The Daleks might be the most iconic of Doctor Who villains, but the Cybermen are – at the risk of extermination – the more interesting. For whilst Dalek creator Terry Nation, who grew up during the Second World War, based the pepper-pots on Nazi values – presenting them as the manifestation of hatred and conformity – the Cybermen's roots are in a question more complex and tragic than the simple desire to kill: what does it mean to be human?
Just like the Daleks before them, the Cybermen were reflections of the era that created them. In 1966, the show's scientific advisor, Dr Kit Pedler and writer Gerry Davis were fascinated by innovations in prosthetic surgery and the ethical issues it brought with it. If, they asked, you became more machine than flesh, were you still technically human? And what makes a human anyway, is it the physical or the emotional? At what point do you cease to be you? This is why, despite all the different forms the Cybermen would take over their 46 years, their ideology remains the same: human existence, physically and emotionally, is weak and cruel – the Cybermen are the saviours.
And now, they're back; re-invented once more for Neil Gaiman's Nightmare In Silver, which makes this the perfect time to take a look back at the history of the Cyber menace...
Mondasian origins
The Cybermen made their first appearance in William Hartnell's final story, The Tenth Planet, in 1966. And it was here, on Earth's twin planet of Mondas, that the age of steel truly began – born out of desperation and pain.
Originally twinned with Earth, Mondas is essentially our planet ravaged after drifting out of the solar system and into the abyss of space. Isolated and frozen by their distance from the sun, Mondas' people suffered. That is until some brain-box had the idea of replacing failing organic parts with cybernetics in order for them to physically deal with the brutality of their new environment. In order to psychologically deal with their grotesque new form, however, they were also stripped of their emotions – eventually rendering them cold, harsh and cruelly logical. Emotions were rubbish, the Mondasians concluded, and being an unthinking machine was just swell. Everyone should be like this – whether they liked it or not. It was, after all, for their own good.
Mondas was destroyed, eventually, but the Cybermen lived on in their charitable cause to conquer the galaxy and set existence free from its chains of thought and feeling – upgrading as they went.
The Tenth Planet Cybermen, despite looking like they were built on Blue Peter, were eerily zombie-like. Being the earliest version, they were a hodge-podge of patchwork humanity and cybernetics. The outline of their human faces, for example, were noticeable underneath their cloth masks and their hands were still clearly flesh and blood. They even had names – even if they were names like “Krang”. They wouldn't last long.
As the Cyber-empire evolved, so did their style. Popular from their first outing in the first Doctor's last story, they returned a mere three serials later for Patrick Troughton's Moonbase. It's here that their pragmatic nature was fully realised, with their look changing – sometimes subtlety, sometimes drastically – with every appearance. With Moonbase and their famous follow-up story, The Tomb of the Cybermen (set on their new adopted home of Telos), they became sleeker and more streamlined – exchanging the cloth masks and oversized chest units for a body, seemingly, made from tin foil. For Invasion (again, a second Doctor story), they became bulkier and, bizarrely, wore lace-up shoes.
After their popularity with the second Doctor, the Cybermen were totally absent from the Third Doctor’s era and didn't return until seven years later with Tom Baker's Revenge of theCybermen. This time, due to their weird allergy to gold, the last great Cyber-War was over, but one ship – along with the Cyber-Leader – remained. This would be their only appearance alongside the Fourth Doctor and it would be another six years before producer Jason Nathan-Turner decided to bring them back with a big re-design for fifth Doctor Peter Davison's Earthshock, which saw them trying to – shock! – destroy the Earth. From here on in, the Cybermen were much bigger and more mechanical – with only subtle varying elements being introduced, such as transparent chins and, in their last story, Sylvester McCoy's Silver Nemesis, cricket gloves for hands.
A new age, a new upgrade
When 2005 Who came around, after 17 years since their last appearence, the lovable iron-clad murderers were as prevalent in the fans' minds as the revelation of who would play the new Doctor. But when Christopher Eccleston's era began, Russell T Davies vetoed the frights in shining armour in favour of the Daleks, who took centre stage in Who's return. David Tennant's Doctor, however, was not so lucky.
As it transpired, the Cybermen had been tucked away in a parallel universe all along under the auspices of Trigger from Only Fools and Horses. Viewers were not so surprised by their reappearance, having spotted the clue in the episode's title, Rise of the Cybermen – but the look on Tennant's face was one of the more memorable Doctor grimaces of recent years, making the moment we heard the dreaded “Delete!” emitting from the familiar, relentless plated faces all the more ominous. Not to mention their sleeker design where no weapons were needed; just a simple electrocuting touch.
Director Graeme Harper spoke of the Cyberman's very geometric looking redesign, saying that their snazzy new threads were inspired by Art Deco designs, such as pleated, 20s structures – and, in particular, the aesthetic facets of Fritz Lang's early sci-fi movie classic Metropolis – to give off the feel of an alien architecture, but encasing human brains to create the ultimate horror. It certainly worked, turning Parallel Earth from a twin world to a grim dystopia. In the second of the two-parter, of course, the Doctor made sure this new manifestation of the Cybus Cybermen were at least a little bit thwarted, before hastily sealing off the parallel universe, conveniently leaving his attractive assistant's boyfriend behind too.
For a while, that seemed very much that for the Cybus Cybermen, up until the series two finale came along, with the Daleks themselves scoring an own goal in inadvertently reintroducing the Cybermen to planet Earth for a galactic royal rumble in which there was no winner.
Due to one of those pesky rips in Time and Space that tend to cause a spot of bother every now and then, it was then revealed in the 2008 Christmas special that a few metal megalomaniacs had seeped into Victorian London too, under the callous gaze of Miss Hartigan, another cold-hearted human whose traits invested themselves quite nicely into the Cybus incarnations, bringing to light that as long as there were people as metaphorically iron-fisted to match the Cybermen's literal steel knuckles, the Doctor would keep running into them.
Once Steven Moffat took over from T Davies, it was expected the Cybermen would get an old-style makeover. With budgets only extending to a Dalek re-design, however, it wasn't to be. Even so, Moffat still managed to make one rouge Cyberman head in The Pandorica Opens scarier than entire legions of invading forces. From this point on, the Cybus design prevailed even when the Cybermen in question were, as in Closing Time, supposedly the original Mondas model. All in all, it was around this point that Doctor Who realised it didn't really know what to do with the villains, relegating them to the meagre fate of being defeated by James Corden's baby and smack-talked by Rory the Roman.
It's little wonder that when Moffat asked Neil Gaiman to write a Cybermen story, he asked if he could make them as scary as they once were. Could it be time, once again, to be converted?
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