Moderator's Note: This is Mike's original Cyberman summary:

The Cybermen and their hair-dryer heads probably did more to ruin the image of "Doctor Who" than any other rubber-suited monster. They were emotionless cybernetic creatures that gloated, got angry, acted smug, and so on. Alledgedly indestructible, they succumbed to a variety of solvents and assorted materials. Blessed with "faster reactions than humans", they could be outmaneuvered by a two-legged hamster with Parkinson's disease.

I wonder why we were never blessed with a "Daleks vs Cybermen" story. Seems obvious in hindsight.



Speak for yourself - I always found the Cybermen pretty scary, once I got over fuming 'Cybermen? What about Cyberwomen?' OK, the early ones weren't that great - those lamps on the head, and their human arms (surely arms would be the first bits to be replaced?) but, like the show, they evolved well. And since they were originally human-types, it's not surprising that they still have emotions. The Doctor just made one of his mistakes in labelling them emotionless.

I admit to being a little surprised that Toberman could equal their strength, though. Not to mention the way they all dropped dead at the touch of a coin in Silver Nemesis.

Don't blame the Doctor; the Cybermen were constantly bragging about their lack of emotions and how it made them oh so superior. In reality, they were repressed nutcases with persecution complexes; Psychomen would be a more appropriate name.

The chestplate made it impossible to tell the difference between Cybermen and Cyberwomen. I have a hunch that enough surgery was performed on potential Cybercandidates to make the sexual issue a mootpoint (Cyberneuters).

Didn't all the Cyberthis and Cyberthat drive you crazy? Using scientific sounding prefixes is an old cliche from pulp sci-fi.

The Cyber weakness to gold devolved from a type of poisoning to becoming their equivalent of Kryptonite; one touch and they keel over. Can we assume these Cybermen were older models and ready to breakdown anyway?

The best thing about the cybermen was that book by David Banks. most of the actual stories were pretty bad, but the concept of the cyberen was a good one.

You're not trying to tell me that Iceberg was better than the televised cybermen stories!! Not wanting to pointlessly slag it off or anything, but it wasn't actually very good. Whereas Earthshock was mind-bogglingly brilliant (as long as you didn't think too hard about the plot), and so was Tomb of - well, Revenge - no, Attack - OK, I admit that none of the other televised cybermen stories were up to much. But they all had their moments.

Unfortunately, it's impossible not to think about the plot of "Earthshock" (or a purple cow). And that's the H-bomb that blows the whole episode.

Ed - do you mean the Iceberg NA or are you referring to the large format David Banks book, "Cybermen!"? If it's the latter, I have to say I enjoyed it too.

For me the cybermen were scarier than the daleks, certainly from the perspective of a child watching the series twenty years ago than the adult (ish) watching reruns today. I think that it was something to do with the fact that the daleks would just exterminate you, whereas the cybermen may well force you to live the rest of your life void of emotion and wearing shiny silver wellies ...

Maybe it was because Daleks looked like you could push them over and leave them stranded, like beetles on their backs. And then there's the stair problem, finally solved in "Remembrance of the Daleks."

I don't know... the fact Cyberman might have had to stop and tie up their shoelaces was laughable for many years.
Mike, there was once a Dalek vs Cybermen story in Doctor Who Magazine that ran across two issues.
It was called Heliotrope Bouquet but wasn't much chop. I mean, how could it? - the Doctor wasn't in it.

I meant the large format David Banks book. The best cybermen story was that one where they assimilate Picard.... oh no, sorry that's the borg. Still, they were like the cyberman done on a decent budget and with some good plots.

I always thought the end of episode two of Tomb was quite chilling: "You-will-be-like-us". OK, it's not "You will be assimilated" but given I first saw this only after it was recovered from Hong Kong, it was one of the more impressive parts of the story.

'You belong to us. You shall be like us' was inscribed on my Doctor Who membership card. It would have been one of the most terrifying moments in TV history had the cyberman not been speaking in such a silly voice.

Sorry, Edje, I completely forgot about that big Banks book - I've never read it, since for some mysterious reason no London library has it in stock. Does it try to reconcile everything we see on TV? (Easier than doing it with the daleks, I suppose.) I'd really like to know what chronological order the Dr Who adventures were in, from the cyber point of view.

Mike - yes, I agree about the daleks. It always seemed so easy to dodge behind them/throw your hat over their eye-stalk, etc. And they don't tower over you the way cybermen do. I disagree over the 'cyber' business though - as a technological illiterate, I am always impressed by scientific sounding prefixes.

Sarah, didn't you see Revelation of the Daleks? They were trying to turn whatshisname - Natasha's father - into a dalek. So not only might you be forced to live the rest of your life void of emotion (well, sort of), you won't even have any shiny silver wellies to console you.

Btw, the cybermen's gold weakness was apparently due to an overflow of illogicality from a mythical universe - something like that, anyway. I'll have to reread Christmas on a Rational Planet.

Revelation - that was a Colin, wasn't it? Sorry, I know I really should be able to recite all 26 seasons by heart ...

I've probably seen it once, but when Doc4 became Doc5 I lost interest in the show (as a 10 yr old) bigtime, an interest rekindled massively when Doc7 graced our screens. However, UK Gold are rerunning the entire series as omnibuses at the mo, and I've recently enjoyed (understatement) Deadly Assassin, so we'll get there eventually.

Come to think of it, the wee lass in Remembrance was sort of semi-dalek-ised. What was the physical transfer made in Revelation? Did the unhappy victim become like Davros or were they blobified completely?

Chris - I'm sure the cybermens' boot laces weren't really a problem. You see, they were probably self-tying semi-intelligent CYBERlaces. Just ask Mike. He knows about these terms.

In "Revelation", the Daleks took bits of preserved bodies and turned them into the organic parts of Daleks. We get treated to the grisly site of a partially transformed head inside a Dalek casing.

The girl in "Remembrance" was mind-controlled, though it was a particularly potent kind of M-C.

Cybermen shop at CyberFoot Locker for their CyberMartens. They're Cyberiffic!

CyberLaces - I should have guessed! I imagine they had CyberAglets as well...

Don't worry, Sarah, all is forgiven. I have to confess to occasional use of the off switch myself, during the Colin Baker era. (But of course I atoned for my sins later, I have all CBs on video now and even watch them, when I really haven't got anything better to do.)

That bit about cybermen in Christmas on a Rational Planet:

'Creatures from Earth's twin planet, sucked out of its orbit and left to wander the universe...scientifically dubious, to say the least. A futurist fairy-tale. Then there was that gold allergy, and their aversion to plastic solvents. Gold bullets instead of silver ones, chemical cocktails instead of holy water. Cryogenic freezers instead of coffins. The Doctor briefly wondered what irrational forces might have been at work on Mondas, all those years ago.'

IIRC, originally it wasn't an alergy to Gold, per se, but to gold dust, which would clog the air intakes.

It just adapted as time went on, and there was one story where they could quite easily get brought down without gold. All you needed was to apply a high-calibre automatic pistol to the face and fire and they went down like flies.

Needless to say, the chap who tried it didn't get more than a couple of them...

They ran a discussion awhile back in Friends Of
Doctor Who about the Borg versus the Cybermen.
On the whole I think the Borg make for the better
foe(FIRST CONTACT,DARK FRONTIER,THE BEST OF BOTH
WORLDS,etc.)
At least they don't look as doofusly as the Cybermen do..also the Borg would have learned to
ahve adapted to their basic weaknesses..the
Cybermen can be stopped if you can get close
enough with a handful of gold dust(SILVER
NEMESIS,EARTHSHOCK,etc.)
I think that this is another example of how DW
could have been better with a larger budget.:)
Ok,if the Doctor's next companion ends up being
a sexy ex-Cyberwoman who looks like Seven I would
probably change my mind.:)

I suspect the reason people like the Borg better is because you can actually see their faces, or what's left of their faces. Because of that, I bet if Seven of Nine had a big robot head with no moving parts, and wore a big bulky, curve hiding, enviroment suit, she wouldn't be nearly as popular as she is now.

Were Doctor Who still on TV, it is certain that the Cybermen would have evolved further. Comparing the Borg of the now with the Cybermen of the then is like comparing an Oric with a PC. Seven-of-nine does win, however, on account of her not having Michael Kilgariff inside her. Otherwise, conceptually, the Cybermen get first dibs and the Borg, however nice and flash, can only settle for winning over the imaginative design of their ship - that great big flying box... which, thinking about it, reminds us of another great big flying box...?

In "Tomb of the Cybermen," Toberman also showed us that some of those older-model Cybermen apparently filled their chest cavities with Alka-Seltzer. And this was banned in some corners of the world for being too grisly. I like the Cybermen a lot, but this is a point against them.

For using Alka-Seltzer? Maybe the Cybercontroller in Attack Of The Cybermen should have taken some because his belly looked rather swollen.

Well, it looks like Alka-Seltzer thirty-odd years later. I don't see what the fuss was about.

Poor Cybercontroller. First time we see him in "Tomb" he looks like he has a migraine. Then he lets himself go and gets an even sillier looking head. Poor dope.

Just wondering...Is "Revenge" the only story in which Cybermen have weapons built into their bodies? In "Tomb" they had no guns, but used the humans' as they were made available. From "Earthshock" on I believe they had their own guns.

I believe the original Cybermen's lampshade weapons in "The Tenth Planet" were detachable from their bodies, but the weapons were normally clipped to the bottom of their chest units.

I believe the original Cybermen's lampshade weapons in "The Tenth Planet" were detachable from their bodies, but said weapons were normally clipped to the bottom of their chest units.

I think the CyberController in 'Attack Of The Cybermen' only appears to have gained weight, when in fact, his internal cybernetic systems have bloated his silver cybersuit with too many life-sustaining cyber chemicals. After all, if we're to assume that there is, in fact, an organic body within the silver suit, it would have to be maintained by some kind of system, or else it would wither and disolve. Thus, the CyberController is mistaken for being tubby.
TA-DA! Nit solved! Comments?

I thought they replaced everything with Cyber parts, just living bits of the head and brain inside the Cyber head.

Well, that would have been my assumption too, had Attack of the Cybermen not demonstrated that there is nothing organic inside the head. And had the Tenth Planet ones not had human arms. I suppose every group of cybermen has differing views on which organic bits, if any, to keep.

I was thinking of the visible chins in Earthshock when I made that last post.

Maybe the chins were metal? And the cybermen just had them moving up and down as they spoke in memory of their human origins? No? OK, it's a s t u p i d idea, but Illegal Alien had some such in-memory-of-humanity explanation for why some cybermen had tears in the corner of their eyes.

If the Cybermen aren't organic in some way, why were they trying to convert Lytton? Opening up the face plate to reveal circuitry was a mistake, if you ask me. I suppose one can assume that behind that wall of circuitry is an alien brain and others former body parts, considering that the Cybermen have a habit of threatening to convert humanoids into their own cyborg race.

"Revelation of the Cybermen" was a pretty good episode, I thought.

Sorry...I meant "Attack of the Cybermen" I had the "Dalek episode" on my brain.

So what was the CyberPlanner in The Invasion all about then? Why have we never seen something like that again?

Doesn't 'Iceberg' say that the CyberPlanner/Co-Ordinator (or are they two different things) became the CyberController?

Well, I suppose it's no stupider than Davros becoming the Emperor Dalek...

I was amazed at how NICE the Cybermen were in The Tenth Planet. OK, so they were prepared to destroy Earth and all that, but that was a question of us or them - Earth had to die so that Mondas would live, and I expect humans would have done the same in similar circumstances. And they did offer to rescue the population by evacuating them to Mondas (albeit with forcible conversion awaiting them on arrival). And - despite extremely reasonably pointing out that humans were dying all the time and no-one cared about them - they let the South Pole base try to bring back its astronauts. And when Ben attacked them, the leader said 'Take him out of here and look after him.' Look AFTER him! Why not destroy/annihilate/exterminate him? They certainly got a lot more bitter in later stories - not to mention somehow acquiring the desire to conquer the universe. Losing Mondas must have had a really bad effect on the Cyber-psyche, though Telos was a perfectly good replacement in my opinion.

Going back to Mike's original comment about why there was never a Daleks vs Cybermen story... Terry Nation wouldn't allow it, apparently.

Why? Was he scared his precious Daleks wouldn't be up to the task? Well, he was right, IMHO. Pathetic as the Cybermen are, they could - literally - run rings around the Daleks.

I thought Terry Nation didn't want a Daleks vs Cybermen story (which was mooted around season 5ish) as he wanted to launch the Daleks in America (in their own series like 'Mission to the Unknown'). This was why the Daleks were supposedly killed off in 'The Evil of the Daleks', so that the BBC wouldn't be able to use them anymore. The series idea flopped, and eventually the BBC got the Daleks back for 'Day of the Daleks'

That sounds about right, actually.

News Headline: Invasion of the Cybermats. Okay, so the actual headline on page 1 of today's Boston Globe was, "Scientists produce ratbot." Apparently they put a microchip in the brain of a living rat, and can now control its movements.

Coincidentally, in the latest Discover magazine there's a short review of the book "Flesh and Machine: How Robots Will Change Us."

Looks like the Cyber invasion has begun.

Actually the Daleks and the Cybermen were going to join forces to face the Doctor but ruthless as they are they would have probably turned against each other.
Thank you very much Terry Nation this story could have been a very good one but you wouldn't allow it.

Personally I'd love to see what would happen if the Cybermen and Borg ever met!

btw:I'd also love to see someone come up with a story where the Doctor and UNIT fight the Borg!
Personally I don't see the Brig making the same
kind of errors that Picard makes.

Whatwere the names of the Cybermen in *Tenth Planet*?
Was there a Krang,a Gern,or a Ssorg ?

Krang and Gern, plus some other unnamed Cybermen. Ssorg is an Ice Warrior from "The Curse of Peladon."

It seems that Montgomery Burns has become a Cyberman...in "The Five Doctors" (and beyond), the Leader says, "Excellent" a lot!

Who's Montgomery Burns?

Who's Montgomery Burns? : D'oh!

He's Homer's evil boss in 'The Simpsons' - an animated US series which has achieved massive critical and commercial success throughout the world in its sixteen year run. It has even had two Doctor Who references in it including a non-speaking appearance for your favourite, Tom.

I know what the Simpsons is! AND I know about Tom Baker's appearance. I just can't be expected to know the name of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, can I, especially if it's been running for 16 years. God, I probably can't even remember the names of every single character in Doctor Who. (NB: Let's NOT put this to the test.)

Let's find out, shall we?

What was the name of the colony leader in Frontios?

How about the "old teacher" who helped the Doctor during his third regeneration (into Tom Baker)?

The theater owner in the Talons of Weng Chiang?

Easy, easy, easy!

Plantagenet, the Abbot Rampoche(/Cho-Je), Henry Gordon Jago.

Plantagenet? Really? And all I remembered was Jago, and not even his whole name.

>Apparently they put a microchip in the brain of a living rat, and can now control its movements.

Oh, good. Just what we all wanted, I'm sure.

First, this isn't a spoiler. It's in this week's Radio Times, which is the mostly widely-read weekly magazine in the UK, but a certain popular monster will be returning in the new series. Let's call them the C*b*rm*n and discuss them in this section of the forum for no particular reason.

They've had yet another redesign and I'm not sure it's terribly effective. I keep imagining new-style C*b*rm*n turning to each other and saying 'Does my bum look big in this?'

Nonsense! That Cyberperson is so sweet! So pretty! So adorable! Don't you just want to pat it on the head like a pet cat?

Oh. Actually, I suppose I can see why you wouldn't regard that as 'terribly effective'...

There's always the possibility that it *is* a Cyberwoman and we just haven't been shown the Cybermen yet.

The Cybermen are more likely to be of indeterminate gender. These days a LOT of people in the Whoniverse are - see Lady Cassandra's 'When I was a little boy'; the Face of Boe's pregnancy; the 'Ladies, gentlemen, and multi-sex beings' speech. And it's fair enough, since - unlike the Daleks - some Cybermen were female before conversion (see Killing Ground and Spare Sparts).

A new picture of the Cybermen. Well, a Cyberman anyway. Gives me a beter impression.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/images/173/aliensenemies2.jpg

I thought Lumic's bunch removed your BRAIN and stuck it in the metal casing? Not your skull as well! Do they remove the flesh first or leave it to rot...?

Incidentally, one headless Cyberman stomping towards you turns out to be even MORE scary than an entire ARMY of the creatures - with their heads on. Interesting...

So maybe this isn't Lumic's bunch? Maybe these are native Cybermen, who happen to look the same.

It would be a bit of a coincidence...they've got the 'C's on their chests and everything...and bear in mind that when the Void was destroyed there's no reason all the Cyber-survivors should have ended up in nineteenth-century Britain...

And since when have Cybermen of ANY variety said 'You will be assimilated'?

And isn't it going a BIT far to design them to go get themselves another brain if they carelessly lose their current one? How would they process it, anyway, without a Cyber-conversion unit?

Moderator's Note: Moved from 'The Pandorica Opens' section:

These are Mondonesian cybermen in this ep!!! Shame they didn't tweak them slightly to make them appear different, like changing their appearance, not bothering with the stupid walking sound effect, delete, or giving them guns to hold instead of arm blasters but I don't care, at last we got the original lot back.

Now if only they'll start saying excellent we'll be back on track.

What makes you think they're from Mondas and not the same New Series ones we've been seeing?

And I could really do without 'excellent.' That was a quirk from the JNT-era. In some ways the New Series ones harken back to the Troughton era Cybermen, and inthe case of their lack of excitement, that's a good thing.

What makes you think they're from Mondas and not the same New Series ones we've been seeing?

Agreed. They've got big silver 'C's on their chests, for heaven's sake. Alright, so they're stealing heads not just brains, but the Cybus lot did start messing around with Cyberneticising flesh during the Battle of Canary Wharf (see Torchwood: Cyberwoman).

Because Moffet said they were Mondas Cybermen. Sadly he obvs couldn't afford to change their look but maybe the Daleks told the Cybermen about their alternate universe counterparts so the Cybermen copied them. Especially as the catchphrase delete is better than excellent when everything is going wrong lol.

If you think about it it makes sense, the Cyberman Amy fights is much more advanced than one we've seen so far and it is clearly of a different design as it has an entire skull in it's head (like the original series ones) instead of just the brain (as Ludvic described his ones.

Well if he said it, I wish it actually made it on to our screens. Still, good point about the skull.

As I've had to explain to Moffat, what he says isn't canon. In fact, it couldn't be more uncanon. He's talking like he made this stuff up.

Unfortunately Emily what he says is canon. It solves niggling questions on who did what and what happened next and what about this. Plus I'm sure it will make in on screen in time. Along with Excellent, come on it has to be done!

Unfortunately Emily what he says is canon.

The hell it is! The Moff is a mere human (in a Living God kinda way) and by saying ANYTHING He's implying that Who ISN'T REAL and that he WROTE this *shudders* fiction. Ergo, His pronouncements are even less canonical than OURS. At least WE don't claim that Who is MADE UP.

Plus I'm sure it will make in on screen in time.

Well, once it's ON SCREEN that's a different matter. I'll welcome those Mondasian/Telosian Cybermen with open arms. (Providing they don't have human arms and lamps on their heads.)

Uh, Emily, you do know that Doctor Who is a TV show, it's not real. The Doctor is a fictional character, no more real than Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or Superman.

Shhhh! Are you nuts?

ooooh- someone hand me some popcorn... this is gonna get interesting...

Tim,

1. We are nitpickers! We don't deal in reality! ;-)

2. While some consider Word Of God to be Canon, some do not.

Uh, Emily, you do know that Doctor Who is a TV show, it's not real.

Obviously SOMEONE hasn't heard of the TV documentary...

The Doctor is a fictional character, no more real than Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or Superman.

Ha ha ha! Even COLIN BAKER doesn't wear his underpants on the outside...

Shhhh! Are you nuts?

He's probably just a bit confused. Maybe he's taking that scene where Troughton very nearly got fictionalised in Mind Robber rather too seriously. Or maybe it's Matt-in-Big-Bang's 'I'll just be a story...make it a good one' thing that's thrown him.

Or, of course, it could be that he's finally snapped after a lifetime of failing to hear that wheezing, groaning sound coming for him. How much easier to pretend the Doctor doesn't exist than to acknowledge that the Oncoming Git has turned down one's ankle-twisting services. Don't give up hope, Tim! Wilf, Donna and Romana prove that he doesn't JUST go for young, good-looking females. He may even come for you on your deathbed, like Agatha Christie in the DVD extras...

While some consider Word Of God to be Canon, some do not.

Nice article. Though it didn't consider the idea that the God in question might be DELIBERATELY lying through His teeth - as RTG did openly and gleefully, a fine tradition continued by The Moff when, say, Rory 'died' and He went round saying that Sacrifices Had To Be Made.

Okay, I was wrong, I admit it. The Doctor is real.

I also like that other TV documentary, the one with Kirk and Spock.

I also went to the movies and saw that documentary about Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia.

Emily - Nice article. Though it didn't consider the idea that the God in question might be DELIBERATELY lying through His teeth
That's covered in Lying Creator.

I also like that other TV documentary, the one with Kirk and Spock.

Fictional gibberish! Federations and Vulcans and spaceships are obviously COMPLETELY different from those portrayed in this tedious nonsense!

That's covered in Lying Creator.

Ah!

Federations and Vulcans

Hmm, someone knows what Federations and Vulcans are. Could it be we've been unfaithful?

Not with bloody Star Trek I haven't! I got pretty desperate during the Sixteen Long And Barren Years Of Despair, but not THAT desperate! Nope, I know there are (FICTIONAL, Tim!) big-eared Vulcans and a non-Peladonian-Federation the way I know there's a footballer called Beckham. Not because I want to but because they unfortunately became part of the petty, miserable fabric of late-twentieth/early-twenty-first century life, and whilst I'm fairly sure I'm the last person on Earth that such things filtered down to, they got there in the end...

Hey, if Who can be real, Trek can be real. Can't have it both ways.

Anyway, we're Off Topic again. Sorry about that.

He's not RTD Emily this one doesn't have the record of lying. In fact he can't keep his gob shut. And he has nothing to gain by saying htese were mondonesian cybermen, excelent!

Hey, if Who can be real, Trek can be real. Can't have it both ways.

I most certainly can! Since (thanks be to the White Guardian) RTG never did that crossover episode He was *shudders* thinking about...

Trek is a stupid sci-fi programme. Who is God's Honest Truth. The difference is EXTREMELY obvious.

He's not RTD Emily this one doesn't have the record of lying.

Obviously YOU didn't see the Moff on that Confidential, explaining that Rory's death (YES! RORY'S "DEATH!") was the price that had to be paid for all that fun the Doc and Amy were having.

And he has nothing to gain by saying htese were mondonesian cybermen, excelent!

He'd do it just to watch the fans squeal, I bet.

Star Trek is NOT stupid! It is one of science fictions most inspirational shows. It inspired young men and women to become astronauts (such as Dr. Mae Jemison, who cameoed in a TNG episode in the early 1990's), it inspired technology like cell phones (based on the communicators carried by Kirk and Co. in Classic Trek). Trek was well known for a long time.

Anyway, if Who can be real, so can Trek. Either they both can be real, or they are both fictional. Like I said, you can't have it both ways, and Trek has as much right to be "real" as Who does.

Where's that popcorn???

In that case, I'm voting for Star Wars being real, too! Why can't there be humans in a galaxy far, far away? (not to mention ogres and John Cleese)

Hear, hear!

If Who can be real, so can Star Trek, Star Wars, or any other science fiction TV show or movie.

Does that mean Charmed is real too?? Wow, I'm so moving to San Fransisco to see if I can hook up with that house of hotties...

Star Trek is NOT stupid! It is one of science fictions most inspirational shows.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. (A few years ago I'd've argued till I was blue in the face - albeit with exceedingly little personal experience to back up my arguments - but now I can't be bothered. Cos...WE WON. OUR programme is approximately the most popular thing in human history and THAT programme (all five or six versions of it) is dead as Dodo Chaplet.)

It inspired young men and women to become astronauts

Seriously? I heard it was REALLY sexist (not that Who wasn't in the 60s. And 70s. At least...).

it inspired technology like cell phones (based on the communicators carried by Kirk and Co. in Classic Trek).

I'm sure someone would have thought of mobiles sooner or later without the benefit of Trekkies. And did Kirk and Co. really text and take photos with their communicators?

Trek was well known for a long time.

Ugg, yes. Has Who's 31-years-and-counting overtaken it yet?

Anyway, if Who can be real, so can Trek. Either they both can be real, or they are both fictional.

Really? You ever told a Christian that they have to be a Buddhist as well?

(Um...actually, bad argument. I certainly have done. Especially when it comes to teaching Creationism/Intelligent Design in SCIENCE classes. I'm all in favour of teaching every other ludicrous creation myth alongside 'em - they've all got EXACTLY the same amount of scientific evidence behind 'em. Especially that one where the Earth is on the back of an elephant which is on the back of a tortoise (or is it a turtle?). Plus, of course, Teminus's WAY-more-reasonable-than-any-other explanation...)

Like I said, you can't have it both ways, and Trek has as much right to be "real" as Who does.

Until you actually WATCH Who in all its shining glory and SPOT THE DIFFERENCE.

Not, of course, that it really matters. Uniquely in the history of major world religions, no one has EVER been burnt at the stake for refusing to accept the Doctor as their personal lord and saviour.

I mean...even if you think he's fictional he's STILL the most important thing in your life so really, it doesn't make THAT much difference whether you spend your life hoping to hear that wheezing-and-groaning sound off-screen or not...

THAT programme (all five or six versions of it) is dead as Dodo Chaplet

Tell that to JJ Abrams who directed a spectacular ST remake last year that did very well at the box office. Who has yet to make it to the big screen.

I heard it was REALLY sexist

It's often credited with being ahead of its time. Uhura was a black woman in a position of responsibility, the interracial kiss, other nationalities represented on the Bridge, women being able to wear mini-skirts (considered liberating at the time), etc.

Meanwhile, Hartnell was telling Teagan to make him some tea whilst other female characters were screaming and twisting their ankles.

Re: Mandy's last comment
Try telling that to Polly, who was busy in The Moonbase, trying to turn attacking Cybermen into pools of bubbling Sludge, with a impromptu chemistry experiment, or blackmailing a English officer in The Highlanders...
As for the 5 Doctors reference, I have the sudden mental image of Tegan, trying to insert a "ration bar" from the Tardis "Food Machine", into a certain part of the Hurndall Doctor's anatomy "where the sun does not metaphorically shine...".

I was going to mention the JJ Abrams Trek movie, but Amanda beat me to it.

There were plans to make a Who movie in the late 80's, (Caroline Munro would have been in it, playing a Gallifreyan TARDIS engineer named Cora)but it never happened. Probably a money thing.

There've been several proposed Doctor Who movies over the years. Judging by the ones that were made, we didn't miss much.

Wasn't Uhura basically a telephone operator?

Well, yes, but she was a black telephone operator in a mini-dress.

Actually, I think her progressiveness was symbolized by her presence on the Bridge and that she was an officer. Apparently that was a big deal back then.

THAT programme (all five or six versions of it) is dead as Dodo Chaplet

Tell that to JJ Abrams who directed a spectacular ST remake last year that did very well at the box office.

Oh.

Ah well.

Who has yet to make it to the big screen.

Why on Earth would Who WANT to? It's always godawful away from the small screen - the books, the audios, the *shudders* comics...Though The Writer's Tale does remark that the Doctor would be interesting in the cinema, as his non-weapons-carryingness, which we just take for granted, would immediately become his unique selling-point...to be absolutely honest, I wouldn't exactly say no to RTG writing a few films for, say, the Tenth Doctor...

...ah. Hang on a sec. Isn't there something we're ALL forgetting? Two somethings, to be precise...is the word 'Cushing' ringing any bells...?

It's often credited with being ahead of its time.

Ah. I heard somewhere that all Trekkie female stars were only in caring professions and only fought in the girlie manner of smashing vases over people's heads, a la Jo-Grant-and-Ogrons...

Uhura was a black woman in a position of responsibility

Pah! Did she rule a planet? WE had Cotton ruling a PLANET! (Alright...not until the 70s. And not for long. And only because everyone else is dead. Admittedly black people in the 1960s tended to be the silent slavish weight-lifting types. But at least they didn't wear mini-skirts.)

women being able to wear mini-skirts (considered liberating at the time)

Ah, yes. That would be the same school of thought that got women smoking in public by lauding cigarrettes as 'torches of freedom'...

Meanwhile, Hartnell was telling Teagan to make him some tea whilst other female characters were screaming and twisting their ankles.

Obviously it'll take a better person than me to try to defend Old Who's position on sexual equality.

Try telling that to Polly, who was busy in The Moonbase, trying to turn attacking Cybermen into pools of bubbling Sludge, with a impromptu chemistry experiment, or blackmailing a English officer in The Highlanders...

Nice try. (Though for some reason the image that springs to mind whenever the word 'Polly' is mentioned is when she's clinging to some man and screaming her head off at a Macra.)

Of course, perhaps another reason the movie wasn't made is because, in the late 80's, Doctor Who was in decline, most of the fans (except Emily, of course) had stopped watching. Maybe they just felt they wouldn't get a good return on the investment.

Mandy, a telephone operator isn't exactly a progressive acting part for a black person.
Uhura was actively denied a chance to command the Enterprise in one episode by a NBC executive who told Gene Roddenberry "I don't belive in one of those n i g g e r s in charge of anything"

Uhura was actively denied a chance to command the Enterprise in one episode by a NBC executive who told Gene Roddenberry "I don't belive in one of those n i g g e r s in charge of anything

Sadly a sign of those times. However, Gene Roddenberry got the last laugh. In the animated Trek series that aired in the mid-70's, there were some episodes where Uhura was left in command (when Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Sulu were off the ship).

Anyway, aren't we supposed to be talking about Cybermen here

Mandy, a telephone operator isn't exactly a progressive acting part for a black person.

I didn't say it was. I merely pointed out that apparently being an officer and wearing skimpy clothing was considered a step up back then, for both women and blacks. That's what Nichelle Nichols said in an interview a few years ago.

Judibug - Mandy, a telephone operator isn't exactly a progressive acting part for a black person.
I'm reminded of an old quote, "There are no small parts, only small actors."

Also the progressive part was that she was serving on this ship as a professional officer who was treated just like everyone else, her skin color & sex was unimportant.

She did occasionally get the chance to do more than say, "Hailing frequencies open."

In the animated Trek series that aired in the mid-70's

They had an animated series?!

Oh, that's alright - I forgot. We have TWO stupid cartoon stories of our own.

Anyway, aren't we supposed to be talking about Cybermen here :-)

Oh - THEM. Yeah, just read The Companion Compendium and guess what! When advising you on alien weaknesses, they only mention emotion and solvents in relation to the Cybermen! So all New Who ones MUST be Lumic's bunch, cos any list of weaknesses for the Mondasian ones would go on for a LOT longer.

Trek was ahead of it's time. Not by much maybe but the mere fact she was in it was a lot. And it was mainly her skin colour that caused her lines to be cut down to haling frequencies open there were eps where women saved the day eg Dagger of the mind.

And the Moff wasn't lying about Rory's death because he did die, just the universe was reset so his death was erased.

The old cybermen had the same problem as the Daleks, a new weakness was introduced at a moment's notice in each ep so they could be defeated. Eventually one stuck with both of them. Daleks shoot for the eye, cybermen gold.

New Cybermen are weak against explosives, mobs of people, dalek guns, electricity, the cybermen blasters from doomsday, time lord energy, any armour pirecing earth weapon, and if the one in the pandorica opens is a Lumic cyberman Celts. Oh yes and teenager's phones. Not so invincible now are they lol.

Give the old cybermen some credit, until their last outing they were reasonably tough. Gold had to be put into their breathing apparatus to have any effect on them until it suddenly started affecting them like silver affects werewolves.

But seriously: how hard would it be for Cybermen to develop anti-gold technology? I mean, if you covered your chest unit with, say, a piece of gauze or something similar, wouldn't that keep out gold dust? The earliest story in which Cybermen have a weakness to gold, chronologically, is Silver Nemesis, while by whatever years Earthshock or Revenge are set in, they still haven't figured it out?

Ditto Sontarans and their provic vent. Sure, they can justify it as a strength, but come on. Over the thousands of years that we've seen their history unfold, surely cloning could be perfected where it wasn't needed.

And the Moff wasn't lying about Rory's death because he did die, just the universe was reset so his death was erased.

He was lying when he claimed it was a price that had to be paid. Nothing wrong with becoming a Roman Centurion OR having a 2,000-year life-span before (presumably) reverting to human and marrying the woman of your dreams.

The old cybermen had the same problem as the Daleks, a new weakness was introduced at a moment's notice in each ep so they could be defeated. Eventually one stuck with both of them. Daleks shoot for the eye, cybermen gold.

The eyestalk thing made sense, though. And is not THAT much of a weakness, especially in the new series.

New Cybermen are weak against explosives, mobs of people, dalek guns, electricity, the cybermen blasters from doomsday, time lord energy, any armour pirecing earth weapon, and if the one in the pandorica opens is a Lumic cyberman Celts. Oh yes and teenager's phones. Not so invincible now are they lol.

Oh. Yeah. Now you mention it, the Daleks were spot-on about them being better at dying...

until it suddenly started affecting them like silver affects werewolves.

Ah yes, see my post of April 30, 1999, for the NA line on this.

But seriously: how hard would it be for Cybermen to develop anti-gold technology? I mean, if you covered your chest unit with, say, a piece of gauze or something similar, wouldn't that keep out gold dust?

Maybe they did...which is why humanity invented the glitter-gun that could get through the gauze. Also, the Cybermen probably didn't see gold as a big threat until it was too late - i.e. until Voga conveniently wandered up at the right moment.

Ditto Sontarans and their provic vent. Sure, they can justify it as a strength, but come on. Over the thousands of years that we've seen their history unfold, surely cloning could be perfected where it wasn't needed.

Or at least it could be underneath the armour, with a little panel to be opened whenever they're in need of plugging in. The idea that a probic vent is necessary to ensure that Sontarans face their enemy instead of running away is somewhat bizarre, especially since the new series implies that fighting is to a Sontaran what catnip is to a cat, and getting killed in the process is just part of the fine manly fun...

The eye stalk was a big weakness, in their last three outings on the original series a Dalek was blinded by shooting at the eye or blown up by shooting a bazooka at the eye.

As for Gold until Silver Nemesis it only worked twice and the second time it only disorientated the Cyberleader and it had to be shot.

Urk. Those are...very good points. I'm not remotely convinced by them, but I can't actually think up any arguments against 'em...I suppose the trauma of Adric's broken badge and the (very different kind of) trauma of Ace's coin-catapulting have just sunk deep into my soul...

I've just been watching 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace'. Why aren't the Cybermen as interesting as real cybernetics suggests they should be? What kind of monster made them so deadly boring?

Oh, yes, Gerry Davis...

Why aren't the Cybermen as interesting as real cybernetics suggests they should be? What kind of monster made them so deadly boring?

Oh, yes, Gerry Davis...

*Shrieks of outrage* The Cybermen are Who's second-most-successful monster EVER! WORSHIP THEM! Er, I mean, at least be a BIT grateful to Gerry Davis, though I'm not suggesting you go so far as to read his novelisations or anything...

From New Series: Season Six: A Good Man Goes to War:

MANDY: lots of noncombatants die anyway, but the Doctor doesn't target them.

KATE: Except all those Cybermen.

MANDY: Oh. Yes, that was a bit gratuitous.

Cybermen are not non-combatants. At the risk of sounding really speciest, if they weren't rampaging over that sector of the galaxy ripping people's brains out they were sure as hell gathering information in preparation for this happy event. The Doctor's pre-emptive action was MORE than justified even if he HADN'T been anxious to get his Companion and her sprog back for some reason. God, it's this wishy-washy attitude that led to that crazy campaign on Pete's World to LET THE CYBERMEN OUT like they were free-range chickens or something...

Cybermen are not non-combatants.

We-ell, maybe not for all practical purposes, but when they're just sitting there, it seems wrong to blow them up. It's not like they're eeeeevil! by their very nature, just... misguided.

It's not like they're eeeeevil! by their very nature, just... misguided.

Why, yes. They all think we'd be vastly improved by a bit of...upgrading.

Just as Daleks think we'd be vastly improved by a bit of...extermination.

'Evil' isn't a word I actually have a problem with, in the circumstances.

Moderator's Note: Moved from New Series: Season Six: A Good Man Goes to War:

The director goes out of his way to point out that these Cybermen don't have "C"s on their chests, so presumably they're the regular Mondas ones. Or they just moved on from revering their creator.

I'm voting for the latter - Cybus Industries and Lumic are meaningless in this universe, it's a lot more likely the Cybermen would just dump the branding than that our Mondasian friends would emulate them to QUITE that degree.

And I'm going to complain about the Cybermen again. Ok the Moff can't afford any money to redesign them to show they're Mondonesian and even if he could he should under no circumstances be allowed to do it. But there are some things he could do; change the voice a bit, and he should definitely take off that ridiculous banging noise they make when they walk.

There was nothing more fun than that banging noise as the headless Cyberman came into view!

Besides, I have yet to be convinced that Moffat's Cybermen ARE Mondasian...

Moderator's Note: ME in Weeping Angels section: And actually I'm not sure such iconic monsters should be used in such an offhand, impotent way. It's worse than that Cyberman popping up in Vorg's Zoo.

Well, that Cyberman was the only proof that the Pertwee-era production team hadn't forgotten about them. Pity the helmet didn't fit and all, but it was pretty cool.

Oh, I'm sure I was totally thrilled the first time I saw it as a kid, but I want Who's second-best monsters to stay a BIT scary...which is difficult at the best of times, let alone when they're so thick they don't even notice they're in a Zoo, AND when they play second-fiddle to the DRASHIGS, a strong contender for most-sock-puppety-monsters-ever...and all for about two seconds-worth of appearance.

Come to think of it - what the hell was the Pertwee era's PROBLEM? Why no Mondas Meanies?

I guess the fact that the overly-long, major-production Invasion ran shortly before he started his tenure worked against him meeting them. The seasons just before and after his run featured them prominently.

We all have bad memories of The Invasion, but surely they'd start to fade after the first three or four years...? (Alright, so mine haven't, but then I'm the grudge-bearing type.)

Moderator's Note: moved from the Closing Time section:

The head cyberman was missing the C part but if you look closely at the others you'll see that it's just a blank circle. Apparently they didn't have them in a good man goes to war. Also they said things like "you will be like us" and "convert" instead of upgrade. It's just a pity they didn't have the tuba music or them saying excellent.

Parallel development is one thing, but it would be a HELL of a coincidence if the Mondas (Telos. Whatever.) Cybermen looked EXACTLY like their alt-uni counterparts. More likely they removed the 'C' after someone explained that being branded with a company logo wasn't cool. And, after all, Lumic's lot DID take to encasing whole people in Cybersuits instead of just removing their brains (Torchwood: Cyberwoman). And I suppose the Cybus Cybermen COULD have emerged from the Void centuries ago and built themselves a spaceship the way they built themselves a CyberKing.

It was a bit embarrassing seeing the Doctor make such heavy work of defeating THESE Cybermen (leaving it all to poor old Stormageddon, basically) after he so casually blew up an entire fleet in A Good Man Goes to War.

Never let it be said that ALL Moffat's redesigns of classic monsters are a disaster. Bitey was horrible AND cute, the way a good Cybermat SHOULD be. Not too small and pathetic-looking (Tomb) OR bloody enormous and stupid (Revenge). (And did anyone else get the impression from the way the Doc said 'Come along, Bitey' that he was considering it as a new Companion...?) Still, it was pretty stupid of him to BELIEVE it when it was playing possum.

I know it's stupid they look the same, if he'd just take out the bloody banging it would help massively. Still they are meant to be new ones, the Moff has confirmed it, the cybermen really need a two parter to themselves they're very much supporting vilians atm. They need a comeback. And they really do need a redesign but Moff mustn't be involved.

I like the new Cybermen. They seem a far more credible threatening menace now. I could do without all that banging though.

Still they are meant to be new ones, the Moff has confirmed it

The Moff LIES.

Remember him promising us no Daleks this season...?

I like the new Cybermen. They seem a far more credible threatening menace now.

Yeah - for one thing they've mysteriously developed teleport technology even though it would probably be easier just to climb up the tunnel...

I could do without all that banging though.

I like the sound of stomping Cyber-feet.

Well at least Marcy Hartigan had a BRAIN. What's Craig got to offer?

Love the Doctor calling them metal morons. He'd never dare say that to a Dalek.

The new cybermen have been supporting villains in all their appearences. They were Lumic's muscle in their first appearence, upstaged by the Dalek's in their second, and taken over by Lady whatshername in their third and final appearence. As for the Mondanesian's (that look suspiciously identical to the new series) they were only part of the alliance of super evil, and were blown up just to make a point in the teaser of A good man goes to war. This has been their only ep where they truly had their own plan and they had the ep to themselves. And they were defeated by the power of love, groan.

As for these being Mondonesians they have a spaceship and have been there too long to be the Lumic ones. The doc himself said the Lumic ones couldn't invent or innovate.

Ps I'm pretty sure the Dalek appeared as a sorry for River Song's mary sue moment of making a Dalek cry mercy.

they have a spaceship and have been there too long to be the Lumic ones

But some Lumic ones came through from the Void in the 1800s, why shouldn't some have come through a bit earlier? And built themselves a spaceship?

The doc himself said the Lumic ones couldn't invent or innovate.

Ooh, when did he say that? They created the CyberKing, didn't they?

Ps I'm pretty sure the Dalek appeared as a sorry for River Song's mary sue moment of making a Dalek cry mercy.

Whereas I'm pretty sure it appeared because New Who is physically incapable of having a Dalek-free season.

Yeah you're probs right about the Dalek free season. And give it time it'll eventually be confirmed on screen that they were Mondonesian ones, maybe they can fight the Daleks later and actually do it properly. There really was no need for the alternate universe ones at all but they had to do it to create the parallel universe to pack Rose off into. Ever consider that new who was far to obsessed with its' characters, every ep was always "a way to explore X about a X's character".

Ever consider that new who was far to obsessed with its' characters, every ep was always "a way to explore X about a X's character".

Frankly, no. I'm still in the middle of plowing through Old Who stories so I can understand the background better, but they couldn't be more boring. The characters are one-dimensional and exist only as a foil for the Doctor with little interest themselves. Exceptions would be the Brigadier (and that mostly because he's funny), the Master (who is as witty as the Doctor), and a few of the longer-lived companions like Barbara and Ian.

Character development was long overdue for this series.

Hear, hear.

Alright, occasionally it occurs to me that maybe I SHOULD want more of the Cyber/Dalek War stuff and less of the Jackie/Pete Reunion stuff, but I just...DON'T.

Though admittedly it still seems a bit weird that you can have a laser-like focus on the Companions' private lives for several episodes in a row, whilst inexplicably failing to show 'em giving a toss that THEIR BABY HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED.

I feel a need to respond to the last couple of posts here.

Emily:Alright, occasionally it occurs to me that maybe I SHOULD want more of the Cyber/Dalek War stuff and less of the Jackie/Pete Reunion stuff

Than you,Emily--you've just stated one of my biggest complaints about New Who far better than I ever could!!!

I watch Who for the adventure,the action, the puzzles, even the strange new worlds.

I really don't care how Rose and Jackie and Pete get along--if I wanted this I'd watch a soap opera(and the Jackie/Pete Reunion was wrong on so many levels it made me sick).

Amanda:Frankly, no. I'm still in the middle of plowing through Old Who stories so I can understand the background better, but they couldn't be more boring.

I think part of the problem here is that WE'VE changed how we watch the show.

If you do things like I do you put the story in and watch the complete story(with New Who I often watch a complete disc or more).

While this works with New Who--Old Who was never meant to be watched this way.

Old Who was meant to be seen one episode ata a time,once a week,without reruns(it wasn't until Pertwees first season that the BBC cut back on episodes enough that you could show a season a second time in reruns).

This means that you can only see an episode once(and if you missed it you were out of luck).

This also helps explain why so many flubs sneak in--odds are you'll never see it again, so it's not worth the time and money to reshoot it.

Even if you catch it--you'll forget it in time(and it is only a kids show).

Note that each episode is also only 20-25 minutes long.

Out of that time comes the teaser(to remind you where we left off) tho opening credits, the escape(how do we get out of last weeks cliff-hanger),advance the story a bit, new cliff-hanger,closing credits, and maybe a previewof next weeks episode(I don't know if the BBC did this).

Note don't advance things too far--people who miss this episode willget lost(and you will lose viewers).

If you've done all this and still have time for character development--great,put some in.

Note:few shows at the time did much(if any) development at the time--it's easier if nothing changes.

New Who has it easier--with episodes that are 48 minutes(to over an hour),and far fewer cliff-hangers it's much easier to find time to do development.

Add to this that New Who is willing to cut the main story to the bone(and sometimes further)so we can have these moments--and even then it's sometimes not enough.

Emily:whilst inexplicably failing to show 'em giving a toss that THEIR BABY HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED.

That's what I'm talking about.

I watch Who for the adventure,the action, the puzzles, even the strange new worlds.

I really don't care how Rose and Jackie and Pete get along

But didn't you SEE the looks on the Doctor and Mickey's faces when Jackie said 'There's never been anyone else' - BEST. MOMENT. EVER. Yes, even better than seeing a million Daleks sweep through the skies above London...

Note that each episode is also only 20-25 minutes long.

Out of that time comes the teaser(to remind you where we left off) tho opening credits, the escape(how do we get out of last weeks cliff-hanger),advance the story a bit, new cliff-hanger,closing credits, and maybe a previewof next weeks episode(I don't know if the BBC did this).

If you've done all this and still have time for character development--great,put some in.

Good points but let's face it, some Old Who episodes were SERIOUSLY padded. And they COULD have been padded with character development rather than pointless quarrels or capture-imprison-escapes.

New Who has it easier--with episodes that are 48 minutes(to over an hour),and far fewer cliff-hangers it's much easier to find time to do development.

Actually they're usually just 43-ish minutes, AND they've usually got to do AN ENTIRE STORY in that time.

Emily:But didn't you SEE the looks on the Doctor and Mickey's faces when Jackie said 'There's never been anyone else' - BEST. MOMENT. EVER.

Excuse me Emily, what part of--"(and the Jackie/Pete Reunion was wrong on so many levels it made me sick)." --didn't you get???(for more--look over in Jackie's section where I talked about the part that wandered off).

Emily:Good points but let's face it, some Old Who episodes were SERIOUSLY padded. And they COULD have been padded with character development rather than pointless quarrels or capture-imprison-escapes.

This brings up one of the problems Old Who(and much of T.V. at the time:stories are handed out to different writers at the start of the season.

From what I've read Old Who had a larger than normal number of stories that fell through.

This would lead to this scene:

BBC: Joe, you know that great little 4-part script you gave us???

Joe:Yeah.

BBC:Well-we now need seven parts-and we need it by Monday.

Joe:faints.

When Joe dets up he thinks--Okay--instead of these timepoints I now have to hit these.The only way to do this is filler scenes of running around,captures and escapes(remember:each episode is only 20-25 minutes to fill,and they will only be seen once).

BBC reads script, pays Joe-game over.

Emily:And they COULD have been padded with character development rather than pointless quarrels or capture-imprison-escapes.

There's a problem with character development--for it to work it changes the charactor in future stories.

First it need to be cleared with the network(maybe jist the Who staff)-and fellow writers informed to prevent comflicts.

To give an idea what I mean try this--you,me and Rodney(HANDS OFF NYSSA,SHE'S MINE) are all writing scripts for the Fifth Doctor.

I'm going for the second story--and as charator development I plan to reveal the secret endless love between Tegan and Adric(what can I say--I want to see Nyssa and Five get a chance to work together).If this is okayed-it cleared with you and Rodney.

In your story-the third-you want Tegan blowing up, pulling Adric aside, and showing Five a whole new for his cricket bat(off-screen due to violence).

Rodney (story 4) wants Adric to have another hissy fit and ***** out everyone.

If these are cleared(unlikely as it would be)-the next step would be for all story authers to talk to iron out differences.

First problem:if Tegan and Adders are in love--it would be a bit much even for Tegan to give him the beating he deserves.

Second problem: if Tegan gives Adders the beatdown you want--he won't be in any shape to throw a fit in Rodney's story.

Now the three of us fight it out for our visions of Who.

So we come to a compromise:

In my story:Tegan and Adders admit their love.

In your story--Tegan loses her temper,starts beatdown-and evolves into something else(note:Nyssa faints,and Five vows never to use that bat again).

And in Rodney story--Adders canthrow his fit(do you know how much splinters hurt there????).

(Oh my gravy--did I just go there--get out the brain-scrubber-I have an image I need to lose!!!!

Oh-yes--when we turn our scripts in the BBC take one look,tells us we're all fired.and power up the shredder. Meanwhile-the other writers are told that they need more episodes.

So-if anyones's still reading after my voyage to not-enough-sleep-land; try this--watch Old Who as it was meant to be--one episode at a time.

I think you'll like it better.

And sorry to Emily and Rodney--I just neede a couple of names of Who fans-no harm intended.

Hey, I'm the one who has dibs on Nyssa, not Rodney. You got us mixed up! Still, this was a good laugh.

I would write a Nyssa/Tegan story, not that it would have a chance in Hell of being made, at least not back then. Who can get away with a lot more these days (and don't get me started on what Torchwood does).

The less seen of that Dalek Cyberman war the better "this isn't war this is slaughter" they could have let the Cybermen destroy one Dalek. And those aren't proper Cybermen I want to see the Mondonesians vs the Dalek's, excellent.

Less Pete and Jackie stuff is good.

The less seen of that Dalek Cyberman war the better

I disagree. Even if you didn't like the way it went, it was the Dalek-Cyberman War that every Fan has been waiting for since they were four. Another couple of minutes of it would have been...nice.

"this isn't war this is slaughter"

'Pest control', I think.

they could have let the Cybermen destroy one Dalek.

Agreed.

And those aren't proper Cybermen

Yeah - they're a hell of a lot more impressive than anything we saw in the Good Old Days.

You're right it is something we wanted to see but a propper war with proper cybermen. The Cybermen were no more effective than the standard UNIT red shirts.

Part of the problem is that the New series Daleks were too freaking powerful as they came from the end of the Time War (& were massively overpowered) whereas the Cybus Cybermen were new & only used to fighting mere humans. So no wonder it was a Curb Stomp Battle.

Hopefully the Crayola Daleks won't be as freakingly overpowered as the Munchkins RTG created.

Hopefully the Crayola Daleks won't be as freakingly overpowered as the Munchkins RTG created.

I like the way you put it, but sadly I suspect your hope is in vain. After all, RTG's BEAUTIFUL, PERFECT, UTTERLY DEADLY Daleks permitted themselves to be exterminated by the hunchbacked monstrosities on the grounds of their alleged inferiority. And even the Doctor admires the new Daleks as 'swish' instead of pointing and laughing at them, a la Tom Baker.

Exactly, as you said, it's Daleks with hundreds of thousands of years on some human made cybermen who are only a few decades more advanced than something we could build today. Whereas Mondonesian Cybermen are much more advanced and hopefully could put up a propper fight. Maybe they could team up with RTD's Daleks to wipe out the crayolas.

Ps yes I'm posting on Xmas day but the Xmas special is so bad I need to distract myself.

Exactly, as you said, it's Daleks with hundreds of thousands of years on some human made cybermen who are only a few decades more advanced than something we could build today.

Though don't forget the Cybus Cybermen beat the hell out of the Daleks in the Void and nicked their most prized, and indeed ONLY, possession, their Oncoming Storm Photo Album.

Plus they (somehow) have that Cyberking thing.

Whereas Mondonesian Cybermen are much more advanced

Let's be honest...they're not really ADVANCED. Alright, they no longer have human arms and flashlights on their heads, but they've always been the bunch-of-tin-soldiers-skulking-around-in-a-rubbish-spaceship-allergic-to-anything-that-moves.

Maybe they could team up with RTD's Daleks to wipe out the crayolas.

RTG's Daleks made it quite clear they'd NEVER team up with that bunch of losers.

On the other hand, that was way before RTG's Daleks got beaten by the Doctor on several more occasions, plus betrayed by their own kind (Caan as well as the plastic monstrosities) so maybe they'll be more amenable to PRETENDING to make the Cybermen tea...

Ps yes I'm posting on Xmas day but the Xmas special is so bad I need to distract myself.

*Nods sympathetically*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYFy5-bFhxE

This is why we've not had propper old series Cybermen appear in the new series. Them and the Doc have made up :-)

Ah, those Dead Ringers sketches are just THE BEST! The only time I've ever experienced maternal instinct is with cats and that Cyberbaby. I just WANT ONE!

Have you seen the Dead Ringers Doctor-having-Christmas-with-his-other-selves...?

This is why we've not had propper old series Cybermen appear in the new series.

I thought the ones we see in Closing Time, and the ones in A Good Man Goes To War were proper old series Cybermen.

That's what they SAY behind-the-scenes, but there's no on-screen proof - give or take the 'C'.

Apparently we've been seeing new cybermen since the Pandorica opens but they've not bothered to change the costume in any way or even taken out the stupid banging.

And yes I have seen the doc having Xmas with his other selves. And him in the wardrobe, tanning salon, London eye, Eurostar, in fact I think I've seen the lot lol.

they've not bothered to change the costume in any way

Hey - they took off the 'C', didn't they? What more could anyone ask for...

A propper head and saying excelent. s well as giving them proper guns instead of the wimpy arm blasters.

Glad to have an ally on the Jackie and Pete front John. And yes I guess you're right the old series was a bit bland but this one took it far too far. There was a running joke in my family that every time RTD wrote an eastenders sytle scene the writers would prise the pen off him for a few mins before he got it back and wrote another one lol.

The later cybermen are more advanced they have space ships and time travel.

Their gold allergy was very hard to exploit when it made it's first and second outing, gold dust in the chest UNIT. And when used in Earthshock it only disorientated the Cyberleader, he still had to be shot.

It was only in Nemesis when it suddenly got upped to 11 where they couldn't even touch the stuff.

To be fair in old who with most monsters it was a weakness of the week with the recurring ones they had to think of somethign that stuck. And was much harder to exploit than the Dalek's bullets in the eye weakness.

And the gold weakness is frankly irrelevant in terms of proper combat. Yes they're both reasonably resiant to firearms (except attack of the cybermen) but the more powerful machine guns would cut straight through them. "High velocity bullets, my one weakness" lol.

BTW there's a Doctor Who/Star Trek comic where the cybermen and Borg team up, I might have to check that out.

'They suffer in the skin, they must be upgraded' - interesting. Has anything except Age of Steel ever suggested the Cybermen were rampaging round the universe out of a sense of social-worker-like DUTY?

'Lumic's turned them into a brand.' - Yeah, now you mention it, THAT'S really sick.

We have new-look Cybermen!!

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/11/12/neil-gaimans-cybermen-storm-these-new-doctor-who-set-pictures/

OK, I think I prefer the old look - these are a bit too fussily detailed - but what the hell.

The old look? You mean like the overweight Cyberman from 'Attack of the Cybermen'?

I meant RTG's Cybermen.

Oh god, the new series has been going so long it's now pretty OLD, isn't it.

Whilst the Fat Controller is positively prehistoric, and as for those cloth-faced critters with the arms...

I like the new design. At least it looks like they got rid of rid of the "c" logo on their chest....

Ah now that's much more like it, they'd better say excellent and stop banging. The arm blasters are much bigger now but still the original style guns would be better.

Not a bad redesign visually and from the upcoming this series bit they seem to be much more nimble than RTDs ones.

Since when has NIMBLE been part of a Cyberman's repertoire?

Everything is relative and RTDs ones were even more slugish than the old ones.

Since when has NIMBLE been part of a Cyberman's repertoire?

Never, but then, given that it's a pretty useful trait, you'd think they work on developing the technology, which couldn't really take that much effort.

Emily: Which type of conversion was a better depiction - Lytton in Attack of the Cybermen or Lisa in Cyberwoman?

Lytton, definitely. HE didn't have high heels or a metallic bra.

Well, not that we saw on-screen anyway...

No, No, Kate, worse than that would be Colin Baker in a thong bikini.

See, Colin Baker in a tong bikini doesn't bother nearly as much as the fact that I'm now trying to picture a bikini with the same colour scheme as his coat.

DON'T DO IT, KEVIN!

So which is worse Colin Baker in a tong bikini or him in a thong bikini?

Nightmare in Silver:

'The Cyberiad (??) built a Valkerie (??) to save critically damaged units, bring them here, and one by one repair them' - OK, since when did CYBERMEN have a Florence-Nightingale-style attitude towards the wounded?

'We needed children' to build a new CyberPlanner WHY, exactly?

'This is just dreamy' - THIS is the sort of thing a CyberPlanner SAYS?

Why would Cybermen who've updated themselves a thousand times still be vulnerable to a) gold or b) a pulse to the back of the head that fries the brain-circuit interface?

I mean, THESE Cybermen are SO MAGICALLY MARVELLOUS that if ONE of 'em steps in an electrocuted moat, ALL of 'em can cross it with no problem afterwards.

If they can move so super-duper-fast, why do they spend so much time a) stomping around and b) standing around?

'Please stand by. You will be upgraded. Welcome to the Cyberiad.' - sorry, when did they get so POLITE?

I want my PROPER (i.e. RTG) Cybermen back.

Maybe we can get the Daleks to EXTERMINATE this bunch

"'We needed children' to build a new CyberPlanner WHY, exactly?"

Because they need their creativity and imagination. (Apparently the implication is that all the Cyberplanners we've seen over the years have been converted kids.)

The Cyberiad is a reference to the book by Stanislaw Lem.

"If they can move so super-duper-fast, why do they spend so much time a) stomping around"

The rumour is that they weren't supposed to stomp but then in post-prod someone decided that this didn't look right and stompy sound effects were added at the last minute.

Why would Cybermen who've updated themselves a thousand times still be vulnerable to a) gold


They aren't, but the cyberplanner is still running old code. Presumably, the software patch that fixed the gold vulnerability isn't compatible with the cyberplanner - it's like he's running Windows Vista, and they're on Windows XP.

Revenge:

This bunch haven't heard of the Doctor?? - well, where WAS he when human ingenuity was inventing the glitter-gun, anyway?

The Doctor accuses the Cybermen of having hydraulic muscles AND brains. They're liquid-powered since WHEN!

'Cybermen do not subscribe to any theory of morality. In war, Doctor' - what, you mean IN PEACETIME they have a theory of morality??

Gold is 'the only thing that is effective against Cybermen' announces...THE DOCTOR. *Starts banging head against nearest wall*

Cyber-radar-equipment is affected by gold too? IT has BREATHING APPARATUS?

Hydrolics have little to do with water. It's a way of producing great forces with small energy inputs. It works by pumping special oils through pipes and pistons that then act as very powerful muscles. It is used to move the large control surfaces of jumbo planes, to power excavators, to run a car's power steering and many other applications where strength is prefered over speed. Cybermen using hydrolics in the design of their mechanical bodies would make sense.

Yeah, except that we never SEE it - open up a Cyberman's head and you usually get a human brain (or, occasionally, a flashing light) rather than some oil. Though I suppose poor old Yvonne did cry an oily tear. And the foam in Tomb didn't look remotely oily, but at least it implied liquid of some variety...

Time of the Doctor:

'The intruder will be upgraded' - so why are you shooting at him, cretins?

And aren't these (godawful Nightmare-in-Silver-style) Cybermen supposed to be from OUR universe (indeed, our twin planet)? Why are they adopting Lumic's 'upgrading' obsession? Well, for the same reason they adopted near-identical bodies, I suppose. I just feel cheated that we were robbed of SEEING the meeting between old and new Cybermen in which the Silver Nemesis types were swooning in admiration.

Remember when I said years ago that Moffat shouldn't be involved in a Cybermen redesign? Well after Nighmare in Silver just hi wright was I? Lol

You were right.

Binro - sorry, Daniel Philips - was right!

Though of course Moffat also came up with a genius idea to redeem the godawful new models - just chop their heads off, carry 'em round for a few centuries and voila! Best Companion EVER!

Kate in NEW SERIES: Season Seven: Nightmare in Silver:
There was no body horror trope to the Cybermen before 1989

What about the partially converted Lytton in Attack of the Cybermen?

That was certainly an attempt at body horror. (albeit on a shoestring budget)

BEST CYBERMAN APPEARANCE:

"Revenge of the Cybermen" (Tom Baker era)

The blaster built into the helmets was a stroke of genius. It's a pity the effect was never used again.

Can't agree here. Very boring story, and I thought the head gun weird. If it had been a beam projector it might have worked, but I remember the first time I watched this and taking a few seconds to realize that projectiles were shooting out. It was also the start of the emotional Cybermen. Probably Tomb for me.

Yeah, Revenge was pretty bad. It's only remotely enjoyable if you manage to watch through a hazy glow of nostalgia for the Target novelisation which (blatant sexism aside) you loved as a kid.

Earthshock, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Closing Time for me.

John if you like Revenge, then all power to you. I don't particularly care for it except for possibly Tom Baker's entire tenure.

New series Cybermen are boring and dull and totally pointless. To be honest, the only two cyber stories I like are Earthshock and tomb.

But you are perfectly free to like whichever story you want, regardless of what our illustrious moderator may say.

"Earthshock" is my runner-up favorite

New series Cybermen are boring and dull and totally pointless.

New series Cybermen stomping around in unison are as scary as Who GETS. If by 'boring and dull' you mean 'they don't have individual emotional characters', that's kinda the POINT of 'em.

Of course, judging by the way New Who has been shovelling on Cybershades and Cybermites and Cyberiads and Cyberkings and Cyberwomen, as well as old favourites Cyberleaders and Cybermats, the writers seem to be in agreement with you rather than me. Which is quite annoying.

Earthshock is my runner-up too. Actually, I almost named it as my first, but that's hard to pull off in the same post where I'd just complained about the overly emotional Cybermen in Revenge.

New series Cybermen are boring and dull and totally pointless.

All Cybermen are boring and dull and totally pointless.

What, even the one in the pointy bra who transplanted her own brain into a pizza-delivery-girl's body in ten seconds flat?

There are a lot of different words to describe THAT particular Cyberman, but 'dull' ain't one of 'em.

That was different. She was a Cyberwoman.

All cyberwomen need a bra... how else would the stupid young adolescent males in the audience know it's a woman?

Have just seen a photo of Capaldi-Doc with Cybermen in his first Grand Finale.

Can you IMAGINE the sheer unadulterated BLISS I would be experiencing if they weren't those godawful Gaiman Cybermen?

Moffat backtracked fast enough with his fat plastic Victory abomination-Dalek-redesign...why is he continuing to expose us to these TRAVESTIES?

I'd honestly prefer the Tenth Planet Cybermen with the human arms, incomprehensible voices, huge-flashlights-on-their-heads-for-no-readily-apparent-reason and *shudders* names...

Gaiman Cybermen

What the smeg are "Gaiman Cybermen"?

I agree that the new series never really has used the Cybermen well - and certainly never better than those moments in "The Pandorica Opens" - but I remain hopeful.

The best use of the Cybermen in New Who was when Rory brought them a message from the Doctor and a question from him.

There are PLENTY of great Cybermen moments in New Who! Alright, maybe not quite great enough for me to be bothered to list 'em, but still...quite a few more than there were in Old Who.

Nick Briggs: 'Director Graeme Harper had his heart set on the Cybermen sounding like Darth Vader; but because Russell told him that was totally wrong, he used to say, "Like Darth Vader, but not Darth Vader." When I did do what I thought was required on set, several of the actors kept saying, "I can't understand what he's saying." This was quite a comedown from the excitement and praise I was greeted with when I did a Dalek voice...finally, in post-production, we did loads of different voices...The trouble was, Graeme couldn't tell the difference...We presented him with several different voices and he kept saying, "Yes, that's the one." Ultimately, Russell was sent the sound files...'

RTG: 'I had the most tedious day of my life - I mean, bless Nick, but when fourteen different voices arrived, all slightly different, I nearly died.'

I love these people.

'We're part of a hive mind now' (Death in Heaven). Since WHEN!

The Invasion:

'The sacrifice will be small' announces the Cyber-Controller-Thing (what the hell was THAT all about anyway), vis-à-vis sacrificing ALL the Cybermen on Earth to wipe out humanity for no readily apparent reason. (Of course, estimates of how MANY Cybermen there are on Earth vary from a dozen to several thousand, but have the tin-pot skulking soldiers from an unexpectedly-blown-up-world REALLY amassed such an army that they can afford to take ANY losses?)

'Now they know we're here' announces the Doctor after Vaughn discretely kills one Cyberman. Why? Have they acquired Death in Heaven's Hive Mind ALREADY? And frankly the Cybermen in the vicinity don't LOOK like they've noticed one of their comrades being gunned (emotioned. Whatever.) down.

Why does the Cyber-bomb need a radio signal to guide it? Can those guys not spot AN ENTIRE PLANET when it's in right front of their metal noses?

Why don't Cyber-ships have shields against Russian (or Vogan) missiles?

Why destroy humanity at all? Those are billions of humans that could be cyber converted in the future. Just leave, figure out a better plan and then have a second go at it. The only reason the Cybermen would want to destroy humanity at this point would be revenge, and that's a very emotionally driven course of action, something the Cybermen are supposed to have no concerns about.

Yes, that was weird. The original plan seemed to be put Earth to sleep and when everyone woke up, somehow Vaughn and the Cybermen would be running the world. And the Cybermen would start harvesting humans for conversion. Except that the Cyber-Controller kept not only trying to change the plan to edge Vaughn out of power and kill all the sick/useless humans, it stupidly kept TELLING Vaughn about its changes of plan, whereupon he'd refuse to cooperate, whereupon the Cyber-Planner-Thingy would back down.

And then a few UNIT blokes actually manage to stay awake during the blackout and the Cybermen panic and decide to wipe out all life on Earth with a megatron bomb. Cowardly cretins. (Of course, if they have rudimentary time-travel by now it would ALMOST make sense, they'd know they desperately needed to get Earth out of the picture if they were to flourish in future. Of course, if they knew THAT much they should really know not to mess with the Doctor...)

They probably don't need "converts" at this point, as there's an entire planet full of Cybermen just a couple of decades away.

In the original series, apart from passing references in 'Tomb' and 'Attack' (which is cribbing from 'Tomb' anyway) the whole Cybermen-are-converted-humans notion gets pretty much thrown away after 'The Tenth Planet' (along with everything else that makes them interesting).

Then, suddenly, the new series is obsessed with it.

They probably don't need "converts" at this point, as there's an entire planet full of Cybermen just a couple of decades away.

Oh.

You'd think, after a lifetime as a Who Fan, I'd be better at getting my head around wibbly-wobb - um, let's just say PRETTY BASIC timelines. I'd been totally assuming that this bunch came from AFTER Mondas's destruction rather than before, just cos that's the order the STORIES were in. Which makes no sense as Cybermen can't really time-travel. (Give or take their computers taking space-freighters a few million years back in time, one of those little accidents that could happen to ANYONE.) And they'd've (obviously) had to set off before Mondas went boom (as helpfully stated in Moonbase) so even if The Invasion HAD been set post-'86 they might not have known about it, so SHOULD they be blowing up Earth at all if they have ANY IDEA their people are hoping to use it as a recharging-battery in a few years' time?

In the original series, apart from passing references in 'Tomb' and 'Attack' (which is cribbing from 'Tomb' anyway) the whole Cybermen-are-converted-humans notion gets pretty much thrown away after 'The Tenth Planet' (along with everything else that makes them interesting).

Bloody hell.

I never noticed.

Ooh, what are the other things that make them interesting?

Then, suddenly, the new series is obsessed with it.

Dunno about OBSESSED, but even if they WERE, you can't criticise New Who for being obsessed with The Thing That Makes Cybermen Interesting at the same time as you're criticising Old Who for discarding it...

Ooh, what are the other things that make them interesting?

Their back story, the rationale for their actions, their amorality, the sense - even post-cybernisation - that they are machine-people hybrids rather than stupid rubbish robot monsters...

Dunno about OBSESSED, but even if they WERE, you can't criticise New Who for being obsessed with The Thing That Makes Cybermen Interesting at the same time as you're criticising Old Who for discarding it...

But the new series has really just restored that element but kept all the junk that's accumulated since 'The Moonbase'. They're still stupid rubbish robot monsters, but now they're stupid rubbish robot monsters that prey on the living.

SPOILERS FOR DARK WATER/DEATH IN HEAVEN:

Their back story

It's a bit of an implausible mess.

the rationale for their actions

I can only remember New Who offering any serious rationale for their actions - they genuinely seem to want to relieve people of these ghastly 'feelings' things. And pain and death and suchlike. Whereas Old Who had them fixated on survival, which would have worked a lot better if they HADN'T had time travel (Attack), powerful armies (Earthshock), enormous fleets (Silver Nemesis) and been repeatedly launching unsuccessful attacks on Earth for no readily apparent reason (Invasion, Moonbase, Wheel in Space).

their amorality

All together now: PROMISES TO ALIENS HAVE NO VALIDITY!

Though to be honest, MOST alien invaders are lying genocidal scumbags. It's no big deal.

the sense - even post-cybernisation - that they are machine-people hybrids rather than stupid rubbish robot monsters...

I stopped getting that sense at about the time the Cybermen stopped waving their stupid human hands around.

Any vestiges - the revenge-obsession in Revenge, the sneering at 'stupid human brains' in Moonbase, the SHOELACES in Invasion and Moonbase - do a LOT more harm than good, in my opinion.

They're still stupid rubbish robot monsters, but now they're stupid rubbish robot monsters that prey on the living.

But we have Cyber-Yvonne! Cyber-Sally! Cyber-Lumic! Cyber-Lisa! Doctor-Cyber-Planner! Rows with Daleks over aesthetics! Cyber-Mercy! Cyber-Brig! Cyber-Danny! Cyber-Craig! And above all...HANDLES! You can't say New Who hasn't TRIED to elevate 'em above 'rubbish robot monsters'.

Though I have to admit my most thrilling Cyber-moments probably just involve 'em stomping around in a line. In Earthshock AND Rise/Age. There's just something about that stomping...

Just remember...

"You have identified as Daleks"

Old Who had them fixated on survival, which would have worked a lot better if they HADN'T had time travel (Attack), powerful armies (Earthshock), enormous fleets (Silver Nemesis) and been repeatedly launching unsuccessful attacks on Earth for no readily apparent reason (Invasion, Moonbase, Wheel in Space).

Oh, and let's not forget their ability to make a star go nova at the drop of a hat.

Just remember...

"You have identified as Daleks"

In retrospect, that WASN'T really the Best Scene Ever. The 'You have been identified as Daleks' was a Dad's Army joke so blatant even I spotted it. The 'It's like Stephen Hawking meets the speaking clock' made no sense, cos neither of 'em had voices like Stephen Hawking or the speaking clock. The 'You are superior in only one respect...you are better at dying' was very out of character - I've never heard Daleks SNEER before. The intriguing idea of a Dalek/Cybermen alliance was squished in two seconds flat. The utter one-sidedness of the battle was a real disappointment, and not entirely plausible either. OK, the aesthetics conversation was quite funny but frankly CYBERMEN shouldn't have a sense of aesthetics EITHER.

you are better at dying' was very out of character - I've never heard Daleks SNEER before.

Yeah, but these were from the Cult of Skaro. They were hardly typical Daleks.

But all the REST of the time the Cult seem to manage to retain their essential Dalekness whilst thinking outside the box.

Well, OBVIOUSLY not the Dalek Sec Hybrid *shudders*.

The Cybermen essentially are walking robot suits that clamp around a living human preserving them indefinitely until they get hit with gold or have an emotional breakdown and explode. Of course where the metal comes from or why the walking cyber suit requires a human when it can move on its own is never really explained well. The meat inside reduces the effectiveness of the Cybermen entirely and the real horror of being trapped in a metal shell is never really explored in detail otherwise they'd have to explain why the Doctor kills them all the time instead of trying to free the trapped people inside.

About the MissyCybes = it'd make more sense for the Master to clone his consciousness into all these robot bodies then he can have a robot version of being 6 billion people.

EMILY in Monsters: Weeping Angels thread:

Cybermen origin story: excellent (in Spare Parts) and perfectly enjoyable (in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel).

Neither of them are in the same league as 'The World Shapers' or (thankfully) Gerry Davis's 'Genesis of the Cybermen'.

Oh, COMICS. Of course, I wasn't counting THEM.

Didn't one of 'em try to claim that Mondasians were Silurians? Didn't another (or for all I know the SAME ONE) claim they were descended from VOORD??

They're two separate comics.

'Genesis of the Cybermen', on the other hand, was a proper TV proposal and everything, by the co-creator of the Cybermen who might be assumed to know what he's talking about (until you read said proposal and realise that he didn't).

They're two separate comics.

Oh well, THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN.

'Genesis of the Cybermen', on the other hand, was a proper TV proposal and everything, by the co-creator of the Cybermen who might be assumed to know what he's talking about (until you read said proposal and realise that he didn't).

It MUST have been bad, if Big Finish haven't adapted it for their Lost Stories.

I mean, they adapted PRISON IN SPACE, fergodssakes.

TARDIS Eruditorum: 'Kroton...is one of those searingly obvious concepts...a Cyberman who retains his emotions. But unlike the latter renditions on the part of Marc Platt or Chris Chibnall, Kroton is not primarily defined by a sort of excruciating agony at his own body horror. Instead he displays a quieter and more existential sort of angst, brooding and philosophizing his way through life. The result is in many way the first story since The Tenth Planet to actually feature the Cybermen as they were originally designed: philosophical challenges to the nature of humanity instead of clanking robots.' - what, KROTON THE HAPPY ••••••• CYBERMAN?!

Doctor in Death in Heaven: 'Every tiny particle of a Cyberman contains the plans to make another Cyberman. All it has to do is make contact with compatible living organic matter and bang, full conversion' - SINCE WHEN!

After Handles apparently.

Given that we saw ABSOLUTELY NO SIGN of it pre-Death in Heaven, I'm thinking you're right.

The Cybermen have made this HORRIFIC, UNBELIEVABLE, UNIVERSE-CHANGING jump in technology and the Doctor...hasn't done a thing about it? Only decided to get worked up about it when they started being able to convert DEAD organic matter as well?

This is the guy who got a nurse to blow up an entire Cyber-fleet, just to provide a punchline. Pull your finger out, Capaldi.

Remember Emily that the Cybermen that faced the Daleks were not proper Cybermen they were the less advanced parallel universe ones.

I'm still holding out for proper Cybermen vs Daleks, Cybermen that say excellent and carry big guns not tiny wrist blasters.

They did Genesis of the Cybermen in the audios, and did it as a tragedy rather than the action horror of Genesis.

I've been meaning to buy it but it sounds quite good, the original sing song Cybermen were creepy.

I'm still holding out for proper Cybermen vs Daleks, Cybermen that say excellent and carry big guns not tiny wrist blasters.

What makes you think that big-guns-and-'Excellent!' means Cybermen rather than, say, bare arms and flashlight heads...?

They did Genesis of the Cybermen in the audios, and did it as a tragedy rather than the action horror of Genesis.

I've been meaning to buy it but it sounds quite good, the original sing song Cybermen were creepy.

Please do. There aren't many Big Finishes one can recommend, but Spare Parts is one of 'em.

Because the big guns and "excellent" Cybermen were the most consistently used design plus they're 'my' Cybermen. They're what I grew up watching "when I saw any Who at all"

Plus they were the only monsters to kill a companion, a real companion not a one episode substitute.

"Doctorman Allen we can begin again" maybe I'll ask for it for xmas, I want to buy Lego Dimensins first, that has the doc in it.

The Cybermen are based on the hoary old Prosthetics Make You Less Human trope - which really needs to die about, yesterday. Disabled people are *not* less human because they use mobility aids. Can we dig Davis and Pedler up to kick 'em in the butttt

If it were just "person gets a prosthetic arm or leg and turns evil" plot that would be one thing, but Cybermen are more of a Tin Woodsman* or George Washington's axe** situation. They kept replacing parts until nothing was left of the original.

* The woodsman kept getting parts chopped off & replaced until he was a tin woodsman.

** An old joke involving what's supposed to be George Washington's axe, the handle has been replaced three times and the head replaced twice.

I've never found Who's Cyberman/disabled people attitude offensive.

But then I'm the kind of person who really HOPED her replacement hip would turn her into a Cyberman.

I hope those new hips are at least working properly now.

Nope, still ••••, thanks for asking.

It's all that gold dust you have around your apartment, Emily, pack the gold dust up, ship it to me and your hip will start working properly.

You can have the gold dust if you take the gravity as well. (I'd say the nail-varnish too only I'm not the nail-varnish type.)

DWM: 'Whether or not Silver Nemesis shows the Cybermen at their best is a moot point' - no it isn't. Whether or not Silver Nemesis shows the Cybermen at their worst is a moot point, thanks to Wheel in Space, Attack of the Cybermen, Nightmare in Silver and so on, but surely NO ONE ON EARTH thinks our twenty-fifth anniversary story is our cybernetic chums' finest hour.

'They're a generic Rent-a-Monster, a convenient and very dull robotic foe for the Doctor to face so as not to overuse the Daleks...there are only three stories...(The Tenth Planet, The Tomb of th Cybermen, and - bizarrely - Attack of the Cybermen)...where one couldn't easily replace them with the Daleks, Sontarans or Ice Warriors' - I'm sure this is LIES ALL LIES but somehow the arguments against it just aren't springing to mind.

David Banks: 'It's quite clear in The Five Doctors script that there are three different Cyber Leaders, so I tried ot change the tone of my voice to differentiate between them' - well, THAT all went whoosh over my head.

It's quite clear in The Five Doctors script that there are three different Cyber Leaders

I was not as clear as he thinks because I always thought there was only one.

Ah, good, I was worried I was being incredibly thick during my several dozen rewatchings. Banks even claims the director (unsuccessfully) tried to get him three different payments for his three different Cyber Leaders...

Never ever occurred to me either, nor did I notice different voicings.

Although I guess there must have been one wiped out the Raston Warrior Robot, and another on the Chessboard of Silliness, and probably another in the 'Sorry. Must dash' sequence.

Somehow, I'm not convinced there being three or more occurred to Terrance Dicks either...

Earthshock is surely their finest hour. Plus it shows that they actually have to put some effort into their plans as they are not invincible. The humans rifles are a threat and it's set just before the cyber wars that will decimate their species.

It's better when the monster had to be cunning as well as dangerous.

The humans rifles are a threat...

Well, not much of one. They get shot point at blank range many times and it doesn't even slow them down. And we're not talking bullets here, the humans are using proper laser weapons.

The soldiers bring down two Cybermen by combining fire. And that's before they steal the cyber weapons.

The freighter crew really should have thought to do that too but I spose it's not their job.

DWM: Wheel in Space 'features no fewer than three designs of Cyberman' - be still my beating heart! Owing to them being so baggily rubbish they were hastily redesigned mid-story. 'However, with publicity photos in short supply, and their appearances on screen often fleeting, the silver giants of that era have slipped into obscurity. Hard though it is to imagine in a programme so well-scrutinised, a complete and unique Cyberman costume design has been lost in the mists of time. Until now...' - it's so sweet that they care. This is probably the sort of thing that happens to you when there's NO NEW WHO ON TELEVISION.

For the Moonbase Cybermen, 'The chest area looked remarkably detailed inside, filled with electronics and wiring...The prop makers sought out futuristic imagery of complex circuits...One BBC technical manual revealed the interior of a keyboard from the Radiophonic Workshop and it was this photo which was selected to be stuck inside the chest panel' - bless!

Original Cyberman designer (Sandra Reid. Alexandra Tynan. Oh, whatever):

'If I were to design them again today, I'd stick much more to Kit's original idea of them being far more human - so you'd see a bit more skin colour, and he said that they had hair coming out from under their headgear' - they - had - WHAT!

'When I went to the first planning meeting, I had to take with me a drawing of a Cyberman, and I was sitting there before going, "Oh God, what am I going to do?" Out of desperation I did that drawing - the one everybody has seen by now, because it's been published in so many places. Quite honestly...my motivation was the clock on the wall!'

If 'everybody really liked' the cloth-faced Cybermen, why have they never been seen again?

ELEVEN new Cyberman costumes for Moonbase!! (Albeit with only three-fingered hands cos 'I wanted them to look as if they were losing limbs' - hmmm...) Were these people MADE of money!

Come to think of it, what would be the religious view on Cybermen? Does your soul die and go to heaven/hell/purgatory/limbo/reincarnation/72 virgins in paradise/jackal-head-with-weighing-scales/whatever on conversion? But Yvonne, Lisa, the Brig, Danny, the Age of Steel bride etc had plenty of personality left. So is it only when your Cyberman is destroyed, in which case are you held liable for all the murders it's committed, or what?

I think the standard Christian position is that we can only be damned by our own actions.

If so, anyone who agrees to become a Cyberman damns themselves, and ends up in hell, but the souls of the forcibly converted would depart during the conversion process, leaving only an imprint of their memories on what is effectively just a fancy zombie.

anyone who agrees to become a Cyberman damns themselves

Why exactly? This only makes sense to those Christians who think that any kind of bodily replacement surgery is sinful, and that false teeth represent a knotty theological problem.

Why exactly?

I meant, anyone who agrees to become a cyberman, knowing what cybermen are like

If they don't know how cybermen behave they haven't really agreed to the conversion, but have been tricked into it, and souls can't be damned through trickery.

Putting it another way, they have to agree of their own free will to have their mind converted as well as their body, knowing what effect the mental conversion will have on them.

Lytton is being mentally cyber converted by drugs - though God knows how drugs can change thought processes.

I meant, anyone who agrees to become a cyberman, knowing what cybermen are like

But you contend that one can only be damned by one's own actions, so the behaviour of other Cybermen shouldn't affect your own spiritual tally.

I think the standard Christian position is that we can only be damned by our own actions.

Whereas I thought we were so saturated with disgusting original sin because granny ate an apple that we were all damned from the moment of conception unless a priest pours magic water over us.

If so, anyone who agrees to become a Cyberman damns themselves, and ends up in hell

What if you agree to conversion to save a loved one's life?

Would Rose and Pete voluntarily marching into Battersea Power through the front door count as agreeing to conversion? Because frankly they were ASKING for it.

but the souls of the forcibly converted would depart during the conversion process, leaving only an imprint of their memories on what is effectively just a fancy zombie

Very neat and convenient but frankly Yvonne and Danny seemed to have MORE human personality (or in the context of this discussion, 'soul') POST-conversion...

(And don't tell me Auton-Rory didn't have a soul, he had so much of a soul he didn't just stand around for two thousand years, he actually infected the REAL Rory with his essence despite this being totally impossible, what with coming from a wiped-out alternative universe and being made of plastic and suchlike. And if Autons can have souls, so can Cybermen.)

This only makes sense to those Christians who think that any kind of bodily replacement surgery is sinful, and that false teeth represent a knotty theological problem.

But if Jesus's Second Coming raises all the dead from their graves in a Dark Water-like manner like he SAID he would, the integrity of the body IS pretty important. Those false teeth ARE a knotty theological problem, as is that skin of metal and body that will never age.

souls can't be damned through trickery

Surely they CAN? Surely anyone who gets tricked with indoctrination-since-birth into being a good Muslim/Sikh/whatever instead of a good Christian is gonna roast in Hellfire Eternal?

Putting it another way, they have to agree of their own free will to have their mind converted as well as their body, knowing what effect the mental conversion will have on them.

Well, NO ONE'S gonna do THAT are they. Except Hegelia from the Killing Ground MA.

Lytton is being mentally cyber converted by drugs - though God knows how drugs can change thought processes.

Isn't changing your thought processes what a lot of drugs are FOR?

What if you agree to conversion to save a loved one's life?

You're supposed to let them die, and hope they end up in heaven.

Surely they CAN? Surely anyone who gets tricked with indoctrination-since-birth into being a good Muslim/Sikh/whatever instead of a good Christian is gonna roast in Hellfire Eternal?

Virtuous pagans like you, me and the Doctor end up in limbo, though if we convert post-death we will be allowed into heaven.

In Limbo, we won't be actively tortured, just be eternally bored.

And don't tell me Auton-Rory didn't have a soul

I think the theologians would call that an example of god's ineffable grace. Basically, god can give souls to anything he likes, if he feels like it.

He'd probably give the Tardis a soul too.

Note, I'm atheist, but I've picked up quite a bit about theology from history, and from reading about Tolkien's struggles to reconcile his religion with Middle-Earth.

Note, I'm atheist, but I've picked up quite a bit about theology from history, and from reading about Tolkien's struggles to reconcile his religion with Middle-Earth.

I don't see where the problem would be. Since religions are just as fictional as his books, (and not as well written) there was no more need to do this than there would have been to reconcile them with the works of Shakespeare or Mark Twain.

What if you agree to conversion to save a loved one's life?

You're supposed to let them die, and hope they end up in heaven.

Well, my loved one would obviously be of the furry persuasion and I have the hideous feeling most religions insanely deny that oochy-coochies can even GET to heaven.

Virtuous pagans like you, me and the Doctor end up in limbo

I THOUGHT we would but then the ••••••• Pope went and ABOLISHED Limbo, chasing the African-dead-baby-vote cos the Third World is the only place religion actually stands a chance of growing, and OF COURSE bereaved parents will prefer Islam's your-baby-is-in-Paradise to Catholicism's previous charming claim that 'Your baby is forever cut off from God's Grace!' (Or, um, maybe the Pope just had a revelation from the Holy Spirit. One or the other, anyway.)

though if we convert post-death we will be allowed into heaven

You're KIDDING! That's AMAZING! How come WE'LL get the chance but the poor hellfire-and-damnation people won't? Or even those poor dears in Purgatory who can't take a few hundred thousand years off their torture with a Damascene Conversion...Of course, I'd like to feel I wouldn't convert post-death (it's not like I find heaven REMOTELY tempting, and I really thought I was the only one to be equally freaked out by ANY sort of eternal life until CapaldiDoc said 'I'm not scared of Hell. It's just Heaven for bad people') but if heaven has an eternal supply of New Who then principles and sanity be DAMNED...

I think the theologians would call that an example of god's ineffable grace. Basically, god can give souls to anything he likes, if he feels like it.

That's just CHEATING.

Admittedly, cheating in the EXACT SAME WAY that wafted a magical new regeneration cycle into the Doctor's gob in Time of the Doctor, but still...

He'd probably give the Tardis a soul too.

Sexy's already GOT a soul, she doesn't need TWO of 'em!

I've picked up quite a bit about theology from history, and from reading about Tolkien's struggles to reconcile his religion with Middle-Earth.

Since religions are just as fictional as his books, (and not as well written) there was no more need to do this than there would have been to reconcile them with the works of Shakespeare or Mark Twain.

Yeah, did it REALLY never occur to Tolkien to simply tell himself that AT LEAST ONE of these competing Christian/Middle Earth theologies was TOTALLY MADE UP...?

I have the hideous feeling most religions insanely deny that oochy-coochies can even GET to heaven.

Some of them believe in reincarnation, which means they can get to heaven, but only after being reincarnated as a human first. However, they also believe you shouldn't be aiming for heaven but for nirvana.

How come WE'LL get the chance but the poor hellfire-and-damnation people won't?

Some Christian theologians say they'll get a chance too. A few even say that one day the demons and Satan himself will repent their crimes and get back into heaven.

did it REALLY never occur to Tolkien to simply tell himself ...

He believed fervently in Christianity, the Roman Catholic variety, and thought that making up anything inconsistent with that would be heresy.

I have the hideous feeling most religions insanely deny that oochy-coochies can even GET to heaven.

Some of them believe in reincarnation, which means they can get to heaven, but only after being reincarnated as a human first.

That's just RACIST.

Some Christian theologians say they'll get a chance too.

They will no doubt ROAST IN HELL for their blasphemous attempts to rewrite SACRED FACTS!

A few even say that one day the demons and Satan himself will repent their crimes and get back into heaven.

How can Satan possibly repent of his 'crime' of thinking humanity is unfit to be given free will? HE WAS RIGHT! We didn't just eat that sodding apple, WE VOTED FOR TRUMP!

He believed fervently in Christianity, the Roman Catholic variety, and thought that making up anything inconsistent with that would be heresy.

Well, I suppose we should be grateful he restrained himself from introducing an Aslan figure to try to save his soul, then...mind you, wasn't Gandalf supposed to be an angel or something stupid like that?

Moderator's Note: Moved from the New Series: Season Two: Made of Steel thread:

Just thought, prompted by seeing the story title on the Last Day board: would initial Cybermen really be made of steel? Wouldn't a high quality, modern plastic be more efficient (and perhaps more economic)?

Sure, maybe when venturing out into the stars and invading planets with a degree of development then steel might be safer, but steel at this time? Obviously the Cybermen were attacked, but (been a while since I've watched this one) were they expecting to be?

Though I guess the Nestene would be an issue.

WOULD the Nestene be an issue in THIS universe, though? There's no sign of any Doctor but Earth's still standing, ergo, a LOT fewer alien invasions.

would initial Cybermen really be made of steel? Wouldn't a high quality, modern plastic be more efficient (and perhaps more economic)?

I'm thinking some sort of body-stocking...

Are you crazy? True Cybermen would never have stupid cloth faces! What next, sticking a whacking great flashlight on their heads...?

Hey, if a body stocking is good enough for the Raston Warrior Robot... !

Ah, well, that's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Raston Warrior Robots were BORN to wear body-stockings the way a Dalek was born to wear sink-plungers, they'd just look really weird on anyone else.

Metal is pretty good if your plan is to take over the world. Plastic Cybermen don't sound that bullet proof to me.

Maybe plastic Cybermen would come later.

The best Cybermen have cloth faces Emily :-)

The best Cybermen have cloth faces

They couldn't even TALK properly!

And they had names! What sort of self-respecting Cyberman has a NAME?

Kroton the Happy Cyberman?

KROTON THE HAPPY CYBERMAN has SELF-RESPECT since WHEN!

(Oh, OK, possibly since he became a universe-ruling god or something but SURELY before then he suffered from SERIOUS self-esteem and body/soul dysmorphia issues for bloody DECADES of dreary comics.)

Well you need names really, it must be confusing enough when you all look alike. Cybermen don't even have numbers like the Borg to distinguish them.

Cyberman cope PERFECTLY WELL with neither names nor numbers to identify them, thank you very much.

How the hell they achieve this is another issue, of course.

(NB: If anyone objects to me moving this discussion, let me know and I'll *sigh* move it back.)

The Mondasian Cybermen are baaaaaaaack!

Normally I'd be foaming at the mouth at having to cope with those stupid pink human hands but I'm so relived those Gaiman Abominations are history, I'm welcoming them with open, well, stupid pink human hands.

And suddenly everyone online is pretending that they secretly loved the proper Cybermen all along...

As JNT informed us in his infinite wisdom, the memory cheats.

Maybe I should rewatch The Doctor Falls before I ask this but...have we just been asked to believe that all the different-looking Cybermen we've seen are unrelated, that different planets sometimes evolve to the point where they develop their own Cybermen? Well first let me say that that itself is not outrageous. I even kind of like it. But where it becomes a problem is that every Cyberman we've seen in this episode is Mondasian and they end up looking like the new series Cybermen. How does this happen?

I'm going to assume that somehow, all the different Cybermen come together and compare notes, else how would they have the records they do in Earthsock and The Next Doctor?

every Cyberman we've seen in this episode is Mondasian and they end up looking like the new series Cybermen. How does this happen?

They kept redesigning themselves until they ended up with the most efficient design they could conceive, which happens to look a lot like the new series standard, at least on the outside.

have we just been asked to believe that all the different-looking Cybermen we've seen are unrelated, that different planets sometimes evolve to the point where they develop their own Cybermen? Well first let me say that that itself is not outrageous.

Well it wasn't UNTIL MARINUS WAS MENTIONED.

What next, canonising John and Gillian?!

which happens to look a lot like the new series standard
I get it. But it's ridiculous.

I guess we don't have to assume the Voord are/were/will be Cybermen. It could be a separate race, of which there were a few. and the Voord (presumably) weren't the ones who created a computer to control everybody.

I'm having a hard time with this whole Mondas, the twin planet of Earth thing.

First of all, just where was Mondas located, in relation to Earth? Were they a double planet thing? If so, how did Mondas get tossed into deep space, but not Earth.

Second of all, since the two planets were twins, they would have formed at the same time, evolution following similar paths, and so on. So how in the dead gods of Krypton did the Mondasians get so far ahead of us technologically? Aside from their Cyber stuff, they built an engine on their planet, they built that huge honking colony ship. We're no where near able to do either of these things.

Third of all, how could life on Mondas continue once it moved away from the Sun? The planet would freeze, the food chain would break down, and all life would DIE!

Anyone have any answers??

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I'm having a hard time with this whole Mondas, the twin planet of Earth thing.

First of all, just where was Mondas located, in relation to Earth? Were they a double planet thing? If so, how did Mondas get tossed into deep space, but not Earth.
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Stars and planets were originally formed by dust and gas clumping together. These essentially clear out the orbits.

However, it may be possible to have two bodies formed in a single orbit if they're of equal mass, the dust/gas around them is equally dense and they're on opposite sides of the central body that they orbit, they could have formed together and use the same orbit. It's then possible that something caused Mondas' orbit to be altered (say a close-ish passage of a micro-black hole or a wandering brown dwarf), throwing it out of the solar system, but as the Earth's on the other side of the sun, it was minimally affected.

Or maybe the collision that broke the moon out of Earth actually broke up a much larger body into multiple parts - Earth, the moon, Mondas, and Mondas wound up getting ejected from the system. Alternatively one or both may have been formed elsewhere in system as a binary pair and something happened that caused them to be separated (Jupiter migrated to it's current orbit from elsewhere, and something caused a body to be broken up which formed the asteroid belt).

I'm assuming natural formation of the solar system here, rather than stellar engineering. If the solar system's artifically produced, well, you can have anything you want.
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Second of all, since the two planets were twins, they would have formed at the same time, evolution following similar paths, and so on. So how in the dead gods of Krypton did the Mondasians get so far ahead of us technologically? Aside from their Cyber stuff, they built an engine on their planet, they built that huge honking colony ship. We're no where near able to do either of these things.
---
Ok, assuming parallel biological evolution doesn't necessarily equate with parallel social and technological evolution, and even if it does there's somewhere between 500 and 1000 years after the fall of the Roman Empire where technology has regressed and it takes that time to begin to catch up. If that never happened on Mondas, they could well be much more advanced than us.

And that pretty much affects:

---
Third of all, how could life on Mondas continue once it moved away from the Sun? The planet would freeze, the food chain would break down, and all life would DIE!

Anyone have any answers??
---
Depending on when Mondas was ejected from the solar system, there might have been enough technologically advanced people to discover geothermal power generation (the planet's core's still molten), to set up giant greenhouses with suitable light sources to grow crops, and eventually, develop cybernetic replacement parts and so on. But all technology would have been focussed on survival of the species, and Mondas' version of Leonardo Da Vinci would have been solely a scientist, rather than the painter, sculptor and everything else he was on Earth.

For Earth, we go off down technological cul-de-sacs or focus on consumer goods - things the Mondasians would either ignore or not bother with, and politics and financal considerations often stop or seriously curtail technological advancement (if we'd carried on at the same rate with space exploration after the Apollo project, we'd probably be on Mars by now).

Or maybe the collision that broke the moon out of Earth actually broke up a much larger body into multiple parts - Earth, the moon, Mondas, and Mondas wound up getting ejected from the system

Ah bless, someone still in TOTAL DENIAL about the fact the moon is an egg!

and something caused a body to be broken up which formed the asteroid belt

Yes! The Fendahl-murdering Time Lords!

there's somewhere between 500 and 1000 years after the fall of the Roman Empire where technology has regressed and it takes that time to begin to catch up. If that never happened on Mondas, they could well be much more advanced than us.

They didn't SEEM that much more advanced in Tenth Planet, though. Sure, they had spaceships but SO DID WE. (Plus, we didn't have bloody stupid enormous flashlights on our heads - you'll note that those were considerably toned down for the World Enough versions and I didn't hear a peep of complaint even from the most fanatical purist.)

---
Ah bless, someone still in TOTAL DENIAL about the fact the moon is an egg!
---
Well, aside from having the Racnoss eggs to consider as well, can you really blame me for forgetting something that manages to achieve the feat of making both Timelash and Fear Her look good? ;)

I didn't hear a peep of complaint even from the most fanatical purist

We've all grown to be more tolerant of the new series and its lax attention to detail.

According to Spare Parts Mondas was always on the exact opposite of the sun from us at all times and they only noticed us when the moon arrived (well they said it erupted from Earth but that makes the Mondassians billions of years older then us so let’s ignore it) so that’s where Mondas was. At least if it was the moon’s arrival that ‘only’ puts them 100 million years ahead.

As for their tech level they are ahead of us but they are effectively post apocalyptic. That’s the sort of thing that messes up technology. Still they had a planet moving engine, that’s way ahead of us.

Also maybe a few more colony ships were successful and some of the human aliens we saw are actually Mondassian’s who’ve forgotten their ancestry. That would explain where some of Mondas’s technology went. The more privileged colonists took it with them.

I was far more annoyed that for the World Enough that the cloth face wasn’t as skin like and they had gloves on their hands and the flashlight was the gun to get annoyed at the flashlight size. Still I thought something looked odd about them. A purist will often give some grudging credit when they really try. What annoys us is when the show just refuses to care.

Okay I have a question... what happens if a Time Lord is converted into a Cyberman? Does he turn into a Cyberman or regenerate?

leave the Cyber-race alone! What have they ever done to us?

Except try to convert us, •••• the energy from our planet, crash a starship into the world, take over our weather control system...

(And this would fail to be an improvement over the current UK government in what way, precisely?)

What in the dead gods of Krypton are you babbling about now!?

I always wondered if they thought, at the time , that Jon's height might of made the Cybermen appear less intimidating than they had in the past. They had towered over the much shorter cast members in the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton stories. At about 6'3" Jon would of been a similar height to the Cybermen; not that this stopped them when Tom Baker took over

The Cybermen made no appearances during the Pertwee Era.

As Judy would say, we've known that for decades.

Invasion, The Five Doctors and Carnival of Monsters are the closest we got to a Pertwee Cybermen story.

The Cybermen are a stupid jumped-up Filofax to quote Arnold Rimmer.

Cybermen and Stormtroopers:
https://tinyurl.com/ycszduz9

Are the Borg on Star Trek a ripoff of the
Cybermen ?

*grabs popcorn- waits for Emily*

What can I be expected to say about it? I've heard of Borg (specifically, I've heard that a Who author (David A McIntee, I'm pretty sure) search-and-replaced 'Borg' with 'Cybermen' to turn his proposed (and rejected) Star Trek novel into a proposed (also rejected) Who novel but didn't bother proof-reading so the odd 'Brog' remained in the synopsis to give the game away...

...So yeah, there are probably similarities but let me make it PERFECTLY CLEAR that I claim no knowledge of ANYTHING to do with Star Trek.

Except that there's something called a Wesley Crusher that is REALLY ANNOYING, even I know that.

Well, really, it's not as if Pedler and Davis had such an original idea that nobody else could possibly have come up with a similar premise. I expect KAM can come up with earlier accounts. The word 'cyborg' dates from the year 1960, and there may have been earlier terms that didn't catch on.

Who got there first, but I really doubt the writers of Star Trek were saying, 'Man, Who's Cybermen are so cool. We should nick that idea.' This was what, the 1980s? It was a trite concept by then.

Except that there's something called a Wesley Crusher that is REALLY ANNOYING, even I know that.

Think of Adders ramped up to eleven. That's Wesley Crusher.

If anything the modern Cybermen are ripoffs of the Borg. They basically act the same way as the Borg do. Classic Cybermen, in my opinion, had more nuance.

If you can say waving human hands around, sneering about 'stupid human brains' and having NAMES is 'nuance'...

Rodney is right, Emily.

The Modern Who Cyberman remind me of the Borg as well.

The Wikipedia article on Cyborg mentions an 1843 story by Edgar Allen Poe describing a soldier with an extensive prosthesis as being an early version of the concept.

Although it seems to me the early concept of the Cybermen was similar to the Tin Woodsman, replacing parts until there was little, or nothing, left of the original man. The Borg probably owe a bit more to the cyberpunk school whereas their parts weren't just for mimicking human body parts, but for plugging into technology which was not something the Cybermen really did much with.

I mean imagine The Tenth Planet with Borg, they'd beam down and take over various computer centers and their forcefields would easily block all the bullets fired at them.

Whether the writer(s) knew of the Cybermen or not* the Borg were a completely different take on dealing with a cybernetic opponent.

* Of course there was a Doctor Who easter egg in The Neutral Zone which had a plot point that was later retconned into being the work of the Borg (I believe the writer was thinking it was the work of the insect aliens from the prior episode).

Tim - Think of Adders ramped up to eleven. That's Wesley Crusher.

But played by a better actor. ;-)

Of course there was a Doctor Who easter egg in The Neutral Zone which had a plot point that was later retconned into being the work of the Borg (I believe the writer was thinking it was the work of the insect aliens from the prior episode).

Those insects were supposed to be the Borg, and be part of a season long arc that would have taken place in season two. The reason that didn't happen was because of the writer's strike that was happening at the time. The Borg concept eventually evolved into the cybernetic humanoids appearing in a single episode of that second season. The rest, as they say, is history.

I appologize for going so off topic.

Guess no one thought the Cybermen would become as popular as the Daleks.

I prefer 'em myself but I very much doubt they've even been AS popular as the Daleks.

A Cybermat making its NuWho debut in Closing Time.
Marking ten years since Closing Time.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Cybermat_2011.jpg

They're first appearance since Revenge.

The Doctor Falls:

Not the best tactics from the scarecrow-Cybermen - just slowly lumbering towards people.

'There's only ever been one way to stop that many Cybermen. Me!' - not when you're JODIE! there isn't...(I mean, not that I'm BITTER about her handing over the Cyberium to the Lone Cyberman and getting humanity wiped off the face of the galaxy or anything...)

Oh, and there's also a glitter-gun.

'You are so strong. You're amazing. Your mind has rebelled against the programming' - oh, what Cyberman DOESN'T rebel against its programming...Yvonne, Craig, Danny, the Brig, the-original-Yvonne-from-Spare-Parts...

'Well, I'll tell you what else isn't possible. A Cyberman crying' - wrong! Though I guess you weren't around when Yvonne was crying...

'Less to throw away' - I'm not sure Cybermen would particularly care if they had to chuck an extra few pounds of flesh in the bin.

Why do the spaceship Cybermen go through exactly the same (stupid!) evolutionary process as the Cybus ones?

'Oh, they love to advertise'- I'm not sure Cybermen DO love to advertise, frankly. They're generally more the skulking types.

DOCTOR: Ah! Hello. I'm the Doctor.
CYBERMAN: Doctors are not required - That's what YOU think, the Cybermen actually used the Doc as their template (Spare Parts), making the parallel-evolution stuff even more suspect, come to think of it.