Cyberman

This article is about the Doctor Who villains. For the movie about Steve Mann, see Cyberman (movie).

Template:Doctorwhorace The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since made numerous reappearances in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest, their latest being the 2006 series' two-part story, Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel .

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While the Doctor's other old enemy, the Daleks, were on the whole unchanged during the original series' forty-year run, the Cybermen were seen to consistently change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance, their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits.

It is presumed (and often implied) that beneath their suits still exist organic components and that they are not true robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours". In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter, and in Attack of the Cybermen (1985), the Cyber Controller's brain could sometimes be seen as a purplish tint on his domed head. The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity as regards the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed.

Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was done. This effect was used until The Wheel in Space (1968).

Later, the BBC used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first an electropharynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units. The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen will be provided by Nicholas Briggs, who also provided the voices for the Daleks in the 2005 series.

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Cybermen have a number of major weaknesses, of which the most notable is the element gold. Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents and excessive levels of radiation.

As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. Cybermen are typically credited as Cyber Leader (or Cyberleader), Cyber Lieutenant, and Cyber Scout. However, one Cyberman exists with a title, the Cyber Controller. The Cyber Controller has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, also referred to as the Cyber Planner or Cyber Director, although these may not be the same being. The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies, as it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. Some Cybermen in the early stories were given individual names such as "Krang". In the novel Iceberg by David Banks, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman. According to the Radio Times, new Cyber Leader and Cyber Controller designs will appear in the 2006 series.

The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls and cricketers' gloves. The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, their round eyeholes and their chest units.

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Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank and file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Cyber Leader had a helmet with black earpieces. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet.

Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen.

It was confirmed in Doctor Who Magazine #357 that the Cybermen would be returning in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternative Earth. New series designer Bryan Hitch stated in an interview in Dreamwatch magazine that the Cyberman design would be updated. The new Cyberman, designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neil Gorton at Millennium FX, was revealed on the BBC Doctor Who website on 10 November, 2005.[1] Extras working on the set revealed that the new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 7 feet tall.

Over the years Cybermen have been shown with various forms of weaponry. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase (1967), the Cybermen had two types of hand-to-hand weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself.

The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns. In Rise of the Cybermen, the hand discharge electrocutes rather than stuns the target.

The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth.

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The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life", implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen.

The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate.

The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were.

In the Big Finish Productions audio drama Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion), "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher". In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources. A more advanced form of cybermat also appears in Real Time.

The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948), Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism".

In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.^[1] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who.

Pedler, influenced by the Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs.

The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."^[2] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1969, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch.

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Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for. Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims.

The race originated on the planet Mondas, Earth's twin planet in prehistoric times, which was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary.

On Mondas, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians — now Cybermen — became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in the previously mentioned audio play, Spare Parts, starring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor.

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The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. The Cybermen had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor.

In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed.

In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to turn Earth into New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis).

In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten (Dalek, 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975 and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century. (In a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975.)[2]

By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor and his companions prevented this in The Wheel in Space.

The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor.

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Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep.

This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock).

The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, and the native Cryons of the planet Telos had also risen up and sabotaged their hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos.

By the late 29th century, the Cybermen had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering around the galaxy. One group tried to take revenge by making a desperate attempt to blow up the remnants of the planet Voga, a planetoid of pure gold that had wandered into the solar system and become a moon of Jupiter. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemy's supply of the metal, but were stopped by the Fourth Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen).

A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973).

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In the Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel 2-parter, the Tenth Doctor visited a parallel universe where the Cybermen were being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. The Cybermen refer to themselves as Humans, they "delete" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade, and can electrocute humans with a touch.

In this reality, the "upgrades" seem to have taken place on Earth, rather than Mondas, and the upgrades are faster, completely removing the brain and placing it in a metallic body, rather than just adding parts. The origin of the "handlebars" is also seen here, being a modification of a high-tech communications device.

They were created by John Lumic, a crippled and insane genius, who perhaps parallels the Dalek creator Davros. His Cybus Industries corporation had advanced humanity considerably, most notable with high-tech zeppelins that the super-rich could live on and with most of the population being connected via miniature cellular communication devices which took the form of ear-pieces. Those communicators were gateway to a vast network of information, which could be downloaded into the human brain. To create the Cybermen, Lumic formed a front organisation called International Electromatics (see The Invasion) to abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen. A resistance group known as the Preachers has set itself up in opposition without knowing the reason for the disappearances. They are led by a parallel version of Mickey Smith named Ricky (a running joke; the ninth Doctor called him Ricky as a mistake in Aliens of London, and later as a wind up in Boom Town).

The Cybermen attacked first at Peter Tyler's house during his wife's birthday party, killing the President of Britain and massacring many of the guests. Even as Mickey, Ricky and the freedom fighters arrived they could not fight off the Cybermen with conventional weapons. Surrounded and unarmed, the Doctor tried to surrender to the Cybermen, who refused to accept it and prepared to "delete"...

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The Cybermen have appeared in various spin-off media, the canonicity of which is unclear.

The BBV audios Cyber-Hunt and Cybergeddon and the BBV video Cyberon feature the Cyberons, which are a race of cyborgs not dissimilar to the Cybermen.

On the BBC Doctor Who tie-in websites, on the first "Defending the Earth" mission, you find a head of a Cybermen, Found in Deffry Vale Underground Station, London in 1975.

The Cybermen were also featured in the Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg, by actor David Banks, who played the Cyber Leader in the television series from Earthshock on. Banks had previously written, in 1988, Cybermen, a fictional history of the Cybermen which included a "future" design for them. In passing, the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Crystal Bucephalus, by Craig Hinton mentioned the Cyberlord Hegemony, a peaceful future version of the Cybermen who have an empire in the Milky Way and used Banks's designs.

The Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry featured Cybermen and cybermats in London during the Blitz. Cyber-technology left over from that adventure was subsequently misused in Loving the Alien, written by the same authors. The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Hope by Mark Clapham features the Silverati, a group of cybernetically enhanced humans heavily reminiscent of the Cybermen.

The Cybermen also appeared in the Big Finish plays Sword of Orion, the aforementioned Spare Parts, Real Time (produced as a webcast for BBCi and later released as a CD), and The Harvest. The first installment of a four-CD series titled Cyberman was released in September 2005. Sword of Orion and the Cyberman series are set during the Orion Wars, when androids rebelled against humanity in the Orion System; both human and android turned to the Cybermen to gain a military advantage. When the plays take place is not clear, but by the Cyberman series Telos has been destroyed by an asteroid collision, which sets it after the events of Attack of the Cybermen.

They have also appeared in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips, most recently in The Flood, published in DWM #346-#353. In addition, a Cyberman named Kroton was briefly a companion of the Eighth Doctor (The Glorious Dead, DWM #287-#296). In The World Shapers (DWM #127-#129), it was revealed that the Voord were the race that evolved into the Cybermen and that Mondas was previously the planet Marinus. In 1996, the Radio Times published a Doctor Who comic strip. The first story, entitled Dreadnought, featured the Cybermen. It may viewed in its entirety online here.

The Cybermen can be seen as a slightly more individualistic forerunner of the Borg from Star Trek. Similarities include converting their victims into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion", although unlike the Borg there is no way to reverse the conversion) and the use of the catchphrase "Resistance is useless/futile" and promises or threats of assimilation, such as "You will become like us." It is not known if the Cybermen influenced the creation of the Borg in any way.

The song "Among The Cybermen" by G/Z/R (a band formed by former Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler) and on their 1997 album Black Science, was originally about the "death" of the First Doctor in The Tenth Planet. The original chorus was "Doctor Who lies dead among the Cybermen".

Cybermen have been the subject of parody. Examples include the Dead Ringers comedy series, which featured a suburban Cyberman family struggling to balance galactic domination with everyday domestic crises, and a segment in The Real McCoy which showed a clip from Earthshock with the Doctor and the Cyber Leader dubbed in "Jamaican". In a Doctor Who sketch on The Lenny Henry Show, a Cyberman leader was dressed as a visual reference to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with a blonde wig and handbag. It was referred to as "Thatchos," a play on Davros, the name of the Daleks' creator. In the 1980s Channel 4 alternative comedy series Absolutely, one of the Cybermen, named "Dave", wins the World Masters golf championship against such opponents as the Wicked Witch of the West from the "Wizard of Oz".

• The Tenth Planet — October 8–October 29 1966
• The Moonbase — February 11–March 4 1967
• The Tomb of the Cybermen — September 2–September 23 1967
• The Wheel in Space — April 27–June 1 1968
• The Invasion — November 2–December 21 1968
• Revenge of the Cybermen — April 19–10 May 1975
• Earthshock — March 9–March 17 1982
• The Five Doctors — November 23 1983
• Attack of the Cybermen — January 5–January 12 1985
• Silver Nemesis — November 23–December 7 1988
• Rise of the Cybermen — May 13 2006
• The Age of Steel — May 20 2006

• Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure — Wimbledon Theatre, London (premiere March 23 1989)

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• Sword of Orion
• Spare Parts
• Real Time
• The Harvest
• Bernice Summerfield: Silver Lining
• Cyberman: Scorpius
• Cyberman: Fear
• Cyberman: Conversion
• Cyberman: Telos

• Iceberg by David Banks (Virgin New Adventures)
• Killing Ground by Steve Lyons (Virgin Missing Adventures)
• Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry (BBC Past Doctor Adventures)