Cybusman
Cybusmen was the original name, during development, for the endpoint of Cybus Industries' Ultimate Upgrade™ project to achieve immortality by converting the entire human population of Pete's World into cyborgs. They were a new breed of Cybermen, a name which John Lumic himself eventually decided was superior to "Cybusmen", (PROSE: Lumic) and the Tenth Doctor recognised their rise on this parallel Earth as a repetition of the events on Mondas in his own universe. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
Characteristics
The Cybusmen had a "clean, industrial Art Deco style" personally selected by John Lumic. (PROSE: Lumic) They bore the Cybus Industries logo on their chests; the Tenth Doctor was disgusted by the realisation that Lumic had "turned [the Cybermen] into a brand". (TV: The Age of Steel) Nevertheless, in the Doctor's universe, Dalek Sec of the Cult of Skaro instantly recognised the Cybusmen, noting that their "outline resemble[d] the inferior species known as Cybermen". (TV: Doomsday)
History
Development
The Cybusmen were developed by Cybus Industries at John Lumic's request, fulfilling Lumic's lifelong ambition of eradicating mortality at any cost. He also incorporated other inventions of his into the system, including the Sleep Replacement System. Lumic felt that the name "Cybusmen" used throughout development was flawed, and eventually landed upon the name of "Cybermen" as a superior alternative, (PROSE: Lumic) unaware that this was also the name chosen by several species of Cybermen in another universe. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen, The Tenth Planet) Due to his work contravening the Genevan Bio-Convention, (PROSE: Lumic) Lumic experimented in secret on vagrants and other people whose disappearances wouldn't be noticed. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
Rise
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)
Preacher-Cyberman War
- Main article: Preacher-Cyberman War
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 Cybus 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)
Lingering in the Doctor's World
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)
With the Alliance
When the total event collapse caused by the sabotaging of the Doctor's TARDIS by the Silence threatened "all reality", the Cybus Cybermen realised that if the crisis was allowed to continue, "all universes [would] be deleted". They investigated the source of the crisis and concluded that "all predictions correlate[d], all evidence concurr[ed]" that the Eleventh Doctor himself would be responsible for the destruction of the universe. Unaware that others, such as River Song, could fly the TARDIS, they crossed over into the Doctor's universe allied with the Daleks, the Sontarans and many other species as part of the Alliance to seal the Doctor into the Pandorica. One Cyberman posted early at Stonehenge was hacked apart by the locals, but still managed to threaten Amy Pond until it was fully deactivated by the resurrected Rory Williams. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) After escaping the Pandorica, the Doctor managed to reboot reality through Big Bang Two, erasing the Cracks from history and thus preventing the Alliance from ever having needed to form. (TV: The Big Bang)
Influence on N-Space Cybermen
A historical account about the Doctor's universe recounted that it had been suggested that cross pollination of the Cybus Cybermen and the Cybermen of Mondas led to the advanced Cyberman model used by the Cyberiad, seen at Hedgewick's World of Wonders. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) Indeed, the Eleventh Doctor crossed paths on several occasions with Cybermen who resembled the characteristic outline of the Cybus Cybermen, but lacked the Cybus logo on their chest and seemed to be native to his universe. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) However, identical Cybermen also developed without outside influence on a Mondasian colony ship, evolving from more primitive Mondasian Cybermen. The Twelfth Doctor referred to this as simple parallel evolution. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Undated events
A Cybus Cyber-ship once 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)
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