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 hungered for immortality because their civilisations were dying out and they wanted to survive, and some were born from the intent to upgrade themselves and everyone around them.
Despite their many different origins, there were similarities between most groups of Cybermen. For the most part, they lacked individuality or names, and had no emotions, viewing 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".
Physical characteristics
General appearance
The Cyberman form was known as a Cyber-body (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet) or Cyber-suit. (AUDIO: Real Time, TV: The Age of Steel) Though the Cybermen's designs varied greatly across time, space and universes, the many versions had several things in common. Nearly all were predominantly silver in colour, (TV: The Tenth Planet et al.) except for the Cyber-Scouts, who were completely black, (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) and a wooden Cyberman, who was almost entirely brown. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Many Cybermen also exhibited exposed circuitry and tubing on a rubber or mylar-textured outer skin, (TV: The Tenth Planet et al.) although some Cybermen had entirely metal bodies with no exposed circuitry. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel, Nightmare in Silver, COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) While some Cybermen had highly muscular Cyber-bodies, (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) the Cybermen that attacked the Dreadnought had skeletal Cyber-bodies. (COMIC: Dreadnought)
Helmet
The head of a Cyberman was known as a Cyber-helmet, and was often characterised with a pair of side handles on the left and right-hand sides of the helmet, which connected together above the Cyberman's helmet. (TV: The Moonbase et al.) However, there were notable exceptions to this trait.
The CyberMondans possessed a third side handle connecting from the back of their heads. (TV: The Tenth Planet) The CyberMondans of the Mondasian colony ship used their side handles as an emotional inhibitor in order to "stop [them] caring" about the extreme pain that they experienced both during, and after, their cyber-conversions. The patients that these latter CyberMondans were evolved from lacked side handles. (TV: World Enough and Time) By contrast, some Cyber-Controllers lacked side handles, instead possessing enlarged craniums. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Attack of the Cybermen, COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) One Cyber-Controller's vision of the "Age of the Cyberiad" featured a Cyberman whose Cyber-helmet also lacked any side handles. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Some Cybermen also possessed weaponry within their Cyber-helmets. The CyberMondans could fire orange, fiery lasers from the centrepiece of their side handles, (TV: The Doctor Falls) while the Cyber-helmets of CyberNomads contained four gun-barrels which fired quick shots. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen, PROSE: Killing Ground)
Cyberdrones were Cyber-helmets capable of flight, with small, blue thrusters on their undersides and backs. They could fire blue laser blasts from their eye-pods. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen)
Other features
The CyberMondans of Mondas notably retained organic, human hands. (TV: The Tenth Planet) In contrast, the CyberMondans of the Mondasian colony ship sported caucasian gloves instead. (TV: World Enough and Time, The Doctor Falls)
Most 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 and spoke in a monotone, buzzing voice, emphasising their lack of emotion. (TV: The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen) These Cybermen were identified by the ArcHivist Hegelia as CyberTelosians. (AUDIO: The Early Cybermen)
The Cybermen who attempted to destroy Earth in 2526 had bulkier, more imposing forms and deeper voices. (TV: Earthshock) Hegelia termed these Cybermen as CyberNeomorphs. (AUDIO: The Ultimate Cybermen) Similar Cybermen also existed in the 1980s, (TV: Silver Nemesis) observed by Hegelia to be "CyberIsomorphs" following the appearance of time traveling Neomorphs in 1985. (AUDIO: The Ultimate Cybermen, TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
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)
Early Mondasian Cybermen had a quavering voice which put inflected syllables in a seemingly random, sing-song manner. Their suits were not entirely metallic, the face and hands being instead covered in a sort of hardened medical gauze. (TV: The Tenth Planet) Those on the colony ship, like Bill Potts, spoke like this as well. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Cybermen from Pete's World spoke in an electronic, monotone voice, far more emotionless and deeper than the Cybermen of the Doctor's universe. Because of their lack of emotions, the Cybermen used technical terms like "compatible" and their battle cry, "DELETE!". (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) The Cybermen were shown to misunderstand lower-level, spoken language terms, instead preferring higher-level language. For example, the Cyber-Lord couldn't understand the word "best" so Miss Hartigan had to say "I will operate at maximum efficiency". (TV: The Next Doctor)
There were Cybermen in the Doctor's universe that had similar appearances to the Pete's World Cybermen, the difference being the lack of a Cybus logo on their chest. Two Cybus units were in a post-Cyber-Wars collection, implying the two Cyber-species had united by the war. After recovering from the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen had advanced suits, (TV: Nightmare in Silver) possibly as a result of cross pollination between the Cybermen of Mondasian evolution and the Pete's World Cybermen. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) 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 detach 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 a partial conversion, the subject took on several features of the Cybermen. For example, Tobias Vaughn's torso was immune to gunfire. (TV: The Invasion) Sometimes, the conversion could be interrupted, yet still partly functional, such as with Ashad. (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati)
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. However, this could only work with the Nethersphere, or a similar Matrix-like computer; the minds of the dead, or "software" would be stored until their bodies were turned into Cybermen. While stored, they could choose to delete their emotions. (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, gold-tipped arrows, or gold particles could destroy (or, in the case of the particles, at least weaken) them. (TV: Earthshock, Silver Nemesis, Ascension of the Cybermen) Gold (and gold particles) 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 Polly Cocktail, (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)
Bullets were unable to damage Cybermen. 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; PROSE: Made of Steel) 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)
Many versions of Cybermen could be weakened by damage to their emotional inhibitor. Feedback loops (TV: Closing Time) and neural inhibitor systems were some of many ways to damage a Cyberman's emotional inhibitor, although the Thirteenth Doctor only assumed the the post-Cyber-Wars Cybermen would be weak to a neural inhibitor system. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen)
The Mondasian Cybermen the Twelfth Doctor encountered onboard the Mondasian colony ship were shown to be vulnerable to their own cybernetic blasters. The Master's 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 patients could be disabled by them temporarily. In addition these Mondasian Cybermen, including their predecessors and their later evolutions (which resembled the Cybermen of the Cyber Legions and the Cyberiad), could be easily incinerated by igniting the fuel lines of the colony ship. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Operation
The Cyber-suit of Cybermen from Pete's World was constructed from bulletproof steel. A chest plate with the Cybus Industries logo housed a "heart of steel", the function of which is unclear, and the emotional inhibitor chip. The brain remained contained within the suit's head, though the skull was included in more hastily converted units. 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 which apparently had sufficient processing capacity to pursue and attack a human target. (TV: The Age of Steel)
Typically, Cybermen were led by a Cyber Leader during conversion missions. If the Cyber Leader was terminated then the Cybermen downloaded the shared files and nominated a new Cyber Leader. However, this would take time. (TV: Doomsday) Other leader variations were Cyber-Lords and Cyber-Kings. (TV: The Next Doctor)
Hierarchy
John Lumic/Cyber Controller, due to being founder of Cybus Industries and creator of the Cybermen, led the Cybermen upon his conversion, even having a throne like chair. He was their highest authority, so much so those who were captured were brought straight to him, like the Tenth Doctor, Rose and Pete. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel)
Upon his death, a Cyber-Leader became the Cyber commander of the Cyber Army. The original had black handlebars on his headpiece though subsequent replacements did not have this. Cyber leaders had the power to call other lower ranked Cybermen for support during heavy conflicts and generally controlled all the other Cybermen. They also held talks with other species, proposing alliances and declaring war and/or surrender to them. (TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday)
After the Battle of Canary Wharf, a Cyber-Lord became the Cyber commander. They were a seemingly higher rank of Cyber Leader, the only noticeable difference being that their purpose was to prepare for the creation of the CyberKing and that their brain was visible through their black face plate. (TV: The Next Doctor)
The said CyberKing was the control unit of a Dreadnought ship, integrated into it, making it the CyberKing. They typically led the invasion and takeover of a planet, serving on the front lines, using their advanced weapons to lay waste to cities, and acted as a mass conversion unit. (TV: The Next Doctor)
Then there was the typical Cyberman, a standard fighting unit of the Cyber Army. They were subservient to all except those beneath them. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen et al.) Such lower ranks were the Cyberdogs, the search and guard units of converted dogs (COMIC: Enemy Mine) and the Cybershades, primitive, beast-like worker unit, converted by using a brain of a dog or a cat. (TV: The Next Doctor)
The Cybermen that crash landed in Colchester, 2011 lacked a Cyber-Controller and nearly converted Craig Owens into one. (TV: Closing Time)
There were also Cyber-drones, partially converted humans, worker units who were used for the slave labour. (COMIC: Enemy Mine)
Lisa Hallett was a partially converted human who was sustained by life support system under the Torchwood base in Cardiff. (TV: Cyberwoman)
Cyberslaves were humans converted by being infected with a nano-form. They could fire electricity from their hands and follow basic orders. If desired, a Cyber-leader could easily disable them. (GAME: Blood of the Cybermen)
The lowest rank were humans controlled at the brain which were often only kept until fulfilling their required purpose, then killed. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday)
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)
The Cybermen that allied with the Borg were connected through the Cyber-web. (COMIC: Assimilation²) 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
Weapons used by the Cybermen were known as Cyber-weapons. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Cybermen)
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. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen) 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 Eighth Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor had a powerful laser weapon built into their headframe. It emitted a thick yellow laser beam powerful enough to stun Destrii, kill humans, (COMIC: The Flood) 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. When grappling a target, they could also emit an electro-magnetic pulse that, while non-fatal, was powerful enough to trigger a Time Lord's regnenerative process. The Twelfth Doctor was rendered unconscious and suffered impaired mobility for several weeks after being attacked in this way. (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) Ashad, (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati) 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 displayed characteristics that could be linked to emotions such as anger, amusement, and, at times, smugness. (TV: Earthshock, Attack of the Cybermen, Silver Nemesis)
When they re-emerged after the Cyber-Wars, the Cybermen appeared to be truly emotionless, although the Cyber-Planner "Mr Clever" showed 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
Points of origin
- Main article: Genesis of the Cybermen
Being the product of parallel evolution, the Cybermen were "inevitable", "always get[ting] started" wherever there were people. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
On Mondas
Various 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)
According to one account, the Cybermen were originally an aquatic species known as the Voord, (COMIC: The World Shapers) who themselves had theorised origins as a Remote experiment. (PROSE: Interference) 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 home planet Marinus to Mondas. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
Prehistoric CyberMondans
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 edge 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)
Rise of the CyberMondans
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 them insane. The cyber-conversion succeeded, producing the first modern Cybermen. However, the first Cybermen's bodies would reject the implants, which would kill them. Those flaws was corrected when the Fifth Doctor (who had arrived on Mondas with Nyssa), had an biological analysis done on him. In the scan, they discovered 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)
On the Mondasian colony ship
Sometime in Mondas' history, a Mondasian colony ship was launched from Mondas to pick up some colonists; when the ship nearly flew into a black hole, (TV: World Enough and Time) twenty Mondasian engineers (PROSE: Jorj) were sent from Floor 0000 to Floor 1056 to reverse the rear thrusters, but as the ship was undergoing the effects of time dilation generated by the black hole, the engineers were unable to return to Floor 0000, and so spent the rest of their lives on Floor 1056. A thousand years later, the Mondasians' descendants inhabited a huge city on Floor 1056, which had significantly degenerated over the centuries. (TV: World Enough and Time) After the Saxon Master crashed his TARDIS on Floor 1056 and ruled the city for a time, before being forced into hiding as "Razor", (TV: The Doctor Falls) the city's hospital began Operation Exodus, a mission to evolve the Mondasians of Floor 1056 into Cybermen to survive the journey to Floor 0000 to gain control of the ship. The Cybermen started as the patients, who escorted humans from the city to the hospital for conversion, (TV: World Enough and Time) and also travelled to the higher floors and captured any other humans on the colony ship for cyber-conversion, including the remaining Mondasian crew members on Floor 0000. (TV: World Enough and Time, PROSE: Jorj) During their development, the Master incorporated a number of functions into the patients that would allow him to control the patients upon their evolution into full Cybermen, (PROSE: Alit in Underland) in a bid to use the Cybermen that would arise on Floor 1056 as his personal army (TV: The Doctor Falls) to conquer the galaxy. (PROSE: Alit in Underland)
When the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS landed on Floor 0000, Bill Potts was taken by some patients to Floor 1056, and after being partially-converted into a patient, Bill spent ten years living in the hospital with Razor, until being fully converted into a Mondasian Cyberman. Two hours later, the Doctor and Nardole found Bill in the hospital's Conversion Theatre, before Missy and the Master confronted them. (TV: World Enough and Time) Shortly before being knocked out by the two Masters, the Doctor altered the Cybermen's definition of humanity to register lifeforms with two hearts as humans; later, while the Cybermen were mass-converting the people of Floor 1056, several newly-converted Mondasian Cybermen attacked the hospital, although the Doctor, the two Masters, and the converted Bill escaped with Nardole in a shuttlecraft, before crashing on Floor 0507. Following this, the Cybermen began evolving themselves further in preparation for their final assault on Floor 0507, whose inhabitants the patients had previously failed to convert. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
After a Cyber-Planner was created on Floor 1056, the Master, Missy and Alit were detected on Floor 0508; in response, the Cyber-Planner sent seven CyberNeomorphs to Floor 0508 to capture the Master and Missy for interrogation concerning the Cybermen's changed definition of humanity, as well as to unleash a swarm of Cybermats to attack Floor 0507. However, after destroying the patrol's Cyber-Lieutenant and escaping capture by the Cybermen, Missy and Alit escaped to Floor 0508's weather control hub, where Missy hacked into, and deadlocked active, an old failsafe system that her predecessor programmed into the patients - which had also been inherited by the evolved Cybermen and the Cybermats - and sent the Cybermats back to Floor 1056. Afterwards, Missy sacrificed "Topknot", a patient from Floor 0507, as a distraction for the CyberNeomorphs, before rescuing the Master. When the remaining Cybermen returned and tried to kill the Master, Missy and Alit, the Master fired his laser screwdriver at the floor's steel deck; as Missy had already hacked Floor 0508's weather settings to generate a strong rainstorm, the resultant electrical burst destroyed all the CyberNeomorphs and allowed the two Masters and Alit to escape before more Cybermen could arrive. (PROSE: Alit in Underland)
Two weeks after their arrival on Floor 0507, the Doctor, Bill, Missy and the Master found Floor 0507's Inertia lift entrances, but were forced to destroy an advanced Cyberman after Missy summoned one of the lifts; this alerted the Cybermen on Floor 1056 - who were now radically more advanced than when they were first converted - who began flying en masse to Floor 0507. That night, when the Cybermen attacked, Nardole and the farmers of Floor 0507 fought off the Cybermen long enough for Nardole to lead an evacuation of the children to Floor 0502, while the Doctor and Bill stayed behind to destroy both the Cybermen and, in the process, Floor 0507, by igniting all the fuel stored underneath the solar farm. Bill managed to survive the destruction of Floor 0507, and was found through her tears by Heather; using her powers as a creature of sentient oil, Heather relieved Bill of her Cyber-form, before the pair took the Doctor's body and left the Mondasian colony ship in his TARDIS. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Following the evacuation, Nardole defended the evacuees of Floor 0507 from the remaining Cybermen on Floor 1056 on a near-daily basis, (WC: The Best of Days) until their conflict was "sorted", although they were still attacked by the Cybermats, (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time) whose failsafe systems had been deactivated again, (PROSE: Alit in Underland) on an annual basis in the spring for at least several centuries, even when Nardole eventually died. (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time)
On Telos
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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.
Telos' status as a birthplace of the Cybermen was contentious. Indeed, Bernice Summerfield once corrected one of her students who believed that Cybermen originated on Telos, instead insisting that Mondas was the true Cyberman homeworld. (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus) The Cyberons knew Mondas as the "original homeworld". (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons) The Twelfth Doctor remembered that Mondas and Telos were both, in addition to several other locations, origin points of the Cybermen. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
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)
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 reopen 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 with the Doctor's help, but the Cyber-Leader and a few others escaped to the Millennium Dome and kept the army out with a forcefield and kidnapped Martha Jones to draw in the Doctor and force him to help them.
The Doctor, having recovered the TARDIS, was able to enter and agreed to help them reopen the Void. However, instead of opening a gateway into the Void, the Doctor opened a space-time portal to the time of the dinosaurs from which emerged a Tyrannosaurus rex. The T-Rex dragged two of the Cybermen back through the portal and destroyed them while 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)
At some point, as seen in an image in Justin Richards' The Secret Lives of Monsters, a Sontaran fought Cybus Cybermen. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
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) Though this event was erased from history by the cracks in time, so that only the Doctor remembered it, (TV: Flesh and Stone) he later managed to close the cracks with the Big Bang Two, which had the ability to restore things lost to the time field. (TV: The Big Bang)
One 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)
A Cybus Cyber-ship fell through reality to Rome in 312, where its Cybermen were taken over by the Entity. The Eleventh Doctor made these Cybermen believe in a Cyber-God and allowed them to remain in this era, away from Earth, and spread the word of their deity. (COMIC: Conversion)
From the future
Some Cybermen were present in early history due to time travel. One faction of Cybermen, for example, were caught in a temporal storm and buried under the Arctic tens of thousands of years before 2010. (GAME: Blood of the Cybermen)
As part of the Alliance, Cybermen time travelled to participate in the creation of a trap for the Eleventh Doctor in 102 Stonehenge. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
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)
Early activity on Earth
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 several 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 Cyber-ship full of Cybermen, either on a mission for colonisation or 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)
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 Who 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)
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)
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)
In the 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)
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)
Aftermath of early invasions
Following the destruction of Mondas, some Cybermen based themselves on Planet 14 and made a series of attempts at invading Earth. (PROSE: Killing Ground) By the 1990s, these Cyberman had been driven from Planet 14 after the planet’s power was turned against them, resulting in a catastrophic explosion. (PROSE: Scientific Adviser) 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.)
In the 1990s, the Cybermen driven from Planet 14 infiltrated the production of a film based on their first invasion. They used the production to identify errors in their original strategies. The Second Doctor arrived and warned them to withdraw as UNIT was aware of their activities. (PROSE: Scientific Adviser)
In 2000, the Cybermen infected the Earth computers with a virus that removed all vowels. (PROSE: Vrs) The Preternatural Research Bureau assisted in eradicating the virus. (PROSE: The Last Dose)
In 2006, the Cybermen that had migrated to Lonsis were attacked by Hulbert Logistics, who were hired by the Shinx. After the Eighth Doctor, unaware of the Cybermen, disabled the combat machine, the Cybermen occupied it. The Cybermen then tried to invade Earth via the portal in the main branch of Hulbert Logistics. The 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)
Attacks during the 2010s
Invasion of the Cyber-Mainframe
In the 2010s, UNIT battled the Cybermen of the Cyber-Mainframe (AUDIO: Code Silver, Master of Worlds) after experimenting with dimension bridge technology (AUDIO: Telepresence) recovered from the Auctioneers. (AUDIO: Game Theory) After Petronella Osgood and Vikram Shindi were virtually converted by Mechanising Worms during an expedition on a parallel Earth, a dimension bridge formed, and the Machine activated Hive Section 49, who crossed the dimension bridge (AUDIO: Telepresence) and attempted to commence full dimension seeding of N-Space, starting with the UNIT base Fortress Island on Earth.
As the Cybermen deleted and upgraded the soldiers of the fort, the virtually-converted Osgood allied with Hive Section 49's Cyber-Controller to modify the Auctioneers' virtual reality app, itself adapted from dimension bridge technology, into a smart phone app to virtually-convert millions of people in seconds. Despite the efforts of Kate Stewart and Josh Carter, Osgood successfully broadcast the app (AUDIO: Code Silver) and the Cybermen flew across the Earth to the virtually-converted humans, in order to build conversion factories for full cyber-conversions. However, when the War Master crossed the dimension bridge from a parallel universe that the Cyber-Mainframe had invaded, he reluctantly allied with Kate and Josh to defeat the Cybermen and recover his TARDIS. After he was seemingly converted into the "Cyber-Master" by a modified mobile conversion unit, the Master reprogrammed the dimension gate to upgrade the Cybermen's power connections by drawing power from all parallel Earths; however, as this also included the parallel Earths that the Cybermen failed to successfully invade, the power drawn was contaminated, destroying all the Cybermen connected to the Cyber-Mainframe. Shortly after, the Master, free of his converted state, used the contaminated energy to power his TARDIS to return to the Last Great Time War, saving the remaining virtually-converted humans from being killed by the contaminated energy. (AUDIO: Master of Worlds)
Other invasions
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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 the chest plate and head of one of these Cybermen in the TARDIS drawing room. (GAME: TARDIS, The Gunpowder Plot)
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)
Later in the 2010s, Missy engineered a new breed of Cybermen, (TV: Dark Water, Death in Heaven) whom she personally referred to as her "Cyberdears". (PROSE: Meet Missy!) 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)
Further into the decade, 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)
Later 21st century
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)
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)
First Cyber-Wars
- Main article: Cyber-Wars
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)
Reference was made to "Cyber-Wars" occurring by the mid-23rd century, having left Earth financially destroyed in combination with the 22nd century Dalek invasion. (PROSE: Theatre of War) One account held that the first Cyber-War began in the 2260s, when human colony worlds like Burnt Salt had their populations ravaged by mass conversions. (AUDIO: The Tyrants of Logic)
Another reference was made to Cyberwars in the early 24th century, (PROSE: The Dimension Riders) followed by a period of peaceful expansion until colonial incidents in 2387. (PROSE: Infinite Requiem)
Between Wars
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-D 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 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. (COMIC: Junkyard-Demon II)
Cybermen on Telos
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, despite the Cyber-Controller fighting to reopen the doors, (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) being damaged in the process. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) A group of CyberNomads eventually reopened the Telosian cyber-tombs and forged a new race, the CyberNeomorphs, with the Telosian Cybermen. (PROSE: Killing Ground)
After a timeship landed on Telos, the Cybermen, led by the Cyber-Controller, 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.
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 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)
Great Cyber War
- Main article: Great Cyber War
At one point the Great Cyber War was waged between humanity and the Cybermen, led by the Super Controller on Telos. During this war, the glittergun was invented. (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) The Cybermen attempted to blow up the planet Voga to stop the production of glitterguns, in one of their last acts in the war. (PROSE: The Revenge of the Cybermen)
The Great Cyber War culminated in a final human attack on Telos. A Cyber fleet consisting of tens of thousands of ships intended to turn the tide of the battle was trapped in warp space at Planetoid X due to a Cyber-Planner malfunctioning. The human forces bombarded surface of Telos and the Super Controller was destroyed. Afterwards remnant groups of Cybermen fled across the galaxy. The Sixth Doctor theorised that, with the destruction of the Super Controller, these remnants would be less stable and more prone to emotions, such as revenge. (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) One group relentlessly hounded the remaining fragment of Voga. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
Ten years later, the fleet trapped in warp space was freed by Zennox. They planned to travel back in time to the last battle to ensure the Cybermen’s victory, however were prevented from changing history by the Sixth Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen)
Whilst visiting the Garazone system in 2503, (AUDIO: Neverland) the Eighth Doctor considered the Cyber Wars to be a long time ago and found a gold-plated Cyber helmet leftover from them for sale. (AUDIO: Sword of Orion)
Great Orion Cyber Wars of 26th century
- Main article: Orion War
After centuries of relatively little activity from the Cybermen, (PROSE: Heliotrope Bouquet, AUDIO: Sword of Orion) the 26th century saw a re-ignition of conflict between Cybermen and humanity (TV: Earthshock) as the Neomorphs rose to power. (PROSE: Killing Ground) This time period included the Orion War, (AUDIO: Sword of Orion, et al.) which by the 33rd century were known by historians as the "Great Orion Cyber Wars". (WC: Real Time)
In 2503, (AUDIO: Neverland) eight years into the Orion War, a human plan to salvage Cyber-Technology from derelict ships to defeat the androids was usurped by an android double agent. They found one near the Garazone system. However, the Cybermen and the Cybermats were revived, and began converting the crew. The Eighth Doctor, Charley and Jensen was able to defeat the Cybermen, allowing them to be destroyed by an Ion storm. (AUDIO: Sword of Orion)
Twenty years into the Orion War, the Earth military found a second source of Cyber-Technology, a Cyber-Ship from an old campaign, buried near the Isle of Wight. The Earth Government created the Scorpius programme to do this, under the command of Paul Hunt. (AUDIO: Scorpius) A Cyber-Planner took control of Scorpius, and turned Hunt into their agent. (AUDIO: Conversion) Through Hunt, they arranged the political rise of President Karen Brett and convinced her to come to Scorpius. (AUDIO: Scorpius) Now under Cyber control, she sanctioned the creation of new Cybermen units from the refugees, publicly being deployed as new commandos with which Earth could finally defeat the Androids. (AUDIO: Fear) With their hold on Earth's Government secure the Cybermen fully converted Karen and designated her a Cyber-Leader. She was ordered to lead an expedition to Telos (AUDIO: Conversion) to reactivate their cyber tombs. The Cybermen discovered that Telos had been shattered by an asteroid impact, though the tombs has survived adrift in the debris field. Karen’s former aide Liam Barnaby, allied with the Android Horde, including Samantha Thorn, defeated the Cybermen, and Karen was killed in the battle. (AUDIO: Telos)
With Karen lost, the Cybermen used Hunt as their spokesperson and enforced martial law on the planet. As resistance began to grow, Cybermen were deployed as a police force and began abducting humans for conversion, under the cover of terrorist activities. (AUDIO: Outsiders) They took these humans to conversion bases across the world. (AUDIO: Terror) As well as converting humans, resistance members Hazel Trahn, Dane and Yan discovered that the Cybermen were taking genetic material and force breeding clones for more bodies to convert. (AUDIO: Machines) After his capture, the Cybermen planned to use the execution of Liam Barnaby to bolster the support of the populace. Samantha Thorn made her way to Earth and rescued Liam, working with the human resistance, and together they infiltrated the Cyber-Planner’s base so Sam could interface with the Planner directly. Though unable to defeat it with logic attacks, Sam managed to get the Planner to concede that logically they would waste resources by continuing to occupy Earth in this way. The Planner ordered the Cybermen to withdraw from Earth. Afterwards, the Cyber-Fleet was attacked by the Android Horde. (AUDIO: Extinction)
In 2526, several planets began to unite to oppose the Cybermen in a war. A force of Cybermen tried to devastate Earth on the eve of their conference to finalise the alliance, intending to detonate a Cyberbomb and convert the survivors. After the Fifth Doctor thwarted this plan, they hoped to crash a 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) ArcHivist Hegelia suggested that an agreement was reached to join forces against the Cybermen, resulting in a Cyber-War beginning in the solar system with a battle between the main Cyber-Fleet and human forces which extended to other parts of the galaxy before the Cybermen were ultimately overcome. (AUDIO: The Ultimate Cybermen)
Cyber-Wars Survivors
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. (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus) In the early 27th century she was invited to investigate a tomb on Tysir IV (AUDIO: Silver Lining) and later sent to one by Irving Braxiatel. 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 Cyber-Wars ship pursuing Voga finally caught up to the planet, now in orbit around Jupiter, and infiltrated the nearby Nerva Beacon to launch their plans. The Cybermen’s attempt to destroy it was defeated and their craft and themselves destroyed due to the involvement of the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen) In another account of these events, a volunteer group of Cybermen infiltrated Nerva Beacon whilst it was in the asteroid belt, intending to collide it with an asteroid of gold which would destroy themselves in the process. They were foiled by the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry. (AUDIO: Return 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)
An offshoot faction of Cybermen evolved to have more organic technology and more individuality. The Sixth Doctor saw some of these "evolved Cybermen" on the Habitat in 3174. (PROSE: Burning Heart)
Presence in the late 20th century
After the Sixth Doctor foiled the Neomorph Cybermen's time travel attempt at saving Mondas, (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) some Cybermen remained stranded in the 1980s, becoming known as the CyberIsomorphs. (AUDIO: The Ultimate Cybermen) The Torchwood Institute collected several rumours of Cybermen in the London sewers. (WC: Monster File: Cybermen)
The Neomorph 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 of one of the Cybermen that were killed by Lady Peinforte and stored it at the Underbase. (COMIC: The Age of Ice)
A Neomorph Cyberman was one of a group of aliens present at a Treen colony in 1991. They initially refused Dan Dare and Digby's appeal to donate money to charity, but were convinced with the assistance of the first seven incarnations of the Doctor. (COMIC: Comic Relief Comic)
In 1992, a Cyber-Force composed of a Cyber-Fleet of at least twenty Cyber-Warships with at least two hundred thousand Neomorph Cybermen attempted to conquer Earth by dehydration, but the Sixth Doctor programmed their weapons to target the methanol that served as the "lifeblood" of cyber-technology. (AUDIO: Hour of the Cybermen)
40th - 50th century activity
Cybermen on Centuria
In the 41st century an interplanetary info-thief stole Cybus Industries 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, destroying Factory Zero-One. (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 followed 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 had 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 enabled 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 Siege of Trenzalore
Elsewhere during the 41st century, (PROSE: Tales of Trenzalore, A Perfect Christmas) a force of Cybermen resembling the highly advanced models that the Cyber Legions would go on to develop (PROSE: Ghost in the Machine, TV: Nightmare in Silver) were among a large number of species that travelled to Trenzalore's orbit after hearing the Question being broadcast across the universe. The Eleventh Doctor landed his TARDIS onboard a Cyber-ship in Trenzalore's orbit with "Handles", a severed Cyber-helmet, after detecting the Cyber-ship as a new vessel of unknown origin, unaware that the ship was owned by the Cybermen; upon being detected by the ship's security systems, the Cybermen awoke from stasis and attempted to capture the Doctor for cyber-conversion, but he escaped with Handles and was pursued by the Cyber-ship after his TARDIS dematerialised.
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Following this, the Cybermen became involved in the Siege of Trenzalore, and, like most of the species in Trenzalore's orbit, attempted to bypass the Church of the Papal Mainframe's force field surrounding the planet, that allowed the Papal Mainframe to swiftly intercept and destroy any highly-advanced technology that attempted to bypass the force field. More specifically, three-hundred years into the Siege, the Cybermen deployed a wooden Cyberman to infiltrate Christmas and capture the Doctor - the wooden Cyberman's primitive nature allowed it to successfully pass through the force field surrounding Trenzalore. The wooden Cyberman attacked Christmas and confronted the Doctor, but the latter used his sonic screwdriver, in conjunction with the Truth Field broadcasting from the crack in time in Christmas' clock tower, to trick the wooden Cyberman into destroying itself by firing its flamethrower wrist blaster into its chest. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Shortly following this, the New Dalek Paradigm (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) attacked the Church of the Papal Mainframe and shut down the force field surrounding Trenzalore. The Cybermen, along with many of the other species involved in the Siege, followed the Daleks to fight Christmas with full force; on at least one occasion, numerous Cybermen transmatted to Christmas and fought the Doctor, the Papal Mainframe's Silents, and the soldiers of Christmas. Eventually, however, the Cybermen, like many of Trenzalore's invaders, were either completely destroyed or retreated from the conflict. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
51st century onwards
Cyber-Wars of the Cyber Legions
By the 52nd century, the Cyber Legions, of which there were at least twelve, were a major power in the universe. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, et al.) Although one account speculated that the advanced Cybermen of the Cyber Legions were the result of cross-pollination between the Cybermen of N-Space and the Cybermen of Cybus Industries, harnessing the most powerful aspects of both Cyber-races and thereby resulting in a radically more powerful species, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) another account depicted the Cyber Legions gradually evolving into these Cybermen from Cybus Cybermen that lacked the Cybus Industries logo on their chest plates. (PROSE: Ghost in the Machine, A Girl Called Doubt) The Cyber Legions, along with a separate group of Cybus Cybermen, engaged humanity in another series of Cyber-Wars. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
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)
Sometime after the Cybermen of the Cyber Legions began using sleeker Cyber-bodies with blue power cells in their chests, (PROSE: Ghost in the Machine) Dorium Maldovar secretly stole twelve Cybermen from the Cyber Legions and reprogrammed them to function as security guards for the Maldovarium. (PROSE: The Heist) After Dorium left the Maldovarium to help the Eleventh Doctor at Demons Run, (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) the twelve Cybermen were destroyed by Kiz the Head-Taker, who beheaded them with a sword composed of Gallifreyan zinc, during a heist of the Maldovarium. One of the Cyber-heads was nicknamed "Handles" by an Auton copy of Dorium who assisted in the heist, and used as a door-stop to provide an escape route, until Dorium's Ood removed it. (PROSE: The Heist) Handles later had its organics removed and was bought from the Maldovarium by the Eleventh Doctor, and served as the Time Lord's companion during the first three-hundred years of the Siege of Trenzalore. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown once encountered the Ninth Cyber Legion. (PROSE: Ghost in the Machine)
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 the early years of the Third Cyberwar, hundreds of Cybermats were sent by the Cybermen to attack Space Station Hamlyn. However, the Cybermats were all lured to defeat by the Second Doctor, using his recorder. (PROSE: The Scruffy Piper) A Cyber War involving Cybermen of the Legions’ design ended when the Tiberian spiral galaxy was blown up, destroying apparently all of the Cybermen. (TV: Nightmare in Silver)
Other Cyber-activity
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)
Remnants of the Cyber Legions
Sometime after the destruction of the Tiberian spiral galaxy, the hand and arm of an advanced Cyberman of the Cyber Legions came to be regarded as a legendary "gauntlet" that granted immortality and could radically improve any form of technology. The gauntlet was traded across numerous planets and was pursued by Seeker Sylen of Catrigan Nova over several years, until Sylen acquired the gauntlet and presented it to Lydia, queen of Catrigan Nova, as a gift. Lydia, unaware of the gauntlet's true nature, used it over several days to improve the technology of Nova Palace, and to partially cyber-convert her soldiers. Lydia also accidentally used the gauntlet on her daughter, but her partial conversion was reversed by the Twelfth Doctor, who had been pursuing the gauntlet for a while. As the guards gradually became complete Cybermen, they began "conscripting" people to Nova Palace for conversion, but were eventually destroyed by the Doctor who, using Lydia as bait, lured the Cybermen to the planet's liquid gold whirlpools, dissolving them, along with Lydia's gauntlet. (PROSE: The Mondas Touch)
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.
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, an army of three million 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) Accordingly, a historical account of the universe said that the battle had only arrested the scourge of the Cybermen, noting that it never ended their threat. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)
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 to Telos to retrieve a second element of the Orb. (GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek)
In the far future
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)
Lone survivors of war
At a point in the far future where exact measurements of time were no longer meaningful, the Cybermen were utterly destroyed in a great war with the universe. Only a handful of Cybermen survived, but they were tracked down by bounty hunters and mercenaries. One Cyber-Controller, who was the Sixth Doctor's former companion Evelyn Smythe, hid on Chronos and discovered a time portal leading to 3286 which he used to make a bootstrap paradox of not just his own past cyber-conversion but the complete Cyberman conquest of the universe.
The Controller was unable to travel through the portal, but eventually the Sixth Doctor, Evelyn, and Reece Goddard all came through to the future. The Doctor and Evelyn escaped back to the 33rd century, leaving Reece to defeat the Controller, but in his final moments Reece learned that the Controller was Evelyn's future self and that the Evelyn with the Doctor had been infected with techno-virus. The Doctor and Evelyn then went to Earth in 1927, creating the Cyberverse. However, the Doctor earlier believed the Cyberverse was a divergent timeline (WC: Real Time, AUDIO: Real Time) and during the Lamprey crisis a version of the Sixth Doctor travelling with a partially cyber-converted Evelyn was said to be from a parallel universe to Melanie Bush's Sixth Doctor. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch)
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)
Rekindling of the Cyber-Empire
- Main article: Restoration of the Cyber-Empire
In the far future, after the Cyber-Wars, Ashad, also known as the Lone Cyberman, set out to resurrect the Cyber-Empire, (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen) by seeking out the Cyberium which had been sent back through time and space by the Alliance, a resistance unit during the war. (TV: Fugitive of the Judoon, The Timeless Children) After the Cyber-Wars, which had ended with the Fall of the Cyber-Empire, the Cybermen were nearly wiped out, though the same was true for humanity. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen)
Ashad was able to retrieve the Cyberium on Earth in 1816 (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati) and brought it back to his own time where the survivors of humanity were hunted by the surviving Cybermen. Using the Cyberium, Ashad located an intact Cybercarrier at the location of one of the last battlefields of the war which contained a Cyber-Army of hundreds of thousands of Cybermen and Cyberfighters. Using his new army, Ashad planned to upgrade the Cybermen to become a purely robotic race and then use the death particle to wipe out all organic life in the universe, leaving only the Cybermen and other robotic lifeforms intact. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen, The Timeless Children)
Shortly after arriving on the Planet of the Boundary, Ashad was invited through the Boundary to the ruins of Gallifrey by the Spy Master who was interested in using the Cybermen and Cyberium to his own ends. The Master decided to use the carrier's cyber conversion chambers to create a race of CyberMasters with the corpses of the Time Lords he had killed when the Master ravaged the planet and killed Ashad in order to gain the Cyberium for himself. Ashad's plan to rekindle the Cyber-Empire was foiled by the Thirteenth Doctor, her companions and several survivors of the Cyber-Wars who destroyed the Cybercarrier and the army aboard it with explosives before most of the army could be awakened. In order to stop the Master, Ko Sharmus, who blamed himself for the whole event as he was a part of the Alliance, sacrificed himself to detonate the death particle on Gallifrey, wiping out all orgainic life on the planet in an attempt to kill the Master and his army of CyberMasters.
After the destruction of her home, the Doctor was arrested by a Judoon cold case unit and taken to a maximum security facility. (TV: The Timeless Children) In this prison, one of her fellow prisoners was a Cyberman. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
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)
In the far future, the Tenth Doctor, Gabby Gonzalez, Cindy Wu, and Anubis encountered a group of "fake Cyberdudes" who reenacted battles from the "last great Cyberwar". (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)
A Cyberman was ensnared by the fibre-optic 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)
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)
Into the posthuman era, technosapience became a commonly accepted form of humanity, most prominently with the Silversmiths' Coterie. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
According to two Time Lords on Marinus, the Cybermen ultimately transcended into pure energy, redeeming the whole of sentient life and becoming the most peace loving-species in the whole of creation, comprised of pure thought with no physical presence. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
However, according to one account, an asteroid colony of Cybermen continued to exist in the final days of N-Space. The Cyberman colony was located towards the edge of the universe, (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) beyond even Gallifrey's position after it had been unfrozen and transported out of its pocket universe. (TV: Hell Bent)
After the end of the universe, the City of the Saved was home to all humans who had been forcibly cyber-converted prior to Resurrection Day. While some were resurrected in pre-conversion forms, others retained their cybernetics. The Order of the Iron Soul was a quasi-religious group composed of some who remained certain of humanity's inferiority. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
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)
Several Cybermen and a Cyber-Planner attempted to gain time travel, eventually becoming stranded in 500002. They converted Byron, but their ship was destroyed by Charlotte Pollard. (AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was)
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)
Alerted of the Obverse by Daedelus, the Cybermen were among the groups who fought in the Enclave War. During the war, Iris Wildthyme potentially allied the Cyber factions with the insect races to storm the homeworld of an unknown race which emerged hungrily from the Obverse. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
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 destroyed by a similarly transported Raston Warrior Robot. A second squadron allied with the Tremas Master, intending to stage an invasion of Gallifrey, but he betrayed and destroyed them. A third squadron attempted to destroy the Fifth Doctor's TARDIS, but were foiled when the TARDIS dematerialised at the last second. (TV: The Five Doctors)
The Cybermen were part of the Supremo's alliance in the war against Morbius. (PROSE: Warmonger)
When the Fifth Doctor visited the Cloisters, a Cyberman was imprisoned there. (COMIC: Ophiuchus)
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)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created by the Black Guardian where the First Doctor never left Gallifrey, the CyberNeomorphs were one of the many species which fought over control of Earth. This timeline was erased when the Seventh Doctor retrieved the Key to Time on the instruction of the White Guardian. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)
In an alternate timeline created when the Seventh Doctor's TARDIS got stuck in the Temporal Plexus, the Cybermen remained a dangerous force in the universe alongside the Sontarans, despite the Daleks having become a peaceful species. This timeline was ultimately erased by the Seventh Doctor due to its existence threatening to destroy the "prime" timeline. (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) and the Cybermen in 1986. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
In an alternate timeline created when the Eleven used the Dark Universe to conquer N-Space, he turned the Cybermen into his personal agents. This timeline was eventually undone by the Seventh Doctor and Ace. (AUDIO: Dark Universe)
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)
In a potential future that the Eleventh Doctor showed to Jean-Luc Picard, the Cybermen defeated the Borg after the Cybermen betrayed their alliance, and invaded both N-Space and the Federation universe. The locations conquered by the Cybermen included Raxacoricofallapatorius, Qo'noS, Judoonia and the Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. Ultimately, this future never existed, as the Doctor convinced Jean-Luc Picard to ally with the Borg, and the Cybermen were destroyed before they could take control of the Borg homeworld. (COMIC: Assimilation²)
The Age of the Cyberiad
- Main article: Alternate timeline (Supremacy of the Cybermen)
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In an alternate timeline, Rassilon, following his exile from Gallifrey by the Twelfth Doctor, discovered the Cyberman asteroid colony at the end of the universe. Proposing an alliance with the Cybermen, Rassilon was converted into the Cyber-President and forged the Gallifreyan Cyber Fleet, leading a full-scale invasion of Gallifrey and, by extension, all of time and space. In particular, Rassilon and the Cybermen managed to force the first twelve of the Doctor's incarnations into impossible situations with the Cybermen so that they could not intervene together. The Cybermen ultimately betrayed Rassilon and harvested his regeneration energy, as they did to nearly all the Time Lords on Gallifrey. However, the Twelfth Doctor and Rassilon managed to stop the Cyber-Controller from regenerating N-Space into the "Age of the Cyberiad" by using the harvested regenerative energy to erase the events of this timeline via the Eye of Harmony and the Cyberiad's presence across all of history. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Alternate universes
The Cyber-Mainframe
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The Cybermen of the Cyber-Mainframe, who attempted to convert the entire multiverse, originated from a universe that Kate Stewart speculated was neither N-Space nor "Pete's World". By the time they attempted to secure a foothold in N-Space during the 2010s, they had seized control of 48% of their native universe, and estimated that they would take full control of it within 7849 years. In addition, these Cybermen had broadcast dimension bridge technology to "many" universes, waiting for them to be used so that they could begin converting these realities as well. (AUDIO: Code Silver)
Sometime prior to their attempted invasion of N-Space, these Cybermen managed to conquer a parallel Earth resembling that of the Earth of N-Space during the early 21st century, their invasion reducing the planet to a desert-like landscape littered with the ruins of various towns and cities. Notably, the Cybermen did not convert the humans of this Earth, instead installing them into pods designed to harvest the electricity generated by their bodies and transmit it through the Cyber-Mainframe to assist in powering every Cyberman and piece of Cyber-Technology connected to the Mainframe. The Cybermen stored these humans in gigantic underground caverns underneath the ruins of the old towns and cities, such as underneath this Earth's Piccadilly Circus. (AUDIO: Telepresence, Code Silver)
Other universes
In one 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 Quantum 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 were not. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
The CyberHost that lived in the universe of the Ferutu wore runic symbols on their armour which repelled Ferutu magic. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
Related species
The Cyberons, a highly similar race of cyborgs, were "distant cousins" of the Cybermen. (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons)
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)
In the video game Happy Deathday, played by Izzy Sinclair on the Time-Space Visualiser, several Cyber-subspecies were among a host of "every single enemy" that the Doctor had ever defeated, who were assembled by the Beige Guardian and pitted against the Doctor's first eight incarnations. (COMIC: Happy Deathday)
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)
Other information
The Tenth Doctor kept one of the Cybus logos from a Cyberman chest plate in the TARDIS within the C chest. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp, PROSE: The Taking of Chelsea 426) The Eleventh Doctor kept one in the TARDIS drawing room. (GAME: TARDIS)
Behind the scenes
Development
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.
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.
The shifting origins of the Cybermen
Telos and Mondas
Much as The Daleks killed off what appeared to be the entire Dalek population at its climax, The Tenth Planet (TV story) ended with the apparent destruction of the newly-introduced Cybermen and their planet, Mondas. When the Doctor, Ben and Polly met Cybermen again in The Moonbase, they had a noticeably different appearance. A baffled Ben protested that "the Cybermen were all killed when Mondas blew up, weren't they?", to which the Doctor merely replied "Or so we thought". The story did not weigh in further on how these Cybermen related to the very different cyborgs seen in The Tenth Planet.
The Tomb of the Cybermen, the third televised Cyberman story, featured Cybermen identical to those of The Moonbase and made no mention of Mondas and its destruction. The Cybermen's homeworld was rechristened "Telos" and was now presented as still in existence long after the 20th century. Subsequent Target novelisations of Cybermen stories unfailingly gave Telos as the homeworld of the Cybermen. Doctor Who and the Cybermen, the novelisation of The Moonbase, included lines suggesting that Mondas had merely been a colony of the Telosian Cybermen.
The matter was confused in 1975 by Revenge of the Cybermen, which referred to Mondas once again as the Cybermen's original homeworld while having the band of Cybermen seen in the story also acknowledge the existence of Telos as a planet under their control. This reversal of what had become the accepted explanation for Tomb of the Cybermen's retcon was carried over in 1983 with Attack of the Cybermen, which unambiguously presented Telos as a foreign world which the Mondasian Cybermen had colonised following the loss of their original homeworld — an egregious contradiction, indeed an almost complete reversal, of the narrative of events presented by Doctor Who and the Cybermen. The reference book Doctor Who: Cybermen, by David Banks, featured a similar theory of Cyber-history, which eventually made its way into a narrative source in The ArcHive Tapes.
Pete's World and the Doctor's world
After Series 2 of Doctor Who introduced a race of Cybermen created by Cybus Industries in a parallel world, it had them crossover into the show's primary timeline in Army of Ghosts. Despite token acknowledgement of the existence of "native" Cybermen in Rise of the Cybermen, the Cybus Cybermen became, to a new generation of viewer, "the" Cybermen, with their origin as converted humans from a parallel universe neatly filling the shoes of the Mondasian original's status as the inhabitants of Earth's "twin planet".
However, this began to cause issues as later stories returned to presenting standing forces of Cybermen in space in the Doctor's universe (rather than intruders from a parallel universe), but used the unique design of the Cybus Cybermen to depict them. The video game The Mazes of Time went so far as to show "Cybus Cybermen", with the characteristic chest logo, in the "Ice Tombs of Telos" section of the game. The Pandorica Opens, where Cybus Cybermen make a token reference to having crossed over from another universe also threatened by the Cracks in Time, was the last explicit appearance of "Pete's World" Cybermen on televised Who; starting with A Good Man Goes to War, the show regularly used a version of the Cybus props who lacked the "C" logo on their chest, allowing viewers to assume that these were simply Mondasian (or otherwise "prime-universe") Cybermen who bore a coincidental design similarity to their parallel-universe cousins.
Indeed a website launched by the BBC for the promotion of Series 2 2, International Electromatics, it had been indicated that Cybus Industries derived their Cyberman technology from the deactivated bodies of alien Cybermen found at the North Pole; this implied that Mondasian Cybermen had actually existed in Pete's World also, thus making it possible that the so-called Cybus Cybermen designs reflected a "natural" Mondasian design, rather than being conditional on the John Lumic origin story peculiar to the Pete's World Cybermen.
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Neil Gaiman, writer of Nightmare in Silver, stated[1] that he had a theory that, at some 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 was given in the episode.
Resolution
Please help by adding some more information.
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.
Information from invalid sources
Two Dalek Wars short stories looking back on the Battle of Canary Wharf attempted to add some nuance to Doomsday's fairly clear decree that the Cybermen were hopelessly outmatched compared to Bronze Daleks in terms of combat ability. According to these stories, 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 story, a single Cyberman ended at the bottom of the oceans of Philjax III during the Daleks' battle with the Squeeth.)
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.
Mondasian Cybermen are among Cyberman enemies used in the Doctor Who: Legacy mobile game. In the story of the game, the Doctors are informed by a Zygon that the Cybermen have been forced to "flee to the far reaches of time" as a result of attacks waged throughout history by time travelling Sontarans.
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.
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.
The non-narrative based work Doctor Who: The Visual Dictionary revealed much more:
- The Cybermen are powered by thermionic generators, their brain was kept in a patented protein solution at 6 °C, and their armour made from a very, very durable manganese-steel alloy.
- The points of weakness on Cybermen were the ankle joint and the exposed coolant lines on the inner (right) side of their left knee.
- Their fingertips incorporate touch sensitive pads and their voice-box was located in their metal mouth (that doesn't open, obviously, only lights up blue when they talk).
- The coolant lines were Kevlar-lined and were bullet-resistant.
- The particle-beam gun technology is capable of being handheld with an outsized grip (because Cybermen are so big) or being incorporated into their forearm. The particle beam guns were top of the arms market and were constructed in John Lumic's Blue Skies laboratory.
Other matters
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.
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ EXCLUSIVE – Neil Gaiman Talks Doctor Who And Cybermen. SFX (May 7th, 2013). Retrieved on January 5th, 2014.
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