Name – Cybermen
Cybermen are ruthless silver humanoids who reproduce by the conversion of humans into Cybermen. They came, originally from Earth's twin planet Mondas. Mondasians were similar to Humans, but as the planet Mondas’s erratic orbit took it out of the Solar System, the Mondasians grew weaker and their lifespans shortened. To combat this they began to replace their body parts with cybernetic components until only the basic Human shape remained and they had rid themselves of all Human emotions. They had one weakness. Gold in any form was fatal, most especially gold dust which clocked their breathing apparatus and suffocated them. A different race of Cybermen were actually created on a parallel Earth by misguided businessman John Lumic who developed them in order to become immortal. First Doctor
In the Tenth Planet, Mondas is returning to its twin orbit with Earth in the year 1986. The planet begins absorbing energy from Earth, which is in danger of exploding under the pressure. The Earth government decides to fire a missile at Mondas and destroy it, but the cybermen force them to stop that happening. When they realise that Mondas might in fact be destroyed by the absorption of too much energy the cybermen prepare to destroy the Earth and save Mondas. The Doctor, with Ben and a group of Earth scientists prevent them from doing that. Mondas explodes, without any undue effects on Earth. Those cybermen who had landed on Earth became immobile as soon as the planet is gone.
The Mondas Cybermen had faces and hands that seemed to be made of metallic cloth and had cumbersome apparatus fixed to their chests. They killed with large lamp-like ray guns.
Second Doctor
In Moonbase the now homeless cybermen want to take over Earth. They plan to do that by means of the Gravitron, a machine based on the moon which controls the Earth’s weather. They have decimated the Moonbase staff with a virus and take it over, but they reckoned without The Doctor and his companions. The cybermen are fought using a cocktail of plastic melting fire extinguisher foam, nail varnish remover and such things to damage the cybermen. They dissolve very successfully and the humans regain control of the Moonbase and use the Gravitron on the Cyberman ship.
These Cybermen now had metal faces and spoke with a more masculine voice that had far more menace. But their plastic parts left them curiously vulnerable.
In the Tomb of the Cyberman a group of Earth archaeologists came to the planet Telos where they planned to find the ‘tomb’ of the Cybermen purely for scientific reasons. Unfortunately the expedition’s financiers, Kleig and Kaftan have an ulterior motive. They want to awaken the dormant Cybermen and use them to gain political power on Earth. Of course, the Cybermen have other ideas. They want to control HUMANS. A battle between Humans and Cybermen results in the Cybermen being sent back to their hibernation units which are refrozen. The Doctor electrifies the main door to prevent any that are not frozen from excaping.
Tomb of the Cybermen saw the appearance of two variations on Cyber-life.
The peculiar bug-like cybermat which was used to attack people while they slept with poison in their fangs. They were about the size of a rat with segmented bodies like insects, though there were variations of cybermats more like a snake and they could vary in size.
The Cybercontroller was a distinctly superior cyberman, as opposed to a cyber-leader which was distinguished only by different coloureed handles. In this case there was a large, egg shaped ‘brain’ with veins running through it which made the cyber-controller the boss.
In The Wheel in Space, the Cybermen target a space-science research ship – the Wheel, first sending their cybermats to kill members of the crew and then arriving themselves on board a stolen ship called the Silver Carrier. Their objective is to use the Wheel as a launch pad for their invasion of Earth. The Doctor, assisted by the remaining crew put a stop to their plans.
The cybermats are used as advance guards in this episode.
The Wheel in Space also sees the first use if a Cyber-Planner, and immobile cyber intelligence inside a non-humanoid machine which plans the attack, making use of advance intelligence.
The Invasion sees a Human, Vaughn, believing that he can rule the Earth with the Cybermen as his troops to control the Human race. It takes him a long time to realise that he is wrong and by then Cybermen are marching through the streets of London as their invasion gets underway. They are defeated by Earth military might, firing at the cyber ship in orbit and Vaughn finally realising his error, and persuaded by The Doctor, using the machine his scientists had developed to destroy the Cybermen on Earth.
Again, the Cyber-Planner lays the foundations for the invasion, using the collaborator, Vaughn to supply it with information. Vaughn destroys the Planner when he realises that they mean to dominate Earth completely.
Third Doctor
Shirma and Vorg, owners of the illegal miniscope in Carnival of Monsters foolishly included a Cyberman in their collection of creatures from around the galaxy. Fourth Doctor
In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cybermen first use their cybermats to decimate the crew of the Nerva Beacon before using it as a base to attack Voga, the gold planet, now caught in Jupiter’s gravity field and forming its 13th moon. The Vogans live in fear of the Cybermen who want to destroy their planet, source of the gold that can kill them. The Cybermen are assisted by Kellman, a human aboard the beacon who believed he would be rewarded by them. Strangely, his reward is gold, the very thing the Cybermen fear, and which kills a great many of them in this episodes. The combined forces of Nerva and Voga eventually defeat the Cybermen, blasting their ship to atoms with a missile.
The serpent like Cybermat was seen in the attack on Nerva.
Fifth Doctor
Earthshock saw the Cybermen hijacking a freighter in order to crash it into Earth and destroy and intergalactic peace Treaty which would have united many planets against the Cybermen. The plan fails when the ship is sent hurtling back in time and crashes in prehistoric Earth killing the dinosaurs and Adric. The Cybermen by this time were becoming far more sophisticated in their design but still, a tiny bit of gold on a cardboard star was enough to kill the Cyberleader.
It was the first and only use of Cyber-Androids as agents of destruction before the Cybermen themselves were forced to show their hand.
In The Five Doctors a group of Cybermen were pulled into the Death Zone by the time scoop. The Master tried to use them against The Doctor.
Sixth Doctor
In attack of the Cybermen, the plan is to divert Halleys Comet to crash into Earth and destroy it, thus preventing Mondas from being destroyed a year later – the events that took place in The Doctor’s first encounter with the Cybermen. As this would change history the Time Lords are anxious that The Doctor does something about that. He is assisted, in the final battle on Telos, scene of the Tomb of the Cybermen, by Lytton, an intergalactic villain who redeems himself by sacrificing himself to let The Doctor, Peri and others escape the inevitable explosion.
Attack of the Cybermen saw a cybercontroller with an unusually bulbous head.
Seventh Doctor
Silver Nemesis saw the Cybermen as just one of three parties interested in the Nemesis weapon, along with time travelling Lady Peinforte and neo Nazi De Flores. Inevitably they are destroyed by it along with Lady Peinforte. The cyberleader is killed by a gold-tipped arrow, just for tradition’s sake.
These cybermen were more high tech looking than ever, looking like real space men now. They were the last time The Doctor encountered them for several centuries of his own time and twenty of our years. Tenth Doctor
In Rise of the Cyberman/Age of Steel, The Tenth Doctor encountered a new kind of Cyberman, not from Mondas or Telos, but from an alternative universe Earth where a megalomaniac businessman had developed a way to put a Human brain into a skin of metal and create a life that would never age or catch diseases. The Doctor proved that they COULD, however, be killed by removing their emotion inhibitor and exposing the former Humans to the horror of being turned into a Cyberman.
Age of Steel saw the creation of a new type of Cybercontroller when John Lumic was upgraded.
In Army of Ghosts/Doomsday The Doctor discovers that the Cybermen have found a way to travel between the alternative universe and the one he lives in. They are followed by what is believed to be the last four Daleks in existence and their Genesis Ark which contains thousands more. There follows a showdown between the two with humanity in the crossfire until The Doctor finds a way to suck them all back into the void between realities.
When Yvonne was converted to a cyberman her strength of will overcame the programming and she defended Torchwood to the last.
The cult of Skaro Daleks escaped but as far as anyone knows ALL the Cybermen were killed. Except for….
A group of Cybermen were cast into 1850s London after the Void collapsed due to Davros’s interference with time and space when he took Earth and other planets to the Medusa Cascade. These had limited power and were dependent on contemporary Earth technology – hydraulics, steam power and basic electronics. With a Cyberleader in charge, they used infostamps to pass information to each other. They used slave labour to build the Cyberking. They also created Cybershades as their scouts and guards.
And don't forget about... Torchwood
The Cyberwoman turned up in the basement of Torchwood Cardiff. She was the half converted girlfriend of Ianto Jones, a survivor of the Battle of Canary Wharf who hid her below his new workplace. When a scientist attempted to give her a life without the life support system the cyber part of her overcame the Human and she became a homicidal killer who eventually had to be killed by the Torchwood team, to Ianto’s grief.
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