Cybermen

CYBUS CYBERMEN

15. Cybermen

The Cybermen are a race of metal men who are amongst the most reappearing enemies of the Doctor in Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for.

A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel. These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode Cyberwoman.

While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits. As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion").

It is presumed (and often implied) that beneath their suits still exist organic components and that they are not true robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen this seemed to have been replaced with electronics. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and The Age of Steel, the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures".

The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout (The Age of Steel), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion (Cyberwoman).

Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In Cyberwoman, the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a human body. In Doomsday, Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion.

The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading".

This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in The Age of Steel where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them.

Cybermen have a number of major weaknesses, of which the most notable is the element gold. Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation.

Their weakness to gold has not been mentioned during the 2006 series, although the Cybus Industries tie-in site makes reference to earlier prototypes having an "allergy" to gold, stating that this was eliminated after further improvements of the Cyberman body. In The Age of Steel, however, an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor.

Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director", although these may not be the same being. The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies, as it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman.

The Cyber-Controller in The Age of Steel used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In Doomsday, a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader.

In the Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel two-part story, the Tenth Doctor visited a parallel universe where the Cybermen were being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human.2" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could fatally electrocute humans with a touch.

These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads.

Lumic began to abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. 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.

These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across the planet between the two sides with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks seemingly trapped in the Void forever.

These Cyberman are usually described as 'Cybus Cybermen' as opposed to the 'Mondas Cybermen.'

In Cyberwoman it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf", due to their desperate need for reinforcements against the Daleks, the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies rather than transplant their brains into Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones.

Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team.