Cyberman
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Cyberman (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
The Cybermen were a "race" of cybernetically augmented humanoids. They varied greatly in design, with different factions originating independently by parallel evolution on planets throughout time and space, including Mondas, Telos, an alternate Earth, Planet 14, and Marinus. Some Cybermen were born out of an instinct to survive, others hunger for immortality because their civilisations were dying out and they wanted to survive, and some the intent to upgrade themselves and everyone around them. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen et al.)
Despite their many different origins, there were similarities between most groups of Cybermen. For the most part, they lacked individuality or names. Cybermen 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". (TV: The Age of Steel, Doomsday)
Characteristics
Variants
Though the Cybermen varied greatly in design over time, the many versions had several things in common. Nearly all were silver in colour, except for a black variety in the London sewers. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen, et al.)
Cybermen also exhibited exposed circuitry and tubing covering a rubbery or mylar-like outer skin. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Cybermen frequently attempted to increase their numbers by cyber-conversion.
The Mondasians which the First Doctor met on Snowcap Base in December 1986 had undergone a less radical conversion and still retained biological hands. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
All other Cybermen were entirely covered by their metallic suits. (TV: The Moonbase et al.) Some partial conversions were known to exist that still held human features, among them Tobias Vaughn. (TV: The Invasion)
The Cybermen on the Moonbase and those released by Eric Klieg on Telos were slim. (TV: The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen) The ones which infiltrated Briggs' freighter in 2526 had bulkier, more imposing forms. (TV: Earthshock) Cybermen like these also existed in the 1980s. (TV: Silver Nemesis) The Cybermen from Pete's World were also rather bulky, notably using the Cybus Industries logo on their chest plate. Their emotional inhibitor was a metal rectangular device placed near the heart. The Tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver was capable of turning off the inhibitor once the chest plate was removed. (TV: The Age of Steel)
Mondasian Cybermen had a quavering voice which put inflected syllables in a seemingly random, sing-song manner. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Later Cybermen spoke in more of a monotone, emphasising their lack of emotion. (TV: The Moonbase)
After recovering from the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen had advanced suits. Their chest units glowed blue. They were sleeker and far less bulky than previous models. No circuitry was visible outside the suit and they developed a plethora of new features: the post-Cyber War Cybermen could move at blurring speed, to the point where everything around them would seem frozen. They were capable of rotating their heads 180 degrees, as well as being able to detatch body parts such as their hands or their head. Their armour was thick enough to deflect lasers, though an anti-cyber gun could completely disintegrate them. (TV: Nightmare in Silver, The Time of the Doctor)
Conversion
Cyber-conversion was the process by which compatible beings were physically and mentally altered into Cybermen. This process was necessary for the Cybermen to increase in number and was carried out in many locations. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
Partial conversions occurred in which a subject only gained some traits of a Cyberman. For example, Tobias Vaughn's torso was immune to gunfire. (TV: The Invasion)
A great weakness of the conversion was they could only convert species close to humans. This left Time Lords like the Doctor safe for a time. (TV: Closing Time) However, the post-Cyber-Wars variety no longer had this drawback, and were able to temporarily incorporate his mind to create the Cyber-Planner, "Mr Clever". (TV: Nightmare in Silver) A further upgrade to the process resulted in Cybermen being able to convert corpses, regardless of their condition. (TV: Death in Heaven)
The Cybermen of Pete's World were created by taking the brains of humans and placing them in cybernetic bodies. These exostructures were built from high content metal and were stauncher and more heavily built than the Cybermen of Mondas. The brain was preserved in a cradle of Cybus-copyrighted chemicals and welded to the exoskeleton, to which cyber-kinetic impulses were bonded, while an artificially grown nervous system was integrated. The remaining human body was simply incinerated. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) Once complete, the newly developed Cyberman had an emotional inhibitor implanted. This prevented them from feeling their emotions, but, if disrupted, the Cybermen entered a traumatic state as they were overloaded by the pain of the conversion. This would make them die in agony or cause their heads to explode from the emotional overload. (TV: The Age of Steel) In times of emergency, cyber-conversion consisted of only constructing a Cyber-suit around a living being with some internal modifications. (TV: Cyberwoman)
Vulnerabilities
Different Cybermen had a variety of weaknesses. The most notable was the element gold which, being non-corrosive, choked their respiratory systems, a property exploited by the glittergun used during the Cyber-Wars. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen, Earthshock, Silver Nemesis; AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) On occasion, the mere touch of gold was toxic to them. Gold coins or gold-tipped arrows could destroy them. (TV: Earthshock, Silver Nemesis) Gold also blocked their sensors and caused cybermats to malfunction. (PROSE: The Revenge of the Cybermen) During the Cyber-Wars, these Cybermen merged technology with the Cybus variety, eliminating more of their lingering organic needs, like the respiratory system; though contact with gold could still briefly scramble the operating systems. They were also still vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses from hand devices, especially when amplified by the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver. An enemy anti-cyber cannon was also capable of outright destroying them, though they later evolved and became immune to it. (TV: Nightmare in Silver) These models were vulnerable to their own blasters. (TV: Death in Heaven) These models could also be disabled when attacked by a Mondasian's cybernetic laser beam and the Master's laser screwdriver after several seconds. The Twelfth Doctor's sonic screwdriver and Missy's sonic umbrella could also combine to form a barrier around the Cybermen to slow them down. (TV: The Doctor Falls) A special wooden variant of these Cybermen could also be destroyed by the flamethrower on its own wrist. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Other fatal weaknesses of the Cybermen included the combination of solvents known as Cocktail Polly, (TV: The Moonbase) excessive levels of radiation, (TV: The Tenth Planet, AUDIO: Telos) and the scent of a particular type of flower. (COMIC: Flower Power)
Cybermen affected by the Cerebration Mentor, an emotion-enhancing device, went "mad". (TV: The Invasion)
20th century guns could damage Cybermen, but did not kill them. Explosives and bazooka shells took them down easily. (TV: The Invasion, Silver Nemesis) UNIT developed gold-tipped rounds to combat Cybermen. (TV: Battlefield) At close range, attacks with energy and laser weapons could kill Cybermen. (TV: Earthshock)
Raston Warrior Robots counted Cybermen among the many beings they could kill. Although equipped only with javelins and blades, the technology of the robots allowed them to easily destroy several Cybermen. (TV: The Five Doctors)
While Cybermen native to Pete's World were mostly immune to bullets, (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) they could be destroyed by rocket launchers. (TV: Doomsday) A huge overdose of electricity could also fry their circuits, such as an electromagnetic pulse. (TV: The Age of Steel) A Dalek's gunstick could also kill them. (TV: Doomsday) A sword could also pierce their armour. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
The Cybermen the Twelfth Doctor encountered were shown to be vulnerable to their own cybernetic blasters. The Master's new laser screwdriver could also destroy one with a single strike. While the farmhands' standard rifles on Floor 0507 barely damaged Bill Potts' Cyber-converted self, the partially cyber-converted individuals could be disabled by them temporarily. The Cybermen could be easily incinerated by blowing up the fuel lines of the colony ship. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Technology
The Cybermen forces in 2526 used the Cyberlance, a powerful, hand-held cutting weapon. They also used the Cyberscope, a device that allowed Cyber commanders to view the battlefield remotely and access a computer database (containing, among other data, information on their race's encounters with the Doctor). (TV: Earthshock)
Cybermen in 1986 had a built-in distress signal in their heads that could be activated manually. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
The chest unit of a Cyberman was vital to the operation of its life support system. (AUDIO: Telos)
The head of Cybermen in 1873 contained a neural generation unit. When removed from the head and with a suitable power source, this unit could be adapted to transmit a signal to distances up to 200 light years. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)
The Cybermen's eyes in 1873 were photocell. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)
The Cybermen of Pete's World were capable of wirelessly communicating with each other, and when a Cyber-Leader was killed, their files were transferred to an appointed Cyberman, who would subsequently be upgraded to a new Cyber-Leader. (TV: Doomsday) They could wirelessly control electronics, such as John Lumic's wheelchair and the "Ghost Shift" control levers at Torchwood Tower; this function was associated with a Cyberman bringing its closed fist to its chest. (TV: The Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts) They were also capable of using infostamps, allowing them to communicate information to other Cybermen when they were low on power. They were also able to steal other technology from the Daleks whilst inside the Void, such as a Dimension Vault. (TV: The Next Doctor) They eventually developed Cyber-weapons of their own, although bulkier and more rifle-like than the Mondasian versions. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
While the Cybermen were capable of time travel, (TV: Earthshock, AUDIO: The Reaping) it was still primitive, limited and even dangerous as late as the 30th century. (PROSE: Illegal Alien) Should the Cybermen have mastered time travel, they would have become strong enough to crush the Draconians, the Sontarans, the Time Lords and even the Daleks. (WC: Real Time, AUDIO: Real Time)
By the end of the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen had gained the ability to instantly adapt to anything that posed a threat to damaging their bodies; thus most methods of killing them became obsolete after one use, and this instant immunity was shared through the Cyberiad. The only guaranteed method of destroying the Cybermen was to completely destroy the planet they were on at the time. (TV: Nightmare in Silver) These Cybermen could also learn a person's identity in seconds using a scanner in their chest plate. They could also self destruct, releasing spores to upgrade a corpse into a Cyberman as well, albeit allowing some to retain their free will. (TV: Death in Heaven)
Weaponry
When they attacked Earth in 1986, Cybermen carried large, hand-held, energy weapons. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
On the Moon in 2070, Cybermen could produce arcs of electricity from their hands to stun, disable and kill. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) They also possessed a cannon that could operate in the vacuum of space. The virus Neurotrope X was used by Cybermen to incapacitate humans. (TV: The Moonbase) Cybermats were sometimes used to spread this virus amongst a population. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
In the 21st century, the Cybermen who attacked Space Station W3 had death rays built into their chest units. (TV: The Wheel in Space)
The Cybermen encountered by UNIT in the late 20th century displayed these same built-in death ray weapons. They also carried large rifles that emitted a flame for medium range combat on London's streets. They also possessed a megatron bomb that was capable of destroying all life on Earth. (TV: The Invasion)
The Cybermen who attacked the Nerva Beacon had their weapons built into their helmets. They were activated with the touch of a hand. Cybermen in 2526; the invaders of Voga; and the Cybermen removed by a Time Scoop to the Death Zone had portable cyber-bombs capable of devastating a planet. (TV: Earthshock, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Five Doctors)
In time, the Cybermen came to favour the hand-held cyber-gun over the built-in weapon. (TV: The Invasion onwards)
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The Mondasian Cybermen encountered by the Twelfth Doctor had a powerful laser weapon built into their headframe. It emitted a thick yellow laser beam powerful enough to cause large explosions, nearly kill the Doctor, destroy other Mondasian Cybermen, melt through steel and incinerate a fully evolved Cyberman when combined with the Master's upgraded laser screwdriver. They could also emit an electro-magnetic pulse when grappling a target, being powerful enough to nearly force the Doctor to regenerate, leaving him unconscious and unable to walk properly, even after several weeks of recovery. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Originally, the only weapons owned by the Cybermen of Pete's World were their electrified hands, (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) but they later gained a small wrist-mounted energy weapon. These wrist blasters could easily kill humans from a distance, even if they were wearing armour. They were mostly ineffective against Daleks. (TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday) They could act on their own, or be commanded by a wireless signal from the head. To keep victims from escaping, the Cybermen eventually equipped their heads with tranquilliser darts to sedate them. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) The Cybermen from the Cyber-Wars also used cyber wrist blasters, which were capable of killing enemies from a distance. (TV: Nightmare in Silver, The Time of the Doctor) They could even destroy fellow Cyberman and emit an electric pulse from their hands that could knock a human out for a period of time. (TV: Death in Heaven)
Culture
Cybermen made survival their central objective. Since they could not reproduce naturally, they needed to create new members of their population through cyber-conversion. At times they tended to focus on converting the population of Earth, at other times on simply destroying it. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
Cybermen tended toward covert activity, scheming and using human or other agents, cybermats or androids to act as their proxies until they deemed it necessary to appear themselves. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen, Earthshock, Attack of the Cybermen)
Individuality and emotion
Throughout their history, Cybermen, for the most part, lacked individuality or names. This was a result of their emotions being removed during the conversion process. (TV: The Tenth Planet, et al.)
A few Cybermen had individual names such as Krang (TV: The Tenth Planet), Kroton, (COMIC: Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman), Bremm and Gramm. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)
Cybermen in positions of authority included the ground level Cyber-Leader who commanded a group of ordinary Cybermen. (TV: Doomsday, The Next Doctor) Cyber-Leaders were sometimes aided by a Cyber-Lieutenant. Immobile computer-like Cyber-Planners would sometimes make decisions and long-term plans. (TV: The Wheel in Space, The Invasion) The Cyber-Controllers, who possessed enlarged craniums, had the position of highest possible authority. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Attack of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel)
Cybermen no longer possessed emotions and viewed them as a weakness. However, several of the Cyber-Leaders appeared to display anger, amusement, and smugness. (TV: Earthshock)
When they re-emerged after the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen appeared to be truly emotionless, although the Cyber-Planner "Mr Clever" displayed personality. (TV: Nightmare in Silver) The Cybermen that evolved on a Mondasian colony ship were also emotionless, although Bill Potts showed anger and sadness in her cyber-converted form. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
History
Early history
- Main article: Genesis of the Cybermen
Being the product of parallel evolution, the Cybermen were "inevitable", "always get[ting] started" wherever there was people. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
According to some accounts, the inhabitants of Telos sought to achieve immortality with cybernetics. They gradually replaced parts of their bodies with machinery until they reached the point where they replaced their brains with computers. These first Cybermen became aware of their lack of love and emotion and found a new goal: power. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Cybermen, Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, The Revenge of the Cybermen, Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet) Something forced many of these Cybermen to leave Telos and take refuge on Mondas, (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet) leaving some Cybermen behind in cyber-tombs. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen)
Various other sources indicated that Mondas was the birthplace of the Cybermen. (TV: The Tenth Planet, Attack of the Cybermen; AUDIO: Spare Parts; COMIC: The World Shapers, The Cybermen) Indeed, Bernice Summerfield once corrected one of her students who believed that Cybermen originated on Telos. (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus)
According to one account, the Cybermen were originally an aquatic species known as the Voord. The Voord were fused with bodysuits which telepathically linked the entire race. Through experimentation with a worldshaper, they quick-evolved their bodysuits into full-fledged Cybersuits. With this change, they renamed their homeplanet Marinus to Mondas. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
Prehistoric Cybermen
Mirroring the events of Mondas' sister planet Earth, the Lizard Kings and the Sea Devils rose to power. They used their technology to augment Mondasian apes into ape-servants. (COMIC: The Dead Heart) A Cyberman from the near future came to Mondas through a cosmic cloud and was captured by the Lizard Kings, who vivisected it and studied its technology. An ape-servant was sent through the cosmic cloud to investigate and it was captured by the Cybermen of the future. (COMIC: The Prodigal Returns)
After the Constructors of Destiny manipulated a rogue planet into messing with Mondas' orbit, (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) sending it on a journey to "the end of space", (TV: The Tenth Planet) the empire of the Lizard Kings went into decline. With the Lizard Kings hibernating in the Dark Continent, the ape-servants evolved into early Cybermen. They used leftover cyberfication machinery to convert regular Mondasians into Cybermen. The Cybermen tamed the dinosaurs, (COMIC: The Dead Heart) created airships, and established cities. (COMIC: The Flesh Unbound)
An ape-servant from the past crashed on Mondas after coming through a cosmic cloud. It was captured and studied by the Cybermen, who sent a scout through the cloud to investigate if there were more apes there that could be converted into Cybermen. (COMIC: The Prodigal Returns)
The Cybermen came in a series of conflicts with remnants of the Lizard King empire. First, they accidentally awakened R'lyeh, (COMIC: The Flesh Unbound) then they were attacked by metamorphs. (COMIC: The Black Sky) The Cybermen mounted an expedition to the Dark Continent to strike back at the Lizard Kings. Along the way there, they were attacked by Sea Devils. (COMIC: The Hungry Sea) The expedition ventured deep into the Dark Continent, where they were obliterated by Golgoth. (COMIC: The Dark Flame) The Cybermen waged a forty-day war against Golgoth which ended in the utter destruction of all involved.
For the next 2000 years, the Mondasians developed an Earth-like society on Mondas. (COMIC: The Ugly Underneath)
Cybermen of the Mondasian colony ship
At an unknown point, a colony ship was created to ferry Mondasians to another world. It became trapped in the orbit of a black hole. Engineers were sent to floor 1056 to reverse the engines. However, the black hole cause a time dialation effect, slowing time at floor 0. The lower floors of the ship experienced thousands of years in the space of a few minutes for the upper floors. The engineers were unable to return and stayed there. (TV: World Enough and Time) The Saxon Master eventually crashed on Floor 1056 and took over, until the residents overthrew him. He was forced into hiding as Razor, the caretaker of the hospital. (TV: The Doctor Falls) Eventually, conditions at the floor became uninhabitable, and the hospital began to work on Operation Exodus, transforming people into cyborgs to lead an expedition to the upper decks. The cyborgs would go and lead people to the hospital to be converted. (TV: World Enough and Time) They also went to the upper decks to collect people to also be converted. (TV: The Doctor Falls) The only person at the control deck, Jorj, sent out a distress signal. Eventually, the Twelfth Doctor, trying to rehabilitate Missy, went to the ship. When Missy, Nardole, and Bill Potts arrived, the cyborgs detected Bill's life signs and ascended up the lifts. Jorj shot Bill, but the cyborgs arrived and took her to the hospital, where she was fitted with a chest unit. There, she made friends with Razor, and stayed there for ten years before he tricked her into going to the conversion theatre, where she was converted into the first fully functional Cyberman. The Doctor eventually arrived and found Bill, (TV: World Enough and Time) and fled to Floor 0507 while the Cybermen continued to evolve and take over the floors. Eventually, they were defeated by the Doctor, who blew up the fuel lines below, incinerating them, while the residents of the floor escaped to Floor 0502. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Rise of the Cyberman
About 2000 years after the end of the previous Cyberman civilisation, Mondas reached the zenith of its orbit away from Earth. (COMIC: The Ugly Underneath) By this time, Mondasian society was similar to that of 20th century Earth. (AUDIO: Spare Parts; COMIC: The Ugly Underneath) According to one account, the surface of Mondas was inhospitable, meaning that all the Mondasians lived underground. (AUDIO: Spare Parts) However, the Cult of C'iva were able to survive on the planet's surface. (COMIC: The Ugly Underneath)
At some point, the Mondasians created the Central Committee of Mondas by plugging 20 of their "Greatest Thinkers" into a computer. Eventually, the Mondasians constructed a propulsion system to pilot the planet and drafted in people to install it. They were forced to augment them to survive in the harsh conditions of outer space. They were also forced to remove their emotions, as the processing drove people insane. The cyber-conversion succeeded, producing the first modern Cybermen. However, the first Cybermen's bodies would reject the implants which would kill them. The Fifth Doctor (who had arrived on Mondas with Nyssa), underwent a biological analysis, resulting in the Mondasians discovering an extra brain lobe that only Time Lords had. This feature was then recreated in the Cybermen, rectifying those flaws. Horrified at his unwitting part in the creation of the Cybermen, the Doctor destroyed the Committee, (who by now had become the first Cyber-Planner, and was now bent on converting all Mondasians) by pouring wine into their Nutrient Vats, and reprogramming a swarm of Cybermats to feed off their electricity, killing them. His efforts were, ultimately, in vain as eventually all of the Mondasians underwent forced cyber-conversion. (AUDIO: Spare Parts)
Spreading into the universe
Zogron was one of the first Cybernauts to leave Mondas. During his pioneering of the instellar Cyber-empire, Zogron became stranded on AS4. (COMIC: Junk-Yard Demon)
While one group of Cybermen stayed on Mondas, another group, the Faction, left Mondas and headed for Planet 14. These developed into groups without connection to one another. (PROSE: Iceberg)
In 1609, the Cybermen were invited to the Armageddon Convention, but they destroyed the robot messengers who sent the invitations. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)
In the 20th century Cybermen attacked London but were forced to dance due to pop music. (PROSE: Dr. First)
Word of the Cybermen spread as far as the Wrarth Galaxy. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Star Beast)
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)
Return to Earth
The humans on 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) Before Mondas' return to Earth, the Faction attempted a separate invasion of the planet which involved International Electromatics. (TV: The Invasion, PROSE: Iceberg)
Scouting missions
Scout crafts were sent to find Earth's location. The first expedition to find Earth crash-landed in the mountains of Austria around 1873. However, due to the extensive damage sustained during the landing, they failed to report the location of Earth to Cyber-Control on Mondas, which was 200 light-years away. The Eighth Doctor made sure that all Cyber-Technology from the expedition was destroyed. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)
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 Nevada in 1954. These Cybermen were from Mondas, trying to invade. Their attack was delayed until 1986. (COMIC: The Good Soldier)
In the early 1970s, Gareth Arnold uncovered a Cyberman ship that had crashed in Cambridge many years beforehand and experimented with the technology that had survived. Using Cybermats, Arnold attempted to convert all of Cambridge, but was stopped by the Third Doctor. During this incident, Liz Shaw was almost converted. The Cybermen that Arnold had created went into stasis on the ship, awaiting an activation signal. (AUDIO: The Blue Tooth)
Pre-IE invasions
Despite the fact that the Cybermen would record their first invasion of Earth as the one involving International Electromatics, (PROSE: Iceberg) some accounts indicate they attacked Earth at a few earlier points.
An army of Cybermen were located in Incan Temples. (GAME: The Mazes of Time)
Another army of Cybermen invaded medieval England, they began converting the locals by creating large statues of themselves to make the locals gather to see them. When the Doctor and Amy Pond arrived, they activated the Cybermen's power systems and used electrical currents to disable the Cybermen. (GAME: The Mazes of Time)
A Cyberman invasion of Earth was stopped by the First Doctor and Susan, who used pop music to confuse the Cybermen. (PROSE: Dr. First)
In 1970, the Cybermen attempted to disarm all of Earth's armies so that they could take over the planet without the death of a single Cyberman. Three Cybermen landed in the English countryside in a rocket and began tunnelling with a Cyber-Mole. With the Mole, they stole the doomsday bomb from Earth's underground secret weapons store and used it to put the entire Earth at ransom. The Second Doctor and John walked down the tunnel left by the Cyber-Mole and killed the Cybermen with ray guns before they could detonate the bomb. (COMIC: Cyber-Mole)
When Earth's most brilliant scientists gathered to witness the test flight of the Dart, Cybermen attempted to kidnap all of them to weaken Earth's military progress. The Second Doctor worked with the United States Air Force to destroy the Cyberman spaceships before the scientists could be taken. (COMIC: Test Flight)
International Electromatics & Isos II
In 1969, (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) 1970, (PROSE: No Future, Killing Ground) 1975, (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) or the late 1970s; (TV: The Web of Fear, The Invasion) the Faction put into motion what would later be recorded as the first attempted Cyberman invasion of Earth. (PROSE: Iceberg)
Prior to coming to Earth, the Faction had invaded the planet Isos II and converted its humanoid population into Cybermen. By repurposing Isos II's monorail system, a dimensional warp was created which led to Earth. A large invasion fleet of Cybermen waited on Isos II while a smaller amount of Cybermen and a Cyber-Planner went through the warp to establish themselves on Earth and put the planet into a weakened state. (AUDIO: The Isos Network)
After several years, (PROSE: Prelude Iceberg) they 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) The invasion fleet from Isos II came to Earth when the planet was put under cybercontrol by radio waves from IE products, but it was destroyed in a chain reaction started by missiles fired by UNIT. (TV: The Invasion, AUDIO: The Isos Network)
Bits and pieces of damaged Cybermen remained in the London sewers. One Cyberman managed to cannibalise garbage it found in the sewers to repair itself and create a considerable amount of Cybermats. The Third Doctor and Jo Grant stopped it from infecting an entire hospital with cybermites. (PROSE: The Piper) In 1975, two Cyberman heads were found in the sewers; one was sent to the Leamington Spa Lifeboat Museum (GAME: Security Bot) while the other head would eventually end up in Henry van Statten's Vault. (TV: Dalek)
UNIT kept at least two Cyberman heads from this invasion, one of which was stored at the Underbase. (TV: Death in Heaven, COMIC: The Age of Ice)
Some Cybermen survived the destruction of the invasion fleet. Many were propelled into deep space. One Cybership crashed in Antarctica, where it remained frozen and hidden for two decades. (PROSE: Iceberg) Another Cybership managed to escape back to Isos II. The Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, and Zoe Heriot followed the ship and destroyed all traces of the Cybermen on Isos II. (AUDIO: The Isos Network)
Vaughn survived his apparent death by transmitting his mind into a robotic copy of himself created with cybertechnology. For many centuries, Vaughn continued to influence Earth while repairing his robotic body with parts salvaged from failed Cyberman attacks on humanity. (PROSE: Original Sin, AUDIO: Original Sin)
Mondas destroyed
The return of Mondas to Earth's solar system saw the second recorded attempted Cybermen invasion of Earth, (PROSE: Iceberg) although the Seventh Doctor believed it to be the first. (COMIC: The Good Soldier) This occurred in December 1986, (TV: The Tenth Planet, PROSE: Iceberg, Mondas Passing, AUDIO: The Reaping) the 1990s, (PROSE: The Power of the Daleks) or 2000. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen)
In 1984, two years before the return of Mondas, the Sixth Doctor left a damaged Cyber-Leader from the far future on Mondas, where it was considered faulty by its ancestors and taken to be reprocessed. (AUDIO: The Reaping)
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)
The Cyberships leftover from the invasion were examined and exploited by humans, allowing them to make advances in space travel, leading Sarah Jane Smith to describe the return of Mondas as "both the greatest disaster and most astonishing blessing ever to have happened to the human race." (PROSE: The Power of the Daleks)
Further attacks on humanity
Following the destruction of Mondas, some Cybermen based themselves on Planet 14 and made a series of attempts at invading Earth. (PROSE: Killing Ground) Another group of Cyberman attempted to establish a homeplanet away from Earth; first on Lonsis (AUDIO: Human Resources) and later on Telos. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Attack of the Cybermen, et al.)
Late 20th century
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) UNIT collected the body a Cyberman that was killed by Lady Peinforte and stored it at the Underbase. (COMIC: The Age of Ice)
21st century
Early 21st century
In 2000, the Cybermen infected the Earth computers with a virus that removed all vowels. (PROSE: Vrs)
In 2006, 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 December 2006, exactly 20 years after Mondas returned to Earth, Cybermen who had been in hiding in the South Pole since the International Electromatics invasion attempted to sabotage the FLIPback project and take over the Earth in the ensuing chaos. With the help of Ruby Duvall, the Seventh Doctor prevented the Cybermen from carrying out their plan and destroyed them. (PROSE: Iceberg)
Birth in a new universe
The Cybermen of a parallel universe were created by John Lumic, an insane and terminally ill genius. To find a way to survive, by 2007 he had perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen. He assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
Using the EarPods he designed and sold, Lumic took mental control of the people of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. After his life-support systems were damaged by his assistant, Mr. Crane, in an act of betrayal that cost him his life, Lumic was converted against his wishes into the Cyber-Controller by his own Cybermen to preserve his flesh form. By the Cybermen's cold logic, it was impractical to cling on to an already dying body. Once converted and revitalised, Cyberman instinct merged with his megalomanical mind and he planned to convert all of the parallel Earth. However, the Tenth Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and, in some cases, explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world. (TV: The Age of Steel)
Following the destruction of the Cybus Factory and the Cyber Controller in Britain, the Preachers moved around the rest of the world to carry out assaults on the rest of the Cybus Factories. One of their earliest victories came in Paris, where a stolen Cybus airship under the command of Mickey Smith fought its way through the streets, saving civilians and destroying attacking Cybermen along the way with a new weapon attached to the ship. Once the airship reached the factory, it destroyed it using an EMP. After the Cyber threat in Paris was ended, Mickey sent a video message to those who were sent on the mission, congratulating and thanking them. (GAME: Save Paris)
Eventually, the Preachers had Cyber resistance and bases set up all over the world, just as the Cybermen had factories. Soon they were ready to begin their assault on what remained of Lumic's legacy. The mission was commanded overall by Jake Simmonds. The Preachers managed to develop firearms which were effective against the Cybermen and sent troops into other countries, where they recruited others to aid them in their cause. Battles ensued when a squad moved into Cyber territory but successful battles ultimately gained them control of countries where a Cyber Factory was located. From there, the Preachers would surround the factory while a single commando unit entered the factory and fought their way to the emotion inhibitor and taking it out, thus destroying the factory and all the Cyber units converted there.
However, the Cybermen also sought to do the same thing: expand, "recruit", take over, and destroy the Preacher bases. The conflict was fought all over the planet. Ultimately though, the Preachers were victorious as they succeeded in sealing the Cybermen inside their factories. Jake congratulated the resistance, but it was known that the Cybermen were not completely defeated, they had only been delayed, as Jake seemed aware of when he gave his congratulations: "You did it! The Cybermen are sealed up in their factories. We're safe for now." (GAME: Cyber Assault)
The Battle of Canary Wharf
Despite their defeat, at least five million Cybermen survived and were able to infiltrate their universe's Torchwood Institute. They found a crack in the universe, caused by the passage of the Void Ship. The Cybermen were able to travel from their dimension into the Doctor's, and infiltrated the planet in the guise of benign ghosts of deceased humans. They established a base inside the Torchwood Tower at Canary Wharf. While there, they started making new Cybermen, using what materials they could find.
After two months (three years in parallel Earth time), the Cybermen suddenly appeared in their true form, occupying every landmass on the planet before breaking into houses and promising to upgrade all humans, commanded by the new Cyber-Leader. (TV: Army of Ghosts) Simultaneously, the Cult of Skaro had exited the Void Ship with the Genesis Ark. The Cult, led by Dalek Sec, communicated with the Cybermen via Dalek Thay and declared war or, in Dalek Sec's words, "pest control".
After a skirmish between humans, Cybermen and Daleks, the Cult travelled to the main room in Torchwood's Canary Wharf, elevated outside above the roof, and opened the Genesis Ark, releasing millions of Daleks who, under Sec's command, started to "exterminate all life-forms below", killing human and Cyberman alike. (TV: Doomsday) Towards the end of the Cybermen-Dalek battle, the Cybermen, desperate for more troops, began directly converting people rather than transplanting their brains into Cybershells. One victim of this process was Lisa Hallett, girlfriend of Ianto Jones. (TV: Cyberwoman)
The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler opened the Void and anything contaminated with "void stuff" was pulled in. This included the Cybermen. (TV: Doomsday)
One of these Cyberman fell through the void into a universe where the Doctor was the main character in a television show called "Doctor Who". The Eleventh Doctor sent the Cyberman back into the Void to "its own home". (COMIC: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who)
However, this was not the last of the Cybermen. The Cybermen that were made on Earth, like Lisa Hallett, had never passed through the Void, therefore they were not sucked in. Ianto took Lisa away from the battle and hid her in the basement of Cardiff's Torchwood Three facility, setting up a life-support system, planning to restore her humanity. He was unsuccessful. She killed Dr. Tanizaki, fought with Torchwood staff and eventually transplanted her brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl. Lisa was finally killed by the Torchwood team. Ianto had desperately tried to salvage what was left of his girlfriend's former identity, but could not succeed. He mourned Lisa's death, moved on, and eventually set his romantic attentions elsewhere. (TV: Cyberwoman)
After the battle, two children, Harry and Sam, were working on a model train set when they found stuff from Harry's dad's previous job. Inside the box was a Cyberman, in all its individual pieces. Not knowing what it was, Sam decided to put it back together so it could watch them play. Eventually, it awoke, threatening to upgrade both Harry and Sam. It forced Sam to help build equipment intended to upgrade Sam and Harry into more Cybermen using the other left-over electronics from Harry's dad's job in the box. They, however, managed to knock the Cyberman into the equipment, causing the latter two to be destroyed. (PROSE: Going Off the Rails)
Other humans were converted during the battle, but fully. These survivors stole teleportation technology from Torchwood Institute in order to gather technology to help them re-open the Void and free the trapped Cybermen. They did not know how to do this, however, and so they stole the Doctor's TARDIS, trying to lure the Tenth Doctor to them for aid. Some Cybermen were destroyed by the army but the Cyber-Leader and a few others escaped to the Millennium Dome and kept the army out with a forcefield. The Doctor and Martha, however, having recovered the TARDIS, were able to enter. The Doctor was able to trick the Cybermen, allowing them to link up their equipment with the TARDIS and giving them instructions. However, the Cybermen were instead sent back to the time of the dinosaurs where they were attacked and killed by a Tyrannosaurus rex. The Cyber-Leader was destroyed after Martha damaged the forcefield and the Doctor used an electrical cord from it to destroy the leader. (PROSE: Made of Steel)
Escaping the Void
Due to the walls between worlds weakening, a small number of Cybermen were able to escape the Void, assisted by technology stolen from the Void-trapped Daleks. However, the rest of the Cybermen, along with the Daleks trapped in the Void, perished. Landing accidentally in London, in the year 1851, these Cybermen, under the leadership of a Cyber-Lord, made an alliance with the human Miss Hartigan, created a minion race known as Cybershades and began construction of a dreadnought robot called the CyberKing with which they planned to conquer the Earth. They also came across Jackson Lake and his family, who in his fugue state absorbed knowledge of the Doctor from an infostamp. Lake and his new companion tried to defeat them, but were unsuccessful until the real, Tenth Doctor arrived. When Miss Hartigan was converted into the CyberKing and the ship became mobile, the Doctor showed Hartigan what she had done and in her anguish she destroyed herself and the Cybermen, with the CyberKing sent to be disintegrated in the Time Vortex before it fell on London. (TV: The Next Doctor) This event was then erased from history by the time field so that only the Doctor remembered it. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
Continued history
In 2008, several Cybermen and a Cyber-Planner, who were allergic to gold, attempted to gain time travel. They converted Byron, but their ship was destroyed by Charlotte Pollard. (AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was)
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While in the Arctic in the year 2010, the Doctor encountered Cybermen that had been buried under the ice 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, The Gunpowder Plot)
In the 2010s, a Cyberman was a resident of the hidden trap street in London which housed lost aliens on Earth under the protection of Mayor Me. As with the rest of the inhabitants it appeared cloaked in human form through use of the lurkworms. It was observed by the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald as it had maintenance performed on it by an Ood. (TV: Face the Raven)
In 2011, a group of Cybermen was 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 cables 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 destroy the Cybermen with a surge of emotion. (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)
During this decade, UNIT did battle with an invasion force of particularly ambitious Cybermen. Determined to hail neither from UNIT's own universe, nor the parallel Earth they knew of, these Cybermen had utilised virtual reality technology to conquer numerous parallel universes in a bid to upgrade the entire multiverse. They were, however, unfamiliar with the Time Lords, an ignorance which proved their undoing when the War Master visited a parallel world they had occupied while attempting to escape the Last Great Time War. Returning to the Earth of N-Space, the Master chose to join forces with UNIT against the Cybermen, who attempted to convert him, only to be destroyed when he overloaded their systems with power from infinite dimensions, siphoning some of it off to give his TARDIS enough energy to return to "the fray" of the war. (AUDIO: Code Silver, Master of Worlds)
Following this encounter, the renegade Time Lady known as Missy engineered a new breed of Cybermen. Creating a paranoia that the minds of the deceased remain alive and conscious of what is happening to them, even after death, she created the 3W Institute, with the purpose of caring for the bodies of dead humans. The organization had facilities all around the world. Its main base of operations was in St Paul's Cathedral, hidden by use of dimensional engineering. A dying person's mind would be uploaded to a matrix data slice called the Nethersphere where their emotions would be removed while their bodies would be upgraded into Cybermen. The people that paid the organization to preserve their bodies, would be placed inside tanks filled with a substance called dark water to hide their nature as Cybermen, while their minds were uploaded. 3W was discovered by Clara Oswald and the Twelfth Doctor, who were trying to find Danny Pink, who was also uploaded to the Nethersphere upon death. Missy activated the tanks, and drained away the dark water, revealing the Cybermen. They were then released, flying into the sky and exploding over major populated areas, creating clouds to produce cyber-pollen for converting those who had not been preserved. Missy also planned for a next wave of pollen to kill and convert every human on Earth. Her plans were foiled by Clara, the Doctor and a cyber-converted Danny Pink by flying the Cybermen into the clouds and making them self-destruct, destroying both them and the clouds. Missy teleported away after the cyber-converted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart fired his wrist-blaster at her, powering her vortex manipulator. (TV: Dark Water, Death in Heaven, The Witch's Familiar)
In 2021 a group of Cybermen claimed to want to become organic again. The European Council 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 2030s, the Cybermen attacked Earth in a series of incursions which would later be known as the Cyberbreaches. UNISYC was heavily involved in stopping these attacks. Some cybertechnology was salvaged by the humans and stored at the Toy Store. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Late 21st century
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) According to Terri Willis in 2136, the Cybermen practically disappeared from human space after this event. (PROSE: The Murder Game)
By 2079, (AUDIO: Second Chances) the Second Doctor was "known and recorded as an enemy of the Cybermen". In this year, 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)
Vogan War
- Main article: Vogan War
By the 2150s, the CyberNomads were involved in a war with Voga. In order to expand their numbers, the Nomads invaded the human colony Agora and used the threat of total destruction to turn the planet into a self-renewing source of physically healthy humans. For the next few decades, the Nomads returned to Agora every three years to collect 500 ready-to-convert humans. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
After the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth, the Cybermen fought a series of skirmishes for territory on the outermost human colony planets. During a conflict on Titan 317, some Cybermen took an entire research bunker hostage. Both these Cybermen and the hostages were slaughtered by the Space Marines. (PROSE: The Janus Conjunction)
In 2176, the Cybermen stopped an attempted rebellion on Agora. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
The Cybermen eventually managed to destroy most of Voga, (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen) but not without severely weakening themselves. At this time, the Nomads had more organic components than any other previous model except the original Mondans. They were forced to use a stolen Selachian ship as their ship.
When a small party of Cybermen came to Agora in 2191, they were destroyed by cybernetic warriors created by the Agorans using Cybertechnology. The main Cyber ship came to Agora to destroy the rebellion, but instead it was infiltrated by the Sixth Doctor and flooded with radiation which killed the Cybermen.
By the end of the 22nd century, the Cybermen were believed to be extinct. In actuality, most of the Cybermen were hibernating on Telos. A few small, isolated groups still existed. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
23rd century - Orion War
In 2246, a lone Cybership attacked the human freighter Dreadnought in deep space. They converted all of the freighter's crew save one, Stacy Townsend. When the Eighth Doctor landed on the Dreadnought, the Cybermen captured him and his TARDIS. The Cybermen attempted to gain the Doctor's knowledge of time travel, but were instead ripped to pieces when he made them all magnetically repellent to each other and the Dreadnought. (COMIC: Dreadnought)
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)
In the 25th century, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend. The Brotherhood of Logicians scoured the universe for Cybermen, believing that they would be receptive to the Brotherhood's cause. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
A Cyberman was found by scrap collectors Flotsam and Jetsam. Shortly after the Fourth Doctor landed on their ship, the Cyberman reactivated, kidnapped Jetsam, and stole the TARDIS. The Cyberman used the TARDIS to visit the site of the crashed command ship of the ancient cybernaut Zogron on AS4. Before the Cyberman could force Jetsam to restore Zogron, the Doctor and Flotsam landed on AS4 and destroyed the Cyberman. (COMIC: Junk-Yard Demon) Flotsam and Jetsam stayed on AS4 and salvaged technology from the remains of Zogron's fleet. They discovered a troop ship full of well-preserved hibernating Cybermen.
Flotsam and Jetsam spent the next four months reprogramming Cybermen and selling them as butlers, bus conductors, and politicians. This attracted the attention of the Brotherhood of Logicians, who sent Joylove McShane and Yellow Stinker to AS4 to collect the remaining unreprogrammed Cybermen. The Fourth Doctor returned to AS4 and prevented the Cybermen from fully awakening and getting off-planet. The Doctor then packed the cybership with explosives and blew up the hibernating Cybermen.
With their attempt to ally with the Cybermen on AS4 a failure, (COMIC: Junkyard-Demon II) the Brotherhood of Logicians financed Parry's expedition to find the cyber-tombs on Telos. Eric Klieg and Kaftan accompanied the expedition so that they could negotiate an alliance with the Cybermen. With the help of either the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, and Victoria Waterfield (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) or Iris Wildthyme (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress), the expedition found and opened the cyber-tomb. After the hibernating Cybermen were reawakened, the expedition realised the true danger of the Cybermen and the tombs were quickly resealed. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
A group of CyberNomads reopened the Telosian cyber-tombs and forged a new race, the CyberNeomorphs, with the Telosian Cybermen. The Neomorphs would rise to power in the 26th century. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
One group of Cybermen, were attracted towards an artefact they could not identify, which was in fact a Dalek Time Axis. As their technology was incompatible with time travel, their ship was destroyed. The Cybermen escaped and took over the ship, the SS Lucy Grey. The Eleventh Doctor and Amy were also attracted to the SS Lucy Grey by the signal from the Time Axis. The Doctor was able to overload the ship's systems, destroying the Cybermen before the Daleks arrived. (GAME: Return to Earth)
The Doctor later encountered the Cybermen on Telos, where the earlier arrival of Billy Jones had caused the "advanced guard" to awake from the cyber-tombs early to defend the others. The Cybermen tried to convert Billy, but he was saved by the Doctor before they could do so. (GAME: The Mazes of Time)
Orion War
- Main article: Orion War
During the Orion War of the early 26th century, humans tried to salvage Cyber-Technology from derelict ships to defeat the androids. They found one near the Garazone system. (AUDIO: Sword of Orion) They found a second source buried near the Isle of Wight. The Earth Government created the Scoripius programme to do this, under the command of Paul Hunt. (AUDIO: Scorpius) The Cybermen managed to gain control of President Karen Brett through which she sanctioned the creation of new Cybermen units from the refugees. (AUDIO: Fear) They managed to gain more control to the point that they managed to convert Karen into a Cyberman and got her to travel to Telos. (AUDIO: Conversion) Their aim was to reactivate their cyber tombs. They discovered that Telos was shattered by an asteroid impact. (AUDIO: Telos)
Due to their failed plan, using Hunt they managed to inflict martial law on the planet. They were used as a police force. By this time they had started to abduct humans, blaming a terrorist group. (AUDIO: Outsiders) They took these humans to conversion bases across the world. (AUDIO: Terror) As well as converting humans, Hazel Trahn, Dane and Yan discovered that they were taking genetic material and force breeding clones for more bodies to convert. (AUDIO: Machines) They planed to use the execution of Liam Barnaby to bolster the support of the populace. During this escapade they used Cybrids. By this time they had defences against Logic Attacks like the one Samantha Thorn used. Sam managed to get them to concede defeat by the logic that they would waste resources by converting the humans in this way. (AUDIO: Extinction)
Great Cyber War
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)
After a timeship landed on Telos, the Cybermen captured it and formulated a plot to save Mondas by diverting Halley's Comet to Earth to destroy it in 1985. A party of Cybermen travelled back in time and established a command centre hidden in the London sewers from which they could affect the comet. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) The Torchwood Institute collected several rumours of Cybermen in the London sewers. (WC: Monster File: Cybermen)
When the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visited London in 1985, the Cybermen captured the Doctor's TARDIS and forced him to take them back to Telos. Bringing the Doctor and Peri to Telos led to several losses for the Cybermen, including the death of the Cyber-Controller and the Cryons gaining help in their revolution against the Cybermen. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
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: The 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, apparently destroying all of the Cybermen. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
Later history
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 into or coming out of the tombs. (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors)
The remaining Cybermen from the Cyber-Wars ship finally caught up to Voga, now in orbit around Jupiter. Their attempt to destroy it was 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)
In the 30th century, a group of Cybermen with limited time travel capabilities attempted to invade the Earth in 1940. They were stopped by the Seventh Doctor and Ace. (PROSE: Illegal Alien)
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 Cyberman, from an alternate 1930s where the human race had become cyborgs indistinguishable visually from humans thanks to a Cyber virus. The Cybermen managed to reverse-engineer the virus Goddard brought but were defeated by the Sixth Doctor. (WC: Real Time, AUDIO: Real Time)
Cybermen on Centuria
During the 41st century an interplanetary info-thief stole Cyberman blueprints from the Torchwood Archive and used them to build a new Cyber army on Centuria with the intent of auctioning them off as hi-tech soldiers. However they turned on him and made him a half-converted slave. They started to kidnap hundreds of tourists and convert them. However, the Doctor discovered this while on Centuria for a holiday and the beach he was on was attacked. He and the other beachgoers were thrown into a van. Jayne Kadett, who was tracking down interplanetary Info Theft when the Cybermen caught her, revealed to the Doctor what had happened. The Doctor and Jayne managed to escape the Cybermen and blow the restraint circuits; the Cybermen factory (Factory Zero One) was destroyed. (COMIC: The Power of the Cybermen)
The Doctor and Kadett followed the Cyberman's signal, taking a robot-run airship across the now-deserted continent of Azlon on the planet Centuria. Before arriving at the airbus terminal (a Cyber-conversion factory), the conductor/law enforcer became influenced by the Cybermen's hypnotic signal, which was being used to subjugate the arriving humans. The Doctor, Kadett and a reprogrammed robot conductor pretended to be hypnotised and follow the other arrivals. Seizing the right moment, the Doctor disrupted the hypnotic signal and the conductor robot attacked the Cybermen. A stray shot from the conductor ruptured the fuel banks, causing a huge explosion which killed most of the newly converted Cyber-drones (basic work units) as their humanity started to become more dominant. As the Doctor and Kadett fled the explosion, they found a bit of a map in a Cyberman's hand. (COMIC: Drones of Doom)
Using the TARDIS, the Doctor and Kadett followed the Cybermen's map to Centuria's arctic zone where the Cybermen planned to ship upgraded human drones. Homaj, a half human, half Cyber drone, escaped the Cybermen who forced him and others to mine Hargstones. A giant purple Ice Snake attacked, but Cybermen with Cyberdogs deleted it. Homaj ran off into the frozen wasteland but the Doctor and Kadett were captured and taken to a huge mine below the ice. Inside the mine, the Doctor created a distraction while Kadett stole some explosives. The distraction caused a Cyberman to split one of the cave walls, disturbing a nest of Ice Snakes which attacked them. Escaping the mine, the Doctor and Kadett saw the Cybership has already departed with its cargo. Homaj waited for them and informed them he had intercepted a message saying that the cargo was going to Centuria Central. He then took the explosives from Kadett and headed back to the mine. In an act of self-sacrifice, he permanently sealed it. The Doctor and Kadett left in the TARDIS in pursuit of the Cybership. (COMIC: Enemy Mine)
The TARDIS landed in Centuria Central in a temporal stasis field. Kadett was caught in the frozen moment but the Doctor, being a Time Lord, could resist the field. Cybermen in a patrol aircar spotted him moving around and pursued. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to bring the aircar crashing down, drawing the attention of other Cybermen, who arrived to salvage parts and take them back to base. The Doctor smuggled himself into the base with the salvage. The base was the Triplanetary base which the Doctor suspected had been robbed of its Hargstone reserves to enable the Cybermen to maintain a stasis machine. The Doctor learned from the Cybermen that they had built the stasis machine from Torchwood files and used the device to subdue opposition. Choosing the most secure place for the machine, the Doctor escaped and headed for the bank's vault, but it was made of titanium and was protected by laser-proof glass and destructor rays. When the Doctor couldn't get in he used the sonic screwdriver to turn the destructor rays inwards, destroying the stasis machine. The Cybermen had a mental link with the machine that enables them to move around inside the stasis field, so when the machine was destroyed the temporal feedback overloaded their circuits. However, a Cyber-helmet in the shadows glowed red, suggesting that the Cybermen presence on Centuria wasn't completely destroyed. (COMIC: Time of the Cybermen)
The Cyber Legions
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)
Attempting to steal the Doctor's memories
In the 54th century, the Cybermen annexed Malleon. Ten to twenty years later, they attacked Nomicae in an attempt to capture the Ninth Doctor's memories of the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: The Bidding War)
Post-Cyber Wars upgrades
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)
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 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)
A Cyber Ship was chased by a Dalek flying saucer. Inside the ship, two Cybermen interrogated a Dalek Lumpy about the whereabouts of the Orb of Fates before being flattened by the Doctor's TARDIS. The Twelfth Doctor sent Lumpy on Telos to retrieve a second element of the Orb. (GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek)
Incompatibility with humanity
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. Since the Cyber-conversion protocols were keyed to human or Mondasian biology, the number of viable converts had dropped dramatically by then.
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)
Final evolution
By the 101st century, the Cybermen had nearly died out. Several centuries earlier, they had become the pacifist Cyberlords. (PROSE: Synthespians™) By the 108th century, the Cyberlord Hegemony was a major political power. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus)
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)
Remnants of the Cybermen
A Cyberman head was once seen destroyed on a desert planet that the TARDIS once visited. The Cyberman lay dead with the silver wires on its face stretched. (WC: TARDIS Cam No.1)
A Cyberman was ensnared by the cables within the Cloisters on Gallifrey. It begged for Clara Oswald's help when she and the Twelfth Doctor walked through the Cloisters. (TV: Hell Bent)
Attempting to change history
One of the last surviving Cyber-Leaders found a TARDIS "abandoned on a planet ruined by fire". It tried to pilot the ship to prehistoric Earth and cyberconvert a few early ancestors of humanity, but it was unable to fully control the TARDIS. The Cyber-Leader was severely damaged by exposure to the Time Vortex and it crashed near Baltimore in late 1982.
Using its access to the entire history of the cyber-race, the Cyber-Leader concocted a plan to attract the Doctor to Baltimore by killing Anthony Chambers, a family friend of Peri Brown, in September 1984. The plan worked and the Cyber-Leader captured the Sixth Doctor and forced him to pilot the TARDIS to prehistoric Earth. The Doctor tricked the Cyber-Leader into thinking that history had been changed and instead of pilotting the ship to a new version of 1984 where Cyberman had been the dominant life form on Earth for millennia, the Doctor took the Cyber-Leader to Mondas in 1984. The Cyber-Leader was considered faulty by its ancestors and taken to be reprocessed. (AUDIO: The Reaping)
While the Cyber-Leader was destroyed with Mondas in 1986, (AUDIO: The Reaping, TV: The Tenth Planet) some of the cyber-technology it left in Baltimore was salvaged by Katherine Chambers and taken to Brisbane. She partially converted her brother to extend his life. In 2006, the Forge manipulated Katherine to create an artificial intelligence by fusing the cyber-technology with other alien technology and the mind of Eve Morris. The Fifth Doctor attempted to destroy all traces of System, but a backup copy was saved (AUDIO: The Gathering) and System went into widespread use by 2021. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
Supremacy over all of time and space
At the end of the universe, a group of Cybermen living within an asteroid were found by Rassilon after he was banished from Gallifrey. Rassilon saw the potential in allying with the Cybermen and let himself be converted into a Cyber-Leader. With Rassilon's assistance, the Cybermen attacked and conquered Gallifrey, and rewrote history with the Time Lords' technology to keep the Doctor occupied at Rassilon's insistence.
In the new timeline, Cyber-Silurians seeded the universe with ark ships containing cybertechnology. The Eleventh Doctor attempted to stop the launch of the arks, but he was captured and assimilated into the Cyberiad.
After the CyberKings captured nearly all Sontaran cloning worlds and caused the extinction of the Rutan Host, the Tenth Doctor, Gabby Gonzalez and Cindy Wu were taken to the Sontaran-Prime on Sontar by some of the last surviving Sontarans. The Doctor tried to protect Sontar from the CyberKings, but was unable to stop an ark from converting Sontar on a planetary scale. The Sontaran cloning factories were then altered by the Cybermen so that they produced an endless supply of Mondasians to convert.
The Cybermen conquered countless more planets, including Alpha Centauri, Karn, (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) Skaro, (COMIC: Prologue: The Fifth Doctor) and even invaded the Matrix during the Sixth Doctor's trial on Space Station Zenobia. (COMIC: Prologue: The Sixth Doctor) The Daleks were destroyed, (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) resulting in the Cybermen taking their place in the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: Prologue: The War Doctor) Earth was completely taken over by Cybermen in 2006. After Rose Tyler was converted and Jack Harkness was killed, the Ninth Doctor tried to destroy the Cybermen. Instead, he was infected with nanobots and cyberconverted. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
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The First Doctor was captured at 76 Totter's Lane in 1963, (COMIC: Prologue: The First Doctor) the Second Doctor was converted into a Cyber-Leader at the Moonbase in 2070, (COMIC: Prologue: The Second Doctor) a time distortion brought a cyberfication machine into the Third Doctor's laboratory which converted the Master. (COMIC: Prologue: The Third Doctor) and the Fourth Doctor found himself surrounded by Cybermen when K9 was converted. (COMIC: Prologue: The Fourth Doctor)
The Fifth Doctor and Peri Brown were pursed by Cybermen on Skaro. (COMIC: Prologue: The Fifth Doctor, Supremacy of the Cybermen) The Seventh Doctor attempted to destroy the cyber-fleet with nemesis mines, but he was attacked by a cyberconverted Ace. (COMIC: Prologue: The Seventh Doctor, Supremacy of the Cybermen) The Eighth Doctor and Josie Day were captured by Cybermen and Cybermats on a spaceship. (COMIC: Prologue: The Eighth Doctor)
At the end of the universe, the Cybermen used looms to siphon the regenerative energy from Time Lords into the Eye of Harmony. They planned to use the Eye of Harmony to shape formation of the next universe, making a reality perfectly suited to the Cyberiad. The Twelfth Doctor came to Gallifrey and confronted Rassilon and the Cybermen. When the Doctor was forced into a loom, the Cyber-Controller betrayed Rassilon and put him in a loom as well. The Doctor and Rassilon used their combined willpower to influence the energy being pumped into the Eye of Harmony and instead of regenerating the future, they regenerated the past. Everything the Cybermen had done was reversed and their supremacy over all of time and space was wiped from the memory of the universe. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Undated events
A Cyberman was among the life-forms exhibited in Vorg's Miniscope. (TV: Carnival of Monsters)
The Fourth Doctor had a medal he was given for defeating the Cybermen. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Star Beast)
The Seventh Doctor and Catherine Broome battled a squad of Cybermen in the Prenadene asteroid belt. (PROSE: Companion Piece)
The Cybermen got involved in the Last Great Time War on planets such as Veestrax. (COMIC: Outrun)
After the Last Great Time War ended, the Cybermen fought other races for control over time. (COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction)
Rassilonian Era
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 Cybermen were part of the Supremo's alliance in the war against Morbius. (PROSE: Warmonger)
During the Doctor's era, the Cybermen allied themselves with the Tremas Master to become the rulers of Gallifrey. After they kidnapped Susan Foreman, they were stopped by the Fifth Doctor. (PROSE: Birth of a Renegade)
Other realities
The CyberHost that lived in the universe of the Ferutu wore runic symbols on their armour which repelled Ferutu magic. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created by the Black Guardian where the First Doctor never left Gallifrey, the Cybermen were one of many races which fought over control of Earth. This timeline was destroyed when the Seventh Doctor retrieved the Key to Time. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)
In an alternate timeline where the Daleks were peaceful, the Cybermen remained a dangerous force in the universe alongside the Sontarans. (PROSE: The Ripple Effect)
In a timeline in which a successful WOTAN paved the way for World War III, the Cybermen successfully occupied the Arctic in their 1986 invasion. They came to agreements with the South African forces fighting the British, supplying them with technology and weapons that gave the former a huge advantage in the war, particularly in the South African invasion of Britain. The First Doctor averted this timeline by halting the world on its road to war in 1972, (PROSE: The Time Travellers) and later averted its causes altogether by defeating WOTAN in 1966. (TV: The War Machines)
The Cybermen were among the species that made up the Alliance. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) However, the Alliance was never formed after the Big Bang Two. (TV: The Big Bang)
If the Eleventh Doctor and Jean-Luc Picard did not defeat the Cybermen and the Borg, the Cybermen would eventually defeat the Borg, and invade both the Doctor's universe and the Federation universe, with planets invaded including; Raxacoricofallapatorius, Qo'noS, the Judoon homeworld, and finally Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. (COMIC: Assimilation²)
Alternate dimensions
In a universe created by the Quantum Archangel in which the Third Doctor's Exile on Earth never ended, a Cyberman BattlePhalanx attacked Earth in 1989, but was stopped by the Doctor. In 2010, the Cybermen returned to Earth and the Doctor - sick and tired of being stuck on one planet for so long - willingly offered himself up for conversion. He led a devastating invasion of Earth.
In another universe created by the Archangel in which the Sixth Doctor led the Time Lords in the War against the Enemy, the Cyberlords were the Time Lords' greatest ally until history was altered so that they weren't. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
References
An image of a Cyberman was one of the fears pulled from the Doctor's mind when he faced the Keller Machine. (TV: The Mind of Evil)
As noted by the Twelfth Doctor in propaganda broadcasts to an occupied Earth in the late 2010s, the Cybermen were among the menaces to humanity whom the Monks took credit for defeating. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
The Tenth Doctor kept one of the Cybus logos from a Cyberman chest plate in the TARDIS. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp, PROSE: The Taking of Chelsea 426) More specifically the Eleventh Doctor kept one in the TARDIS drawing room. (GAME: TARDIS)
Behind the scenes
Inspiration for the Cybermen
The idea for the Cybermen came from Kit Pedler's interest in new medical advances and his fears of where they might lead. Early concepts of the Cyberman design emphasised the "man" part of the name, but the proposed design would have cost too much money. Indeed, the televised version of The Tenth Planet featured much more human-like Cybermen with human hands.
Prologues to certain Target Books novelisations reflect the earlier ideas about the Cybermen and state they perfected the science of cybernetics to gain immortality. The Cybermen were the result: immortal, but at the price of loss of their humanity.
Development of the characters
The second appearance of the Cybermen in The Moonbase (pre-planned by the production team even before The Tenth Planet had aired), re-designed them radically, making them much more robotic in appearance. The Cybermen went through another major re-design in The Invasion, yet another in Earthshock, one in the comic strips in The Flood and one more in Nightmare in Silver. Minor re-designs would take place as well. As the Cybermen stories do not appear in a chronological order, this makes their evolution rather confusing; more 'advanced' Cybermen are around at the same time as more 'primitive' ones. This can be explained by time travel, though the Cybermen only captured one time ship. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
Non-narrative information
According to non-narrative information in DWBIT 17 and the DWBIT Daleks vs Cybermen Special, during the Battle of Canary Wharf, the weaponry of the Cybermen was mostly ineffective to Dalek casing, but there were some Dalek casualties as the Cybermen were able to tear the domes of some Daleks right off, in some instances as part of an ambush.
In another Dalek Wars page in Battles in Time, a single Cyberman ended at the bottom of the oceans of Philjax III during the Daleks' battle with the Squeeth.
- In a website launched by the BBC for the promotion of season 2, International Electromatics, it was indicated that Cybus Industries derived their Cyberman technology from the deactivated bodies of alien Cybermen found at the North Pole.
In the stage play The Monsters Are Coming!, the Lurman Vorgenson used his machine, the Minimiser, to capture several Cybermen to be part of his travelling show dedicated to the Eleventh Doctor. The Cybermen were one of many mind-controlled versions of his recently encountered enemies. It was revealed that the New Paradigm Daleks had planted the idea in his head to attract the Eleventh Doctor to the show with his monsters, and capture him in the Minimiser. This plan worked, although Vorgenson learned the truth. The audience managed to save the Doctor and helped him to release the Cybermen from the Minimiser to destroy the Daleks.
According to The Brilliant Book 2012, at one point, Vastra and Jenny battled the Cybermen.
Cybermen of unspecified origin
Because of the various origin stories of the Cybermen, it's often hard to tell which version of the species is appearing in any given story.
Neil Gaiman has stated[1] that he has the theory that, at one point, the Cybus Cybermen encountered the Mondasian/Telosian Cybermen and the two races merged into one, explaining why, in Series 5 and Series 6, the Cybermen share characteristics of both the originals and the Cybus versions. It may also explain why the Cybus Cybermen appear in the ice tombs on Telos (in The Mazes of Time) and why the Cybermen have connections with Mondas Cybermen in the past but have the Cybus design (in Assimilation²). This merged Cyber race is implied in Gaiman's Series 7 episode Nightmare in Silver, where the Cyber-suits of two Cybus Cybermen are seen and said to have been found after the Cyber-Wars (a Mondasian Cyberman conflict) along with the suit of a Cyberman of the Cyber Legions. However, no explicit confirmation of this theory is given in the episode.
Dialogue in TV: The Doctor Falls has since suggested that while some Cybermen are born of unique origins, they are still part of one species.
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 resemble the Mondasian Cybermen, but when the Doctor is killed, they shout "YOU WILL BE DELETED", the catchphrase of their Cybus counterparts.
Cybermen by David Banks
The non-narrative source Doctor Who: Cybermen, by David Banks, went into further detail about Cybermen and Cyberman factions. Banks created a number of terms — CyberFaction, CyberNomad, CyberTelosian, CyberMondasian, and others — to explain the differences in the Cybermen's costumes on television. Some of the terms, in adapted forms, appear in his later novel, PROSE: Iceberg. It is these forms — Mondan and the Faction, which this wiki prefers, according to our canon policy.
The history Banks presented as "non-fiction" was largely ignored by other authors and so can't be considered in the writing of most of our articles. Here are some of the points that Banks made which never made it beyond Doctor Who: Cybermen:
- The departure of the CyberFaction (that is, the Faction) from Mondas was thought to have occurred around 5000 BC in what Banks called the "First Divergence".
- In the "Second Divergence", a group which author David Banks called "CyberNomads" diverged from the Faction. These so-called "Nomads" searched for the validium statue Nemesis and tried and failed to destroy Voga.
- Possibly after the 21st century, the Faction abandoned their home in the Sol system and journeyed into the galaxy to colonise a suitable planet. The Cybermen which colonised Telos, possibly in 2175, split from the Faction and were called the CyberTelosians. This group united with the CyberNomads after they discovered the frozen CyberTelosians, and became CyberNeomorphs. These Cybermen planned to use Halley's Comet against Earth and were taken to the Death Zone on Gallifrey.
In other words, what Banks was trying to do was create terms for each of the different costumes he and his fellow performers had worn throughout the years. In effect he was saying that the costumes in Attack of the Cybermen were of CyberNeomorphs, the ones worn in The Tomb of the Cybermen were of CyberTelosians, and so forth.
The idea has not been widely ignored by other works. Even he did not in his book, Iceberg, which mentioned none of his terms precisely. It did not reference the CyberNeomorphs and CyberTelosians, and called the CyberFaction, "the Faction", and CyberMondasians, "Mondans".
Other matters
- Mondasian Cybermen are among Cyberman enemies used in the Doctor Who: Legacy mobile game.
- Similar to the villains of the Time War in the RTD era, every twelfth episode in the Moffat era featured at least one Cyberman. Series 5's The Pandorica Opens had a Cyber-Leader in The Alliance; series 6's Closing Time had Cybermats, series 7's Nightmare in Silver had Cybermen that survived the Cyber-Wars, Cybermites, and Mr Clever; series 8's Death in Heaven had a Cybermen army made by Missy; series 9's Hell Bent had a Cyberman in the Cloisters; and series 10's The Doctor Falls had Mondasian Cybermen created on a colony ship.
Footnotes
- ↑ EXCLUSIVE – Neil Gaiman Talks Doctor Who And Cybermen. SFX (May 7th, 2013). Retrieved on January 5th, 2014.
External links
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