Cyberman
- This article is an overview of the concept of the Cybermen. You may be looking for more specific versions, including those from Mondas and those from Pete's World.
Cybermen were a "race" of cybernetically augmented humanoids. They varied greatly in design, with different factions throughout time and space.
The two major groups, from which nearly all other known versions derived, were the Mondasian Cybermen, which originated on the planet Mondas – Earth's twin planet in the Doctor's universe (TV: The Tenth Planet) - and the Cybermen created by Cybus Industries, which originated on Earth in an alternate universe known by the Doctor as Pete's World. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) Despite the different origins, there were major similarities between both groups of Cybermen, and, after the two groups came into contact, there were versions that shared characteristics of both. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
For the most part, Cybermen lacked individuality or names. They had no emotions and viewed them as a weakness. They frequently attempted to physically and mentally re-engineer humans and other humanoids into Cybermen, via a process called "cyber-conversion" or "upgrading".
Origins
Mondas
- Main article: Cyberman (Mondas)
These Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids who originated on Earth's former twin planet, Mondas. Mondas drifted into the outer solar system. To survive, the natives of that world adapted by turning themselves into cyborgs. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Eventually, all of the Mondasians underwent cyber-conversion. (AUDIO: Spare Parts) Many of them left Mondas and ultimately developed into separate groups without connection to one another.
Nearly all were silver save for one black variety (for stealth) surviving in the London sewers (TV: Attack of the Cybermen). They had exposed circuitry and tubing which may have contained hydraulic fluids for motion, covering a rubber or Mylar-like outer skin. The Mondans which the First Doctor met on the Snowcap base in December 1986 had undergone a less radical conversion and still retained biological hands; it is possible these Cybermen were prototypes. (TV: The Tenth Planet) They were similar in design to the earliest Mondans which the Fifth Doctor would later encounter on Mondas. (AUDIO: Spare Parts) All other Cybermen were entirely covered by their metallic suits. (TV: The Moonbase onwards)
These Cybermen had several major weaknesses. The most notable was the element gold. Gold, being non-corrosive, choked their respiratory systems. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen) 20th century guns barely fazed Cybermen, though explosives and bazooka shells could take them down. (TV: The Invasion, Silver Nemesis) UNIT would develop gold-tipped rounds for Cybermen. (TV: Battlefield) In later centuries, the Cybermen would take hits from laser guns and energy weapons: at close range, this could destroy them. (TV: Earthshock)
Parallel Earth
- Main article: Cyberman (Pete's World)
These Cybermen originated in another universe, where they were created by John Lumic, the owner of Cybus Industries. His Cybermen believed that all of humanity must be "upgraded" to cyber-form so that information would never be lost and that the humans' physical and emotional weaknesses were abolished.
Cyber-conversion usually involved removing the brain of the subject painfully and placing it within a suit of armour. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) Once complete, the new Cybermen had a special implant that prevented them from feeling emotions. If the implants were disrupted, the Cybermen entered into a traumatic state caused by the pain of the conversion. This inevitably resulted in an agonising death from the emotional overload. (TV: The Age of Steel)
The cyber-suit was constructed from bulletproof steel. This exo-structure appeared thicker and heavier than that of the Cybermen of Mondas (though a comparison of the strengths of the two body types was never performed). A chest plate with the Cybus Industries logo housed a "heart of steel" and the emotional inhibitor chip. The brain was contained within the head. Artificially-grown nervous tissue was threaded throughout the body so the Cyberman responded like a fully biological organism. (TV: The Age of Steel) Without a brain inserted, the cyber-suit was a robot. Even when disembodied, the various parts of the suit – arm, head and torso – had sufficient processing capacity to pursue and attack a human target. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
Other
According to one account, the Voord eventually became Cybermen. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
History
Given that both original groups of Cybermen eventually developed time travel technology and had various splinter groups on a variety of planets, some hibernating for millennia on tomb worlds, it is impossible to create a linear timeline of their development. It is known, however, that at some point the Cybermen of Mondas came into contact with at least the remains of Cybus Cybermen, and that some versions eventually shared traits of both original groups. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
History
Early history
Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids who arose on Earth's former twin planet, Mondas. Mondas drifted into the outer solar system to become an orphan planet. The Mondasians adapted by turning themselves into cyborgs. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Eventually all of the Mondasians underwent forced cyber-conversion. (AUDIO: Spare Parts)
- See Creation of the Cybermen for more details.
The original Mondasians retained more of their organic form. They had personal names. Another group, the Faction, left Mondas and headed for Planet 14. These developed into groups without connection to one another. (PROSE: Iceberg)
Mondas developed a drive propulsion system. This was placed in the planet's core to move the entire world. As the original Cybermen were limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, they decided to invade Earth. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
A Cyber Ship full of Cybermen, either on a mission for colonisation or a military purposes, crash landed in Klimtenburg at some point prior to the 19th century. The survivors began capturing humans, using body parts to replace their own damaged parts, and they created their own thunderstorms so they could revive themselves using power from the lightning. The Eleventh Doctor arrived in Klimtenburg during the 19th century and began to investigate an illness the villagers were catching which he identified as Hapthoid Radiation poisoning from a Cyber Ship's generator. As more and more Cybermen began to revive, the Doctor rallied the villagers to fend off the oncoming attack. When battle began, the Doctor infiltrated the Cybermen's base of operations and, with the help of the mostly converted Victor Ernhardt, overloaded the Cyber-network with excess power. All the Cybermen exploded. (PROSE: Plague of the Cybermen)
Middle history
20th century
In 1903, after receiving a wealth of information from the future, Grigori Rasputin saw people made of metal. (AUDIO: The Wanderer)
The Seventh Doctor and Ace fought Cybermen in London in 1940. (PROSE: Illegal Alien) They would later fight them in Nevada in 1954. These Cybermen were from Mondas, trying to invade. Their attack was delayed until 1986. (COMIC: The Good Soldier)
By 1970, Cybermen, specifically the Faction led by a Cyber-Planner (PROSE: Iceberg), had established a base on the dark side of Earth's Moon. The Cyber-Planner had contacted the industrialist Tobias Vaughn, the head of the International Electromatics corporation. Vaughn installed mind control circuits in his company's appliances, paving the way for an invasion. He also grafted cybernetic arms onto several of his workers.
Vaughn had a Cyber-Planner installed in his office. The plot was uncovered by the newly formed UNIT and the Second Doctor, who helped avert the invasion on the Earth and at the Cyberman base on the Moon. (TV: The Invasion)
From the mid 1970s through 1985, Cybermen lurked in the sewers below London, awaiting another invasion. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) This would happen in December 1986. (TV: The Tenth Planet) At some point a Cyberman's head was taken and was stored in Henry van Statten's Vault, where he held alien artefacts. According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975. (TV: Dalek)
Having captured a time vessel, the Cybermen knew that the First Doctor would eventually destroy Mondas. They planned to divert Halley's Comet towards Earth in 1985. They hoped the destruction of Earth would change the past so Mondas would survive. The Sixth Doctor foiled them. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
In December 1986, the First Doctor met an advance force of Mondans near Snowcap Base in Antarctica. This force was to prepare for Mondas' return to the Sol system and to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen. Mondas absorbed too much energy and was destroyed, as were the Cybermen on Earth who depended on Mondas for power. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Following the destruction of Mondas, the Cyberman would make Lonsis their new home. (AUDIO: Human Resources) One account also claims that the Cyberships were examined and exploited by humans, allowing them to make advances in space travel. Sarah Jane Smith described the invasion as "both the greatest disaster and most astonishing blessing ever to have happened to the human race." (PROSE: The Power of the Daleks)
The Cybermen and a group of mercenaries led by Karl made an alliance with the Daleks in a gambit to sabotage a peace conference on Earth in 1988 and have the planet destroyed. The Cybermen and the mercenaries had a much more active role than the Daleks, as they were tasked with kidnapping an American envoy on whom the success of the conference depended and in capturing the Doctor whom the Dalek Emperor declared a vital part of the plan. The Daleks took a more behind-the-scenes approach as they planned to use the mercenaries and Cybermen as nothing more than scapegoats who could be blamed for the destruction of Earth by the Galactic Council while the Dalek involvement remained a secret. When the Sixth Doctor revealed this information to the Cybermen and the mercenaries, they immediately turned on the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Ultimate Adventure)
In November 1988, a scouting party was sent to Earth in search of a statue made of validium called Nemesis, a Time Lord weapon. The Cybermen met Lady Peinforte, who brought many of their number down with gold-tipped arrows. The Leader apparently forced the Seventh Doctor to surrender the Nemesis. Their Force was destroyed by Nemesis as the Doctor had instructed. (TV: Silver Nemesis)
21st century
In 2000, the Cybermen infected the Earth computers with a virus that removed all vowels. (PROSE: Vrs)
In 2005, (COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone) Cybermen from the future time travelled to Earth to announce themselves to the public. They hoped to flood Earth, using a powerful water-like nerve agent to make humans willingly participate in cyber-conversion. The Eighth Doctor, having absorbed a segment of the Time Vortex for a brief period of time, turned their entire army to dust, and decomposed their ship slowly, causing it to explode soon after. (COMIC: The Flood)
In 2006, Cybermen again invaded Earth's South Pole. (PROSE: Iceberg) In the same year, the Cybermen on Lonsis tried to invade Earth via the portal in the main branch of Hulbert Logistics.The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller destroyed them. They used a quantum crystalliser to make the Cybermen and their ship rapidly rust into dust. (AUDIO: Human Resources)
In 2008 several Cybermen and a Cyber-Planner who were allergic to gold attempted to gain Time travel. They converted Bryon but their ship was destroyed by Charlotte Pollard (AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was)
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While in the Arctic, the Doctor encountered Cybermen that greatly resembled the Cybus-made Cybermen, and were said to be brains in metal shells like the Cybus creations, but also had certain characteristics common to the Cybermen of Mondas. For instance, they used Cybermats, they recognised the Eleventh Doctor as a Time Lord, and they had advanced space-faring capabilities.
This group of Cybermen had been buried under the ice in the Arctic Circle for tens of thousands of years after being hit by a temporal storm. An excavation began to awaken the army, commanded by a Cyber-Lord, releasing Cybermats which in turn created Cyberslaves. The Eleventh Doctor arrived on 4 May 2010 and stopped their awakening. He blew up their ship and returned them to stasis. (GAME: Blood of the Cybermen)
The Doctor kept a chest plate and head of one of these Cybermen in the TARDIS drawing room. (GAME: TARDIS, GAME: The Gunpowder Plot)
In 2011, a group of similar Cybermen were encountered by the Eleventh Doctor and Craig Owens in Colchester. They were based in another crashed ship which the Doctor claimed had been crashed in the future site of the Sanderson & Grainger department store, "centuries" before the survivors were revived by the council laying down cabled on top of it, which activated the ship's Cybermats. The Cybermen attempted to rebuild their numbers and upgraded store employees Shona and George but they were eventually defeated when Craig's love for his son Alfie allowed him to resist Cyber-conversion and created a surge of emotion which destroyed the Cybermen. (TV: Closing Time)
The Ninth Cyber Legion invaded London in 2012 commanded by a Cyber-Leader and a Cyber-Planner using a piece of the Eternity Clock. They made a Cyber factory that was full of Cyberman storage units, guarded by Cybermats. The Legion was destroyed by the Eleventh Doctor and River Song by shutting down their thermionic core. The shells of dead Cybermen remained in London as far as 2106 when the Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm invaded. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
At some point in the 2010s, Missy took advantage of the 3W institute to surround human bodies in Cybermen shells, supposedly exoskeletons to protect the bodies while uploading their minds to the Nethersphere, a Matrix data slice. There, she removed their emotions to download them back into their bodies and create a Cyber army of the dead. The Cybermen marched into the streets where they were greeted by curious on-lookers before UNIT arrived to confront them. The Cybermen flew off until one was over each major city of the world and then self-destructed, creating a rainstorm of Cyber-pollen that went into the ground and Cyber-converted all of the world's dead. The Mistress and the Cybermen were defeated by the Doctor, Clara Oswald, as well as by two Cyber-converted individuals whose personalities were not entirely erased - Danny Pink and Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. (TV: Dark Water)
In 2021 a group of Cybermen pretended to want to become organic again. A space program used this to their advantage. However the Cyberleader lied, in fact having tricked the agency into creating a conversion chamber. The Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex foiled this scheme. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
In the middle to late 21st century, Space Station W3 was the site of a takeover by the Faction, but were defeated by the Second Doctor. (TV: The Wheel in Space) In a second attack on the wheel, the Cybermen were sent into the Land of Fiction by Zoe Heriot. (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen)
By 2070, the Cybermen were known and feared in several galaxies (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Cybermen) but were thought extinct by Earth. At this time the Earth's weather was controlled by the Gravitron installation in the Moonbase, the Faction planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt Earth's weather and destroy all life on the planet. (TV: The Moonbase)
Post-21st century
The Space Marines fought the Cybermen on Titan 317 in the latter half of the 22nd century. (PROSE: The Janus Conjunction)
The Sixth Doctor encountered Cybermen in 2191. By using a Selachian ship the Cybermen had conquered Agora. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
The Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition on the planet Telos found the Cyber-tombs. Hordes of Cybermen waited in cryogenic suspension. Earth's Brotherhood of Logicians intended to awaken them, believing the Cybermen would be receptive to their cause. The tomb would be sealed again (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) and later re-activated. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
Cyber-Wars
During the Orion War of the early 26th century, humans tried to salvage Cyber-Technology from derelict ships to defeat the androids. This led to both sides nearly wiped out and the temporary conquest of Earth before the Cybermen resurgence was stopped. (AUDIO: Sword of Orion, AUDIO: Cyberman)
In 2526, several planets united to oppose the Cybermen in an event called the Cyber-Wars. A force of Cybermen tried to devastate Earth with a Cyberbomb and convert the survivors. Failing this, they hoped to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the effort failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the "meteor" that wiped out the dinosaurs. (TV: Earthshock)
One of the last acts of the Cybermen in this war the attempt to blow up the planet Voga to stop the production of glitterguns. (PROSE: Revenge of the Cybermen) In the aftermath of their failure, the Cybermen were reduced to scattered remnants. One group relentlessly hounded the remaining fragment of Voga. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
The war ultimately ended when the Tiberian spiral galaxy was blown up, destroying apparently all of the Cybermen. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
Later history
On Telos, the Cybermen plotted to change history and divert Halley's Comet to Earth to destroy it and to save Mondas. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) At some point, Telos was shattered by an asteroid impact. (AUDIO: Telos)
In a daring attempt at conquest, the Cybermen prepared an armada of Cyber Ships and attempted to take over other universes as well as their own. Led by a Cyber-Controller, the armada crossed from their universe into the 24th century of another and entered into an alliance with a species similar to their own known as the Borg and together they attacked the planet Delta IV. The Deltan Prime Minister escaped the attack and warned Starfleet of the newly assembled war force. The Doctor, Amy and Rory accidentally found themselves on the bridge of the USS Enterprise just as it was attacked by a massive fleet of Cyber Ships and Borg cubes. Joining forces with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the Doctor intended to help Starfleet end the Cyber threat. He then began to remember an encounter with the original Cybermen during his fourth incarnation which took place in the same universe - which he also remembered not remembering - and concluded that the Cybermen were rewriting history.
Meanwhile, the Cybermen betrayed the Borg and the two sides fought a devastating battle on Cogen V. The Cybermen were victorious and the Borg collective was at risk of falling completely under Cyber control. The Enterprise arrived at the planet to find only the remnants of numerous Borg ships in its orbit and the bodies of Cybermen and Borg on the planet's surface. The Borg contacted the Enterprise and offered Picard an alliance. Picard refused, having painful memories of a previous encounter with the Borg, but the Doctor, Amy and Guinan realised the alliance was necessary. Picard realised this too after the Doctor took him in the TARDIS and showed him a future in which the Cybermen had succeeded. The Borg accepted the temporary alliance and they and Starfleet organised a raid on the Cyber-Controller's command ship and they weakened the Cybermen by filling the air with gold dust. After a struggle with the Cyber-Controller, one of the Borg set all ships linked to the Cyber-web to self-destruct, much to the Doctor's disgust as he considered this genocide, despite what the Cybermen had done. With the complete destruction of the Cybermen from the Federation universe, the Doctor guessed that any changes they had made had unwound themselves, although all involved would retain their memories of the event. (COMIC: Assimilation²)
Telos was not the only site of Cyber-Tombs. There were dozens across the galaxy and more wars were started. Bernice Summerfield spoke of the Telos expedition and other tombs being discovered in the past tense. She was sent to one by Irving Braxiatel in the early 27th century. Braxiatel intended to use the Cybermen as a private army but was thwarted. (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus)
The Tremas Master sent The Graak to a Cyber-Tomb populated by Cybermen to steal a Cybermat. These Cybermen were either going in- or coming out of the tombs. (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors)
Around 2875, the remaining Cybermen from the Cyber-Wars ship finally caught up to Voga, now in orbit around Jupiter. Their attempt to destroy it would be defeated and their craft and themselves detroyed due to the involvement of the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
By 3286, the Cybermen had been thought dead for centuries. A group of these Cybermen led by a Cyber-controller attempted to gain time travel. Around this time, Goddard arrived. Goddard was a super developed Cybermen,from an alternate 1930s where the human race had become cyborgs indistinguishable visually from humans thanks to a Cyber virus. The Cybermen manged to reverse-engineer the virus Goddard brought but were defeated by the Sixth Doctor. (WC: Real Time, AUDIO: Real Time)
In the 52nd century, the Twelfth Cyber Legion was positioned 20,000 light years away from Demons Run when it was largely obliterated by the Eleventh Doctor and Rory Williams, who were planning to assault the asteroid station to rescue Amy and Melody Pond. This gave the Cyber-Leader little choice but to give the Doctor and Rory the information they needed regarding Demons Run. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
Cybermen from the far future would use time travel to return in time to the 2000s to convert Earth. They used rain that caused extreme emotions (sadness, fear, anger) to convince the humans that emotions were bad and to accept conversion willingly. The reason they needed humans from a past era was clear to the Doctor; in the future of the Cybermen, the human genetic template had been corrupted and augmented by their interactions with many alien races. The Cyber-conversion protocols were keyed to human or Mondasian biology; the number of available converts would drop dramatically.
The Doctor offered to regenerate for them so they could gather the data of his regeneration and upgrade their conversion protocols to include other races, in exchange for leaving the Earth alone. The Cybermen agreed, but betrayed him at the last moment (the Doctor was expecting this). Using the fragment of the Time Vortex the future Cybership used as a power source, the Doctor destroyed the Cyberfleet and dissolved them into rain. (COMIC: The Flood)
The Cybermen were notable customers of the information regarding the Doctor held by the Inforarium. When the Eleventh Doctor discovered the Cybermen, as well as the Daleks and Sontarans, had been purchasing this information, he infiltrated the Inforarium and memory-proofed their database using methods he learned from the Silence. The information sold was thus instantly forgotten. (HOMEVID: The Inforarium) This led to the Cybermen losing data on the Doctor.(TV: Nightmare in Silver)
A thousand years after the destruction of the Tiberian spiral galaxy and the end of the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen were thought to be extinct. Yet surviving Cybermen lay beneath the future site of Hedgewick's World of Wonders. When the theme park was built, the Cybermen began using Cybermites to kidnap people as "spare parts". Angie and Artie Maitland arrived on Hedgewick's World with the Eleventh Doctor and their nanny, Clara, and were taken by the Cybermen. With enough components to reawaken them, after being presumed extinct for a thousand years, the Cybermen awoke from their tombs.
The Cybermen began attacking Natty Longshoe's Comical Castle to convert the humans there, but the Doctor, in a battle for his mind with the Cyber-Planner, Mr Clever, had them stop in place to bring in the local resources to win the chess game. The Doctor used a hand pulse to redistribute Clever among the rest of the Cybermen. Angie and Artie were also released. Emperor Ludens Nimrod Kendrick Cord Longstaff XLI gave the verbal command to start the countdown of a planet-imploding bomb. This drew the attention of his ship, which transmatted the Doctor and the humans on the planet while the Cybermen were left behind. The planet and the Cybermen were destroyed; however, one Cybermite survived the destruction. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
Final evolution
By the 101st century, the Cybermen had nearly died out. Several centuries earlier, they had chosen a new name for their species and become pacifists. (PROSE: Synthespians™)
The Cybermen would ultimately transcend into pure energy. They would redeem the whole of sentient life and become the most peace loving-species in the whole of creation, purely thought with no physical presence. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
Undated events
During the Dark Times on Gallifrey, the Cybermen were excluded from the games in the Death Zone, because the Time Lords believed they had an unfair advantage over other victims of the games. Borusa, having found the Game of Rassilon, transported a squadron of Cybermen to the Death Zone to threaten and harass the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. These Cybermen were mostly destroyed by a similarly transported Raston Warrior Robot. The survivors allied with the Tremas Master, but he betrayed and destroyed them. (TV: The Five Doctors)
The Seventh Doctor and Catherine Broome battled a squad of Cybermen in the Prenadene asteroid belt.(PROSE: Companion Piece)
A Cyberman was among the life-forms exhibited in Vorg's Miniscope. (TV: Carnival of Monsters)
The Cybermen were part of the Supremo's alliance in the war against Morbius. (PROSE: Warmonger)
The remains of one Cyberman were put on sale at the Maldovarium market. The Eleventh Doctor purchased the Cyberman's head and called him "Handles". (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The Cybermen were involved in the Siege of Trenzalore. After being summoned to Trenzalore by the First Question, the Cybermen attempted to pass through the Papal Mainframe's force field. One attempt involved a Wooden Cyberman as it was low-tech and would not trigger any alarm system but the Doctor tricked the Cyberman into destroying itself. Later, the Daleks attacked the Mainframe and learned how to break the force field. The Cybermen followed them and fought the Doctor and the Silents until all the Cybermen, like many other species involved in the battle, were either killed or saw fit to retreat. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Alternative timeline
In the future shown to Picard by the Doctor in which the Cybermen had succeeded in their conquest of multiple universes, the Cybermen made use of the technology they had acquired from the Borg and they were able to convert more species. Amoung these species were as follows:
- The Klingon homeworld of Qo'noS fell to the Cybermen in under 50 years. These Cybermen bore the Klingon insignia and used Klingon swords.
- Raxacoricofallapatorius was taken 30 years after Qo'nos. The Raxacoricofallapatorians were more bulbous Cybermen with large claws for hands.
- The Vulcan homeworld was taken another 20 years later and all the Vulcan culture and wisdom was lost.
- The Judoon were conquered in another 25 years and they became the Cybermen's shock troopers, identified by their metal Rhinoceros horns.
- Humanity fought back for almost 40 more years but the Cybermen eventually triumphed. San Francisco became another nexus from which the Cybermen could strike. Starfleet Academy held the last survivors in the galaxy before they were overrun. (COMIC: Assimilation²)
Behind the scenes
Cybermen of unspecified origin
Clarification
According to comments made in The Brilliant Book 2012, the Cybermen of the Cyber Legions were the original Mondasian versions because, despite having the Cybus-style suits, they lacked the "C" logo on their chest. If so, the Cybus Industries Cybermen joined the Alliance and the Cybermen that have appeared since then (without the "C" logos) are the Mondasian models.
No fictional source has given a clarification, and the matter is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Cyber Legions Cybermen have displayed characteristics of both the Mondasian and Cybus Cybermen, as stated in the overview above.
The story which comes closest to giving any clarification is Assimilation², which initially features Cybermen with the Cybus logo but these are later changed to the logo displayed by those of the Cyber Legions and remains for the rest of the story. The use of the Cybus logo was likely an error. However, the comic also details an encounter between the Fourth Doctor and the original Cybermen which is said to be directly related to the comic's main Cyber Legion threat, but at the same time the Cybus terms "Delete" and "Upgrade" are still used in the final issue, and Guinan also states that "different versions of [Cybermen] can be found in alternate universes." Thus, the complete background of these Cybermen remains a mystery.
Neil Gaiman, writer of The Doctor's Wife in Series 6 and Nightmare in Silver in Series 7, has stated in an interview[1] that he believed the Cybermen in the "'Tom Baker' universe" had all but died out. That left the Cybus Cybermen who had escaped the Void and ended up in Victorian London, and were sent into the Time Vortex at the end of The Next Doctor. Rather than be disintegrated as Jackson Lake predicted, they were scattered through time and space and eventually encountered the remnants of the Mondasian Cybermen, "and there was some cross-breeding and interchange of technology, which is why you then get the ones that look like, but actually aren't, the Cybus Cybermen." This is despite the fact that all of the Cybermen in The Next Doctor were seen to be blown to bits by Mercy Hartigan, unless there were more deeper within the CyberKing. However, Gaiman includes no reference to this theory in Nightmare in Silver. The episode does still establish that the Mondasian Cybermen came into contact with at least the remains of Cybus Cybermen, which can be found in Hedgewick's World of Wonders.
Other appearances
- The chess-playing Cyberman from Nightmare in Silver appears in She Said, He Said, the prequel to The Name of the Doctor. However, the story's unusual style of narrative makes it difficult to determine where, when and under what circumstances the story takes place in-universe.
- It is not known if the Cyberman head from The Gunpowder Plot belonged to a Cyberman from Cybus Industries, the Cyber Legions or Blood of the Cybermen, although the appearance of the Blood-style chestplate from TARDIS suggests it to be the third option.
- Similar to the above point, a 2006-style Cyberman head is seen in the Black Archive in The Day of the Doctor but it is unknown which of the three possible variants it belonged to, as all three kinds of Cybermen had taken part in activities on Earth that UNIT likely investigated.
- A 2006-style Cyberman is also depicted in the front cover of the 2014 re-release of Illegal Alien as part of The Monster Collection.
- The Cyberman in the video game Whodle resembles the classic Doctor Who Cybermen a lot, but when The Doctor is killed, they shout "YOU WILL BE DELETED", which is what the Cybus Cybermen say.
Footnotes
- ↑ EXCLUSIVE – Neil Gaiman Talks Doctor Who And Cybermen. SFX (May 7th, 2013). Retrieved on January 5th, 2014.
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