Forum:The Unspecified Cyberman Debate

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The initial query

I was recently reading through The Brilliant Book 2012 and noticed that it states that the "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Closing Time" Cybermen (although it says nothing about "Blood of the Cybermen") are infact 'Mondasian' (for want of a better term) and not 'Pete's World' ones. I suppose the debate now is: Do we consider The Brilliant Book/s to be canon? I can see why some people wouldn't (a lot of it is written out-of-universe), but I also understand that the views on continuity expressed inside the book are also those expressed by the production team. So should we go ahead and merge the information into Cyberman (Mondas), or are there some people who object or something? The preceding comment was made by Bigredrabbit (talk to me) 23:26, October 29, 2011 (UTC)

If the fact that the more recent Cybermen are actually the main universe Cybermen actually does come from the production team or from Moffat, then I would say that we should consider that canon. I would think that writer's intent is really what is important in this case. Still, I'm sure that their are plenty of people who would disagree.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 20:19, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I think there's a debate as to whether reference material works as a source. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's preferred to be placed in the "behind the scenes" section. Am I wrong on this? That said, if it's absolutely said with the production team's blessing, rather than just whoever wrote it... -- Tybort (talk page) 20:55, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

There's s0me debate as to whether reference books are 'canon'. This wouldn't be the first article that demonstrated information from REF prefixes as 'canon'. Even the CyberMondasian, CyberNeomorph, CyberFaction, etc. stuff is mainly based on REF: Cybermen. So I really think we ought to consider The Brilliant Book 'canon'. 220.244.162.100 10:02, November 1, 2011 (UTC)

The issues are seperate in that particular case. The CyberMondasian / CyberNeomorph / etc. info comes from the book Doctor Who: Cybermen which is a very unique case, as it contains both in-universe narrative and out-of-universe reference material. The in-universe reference stuff is presented in the form of a reference work by in-universe characters. So the in-universe stuff from Doctor Who: Cybermen is okay to cite in-universe regardless of how we feel about out-of-universe reference works like The Brilliant Book, and we can't base our policy on out-of-universe reference material on how we feel about CyberNeomorphs. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 21:37, November 1, 2011 (UTC)

The Brilliant Book cannot be used to assert in-universe information. Our canon policy is immensely clear. Narratives are primary information. Secondary sources — that is, reference works — cannot be used to source of in-universe information. Secondary sources may be used to add notes to "behind the scenes" sections but that's about it.

Although I've got a lot to say on this subject, it's actually really simple. In-universe sections have to come from in-universe sources. Behind the scenes sections contain real world information. Ne'er the twain shall meet. And since the in-universe portion of articles is mandatory, if you don't have a narrative reference for a topic, you can't even start the article at all.

Here's a practical example. Let's say there was a book called Uncle Terrance's Guide to the Whoniverse. And imagine that Terrance Dicks, feeling a bit impish, put in an entry about a place called "Devon Motorworks", which he asserted was the company that built Bessie. You can't then create an article which says:

Devon Motorworks was the automobile factory that created Bessie. (REF: Uncle Terrance's Guide to the Whoniverse)

It doesn't matter that it's written by Terrance Dicks, key production team member during the years that Bessie was in use. The problem is that you're using an out-of-universe source to cite something which is in-universe.

I know it's tempting to use information said to be straight from the word processor of Steven Moffat, but we just can't do it. It's the "thin end of the wedge", as Humphrey Appleby liked to say. We'd then have to let in a lot of material:

• Offhand comments made on DVD commentaries. (And then we'd have to settle the question of who's right. For instance, Julie Gardner firmly asserts The Woman was the Doctor's mother, but RTD is more coy about it in PCOM: The End of Time part 2.)
• Stuff in the production notes section of DWM, or notes from the producers at the front of annuals. Was series 5 actually Season Fnarg? It is if you take Steven Moffat literally in the pages of DWM.
• A literal ton of material from old Doctor Who and Dalek annuals that we don't even want to think about, such as text which introduces activity pages, which is sometimes done non-narratively, but in-character. This sort of creep is already happening on the wiki, largely from the DWBIT range of magazines. Some editors are quoting from non-narrative "factoids" that appear in BIT and it simply can't be allowed to continue, much less expand to other publications.
• God does not know how much we'd have to include from The Writer's Tale, The Nth Doctor and other books which contain information about narrative avenues not actually taken. We're already on shaky enough ground sometimes using the credits and the script (hello Zaggit Zagoo bar, I'm lookin' at you) to name things which the finished episode does not. We don't want to open ourselves to the mentality that "anything which comes from the mouth or pen of The Creator deserves an article/is canon here". Sometimes great artists just doodle. We don't want to be in the position of creating an article for all the things that almost were.

Another thing I'm seeing as dangerous is the suggestion upthread that some reference works are better than others. This would be a very difficult arrangement to administrate. A reference work is a reference work is a reference work. One written by RTD may be more valuable to your own personal sense of canon, but it'd be hard to let some in but exclude others. Other people, who generally disapprove of RTD, would be quick to say that they don't particularly care what his opinion is in a specific book. Thus, the disqualifying factor here is not the writer, it's the perspective from which the work is written.

See, this is a wiki about a fictional universe. The DWU is created by and indivisible from narrative. This isn't like the Star Wars universe, where Lucasfilm has a canon policy. It's okay for w:c:starwars to use the Star Wars Encyclopedia because that's explicitly canon to Lucasfilm.

We don't have the organisational luxury of a BBC-provided list of allowed works. So we have to set some sort of boundaries. If we didn't, we'd soon be including fan works or things that have no actual bearing on the DWU.

Now, we have a pretty broad church here, but it's not infinitely expandable.

If you look at DWU reference works, as a general group, they're not the most accurate things in the world. JNT wrote The Companions and erroneously asserted that Sara Kingdom was a companion — something Jean Marsh has strongly denied ever since. JNT later asserted in another book that he had absolutely no problems with Tom Baker, something we know isn't true from the preponderance of other evidence. He's a big part of the production team, though. Should we take him more seriously than Jean-Marc Lofficier, who once notoriously asserted that Polly Wright's last name was "Wright"? I don't see why we should. Philip Hinchcliffe is well known as a non-expert on the narrative history of DW. I wouldn't trust him if he set out to make a DW encyclopedia, nor would I expect Verity Lambert to have been terribly accurate on the details of her tenure in the years before her death. I mean, this is surely the lesson of DVD commentaries. They're not that accurate, even though they may include people who we'd otherwise deem to be authoritative. We'd expect Tom Baker to remember things about The Ribos Operation. After all, he was there! But his memory is often spotty.

The point is, as a class of works, it is simply better for the quality of our information to stay on point. Our subject is the DWU, not other people's impressions of the DWU.

Such a stance forces us, as editors, to actually watch the episodes, or read the books, or listen to the audios. Everything in the DWU begins and ends with the narrative. "Reference" works are — by definition — someone else's distillation of the stories of the DWU. Now, of course, it's relevant to note what various people important to the production of the DWU think about it. But these notes must be in their proper place — the behind the scenes sections of articles.

Now, allllll that said, I happen to believe that you don't need The Brilliant Book to tell you that the S6 Cybermen are Mondasian. This is readily apparent in their design, in their ability to travel into deep space, and in the design of the shapes of their spacecraft — which clearly match those seen in The Invasion. The visual evidence is that they are "proper" Cybermen, and I've long held that we've put the burden of proof the wrong way around. The question is not, "prove they're Mondasian". Rather, it's, "using only the evidence at hand, prove that they're Pete's World."

We're being far too literal, expecting a bit of dialogue or a screen to tell us that they're definitely this universe's Cybermen. Such dialogue is incredibly unlikely. We can positively assert they're Mondasian, because they're obviously NOT Pete's World, and we've been given no reasonable expectation that there's a "third option" out there.

It's better to say that it's unclear how or why the Mondasian Cybermen came to have a somewhat similar appearance to the Pete's World Cybermen than for us to assert that the s6 Cyberment are a "third, unknown type" of Cybermen. We're just making that up. The visual evidence points to the fact that they are Mondasian, and that we're simply missing the bit of their history that connects, I guess, Silver Nemesis with A Good Man Goes to War.

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">01:37: Wed 02 Nov 2011 

Their ability to travel into deep space is not much of an argument for them being Mondasian, as the Cybermen with the Cybus logo in The Pandorica Opens also have this ability. And the third option is not them being a completely separate type, but a result of an alliance/merger between the Mondasian Cybermen and the remnants of the Pete's World Cybermen. As for visual evidence, while their ships etc. look Mondasian, I don't think we can just dismiss the fact that they themselves look more like Pete's World Cybermen. Ausir^(talk) 11:37, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

Well, as long as this is turning into a debate about what type of Cybermen they are, let's just go with Occam's Razer. An alliance/merger betweeen the different types of Cybermen is wild speculation. No possible justification for it at all exxcept that it would be cool. The Mondasian Cybermen aren't like the Daleks who have been completely destroyed (over and over), we just haven't heard from them. The Cybus-Cybermen, on the other hand, come from a parallel universe that has been completely cut off from the main one. Every episode that they have been in has given some sort of explanation for how they crossed through the void. Even in The Pandorica Opens, we can probably assume that they came through the cracks. The Cybermen of the new series look exactly like you would expect the classic Cybermen to look if they had a higher budget and modern special effects. Unless we have a real reason to believe that they found another way to brak down the walls of the universe and cross over from Pete's World, we should assume that they are the Mondasian Cybermen unless told otherwise.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 20:04, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that we don't have enough info to assume a single thing about where those C-less Cybus-looking Cybermen came from. What we do know is that the modern version of the DWU contains our familiar classic-era Mondasian Cybermen, because of the head in Henry van Statten's vault, so we can't assume an original Star Trek Klingon style of "oh, they were supposed to look like that back then too" just because that would be cool. We should really be calling Rory's Cybermen "Cybermen," without indicating anything to suggest they came from Mondas or Pete's World or France or any other damn thing; it would all be just speculation on our part. We're here on this particular wiki to catalog what we see, not to imagine what would fill in the gaps we don't see. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 02:59, November 5, 2011 (UTC)

It's not really relevant, but the Klingons' appearance actually changed due to Klingon genetic engineering experiments using human augment embryos. There was an Enterprise 2-parter that explained it. The case with the cyberheadd is more like the DS9 episode where they travel back in time to The Trouble with Tribbles and ask Worf why the Klingons all look like humans. Anyway, back to the point. I wasn't saying that we should assume that the Cybermen always looked the way that they do now. I meant that if they had originally brought back the Mondasian Cybermen in the new series instead of parallel universe Cybermen, they probably would have made them look similar to how they look now. Even if you just look at the black & white era of the show, the Cybermen in The Invasion are radically different from the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet. It isn't really a stretch to assume that they would continue to look more advanced. By your logic, we also shouldn't assume that the Cybermen in Silver Nemesis or The Five Doctors, or most other cyberepisodes. After all, they rarely specify where they came from and for all we know the Pete's World Cybermen could have travelled to our world, gone back in time, gotten rid of their Cybus logos, and faced earlier versions of the Doctor in different episodes. We shouldn't require evidence that the Cybermen are from our universe-if there is no proof that they aren't from our universe then they are from ours.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 06:03, November 5, 2011 (UTC)

i think the best way to compare the cybermen types is to look at how they become cybermen. mondasian cybermen are made from human parts being replaced with cybernetic parts while the cybus cybermen are created when the brain is transplanted into the cybersuit. from this information, i conclude that the cybermen in series 5/6 are mondasian not cybus (skull in helmet in DW:pandorica opens, craigs transformation in DW:closing time), although i do think a cybersuit redesign would have helped clear matters. an alliance is still a valid point though. this debate seems more like the kind of conversation that would happen on the howling instead of in the panopticon. Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 08:28, December 20, 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least when it started out, this was about trying to figure out what to do with the Cyber-articles. Anyway, the method of conversion can't really be used as evidence, thanks to Cyberwomen and Lisa Hallett. There is probably more than enough evidence, regardless, to assume that the Cybermen that we've been seeing recently are real-universe Cybermen, but just putting the ambiguous Cybermen on the Cyberman page is probably as fair a compromise as any, and the fact that we are having this discussion proves that the evidence that we are now seeing real Cybermen wasn't quite clear enough for some people. Hopefully we'll get some kind of redesign before long that will finally convince people that we are seeing real Cybermen.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 09:17, December 20, 2011 (UTC)

I don't know why you think that the cybus cybermen aren't real cybermen. for those of us that started watching from the 2005 series, they are the only cybermen they know, and before i started watching the classic series and participated in these sorts of conversations, i will admit i was confused at first to why the cybermen were converting people by methods other than brain transplant. now i have more knowledge on the subject, i can clearly see that they are actually a different kind of cybermen, but that should have been made more obvious. i guess the thing with lisa does add confusion to the conversation as she wasn't converted in the same way that had been stated earlier in (the new) series, but the show still shouldn't confuse new whovian children who are to young to have watched the classic series or torchwood. Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 05:00, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I should have put the word real in quotes. The Cybusmen are clearly real in that they exist, but it is the same as saying that Jackie Tyler is the "real" Jackie as opposed to Jackie Tyler (Pete's World). Anyway, there is no reason that age should stop younger children from wathcing Classic Who. The show had long been cancelled when I was a kid, but I was still a fan when I was nine. Still, I definetly agree that they should have made it more clear that the Mondas-Cybermen were back, if for no other reason than to avoid these kinds of debates. Anyway, this conversation is sort of veering away from one that is appropriate for the Panopticon, so if we are going to continue discussing this, then we should move to the Howling, unless someone has some kind of solution as to which article this should all go on.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 07:51, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

ok, i opened a thread on the howling to continue this conversation about the types of cybermen http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Howling:The_cybermen_debate Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 11:55, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

Admin calls time out

I'm going to disagree with Icecreamdif. This conversation should remain here. It is a violation of T:SPOIL FORUM to invite people to a howling thread from the forum namespace. People in the forum space may not understand fully that they are entering a place where spoilers are allowed. No discussion in the Howling can ever be used to formulate policy. We do in fact need policy on this matter, so here the conversation should remain.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">03:39: Mon 26 Dec 2011 

Oh, and guys, please indent your comments, by using colons (:) at the beginning of a line, so that others can follow the conversation later. Below are the comments from the Howling thread I've now closed.

The conversation continues

I genuinely think the origin of any Cyberman that isn't explicitly shown should be left intentionally vague. The Cybus Cybermen was meant to be a reboot of the Cybermen just like the new Silurian. In the end, I think they are just considered Cybermen by some of the writiers. The Cybermen with ambiguous origin does not have to be Mondasian or Cybus; there could be other Cybermen. Of course, the information from the Brilliant Book should be noted, but the other ones should probably be just considered generic Cybermen in general.

The fact that Mondasian Cybermen looking similar to Cybus Cybermen already suggests that certain adoption of each other's technology has occured. The clean division between the two races may not even exist anymore.

The Silurian would be much more worthy of debate, considering that the new series Silurian have removable mask and a humanoid face, which may suggest all other Silurians and Sea Devils actually might have been wearin masks the whole time... --222.166.181.197 15:31, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

The Silurians are a completely different case. The original Silurians would have looked very stupid in the modern show. Some races, like the Sontarans, can return to the modern show and still look good with few major changes to their appearance, but the Silurians just looked like people in cheap costumes back in the 70s. The Cybermen also looked like people in cheap costumes back in the classic show, but their appearance was constantly changing even in the classic show. The Silurians, however, are a fully biological species, and some kind of explanation was needed to change their appearance. The fact that Mondasian Cybermen look similar to Cybusmen really proves nothing at all except that they didn't have the budget to redesign them. There is also no reason to believe that there are more than the two forms of Cybermen. Just the fact that Lumic randomly came up with a similar design and name to a species that existed in another universe is unlikely enough, but anymore variants of the Cybermen existing is next to impossible. Any Cyberman we see must be either from Mondas or from the Earth of Pete's World. If you genuinely think that the origin of any Cybermen that isn't explicitly shown should bhe left intentionally vague, then you must think that Cybermen in any Classic episode that doesn't mention Mondas should also be left vague. As I mentioned in the Panoppticon conversation, a group of Cybusmen could have crossed into our universe, travelled back in time, gone through a redesign, and then been scooped up and taken to the death zone, or captured by Vorg and stuffed in his miniscope, or gone after Nemesis. We shouldn't automatically assume that the Cybermen we see in new episodes is from Pete's World, anymore than we should assume that any other character we see is from Pete's World. The walls of the universe have been closed. Nothing can get across through the void. Therefore, the Cybusmen couldn't possibly have been behind Closing Time. If you want an in-universe reason as to why they weren't redesigned, then apart from Rose, every character who appeared in Pete's World was identical to their "real"-world counterpart. Why should something like the Cybermen be any different?Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 22:12, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and the idea of Classic Silurians wearing masks the whole time could actually make sense. It would explain why their third eye could be used as a weapon, for example. Maybe it would have been cool if the Silurians initially looked like their classic counterparts in The Hungry Earth, and then revealed that they were just wearing masks. Anyway, that is another debate entirely.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 22:14, December 21, 2011 (UTC)

uh...what you said make as much sense as saying having a Pete in Pete's world is unlikely. They are parallel universes to our; they are meant to have similarities. Moreover, the development of Cybermen not of Mondasian origin in our Universe is perfectly probable. A Cyberman is a Cyberman, and the origin, unless specified, is ambiguous. You don't go and look at Silurian and say they come from specific parts of Earth unless they specifically told you now, do you? --222.166.181.57 03:40, December 22, 2011 (UTC)

Well, realistically, it seems incredibly unlikely that their would be a Pete in Pete's world. The odds that the same people would meet and have children in such a radically different world are incredibly low. In any parallel universe story, it's just one of those things where your willing suspension of disbelief has to kick in. However, with the Cybermen, it's even more unlikely. Not only do we have a very similar "species," but they have a completely different origin. In many ways it is completely ridiculous, but Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel are good stories, so the unlikliness of the whole thing is easy to ignore. However, unless you're suggesting Cybermen from yet another universe made their way through the sealed walls of the universe, then we must assume that there are only two brands of Cybermen in The Doctor's universe.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 05:20, December 23, 2011 (UTC)

the universes are parrallel, meaning they are very similar meaning that having a person in both universes is still very likely, otherwise the world would look much more different from ours then it does as if any of the many importaint people who influenced the way the world looks like today (eg: benjamin franklin, alexander graeham bell) were never born, the world would look very different to what it is, which is basically our world with blimps in the air. next, i think what 222 was saying was that the mondasian cybermen might not be the only ones which originated in this universe. there are many other humanoid species which might have turned into cybermen within our own universe. although it hasn't been specified in the show, there is always that possibility. i also quite like the idea of the two known kinds of cybermen forming an aliance with the cybus' better body and the mondasian's easier way of converting. Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 12:08, December 23, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but we saw that Rose already didn't exist in the parallel universe. Think about all the many other people who must not exist in that universe. Anyway, back to the point, what are the odds tha there would be other Cybermen in our universe. You might as well say that another species who were mutated in a nuclear war built travel cases for thesmelves and removed all emotions, and now we have another, identical, group of Daleks. Plenty of other humanoid species have turned into Cybermen, but they are still all the Mondasian brand of Cybermen. The Cybeusmen only want to upgrade humans, but the Mondasian Cybermen are much less picky. Whether a Cybermen in the "real" universe was originally from Earth, Sto, Dulcis, or any of the other planets of humanoid, they are still Mondasian Cybermen. Unless you are suggesting that the Cybermen were created independantly on multiple different worlds in our universe, which, as I said, seems incredibly unlikely.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 18:21, December 24, 2011 (UTC)

even if the chance is 1,000,000,000/1, that still means that there would be a possibility for much more than 2 different kinds of cybermen in existence. and who knows, maybe there is another dalek-like race in the whoniverse that we haven't seen yet? Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 01:54, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, since you clearly have no idea what a parallel universe is, please either read the Pete's World article in this wiki or go look up what a parallel universe is before you come back to this discussion. It's quite pointless to discuss something when you don't even understand what the subject is.--222.166.181.78^{talk to me} 02:00, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

I know what a parallel universe is. That still doesn't make it any more likely that the same people can possible be born and have relatively similar lives in such a radically different environment, but at this point that's not even what you're suggesting. You're saying that there may be more Cybermen in the Doctor's universe. That seems ridiculously unlikely. Maybe there are other universes with Cybermen in them, but in this one, it would just be silly to assume that there is more than one brand of Cybermen. Maybe there is also another Gallifrey in the other constellation of Kasteborus in the Doctor's universe, with another race of Time Lords on them. By that logic, we can't be sure of anything that we've seen. Is Strax from the same species of Sontaran that we've gotten used to, or has an identical species evolved on another planet called Sontar and started reproducing by cloning after becoming obsessed with war? I think we have to assume that there is only one brand of Cybermen per universe.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 17:00, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, can you just read the articles first. The fact that you keep saying it is unlikely to have Pete in Pete's World contradicts the definition. There's no discussion if you don't understand what you are discussing.

Your examples also suggest you don't really understand other people are saying. Non-Mondasian Cybermen does not in any way equates to having another Sontar and another race of Sontaran. Sontar is a planet and Sontaran is a race specifically from the planet. Cybermen on the other hand is used as a generic name. It would be more similar to Sensorites vs Oods, Minotaurs vs Nimons, Foamasi vs Slitheens, Humans vs Non-Earth Near-Humans...the examples are plenty. Daleks are a also clone species, so I have no idea what is your point. --222.166.181.144^{talk to me} 18:40, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry you disagree with me Czechout. I thought this might do better in the howling, since this is really straying away from a policy discussion, and is really moving more towards just speculating about the Cybermen. While I am happy to argue all day on the Howling that the Cybermen in the new seasons must be the Mondasian Cybermen, as a matter of policy, I would say that we should stick with the system that we have now until an episode gives us a more concrete answer. Maybe we should have a discussion here and one on the Howling. Anyway, Cybermen are still a distinct being created by one species. Other races of Cyborg species may be possible, and have been seen on a few occasions, but there are distinct characteristics of the Cybermen, gold-allergies, the handlebars on their heads, that are unlikely to be randomly duplicatd by another species. It also wouldn't be even remotely related to Sensorites vs. Ood, or Minotaurs vs. Nimons, unless the Mondasian Cybermen had something to do with their creation. I have never seen The Sensorites, and it has been a long time since I've seen The Horns of Nimon or The Leisure Hive, so forgive me if I misunderstand, but aren't the Sensorites and the Ood just from the same star system, and the Doctor said that the Nimons and the Minotaur were related. What you seem to be suggesting about the Cybermen is completely different. You are saying that there are two races of Cyborgs that independently evolved to be almost exactly the same. That is completely ridiculous, even in a universe with two Loch Ness Monsters and three explanations for the destruction of Atlantis. Apart from that, you have no evidence to back up the idea of there being multiple versions of Cybermen that appear in the Doctor's universe, and it just makes the whole thing needlessly more complicated. If you don't agree with any of my other arguments, then we have seen two forms of Cybermen, so there are two forms of Cybermen. To assume anything else would be wild speculation.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 06:45, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Nobody ever said the Cybermen have to be unrelated. All everyone above are trying to tell you is that the show mentioned Cybermen, the category Cybus Cybermen and Mondasian Cybermen used in fandom are just denotation of origin, the instances where the origins are ambiguous, then they are ambiguous. There are just Cybermen, a generic category of villain augmented by cybernetic mean with certain similarities. Cybus Cybermen and Mondasian Cybermen are not two forms, they are two races with similarities. The only instance that suggests gold aversion in Cybus Cybermen are in the games and they only mentioned it occurred in the prototypes only, so I have no idea where you get your facts from. The Cybermen with ambiguous origin could be of either origin or neither or combination or offshoot, etc. Labeling Cybermen with uncertain origin as generic Cybermen would not at all be a wild speculation; it would be a wild speculation to assume they must be either. What you are saying is akin to saying grouping every near-human as "human" because the chance of another organism looking human is slim or saying Slitheens are Foamasis because they are technologically similar.

Not labeling the generic Cybermen as Cybermen of Mondasian or Cybus origin makes 1 less assumption and is basically just taking what the show gives us. Labeling them as either would require 1 additional assumption, so I don't see how making more assumptions would make it a less wild speculation. --222.166.181.115^{talk to me} 09:11, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Just as a point of order, when I say I "disagree", I meant that I was disagreeing with you in the sense that a policeman "disagrees" with you driving 70 in a 35 zone. I understand your inclination to suggest the Howling because there is an element of speculation to this discussion. But that's the fault of Moffat and company. Any policy solution we come up with is necessarily going to be based on speculation, cause the narrative gives us only visual references, not dialogue. There are a number of speculations we make just to be able to have some sort of organisational order. We assume, for instance, that a rabbit is a mammal, just so we can have some sort of categorisation. But there's no narrative which explicitly says, "Rabbits are mammals".

Same thing here. What we're trying to do in the thread is to hash out which bits of the visual narrative should receive primacy. That requires comparison with other species, opinion, and counter-argument.

As an admin, I do have to enforce the rules. And in this case, any tip-toeing over the line about speculation is far outweighed by the fact that this is a genuine effort to find a policy. Policy can never arise from the Howling, because a number of our editors won't touch the Howling with a barge pole. We absolutely cannot force people into a part of the wiki where spoilers are allowed. That's the major point of T:SPOIL FORUM, so I will ask you not to have a parallel thread to this one at the Howling. We cannot go on with this "unspecified" idea to Cybermen. We need to decide here on some other way forward, cause it's going to be a long time before we get a proper explanation.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">14:56: Mon 26 Dec 2011 

The "all on one page" option

The most sensible thing would be to merge the two Cybermen articles and just specify the instances when they have clearly identified their origin. For the ones specified in The Brilliant Book, just note it in within the article. Moffat clearly makes very little attempt in specifying which Cyberman race is appearing on screen, the problem is just going to accumulate and the unspecified Cybermen appearances will probably end up more than specified Cybus Cybermen's appearances. There's absolutely nothing wrong with just calling them Cybermen, we don't even know if the Doctor knows or cares if they were form Pete's World or our World. --222.166.181.210^{talk to me} 15:20, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Well, we know the Doctor knows the difference. He demonstrates such knowledge in Rise and The Next Doctor. He'd probably care, too, because they have different weaknesses. For "our world" guys, it's gold; for Cybus Industries, it's removal/compromise of the emotion chip. I'm not actually opposed to the idea of one big Cyberman article, though. I mean, that's already happened at Cyberman, really. I say we either do that, or the suggestion in the next section. These articles which stress origin, though, need to go. Cyberman (Mondas), and the ilk, need to go.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">15:35: Mon 26 Dec 2011 

Yeah, I understand that you were overruling me and not just disagreeing. I just figured that it might be difficult to make a policy out of all of this speculation, some of which is much more wild than others. I obviously wasn't suggesting to use the Howling to make policy, but it is commonly used to discuss topics like this, and this has come to look much more like a Howling discussion than a Panopticon one. Anyway, if you don't mind all of this speculation on a Panopticon page, then I'll drop the issue. Anyway, I might be a bit confused about your suggestion, 222. Are you suggesting that we have seen other groups of Cybermen than the Cybus and Mondasian versions? I think that we should really assume that every Cyberman that we have seen has to belong to one of the two groups, even if we don't know which. If we were still on the Howling, then I would say that we must assume that any Cyberman whose origin was not shown on screen must be a Mondasian Cyberman, because the Cybusmen are locked in another universe. However, as far as the articles are concerned, I would say that we should just stick with what we are doing now. Keep the Mondasian and Cybus pages, and the Cyberman page that discusses both of them, with a section that mentions ones of "unknown origin." Right now, the season 6 Cybermen are discussed on the Mondasian Cybermen page, with the Brilliant Book 2012 as a source. I'm not quite sure of what the policy is. Can the Brilliant Book be used as a source for something like this?Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 17:03, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely not. That's the first question in the thread, and it was answered at the top of the thread.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">20:51: Mon 26 Dec 2011 

Well then, I'll go move the references to A Good Man Goes to War and Closing Time from the Cyberman (Mondas) page to the Cyberman page, at least until we come to some kind of a consensus on this page, because the page cites the Brilliant Book 2012 as its reason for putting them there.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 01:00, December 27, 2011 (UTC)

The disambig proposal

Here's an idea to consider. Why don't we just follow standard disambiguation policy? We're so focused on origin, we've forgotten our own rules. By rights, the following should be happening:

• Cyberman (Mondas) should actually be Cyberman (The Tenth Planet)
• Cyberman (Pete's World) should actually be Cyberman (Rise of the Cybermen)
• The guys with the gear logos should be Cyberman (Blood of the Cybermen)
• And the series 6 guys should be Cyberman (A Good Man Goes to War)

Yes, it's longer to type (though autosuggest will help), but that's actually how our rules go. And it avoids the question of origin entirely.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">15:25: Mon 26 Dec 2011 

I have to admit my surprise when I read this whole thing through. I didn't see one person bring up the classic cybermen's weakness to gold and the modern cybermen have no apparent feeling about this one way or the other. So would it be inaccurate to say that all DWU Prime Cybermen have a gold weakness? – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.181.229.139 (talk • contribs) .

The gold weakness was never mentioned until Revenge of the Cybermen I think, but that doesn't mean that it didn't exist before then. Anyway, the disambig idea has pretty much the same problems as the ideas that deal with origin. Since the Cybermen in Blood of the Cybermen and A Good Man Goes to War are presumably either Mondasian Cybermen or Pete's World Cybermen, they would still have to be in either the Cyberman (The Tenth Planet) page, the Cybermen (Rise of the Cybermen) page, or a generic Cyberman page. It would just be speculation to assume that they are a new form of Cyberman. Unless you also want to create Cyberman (The Invasion), Cyberman (Revenge of the Cybermen), Cyberman (Earthshock), etc. then we shouldn't create a new page for the season 6 Cybermen. Maybe we should change the names of the pages that we already have to fit that policy, but I don't think that we should create new pages.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 20:21, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, I don't understand what you still don't get at this point. There were never "forms of Cybermen"; we have Cybermen we encounter throughout the series, some of them are Mondasian in origin, some of them are from another dimension that we saw in Tenth's adventures, and some of them we just don't know. It is not a speculation to keep it ambiguous, because we simply don't know where they come from. Cybus Cybermen just popped up in the Pandorica arc and the Next Doctor, you'll just have to accept that Cybus Cybermen from the void could randomly pop up at any point in time even if the Pandoric Open's Cybus Cybermen were the only branch of them not in the Void at that time. I don't see an article on Human (Pete's World), Human (Dreamlord's World). We have a generic grouping of humanoid organisms that depends on cybernetic enhancements as medical aids and reproduce through conversion/upgrade and that's pretty much it. I genuinely don't see any sense in keeping the current format or to do what Icecreamdif said. Even Mondasian Cybermen would be composed of multiple biological species, we are dealing with a special generic group composed of multiple species and of different origins. It's nice to have the names Cybus Cybermen and Mondasian Cybermen to be used among fandom, but they are of very little use for references, much less than just saying explicitly the group they are from when it's stated in the TV series. --222.166.181.66^{talk to me} 07:42, December 27, 2011 (UTC)

Every Cyberman is either what we now call Mondasian Cybermen or Cybus Cybermen. The two aren't related to eachother, and have entirely different origins and backstories. Whenever we see the Pete's World Cybermen in the Doctor's universe, there is some kind of explanation for how they managed to cross the void. Some Cybermen's origins are left ambiguous, so we shouldn't mention them on either page, but simply merging the two pages would be the same as merging Pete Tyler (Pete's World) with Pete Tyler, or Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart with Lethbridge-Stewart (Inferno), or Rose Tyler with Rose (dog). They are similar, but have entirely different backstories. Maybe, we should change the names to Cyberman (The Tenth Planet) and Cyberman (Rise of the Cybermen) though.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 05:49, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

uh...What was the explanation in The Pandorica Opens? Did I miss it? Moreover, how does any of your analogy relate to the problem here? They are all individuals, and we have more than 1 Cyberman. I don't understand how you would think Cyberman's case is more similar to "Pete Tyler" than "Human". We don't have "Human (Pete's World)" but somehow you think "Cybermen" should be classified as an individual and not the pseudo-specie it is now? What you said makes absolutely no sense. Your logic is just not possible to follow, so I think the merging into 1 comprehensive Cybermen article would be more sensible.--222.166.181.33^{talk to me} 06:13, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Didn't the Cybermen in The Pandorica Opens come through the cracks? I thought there was some kind of reference in there somewhere. Anyway, the Cybermen are not a species. They are not the same as individuals, but comparing them to humans would be innacurate. We can assume that the humans from Pete's World are more or less the same as those from the Doctor's. They evolved on the planet Earth, formed pretty much the same nations and organisations, and are almost exactly the same. The Cybermen, on the other hand, are very different in each universe. One version was created by a mad man on Earth who wanted to become immortal, while the other was created by the Mondasians because they didn't want to die. One version is interested in "upgrading" humanity, while the other group seems to be more interested in waging general war, and is much less particular about who they convert. One group is allergic to gold, one isn't. Really, apart from the name and a couple of similarities in appearance, the two have very little in common. Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 06:44, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Can you point out the reference concerning "the Cybus Cybermen came through the cracks"? You keep saying these points that you "thought there was some kind of reference in there somewhere" but noone can find them, and you also can't tell us where you find them? If they were not the same as individuals, then why did you give those as examples? You keep giving these examples that you think are different but used them nevertheless, what is your point?

"They evolved on the planet Earth, formed pretty much the same nations and organisations, and are almost exactly the same. The Cybermen, on the other hand, are very different in each universe. One version was created by a mad man on Earth who wanted to become immortal, while the other was created by the Mondasians because they didn't want to die."

What is your point? One developed in an alternate Earth from a parallel dimension for survival and another developed in a twin planet of earth for survival? While I agree they are not the same specie, and Cybermen are just a pseudo-specie, what you said was not showing the differences but the similarities. Even the Mondasian Cybermen are not a proper specie, Not all Mondasian Cybermen are necessarily Mondasians. What makes Cybermen Cybermen are really just the similar cybernetic enhancements as medical aids, and the Doctor only referred to them as Cybermen. You have multiple origins, yes, but there are multiple human/near-human origins. Before you comment again, could you please just look through the earlier posts? It is all but impossible to follow your logic, because you are completely inconsistent with everything you say, one post you said the Cybus Cybermen are allergic to gold and the next post you said they are not, and this happens to pretty much everything you say. I fail to see any coherent point that you're trying to make. There's no discussion if you don't know what you're saying. --222.166.181.90^{talk to me} 07:05, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I think you're right that there was no reference to the Cybermen coming through the crack. In terms of how many pages we have, that doesn't really matter though. I think my mind was still on whether the season 6 Cybermen were Cybus or Mondasian when I brought that up. I also never said that Cybus-men were allergic to gold. I said that all Cybermen in the Doctor's universe had the allergy, in response to the suggestion that there may be non-Mondasian Cybermen in the Doctor's universe. Anyway, in regards to how many articles we have, I used the individual examples, because they are the closest analogy that exists. Since we don't have another race of Cyborg species that exist in multiple universes, the only analogies that were available were individuals and species. Although they are not individuals, I am suggesting that we treat them more like individuals than like a species. Mainly, because, as I said, the Humans are more or less the same in both universes. Both Cybermen do have a few similarities. As you say, they are both pseudospecies, both look similar, and both are called Cybermen. However, the fact remains that they are not the same thing. They have different origins, different goals, different strengths/weaknesses. Cybusmen and Mondasian Cybermen are simply not the same thing, and thus shouldn't share an article. I'm sorry if some of my posts have been a bit confusing, and I will try to be more clear in the future.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 07:36, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Just look at what you posted before you response, you specifically said the gold allergy thing in 06:45, December 26, 2011. I really don't see you are developing any sort of argument here. It's really tiring to keep looking up things you claim happened; and after not being able to find any of them, all we get is you admitting it's something you thought happened but really didn't.

I'm sure there could have been reasons in formatting the articles the way you suggested but certainly not the reasons you are giving, and I'm not quite sure if you understand your reasons. According to what you said, humans and Cybermen from Pete's World are both similar to their N-Space counterparts and both of them have different histories from their N-Space counterparts and yet we should format them differently. Your definition of origin is also very unconventional, how does 2 human races from two different universes be considered to have the same origin? How does 2 human races in 2 different technological advancement stage from 2 universes be considered to be exactly the same race? The articles themselves are already formatting some of the pseudo-species as if they were species. I think you can get away with calling the Cybermen a pseudo-specie, but I doubt you can get away with calling them a pseudo-individual. I support the merging of the disastrously chaotic "Cyber articles" because this wiki is, essentially, a reference site. Dividing everything into the smallest technical unit possible inconsistently just makes the wiki both ineffective, inaccurate, and incoherent. --222.166.181.203^{talk to me} 09:39, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Let's try to simplify things as much as possible. I never said that Cybermen were pseudo-individuals. I used individuals as an analogy, but I never said they were the same thing. If anything, the Cybermen should be treated like a technology. Anyway, the Cybermen might have a few similarities in each universe, but they are completely different technologies. Humans, on the other hand, might have a few differences, but they are pretty much the same in the end. I would imagine that if you looked at the DNA of humans in both universes, you would find that they are the same species. Of course, that is speculation, but it probably is best to assume that the humans in Pete's World are, in fact, homo-sapiens. The Cybermen in Pete's World, however, are a fully different technology. They have different goals, they convert people in different ways, they have different weaknesses, and if you were to take them apart you would likely find different technological differences(once again speculation, but probably a safe assumption.) All of the Cybermen that we have seen which originate in n-space, are simply upgrades to the original Mondasian Cybermen. Over the years, the Mondasian Cybermen became more advanced and eventually evolved into what we saw in Silver Nemesis. That is why it makes since to keep all of the Cybermen from the Classic Series in one page. The Cybus-men, however, are simply not the same thing, and are unrelated to the Mondasian-Cybermen. Therefore, they should not share a page. However, it makes since to keep one page that does describe and link to the primary pages for both, because they do share a number of similarities, and there are some Cybermen whose origins we do not know. Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 08:01, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Uh...you are not making a lot of sense:

Cybermen as Technology

Technology of different origins are currently grouped under the same article if their primary function and name are the same or similar. E.g. a variety of perception filters of different origins are shown in the series with similar functions, and they are all grouped under Perception Filter. I genuinely do not understand why you raised the point and decided to go against the convention already in place for that category.

Cybus Cybermen and Mondasian Cybermen are unrelated and Humans from both Universes are the same

Ignoring the fact that everything you said are pure speculations as you have stated, if two races originating from different Universe with different technology can be considered "the same" for one, why are they different in another case? Assuming you now take the stance that gold allergy is not present in Cybus Cybermen contrary to your initial stance, humans in Pete's World would have different technological weaknesses to humans in N-space, they use different technology, their daily lives are different, and if you take apart their devices, you'll find technology way more advance and different from those of human race in N-space. Everything you said about the Cybermen also apply to the humans. Even if the humans were biologically similar, they are of complete different origins and evolved independently from each other, making them as unrelated as Cybus Cybermen and Mondasian Cybermen, so why would the conclusions reached be the opposite of each other in your example?

Biology

As stated above, if you look at the DNA of Mondasian Cybermen, you will find DNA from different species. So what is the significance of genetic when you are dealing with this topic? --222.166.181.155^{talk to me} 09:05, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

The Humans in Pete's World ride around in blimps and use advanced Cybus-industries technology. In every way that matters, they are exactly the same. There are differences in their society, but fundamentally they are the same. The Cybermen, have a handful of similarities, but are fundamentally different. You say that we have one page for the perception filters because the technologies are similar, which is why I suggest that we keep a page that encompasses all Cybermen. However, we know enough about the history and technological differences of the two different types of Cybermen that it is worth it to have two seperate pages. I never said that Cybus-men have a gold alergy. As a minor point in an earlier argument about something else, I mentioned that all Cybermen that originate in N-space have the gold allergy, but it is not as fundamental a part of my argument as you make it out to be. Whether the Cybus-men are or aren't allergic to gold, I don't see how it makes a difference, so I wish that you'd stop bringing it up. It is getting a bit distracting. Apart from a couple of physical appearances, and the fact that they sometimes convert people to become like them, the Cybermen and the Cybusmen have very little in common. Also, we know a good deal about Cyber-history in both universes. Our knowledge of human-history, however, is very one sided. In N-space, we know that the Earth formed around a Racnoss spaceship, life was started by an exploding Jagaroth ship, technology manipulated by the Silence, and a good deal more about Human history after that. In Pete's World, however, we know next to nothing about Human's before the 21st century, and very little even in that century. We don't have enough information for it to be worth it to create a Human (Pete's World) article. Any information on humanity in that universe can just be mentioned on the Human page. However, since we have so much more information about the Cybermen of both universes, it only makes sense to have multiple articles.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 09:27, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

So now are they technology? You are just utterly confusing and contradictory. You say they are technology but they should not be formatted in the same way as other technology, you agreed they are some sort of pseudo-specie but they should not be formatted like such, you said they are not one pseudo-individual but should be formatted that way.

What is "the 2 human races are different but they are fundamentally the same"? If they are different, they cannot be the same, the word "same" excludes differences. On the other hand how does "apart from a couple of physical appearances, and the fact that they sometimes convert people to become like them" constitute to a conclusion that the Cybermen are fundamentally different when the conversion/upgrade and survival/immortality theme is what the Cybermen fundamentally are?

Would you say a Korean made smartphone and an American made smartphone are fundamentally different because apart from the fact that they do what smartphones do they are different? I am really sorry, but there's no logic in your argument.

It is quite important to merge the articles for consistency and accuracy. What you are suggesting now is the current confusing status quo, which I think a lot of people have already agreed to abandon in the beginning of the conversation.--222.166.181.126^{talk to me} 09:58, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

and icecreamdif, all these points that you say don't matter were originally bought up by you (crack, gold, crossing void, individual, etc); if they don't matter, please don't bring them up. Every one of these points that you "thought were true" took up people's time to look for them.--222.166.181.251^{talk to me} 10:09, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

If you look up, you will notice that we were debating other issues earlier. The gold issue had more to do with how to categorize the season 6 Cybermen, but that is not what we are talking about. Same with the cracks. When I say that they are different but fundamentally the same, I mean that despite their minor differences, they are mostly the same. The Cybermen are the exact opposite. Despite their minor similarities, they are mostly different. The Cybermen in n-space weren't really all about the conversion process. It is something that they did, and it may have been an important part of their creation, but in the Cybermen's classic appearances, they were usually trying to capture something, or avoid being entombed, or fighting a war. Conversion was only ever used as a means to an end, but it wasn't their primary schtick in the same way that it is with the Pete's World Cybermen. Going by your analogy with the smartphones then, a smartphone made by a Korean company would have enough similarities with one made by an American company to warrant having a Smartphone article. However, if you look at Wikipedia, they also have individual articles for different brands of smartphone. The Cybermen are not a species, a pseudospecies, or a technology. They are something unique, so we can only make a decision based on those other things. 69.143.170.93^{talk to me} 04:27, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

You just said they should be treated like technology in your last post and agreed on the pseudo specie a few posts ago, now they are neither. What is the point of raising any point at all if you are going to completely contradicts them every other post?

I don't know what other issues you were talking about throughout the entire conversation, but everyone else have always been talking about the original topic. So are you saying none of the points you have raised are relevant to the discussion on hand?

Did you see Cybus Cybermen upgrading people in the Pandorica Opens? Did they not waged a battle with the Daleks and ended up trapped in the Void?

"I mean that despite their minor differences, they are mostly the same. The Cybermen are the exact opposite. Despite their minor similarities, they are mostly different." You keep saying this, but you failed to mention any valid support for this statement. This is basically something that you personally decided arbitrarily, so please do not keep bringing up this statement unless you can support it.

Concerning the wikipedia thing:

1. This is not wikipedia, and if you cared to read the example I posted, currently technology like perception filter (which includes the perception filter for camouflage and the perception filter for attention-repellant) are grouped under the same article if they have similar primary functions and names in this wiki.

2. Wikipedia does not have articles for American smartphones and Korean smartphones, wikipedia has articles for the brands (which would equate to Cybus Industry, Pete's World, Mondas, etc), and specific popular models (which would equate to CyberLord, CyberKing, CyberShade, Cybermat, etc).--222.166.181.228^{talk to me} 08:47, December 31, 2011 (UTC)