Earthshock (unproduced TV story)
- You may be looking for the Fifth Doctor story.
Earthshock was a proposed story for Amblin Entertainment's 1990s Doctor Who television show based on the Fifth Doctor story Earthshock. It was summarized in the Leekley Bible. The story was notable for reinterpreting the Cybermen as piratical plastic "Cybs".[1]
Synopsis
The Doctor arrives in Wyoming in 1994. In an underground cave of dinosaur fossils, a number of paleontologists were murdered by a raiding party of Cybs, galactic slash-and-burn marauders who converted themselves into beautiful cybotic organisms of vat-grown plastic after ruining the environment of their home planet, Mondas. They are protecting a bomb capsule capable of destroying Earth.
Although the Doctor dismantles the bomb, the Cybs capture him and force their way onto the Tardis, where a deadly fight takes place. The Doctor weaponises the Cybs' vanity against them, as well as their breathing apparatuses' vulnerability to gold dust.[2]
Notes
- The Nth Doctor notes that, while the visual reinterpretation of Cybermen as "deadly cyborg version[s] of a Native American-style warrior" would have been controversial among fans, the depiction of the Cybs as space scavengers is faithful to their introduction in The Tenth Planet (rather than, as the authors note, "some silver-suited alternative to the Daleks").
