Villain - Cybermen
The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs that are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, 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 as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with every emotion deleted from their minds.
They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the program) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest.
The Cybermen returned as a parallel version and appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel", and have been recurring villains in the revived series since. They also appeared in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood in its fourth episode, "Cyberwoman" (2006). Cybermen have also appeared in 2010 installments of the Doctor Who video game series The Adventure Games.
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 upgraded to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. They retain living human brains. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands; by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but they changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). 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" or "Robotization" in the older episodes and "upgrading" in the newer episodes).
It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not 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 (1985), their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. 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 and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. 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 Cybermen in the New 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"). In The Pandorica Opens, a Cyberman head is shown to open up, revealing an entire human skull, not just the brain.
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 fully 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' refusal to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain.
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 causes the converted Cybermen to realize what they have become, driving them insane and killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other life forms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.
Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). 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. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode mentions it.[1] Cybermen are also efficiently killed when shot with their own guns, or by a Dalek. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel", an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor.
Their armor is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible—they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialized weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
