen waiting in stasis until
they
were activated. Taking advantage of the fact that the Cybermen’s headquarters
was powered by geothermal energy from the dormant magma chamber
underneath the island, The Doctor and his allies planted explosives to crack
the magma
chamber, unleashing a river of lava that destroyed the dormant
Cybermen before they could be activated. As The Doctor departed, however,
he noted
that the Cybermen’s legacy on Tasak would actually be to create peace
due to the advances achieved by use of their technology, reflecting
that it was only how knowledge was used that defined whether it was good
or evil
rather than what it began as.
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Sword of Orion
(Nicholas Briggs) |
|
During the Eighth
Doctor's
first trip in the TARDIS with new companion Charley
Pollard, he materialised in the far future
during the Orion War ("Sword
of Orion"), a war
between humans and androids that began when humanity made its
androids too realistic, to the extent that the androids demanded
equal rights from the authorities, going to way when they were
refused. When the TARDIS accidentally materialised on a spaceship
where one of the crew had been murdered by a being of great
strength, The Doctor discovered that the power problems were
because of a Cybermat that had infiltrated the ship, and subsequently
discovered that the ship had deliberately made contact with
a ship full of dormant Cybermen; the ship's captain, Deeva,
was an Earth Security operative sent to attempt to form an alliance
with the Cybermen against the androids. As the entire crew were
converted, Deeva was revealed to be an android double agent
seeking the Cyber conversion process to convert humans to fight
for the androids, but, as an ion storm struck the ship, Deeva,
changed by her time with The Doctor and Charley, sacrificed
herself to ensure the destruction of the Cybermen, giving The
Doctor and Charley time to retreat to the TARDIS.
Some time after this, following Charley’s attempt to leave
The Doctor following the death of fellow companion C’rizz,
The Doctor and Charley were forced to investigate a temporal ‘hump’ -
swelling in space/time caused by pressure in the event ridges
- that had thrown them off course, causing them to land in Singapore
in 2008 rather than 1931. Tracking the hump to the SS Batavia
- a ship that was marooned in the harbour in 1942, - The Doctor
and Charley swiftly learned that it contained a small group
of Cybermen that had attacked it in 1942 after an experimental
generator designed to help them avoid detection transferred
the ship to the year 500 000 - by which point Earth had been
abandoned, - the generator being reprogrammed based on signals
that were sent by the Cybermen into the past. Tracking the ship
to its new location, The Doctor was horrified to learn that
the Cybermen intended to establish cybernetic conversion facilities
in 1942. With the Cyber-Planner’s body damaged due to
temporal corrosion, the Planner transferred its intellect into
Charley’s body moments before The Doctor transferred the
Batavia back to 1942, allowing the ship to be hit by torpedoes
to preserve history. Due to Charley’s brain being incapable
of holding the Cyber-Planner, the Planner attempted to transfer
itself into The Doctor, but The Doctor rewired the transmission
and restored Charley to normal. Unfortunately, at the last minute
a deranged and partly converted treasure-hunter who had sought
the Batavia’s supposed gold reserves attacked The Doctor,
forcing The Doctor to take him to the future to acquire Cyber-technology
only to be subsequently killed by the remaining Cybermen. Although
Charley managed to destroy the ship, the subsequent disintegration
caused the TARDIS’s HADS to activate, resulting in the
TARDIS dematerialising, with The Doctor’s recent memories
so scrambled that he was unable to recall what had precisely
happened to Charley (Who went on to be rescued by the Sixth
Doctor, leaving her in an awkward position as she was thus forced
to prevent herself from letting this Doctor know anything about
her time with his future self).
Some time after
Charley’s departure, The Doctor, while searching for new
companion Lucie Miller after she had been abducted by the mysterious
Headhunter - who had been tracking Lucie throughout time since
she joined The Doctor on his travels - discovered that the Headhunter
had taken her to an alien war machine on a distant planet disguised
as an office, the ‘office manager’ Hubert brainwashing
humans to run war machines that he provided to alien races currently
at war… with the pre-Telos Cybermen being the opponents
of his latest ‘clients’. After Hubert was convinced
to side with the Cybermen, The Doctor and Lucie discovered that
the Time Lord Celestial Intervention Agency - a group of Time
Lords who interfered with affairs of the universe that might
endanger the timeline or Time Lord supremacy of the Time Vortex
- had deliberately engineered the war in an attempt to destroy
the Cybermen. Using the Agency’s Quantum Crystaliser -
a device which altered possible futures to create the best possible
outcome for the user - The Doctor reprogrammed the Crystaliser
to increase its range while ensuring its goal of defeating the
Cybermen, causing all the Cybermen on the planet to be killed
before the device itself was rendered useless when a Cyberman
attempted to activate it.
 |
| Rise of the Cybermen /
The Age of Steel (2006) |
|
After not encountering
them for almost two lifetimes, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith
finally had their own confrontation with the Cybermen, during
the events of "Rise
of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel". Having accidentally
travelled into an alternate version of Earth - exactly where
its history diverged
from ours was never expressly revealed - The Doctor and Rose
visited the mansion home of the alternate Pete and Jackie Tyler,
while Mickey encountered his alternate self... just in time
for The Doctor and Rose to find themselves caught in the middle
of an attack by the newborn Cybermen of that universe. Created
by the dying genius John Lumic,
who sought a means to cure himself of his illness, these Cybermen
were regarded by Lumic as the
next necessary stage in human evolution, and he was determined
to 'upgrade' the entire population of Earth by force. While
The Doctor kept the Cyber-Controller Lumic occupied, Mickey
managed to find the code that would deactivate the emotional
inhibitor chip, thus causing the Cybermen to self-destruct as
they were finally capable of realising the horror of what they
had become.
 |
| Army of Ghosts /
Doomsday (2006) |
|
A couple of
years after this confrontation, the surviving Cybermen of that
world managed to use an experiment being conducted by
the Torchwood institute of this reality to cross over into this
universe, following the trail of a 'Void ship' - a ship designed
to 'hide' in the void between universes ("Army
of Ghosts/Doomsday"). However, once the Cybermen
had crossed over, it was discovered that the ship was created
by the last four
Daleks in existence - the Cult of Skaro, a secret order created
to think like the enemy and develop new ways of killing-, resulting
in a moment that Doctor Who fans had longed for ever
since the two species became the nightmares they are today;
a war between
the Daleks and the Cybermen. Initially, the Cybermen had the
advantage of numbers - it was five million Cybermen to only
four Daleks, after all - but the Daleks' advanced weapons gave
them the edge regardless, and after the Daleks managed to open
a Time Lord prison capsule, the Cybermen lost even the advantage
of numbers, with millions of Daleks filling the skies of London.
However, as both species had passed through the void, The Doctor
was able to defeat both of them by opening the rift into the
Void, thus drawing both species into the ‘null space’ between
universes due to them having absorbed 'background radiation'
when they passed through the void. With the rift open, both
species were pulled into the void, essentially being trapped
in a dimension that has become known as ‘Hell’ by
some people.
However, some
Cybermen - those who had been converted on this side of the
rift - remained behind regardless of The Doctor's
efforts. One of these - Lisa Hallet - was rescued by her boyfriend,
Ianto Jones, who went on to work at Torchwood Three in Cardiff,
under the command of the Ninth
Doctor's
old companion Jack Harkness. He attempted to restore Lisa to
her original human form with
the aid of a cybernetics expert, convinced that she was still
human underneath her upgrades, but when awakened, Lisa reverted
to her Cyberman personality and attempted to convert the Torchwood
base into the focus for her new Cyberman army. She nearly killed
Jack (His immortality after being resurrected by Rose following
"The
Parting of the Ways" being the only thing that saved
him), but, seeing how far Ianto had gone to protect her, Lisa
transplanted
her brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl so they could
be together. Clearly insane, and still claiming they both could
be upgraded, Lisa's new body was shot and killed by the rest
of the Torchwood team (Interestingly enough, it was implied
that Jack has experience with the 'original' Cybermen when he
discussed the damage that the Cybermen could do if Lisa was
allowed to exist, although this was never expressly stated).
While travelling
with Martha Jones, The Doctor discovered another group of Cybermen
who had been converted on this side of the dimensional rift
and thus remained after the others were sucked into the Void.
Although these Cybermen attempted to use alien technology -
presumably salvaged from Torchwood - to open the Void and release
their army once again, their initial experiments simply resulted
in sending them randomly teleporting around London, forcing
them to try and find The Doctor to force him to help them. With
Martha having tracked them down to their headquarters at the
Millennium Dome, The Doctor led a small army unit to confront
the Cybermen, the soldiers destroying five of the Cybermen before
The Doctor was able to destroy them by opening a space-time
portal to the last location where he and Martha had been prior
to their return to London (Which, since the TARDIS had previously
been visiting prehistoric times, meant that the Cybermen were
torn apart by a T-Rex).
 |
| The Next Doctor (2008) |
|
Another
group of Cybermen eventually managed to escape the Void when
Davros’s attempts to trigger the Reality Bomb ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's End") destabilised the dimensional barriers, allowing
a small group of Cybermen to escape the Void with stolen Dalek
technology, including various ‘infostamps’ that
contained all the information they would require to survive
in this universe. Arriving in London in 1851, the Cybermen recruited
the aid of workhouse matron Miss Mercy Hartigan to gather children
to use as a work force to construct a ‘Cyber-King’,
a gigantic mobile Cyber-conversion factory that simultaneously
acted as a war machine; their lack of resources necessitated
them using more subtle methods than usual. However, their attempts
were thwarted when the Tenth Doctor discovered their presence
in London, allying himself with Jackson Lake, a mathematics
professor who had been exposed to an infostamp containing information
about The Doctor when he discovered the Cybermen in his basement;
the trauma of witnessing the Cybermen kill his wife and abduct
his son resulted in Jackson briefly believing that he was The
Doctor before the genuine article arrived, causing him to seek
information about the Cybermen while trying to defend London
from their attack. Despite the shock of learning that his identity
was a lie when The Doctor deduced what had happened, Lake nevertheless
aided The Doctor in fighting the Cybermen, using the infostamps
as weapons by damaging their power sources and using them to
overload the Cybermen while The Doctor evacuated the children
from the Cyber-King before it activated. Although the Cybermen
attempted to convert Miss Hartigan to become the Cyber-King,
her mind proved so powerful that she came through the conversion
process with emotions intact, although her lust for power and
respect meant that she continued to lead the Cyber-King against
London regardless. Using a hot-air balloon Jackson had developed
as his own TARDIS - Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style
- The Doctor flew up to confront Miss Hartigan as she sat in
the chest of the Cyber-King, subsequently using an infostamp
to break through both the Cyber-programming and her rage and
anger, forcing her to truly look at what she had become. Screaming
in horror at the realisation of her true nature, Miss Hartigan
triggered the Cybermens’ self-destruct before destroying
herself, The Doctor subsequently using the vortex generator
the Cybermen had used to escape the Void to send the Cyber-King
into the Time Vortex, where it would disintegrate harmlessly.
The Eleventh
Doctor’s first encounter with the Cybermen occurred in
the Arctic, when he and his companion Amy Pond responded to
a distress signal, discovering an Arctic base where a geological
expedition had discovered a long-dormant Cyber-ship, the reactivated
Cybermats infecting the expedition members with a nanovirus
that turned them into ‘Cyberslaves’ ("Blood
of the Cybermen"). Although The Doctor managed to devise
a cure for the virus after examining one of the Cybermats, Amy
was captured by the Cyberleader, forcing The Doctor to begin
the Cybermen revival process or allow Amy to be converted into
a Cyberman herself. Fortunately, The Doctor managed to escape
the Cyberleader and rescue Amy before reversing the revival
process, although he, Amy, and Chisholm - the last surviving
member of the expedition - then had to escape the base before
the Cybership self-destructed.
 |
| The Pandorica Opens/The
Big Bang (2010) |
|
The
Eleventh Doctor faced the Cybermen again when they joined forces
with his other enemies in a vast Alliance to trap him in the
Pandorica - a legendary prison that had been spoken of in myth,
created specifically to hold The Doctor - after they became
convinced that he would be responsible for a temporal explosion
that triggered the creation of cracks in the universe after
the TARDIS exploded, unaware that the explosion had already
taken place when his future companion River Song was piloting
the ship. With the collapse of history, the various races in
the Alliance were all erased from existence, leaving only statues
of themselves gathered around the Pandorica as ‘after-images’,
Earth the last fragment of time left in the universe thanks
to the exploding TARDIS putting itself in a time loop at the
moment of its destruction to act as a substitute sun for Earth.
With The Doctor having taken the Pandorica into the TARDIS explosion,
using the TARDIS itself as a power source to transmit the remaining
atoms of the true universe stored within the Pandorica across
all of time and space in a second explosion that restored the
history of the universe, the Alliance was erased and history
restored.
|
|
