|
The Cybermen |
Reviews
|
|
The Cybermen |
Why I like The Cybermen by Mark Irvin 14/11/01
I'm a little surprised that no one has actually taken the time to review any of the Doctor's adversaries. After all, everything else seems to be reviewed here, why not his opponents? I thought I'd do something a little different and comment on why the Cybermen are my all time favourite Doctor Who adversary.
The Cybermen have always appealed to me since I was a little tacker and are one of the main reasons I started watching Doctor Who. Since witnessing them board the Beacon, shoot the Doctor and state "The Beacon is ours" I've been utterly hooked.
A couple of years later at the age of seven, I was fortunate to receive a return appearance in Silver Nemesis during it's original broadcast. Their emergence from a Cybership at the episode 1 cliff-hanger was a total surprise. To this day it still remains as one of my all time favourite Doctor Who scenes.
It wasn't until later in life that I managed to watch Earthshock and once again I was not disappointed. A thrilling story that contained arguably the greatest opening episode in Who history. And that's not even considering the brilliant music. Although let down a little by plot holes and slightly glossed over second half, I'd still rank it as one of the very best.
To be honest I always enjoyed the obligatory --- "What are they?............ Cybermen" bit. It might even be my favourite line used by Davison and McCoy although admittedly I am a bit biased.
The earlier Troughton tales - The Invasion and The Tomb of the Cybermen are absolute gems. Initially I was a little surprised by the style and voices from the Black and White Cybermen but found them to be just as good as their modern counterparts. Comparisons to the Voc Robots from The Robots of Death are very appropriate.
I even think Attack of the Cybermen was very good - containing great scenes on Telos, a successful return from Lytton and a memorable performance by Colin Baker.
Their inclusion into The Five Doctors was a little superflous and out of place but they still manage to impress. The Raston robot massacre scene is very worthy of attention and they appear notably menacing when used alongside that clangy Cyber-music.
The Cybermen would surely have to one of the more truly intimidating Dr Who enemies. Not over ambitious in design they were brilliantly realised. Visually impressive, they are one of the few foes that are seldom the subject of ridicule - with perhaps the exception of their appearance in Revenge of The Cybermen. The comical hands on hips stance is rather camp, but I would actually argue that this is part of their charm here - The comical Doctor and the comical Cybermen - A marvellous combination.
The voices in Revenge complete with Christopher Robbie's ludicrous accent were admittedly embarrassing. But they definitely got it right in the eighties with the appointment of David Banks and Mark Hardy - a portrayal that could not be classed as anything less than outstanding. I always get a little incensed when I hear criticisms aimed at the eighties Cybermen being "over emotional" or "swaggering". Their sixties counterparts - whilst superb in their time WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED in modern times. Updating was essential. Sarcastic comments about gold vunerbility also seem apparently stupid. Err...... Didn't gold almost wipe them out? Did they wanted to destroy Voga the Planet of Gold just for the fun of it? Ahh... forget it. I hate people who whinge about stupid continuities! (Oops! Hang on!)
In conclusion, I've always rated the Cybermen above the traditional Doctor Who favourite the Daleks. Perhaps it's because they're almost human but lifeless and logical - a cold and evil version of all of us. Although I have always enjoyed the Daleks, to me they come across as a little unrealistic to be conquers of the universe. The body of a pepper shaker would surely be a poor design for combat, I'd like to see how they would go when confronted by some rocky terrain. In contrast the Cybermen are believably adaptable to any situation - And they could easily be seen as the future of human cybernetics gone mad.
Would enyone else like to comment on the Doctor's enemies? I'd certainly enjoy some opinions of the Cybermen, Sontarans, Master incarnations, Daleks and co.
The Cybermen by Rob Matthews 28/11/01
Created as a possible successor or rival to the Daleks, the Cybermen of The Tenth Planet were original enough to have genuine potential and not be doomed to go the way of the Mechanoids. Their costumes were rather laughable - though very creepy at the same time, like something from a surreal nightmare -, and their voices were silly and annoying, but they were well-conceived creatures with an interesting backstory; humans beings who'd gradually replaced their entire bodies with artificial parts, mummified corpses kept upright by prosthetics. People who pursued survival at the expense of really living, they were - like all the best monsters - a warning of what we could become. They even came from a planet that had once been the identical twin of Earth.
Unfortunately, the reasons for Mondas' 'journey to the edge of space' went unexplained in that story, with the Mondans conversion into cybernetic creatures being attributed separately to their race 'becoming weak'. The suggestion was that the Mondans had had a fascistic 'master race' ideal and wouldn't tolerate the frailty that was part of being human.
Much later, in the sixth Doctor's era, the Doctor said that Mondas had been able to leave it's orbit because the Cybermen had fitted it with a 'propulsion unit' - a script idea which seems to have developed hybrid-like from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, in which the evil pepperpots tried to do the same thing with Earth. The explanation was still rather half-baked, with even the Doctor admitting he had no idea why the Cybermen would want to push a planet around space.
In David Banks' great Cybermen book (which I wish I had kept my copy of!), he suggested to the contrary that Mondas had been dislodged from its orbit by a huge cataclysm; he suggested it resulted from the impact of the freighter from Earthshock (to quote Bart Simpson, "The ironing is delicious!"). The rapid lowering of climate and seismic chaos thus drove the remaining Mondan humans into subterranean dwellings, and only gradually, as they drifted further and further from the sun, did they come to embrace cybernetics as their only option.
Perhaps because Banks' book was my introduction to the earlier cyberstories, I've always found them just a little bit disappointing, at least in terms of concept. Their origins and aims seemed a bit too similar to the Daleks, in that they believed the technology they'd grafted onto and into themselves made them superior.
More effort should have been made to make them different. I'd much rather have seen them portrayed as tragic survivors than vague Nazi types. Unlike the Daleks, their aims were never really that clear. Sometimes it was mere survival (in Revenge of the Cybermen and Earthshock, they're actually acting in self-defence, pre-empting strikes against them), sometimes they wanted to rule the universe. I'd have loved to see a redemptive story in which the Doctor manages to reintroduce some humanity to these robotic creatures, or at least to a faction of them. We were told initially that they still had human brains, although this no longer seemed the case in, for example, Attack of the Cybermen, where the Doctor opened up one of their faces to reveal little more than a lightbulb. Still, any post-Earthshock story Cyberman story could have developed the idea of their cyber brains becoming so complex as computers that they actually developed a sentience of their own (the old AI/Blade Runner idea). This would be a good twist, dragging the old concept into the era of K. Dick or Gibson). It would also make sense of their apparent development of personalities and moods.
(Mark Irvin is right, by the way. Those older monotone Cybermen wouldn't have worked anymore in the eighties. The faux pleasantness of the Voc Robots was a more genuinely chilling sound than than the expressionless droning of Troughton-era Cybermen anyway, and we could hardly have big villains like the Cybermen lagging behind one-offs like the Vocs)
Attack of the Cybermen was, like Resurrection of the Daleks, a worthwhile story not because of its addled plot, but because of its details of cyber-life. I've suggested before that Resurrection of the Daleks was a kind of 'day in the life of the Daleks', almost a series of vignettes depicting their various nasty activities, and I'd say the same about Attack of the Cybermen. For the first time we saw the cyber conversion process in action, and were given random but intriguing bits and bobs like the work party of half-cybernised humans, the suggestion that the conversion process sometimes failed, the 'rogue' Cybermen whose brains had been damaged by their frozen hibernation. They creation of the cyber-tombs was attributed to the Cryons, and appeared to have become a kind of big storage hive that the Controller was raiding - perhaps out of desperation - for undamaged troops. Had more cyber stories followed, this one would have served as a good backbone to their saga.
Sadly those stories didn't follow, and their potential went underexplored..
Gosh, I seem to say that a lot about Doctor Who. Thank God for the novels...
When they returned in Silver Nemesis the Cybermen could really have been any old villains, and they were vulnerable enough to make you wonder why anyone with access to a jeweller's would ever have feared them in the first place. In reply to Mark irvin's other comment, fans make sarcastic comments about the Cybermen's gold vulnerability because a) it wasn't a very good idea in the first place, and b) it was used far too loosely in Silver Nemesis. Originally, in Revenge and Earthshock, the Doctor said that if gold got into their chest units it could clog their breathing appartus and suffocate them..
(strange, given that the Doctor also states in Earthshock that the Cybermen don't need air!)
.., whereas in Silver Nemesis, they seem allergic to the very touch of gold, the way vampires are to holy water. How can you take an enemy seriously anymore when it can be held off with a small coin and a catapult? Notice that in Earthshock, the gold itself was not enough to finish off the Cyberleader. Also it was used sparingly in the plot, and was probably only resurrected because it tied in so well with Adric's swot badge - when the badge was broken into the leader's chest, it was, like, symbolic of Adric's impending sacrifice.
All said and done, I like the Cybermen, love them. Most days they're my favourite villains. Because they're humanoid, they work better on screen than the Daleks too. The Daleks have a clearer history and are a great concept, but in a cheapo TV show we have to imagine that they do more impressive things offscreen - that in parts of their empire they're marching about on mechanical legs and flying through the air in lethal squadrons. The beauty of the Cybermen is that they require less suspension of disbelief. And they burst out of things and stomp around like a dream.
Won't BBC Worldwide please commission a 'Genesis of the Cybermen' novel?!
The Cybermen stories by Joe Ford 10/4/05
People love the Cybermen, don't they? I mean if you went up to any forty-something on the street that looks a bit geeky and ask them what they remember about Doctor Who after the Doctor, the TARDIS and K.9. they will instantly recall the two biggie monsters...the Daleks and the Cybermen. Never fear, I come not to praise the Cybermen but to bury them and to prove once and for all that they were never a contender for best baddie next to the Daleks, the Sontarans or even the Zarbi! I promise I won't mention jug handles; moon boots or Roy Skelton on acid... the quality of the stories themselves speaks volumes about the metal giants.
There are many ways to run The Tenth Planet into the ground so why don't I cover the lot. It has it all really, hideous foreign accents, hilarious attempts to be politically correct, a base under siege atmosphere without the base really ever being under siege, William Hartnell so ill he barely appears in his swansong, an incredibly dull subplot about two astronauts stuck in space, insulting American stereotyping (on a British show... never!) and worst of all it introduces one of the weakest aspects of the show... those silly suited Cybermen! Honestly if Ben wasn't so damn cute it would not be worth watching.
The original Cybermen were so successful they had a re-fit for their next story. Although I would never agree with that guy who said they looked like they had got dressed out of a kitchen sink (I dread to think what lingers in his kitchen sink! Cybermen ray hats!) they do look faintly ridiculous, seven-foot tall men with face socks and bulky mechanical handbags. I can see where the designers were heading, the complete lack of humanoid features but compared to the stormtrooper look of the eighties they are absurd-looking and unintentionally funny. This extends to the voice, which disturbingly sounds like Billie Piper singing if she was shoved in a blender. This utterly alien look and voice might be enough to scare an eight year old shitless but I remain unconvinced.
The Moonbase is a far superior story, which actually bothers to be a little scary in places and treats the Cybermen menace with appropriate seriousness without losing its entertainment value. Their new look piping and jug handles (sorry I couldn't help myself!) are an improvement and the mechanical voice suitably inhuman and frightening. The image of ten Cybermen trudging over the moon's surface to attack the base is a great image. Where this story falls down is how easily the Cybermen are defeated and how stupid the humans look for not thinking of this easy solution at the start of episode three. The Cybermen scheme to poison the base and run amok with the world's weather does seem a little grandiose for a race who forget that they can be sucked off into space by the same people they are trying to murder. Alas the sight of Cybermen flying off into space is rather funny and belittles them further. As does their sherbert saucer spaceships.
Ten out of ten though for the end of episode two where a Cybermen is revealed to be hiding in a hospital bed for ages. Who would have thought to look there...?
Tomb of the Cybermen is held in such high regard and it is easy to see why, despite the mountain of problems the story has to overcome. Let's face it, the scenes of the Cybermen awakening from cryogenic stasis are breathtaking and iconic, the way they slowly break through their protective casings like something truly evil being born is possibly the most frightening the creatures ever were. Just a as chilling is the Cybermen trying to break free of their underground prison, attempting to smash their way through the hatch that seals them in.
These (groan) behind the sofa moments are so good they almost help you forget the rest of the story is just a load of old pants. It's cheesy camp SF all the way with too many embarrassing performances by actors who are convinced this is just some silly kids show (hmm maybe they have a point). Klieg and Kaftan are so daft it is impossible to take them seriously as villains and caricatures like Viner and Hopper make me cringe every time they speak (you really want them to die horribly).
What makes matters worse is the story drives towards what should be the central scare... the conversion process but it is something we never get to see. I suppose the viewers were just too thin-skinned in the sixties, if they could not take a little Cyberman blood-foam oozing from the chest plate imagine their reaction to seeing humans being stripped of their body parts and emotions. The Cybermen drone one about the process... "You will be like usssss..." But at the end of the day they are all talk. The reason Star Trek TNG's Best of Both Worlds was so scary was because we saw Picard being altered and his Borg persona, red eye beam and swivelly tool arm included, was so calm and alien we could see the horror of being converted...
An innovation of Tomb of the Cybermen is the introduction of the Cybermat, small, metal, rodent-like creatures that can be sent in to infiltrate areas far more effectively than a clomping great Cyberman. It is a great idea, a metal rat sounds terrifying but the realisation again leaves much to be desired. Swivelly, bulging eyes and fuzzy felt teeth make these little blighters so cute (and funny) you want to buy one and give it to all your favourite nieces and nephews at Christmas. Not the idea I'm certain the producer and writer were going for. Watching grown men acting in sheer terror at these cute little blighters is a thing to behold.
The Wheel in Space is an astonishingly dull tale that is apparently about the Cybermen but they take up so little screen time and are so ineffective when they do you have to wonder why David Whitaker didn't just write a 'Day in the life of the Wheel' as a launch vehicle for Zoe. Let's face it, it doesn't matter how intricate or clever the Cybermen's scheme is to take over the Wheel what we want to see is explosions and scary metal meanies. Their plan to smuggle themselves on board using an abandoned rocket and an asteroid belt is so convoluted and knife-behind-the-back-in-the-shadows it may have well have been the Conservative Party attempting to sneak aboard.
The simple fact is the Cybermen aren't scary in this, they are politicians, inveigling their way on board with Machiavellian plotting. It is unthinkable to use the Cybermen but not exploit their potential for thrills but the usually meticulous Whitaker tries an experiment too far here and fails miserably.
The Invasion is my personal favourite Cybermen story and low and behold they hardly feature in it at all. Where this story succeeds where so many others fails is in making Cybermen a force to be feared, not putting them in the spotlight and exposing their flaws but having them as a terrifying background menace with the constant threat of their invasion of Earth.
The reason is story works so well is Tobias Vaughn, the man who betrays Earth to the Cybermen and who is partially converted himself. When a scientist pumps three bullets into Vaughn's chest and he stands there laughing with three smoking holes in his chest it reveals the horror the Cybermen represent. In a typically villainous and devious twist Vaughn intends to use the Cybermen and then take over the world himself and so has an emotion machine built to attack the Cybermen. It strikes me as odd that the scariest image of a Cybermen I can think of is one of them in pain, deranged with fear from the machine and rampaging through the sewers.
The story boasts some terrific imagery for the Cybermen, especially when they burst from the sewers and pour down the steps outside St Paul's Cathedral. This isn't a complex operation to take over a silly space wheel, but ruthless automatons parading through the very streets we live in, hypnotising us, making us ready to be converted into their own. And the story lives up to its promise of an impressive shootout between the Cybermen and the military, scenes of the metal hordes being driven back by bazookas is breathlessly exciting.
Then the Cybermen were forgotten, the third Doctor's reign saw a focus on earthbound stories and the silver giants it would appear did not pass the grade. It wasn't until six years later that they returned, freshman Doctor Tom Baker boasting an impressive number of old adversaries to ease him in gently. New producer Philip Hinchcliffe had done wonders for the Daleks after a couple of unimpressive appearances (this is popular opinion, not my own) and it would appear the Cybermen would finally get the story they deserve...
Oh dear.
Revenge of the Cybermen is one of the worst ever Doctor Who stories and what makes me sad is it isn't even the worst Cyberman story. Any mistake Doctor Who could make, acting, scripting, production, music... it is totally cocked up here and not even an endearing 'so bad it's good' way.
The Cybermen were never this ridiculous again. Their new look, like glittering disco androids, was ineffective and the fact that they were headed up by an extremely emotional Australian with a fetish for hands-on-hips actions did not help matters. The Cybermen plan is one of revenge against the planet of Voga whose inexhaustible supply of gold defeated the silver giants in the Cyberwar. That seems like a rather emotional response? Wouldn't the Cybermen rise above such things and just get on with taking over the universe? There are barely a handful of them and travel in a silly little spaceship which even the Doctor comments on... they are hardly the impressive, emotionless army that they were during The Invasion.
The only really good scene for the Cybermen in Revenge is when two of their number transmat down to Voga and start blasting the Vogans to kingdom come! Unfortunately this has the adverse effect of pointing out some glaring script errors when the Vogan army is obliterated when there is gold all around them, walls, guns, the lot and they could have easily defeated these two Cybermen.
Their return appearance in Earthshock is one of the better-kept surprises of the JNT era. He went to great pains to ensure that nobody would know who it was that would be making a surprise appearance in this week's episode. And it pays off in spades... the end of episode one where they are revealed in their stylish new-look glory is superb and genuinely thrilling.
This is the comeback that Revenge wasn't, here you get to see the strength of the Cybermen (hundreds of them break out of cargo tubes and go on a killing spree on the freighter), their lack of emotion (the Cyberleader orders the death of Tegan to test the Doctor's emotional response) and their deviousness (they want to prevent a meeting of superpowers uniting against the Cybermen and so plant a bomb on Earth but when that plan is foiled they have a backup, planning to crash the freighter into the Earth...). Still no conversion process but that isn't the point of this story, it is all-out action all the way and it works a dime in that respect. The Cybermen tower over the humans, they taunt them and kill them... they are truly an awe-inspiring force to be reckoned with.
Plus the sight of the Cyberleader blasted to death in the TARDIS is one that was remembered for a long, long time.
Attack of the Cybermen is a strange beast. It isn't really a very good story with its complex writing that tries to entangle lots of Cyber-history together and ends up being something of a confusing mess. And yet it is so mercilessly entertaining because of its mock-Earthshock action adventure atmosphere, so I would hardly call it a failure. The performances are mostly excellent and there are some excellent set pieces it is just a shame that the story doesn't hold together very well.
The Cybermen take another turn for the worse here and it shames me to admit they are the weakest aspect of the story, especially since this is one of a couple that is actually about the Cybermen and their history. They look good but sound like deep-sea divers and move far too robotically to be convincing. The story takes the best parts of Tomb of the Cybermen and belittles it and the 'drama' of The Tenth Planet and skips over it in a few sentences. I cannot comprehend how this story claims to pull all the Cyber-stories into one coherent storyline when the latest Cybermen look nothing like the Troughton era ones. And especially the Cybercontroller who lacks any of the original's menace.
At least you finally get to see the conversion process, which looks suitably grotesque. Lytton is wired up to the wall with a Cyberarm and chest unit installed and begs for the Doctor to kill him. One thoroughly disturbing, but welcome, scene sees a pair of Cybermen crushing Lytton's hands until blood runs free... although it upset people at the time it is exactly the sort of body horror that should have been deployed every time we met up with the Cybermen.
And we finish this uninspiring lineup with Silver Nemesis, a story that redefines the word bland and packages it in three, endlessly boring Doctor Who episodes. Why were the Cybermen used in this story? They contribute absolutely nothing to the plot and they are made to look really stupid. Kevin Clarke seemed to think that because it was the silver Doctor Who anniversary that he should use silver monsters. Huh? Should we use Axons on the gold anniversary? Zygons on the ruby one?
It doesn't help that the Cybermen have never, ever looked better. They are polished up, overpoweringly tall and have their most convincing spaceship yet (admittedly the competition is not very hot). But they are killed off so easily. Gold coins, gold dust, even bloody arrows for pity's sake! There is one really stupid scene that sees a Cyberman shooting after Ace for half a minute and she turns around and with one shot knocks the giant of his feet with a gold coin. She also convinces two others to shoot themselves. And the Cyberleader is killed by a peasant with an arrow! It has come to a point where the Cybermen are so delicate a gentle shove will take them down. I doubt this is what Kit Pedler had in mind when he created the buggers.
I have absolutely no idea why fans place the Cybermen in such a grand position next to the Daleks as the second best 'monster' to feature in the series. Every monster needs a good hook... the Silurians work because of the implications to humanity with their discovery in underground hibernation, the Zygons prey on our fear of 'the killer among us' with their frightening shapechanging skills, the Gravis terrifies by drawing on our morbid fear of death (dragging our corpses under the soil and enslaving our minds to his mining machine)... you look at all of the best monsters and they can all be summed by a sentence that reminds you why they give you willies (the shop window dummies). The Cybermen do have a hook and a bloody good one, they are the mechanised remains of mock humans, surrendering their bodies and emotions to machine logic to make them superior creatures. The thought of trading the reasons to live (summed up beautifully by the fifth Doctor in Earthshock during his "Smelling a flower, eating a well prepared meal" speech) for a chance to live longer and conquer is terrifying, every human like a doll on a factory line, all identical, none capable of individual thoughts or acts. The trouble is these factors were rarely taken into consideration in the TV series or were handled in such a cack-handed manner that the potential for drama is squandered. More often than not the Cybermen were used as a stock baddie... more like Star Wars stormtroopers than Star Trek's The Borg... The Moonbase, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space Revenge of the Cybermen, Attack of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis all waste the potential to squeeze the drama out of the Cybermen and concentrate on grandiose plans for conquest (and haven't we all had enough of that?). Only The Tenth Planet, The Invasion and Earthshock bother to examine the Cybermen in any detail and even then it is only a few scant moments.
Polly's horrified reaction to the Krang's dismissal of the two astronauts lives is a rare example of mirroring the Cybermen against a human and comparing the differences. Okay Anneke Wills is near hysterical thus blunting the scene but to be able to see such a betrayal of humanity acknowledges the damage the Cybermen have done, abusing their bodies to a point that they cannot even feel.
Better though is Tobias Vaughn's dealings with the Cybermen. He wants to utilise them for their strength but deep down has a morbid fear of their lack of emotion. He himself refuses to become a Cyberman and will only have cybernetic enhancements on his body, not his mind. He fears they will attempt to take control from him so he gets Professor Watkins to build an 'emotion' machine which will attack their systems and drive them insane. All these mind games are fascinating especially when the Cybermen prove to be the better tacticians, Vaughn's emotions are a weakness giving him delusions of grandeur, the Cybermen have no such ideals and in the end Vaughn's emotions are what finish him off (his hatred of them causes him to attempt to sabotage the transmitter and thus sees him shot in the back). The Cybermen are clever enough to exploit Vaughn's thirst for power and use him as their instrument to get their army to Earth.
Earthshock takes a far more explicit route of dealing with the emotional impotence of the Cybermen by having a conversation between the fifth Doctor and the Cyberleader. The Leader explicitly states that emotion is a weakness and after the Doctor denies this he orders the death of Tegan. In the gripping few seconds that follow the Doctor is faced with the dilemma of trying to save her thus proving the Cyberleader's argument and being under his control or letting his companion die. Of course he chooses the latter but it is fascinating to see just how cold the Cybermen are, believing that attempting to save the life of a friend a weakness. In an even more direct moment the Doctor describes some of the joys of being alive and the Leader dismisses them as irrelevant. It only serves to make them a scarier menace in this story, willing to sacrifice any number of people to achieve their goal... the devastating collision of a spaceship with the Earth.
But these are rare examples, it is a much more regular occurrence for the Cybermen to be used for muscle and their somewhat hysterical look means this usually falls flat on its face. Tomb and The Moonbase are the only two times they really come across as a formidable fighting force, later stories limit their number to three or less (Revenge), massacre them for a laugh (The Five Doctors) or weaken them to a point where a good sneeze will make their chest units explode (Silver Nemesis). So my point is if the writers aren't exploiting their psychological potential and fail to make them an awe inspiring fighting force... why the fuck do they keep showing up?
One downside to such a large fan base is that collective expectations start to form and one of these is the return of old monsters. I don't think there is a good enough reason for the Cybermen to appear in the series any time after The Invasion but because of their status as the second best monster ever! the writers and producers listen to the fans and include them because it is expected and the ratings might improve a little. This usually leads to weak scripts (Revenge, Attack, Nemesis) full of blatant shock moments (Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Attack) that gets the fanwanking started but leaves you just as unsatisfied as you would holding a sticky tissue you in your hand and wondering why you bothered. The Cybermen were belittled from Revenge onwards, reduced in menace and intelligence to a point where their very presence was the excuse for their inclusion.
There are too many moments to mention where the Cybermen betray their non-emotional status that it seems a bit redundant to list them all but some of my all time favourites are...
At least the Daleks could stick to their fundamental characterisation (erm... shrieking "Exterminate!" and killing lots of people!)... the Cybermen were so inconsistently written and designed it is hard to follow their continuity at times. Could you honestly compare those from The Tenth Planet to those of Silver Nemesis? (Try the same with the Daleks from The Daleks and those from Remembrance and see a monster who knows how to hold on to his identity!)
I hope the new series doesn't bother with them. The Cybermen have had their day. And again. And again. And they blew it every single time.
"The future beckons" by Thomas Cookson 10/4/18
The Cybermen are the classic show's second most iconic monsters, chiefly remembered for their 1960's heyday: for monochrome images of Cybermen emerging from their Telos tombs or marching silently down the steps of St Paul's. The graceful but unnerving movement of relentless, soulless mechanized zombies that were once human.
From their first appearance in the snowy Arctic mists, desperate to save their world Mondas to their grand magnum opus in The Invasion, giving UNIT its baptism of fire, the Cybermen briefly seemed to supersede the Daleks as the show's lead heavies.
The 1970's saw them take a long hiatus. The start of Pertwee's era saw virtually no old monsters featured at all. But due to reduced ratings, the temptation to revive old familiar foes now in colour asserted itself. The Daleks, Ice Warriors and even past Doctors returned. This provided the desired ratings boost and saw Pertwee become the only classic Doctor to leave the show healthier than when he started. But, a cameo appearance in Carnival of Monsters aside, the Cybermen remained conspicuously absent.
Finally, they returned in 1975's Revenge of the Cybermen, in what many consider their weakest appearance. Most issues fans have with later Cybermen stories start here. Their tendency to break character emotionally and melodramatically for the sake of hyperbole, the reduction of them to scavenger thugs, and their notorious, convenient weakness to gold.
The problem is the Cybermen here don't come across as merciless enough. Tom Baker doesn't really treat them seriously as a threat, even openly mocking them. There's a conscious effort to portray them as near invincible when the Doctor and Harry try ambushing them with gold dust only to be completely overpowered. But too many questions emerge of why such a ruthless enemy keeps finding contrived excuses to not kill the Doctor and friends, which after Genesis of the Daleks particularly feels like an unwelcome clichˇ the show was just getting away from.
Tomb of the Cybermen could be accused of the same, but that story was thick with an atmosphere that reinforced the Doctor was very much on their turf and had to tread carefully. It even made sense that their computerised minds were so alien from ours that they couldn't comprehend why the Doctor would be defiant or uncooperative. Here it's a lot harder for the Cybermen to dominate the scene.
Some could argue the show was in danger of getting too dark at this point, and Revenge might've been the lighter relief the show needed. But even so, it's hard to fear the Cybermen when their weapons seem to be permanently on stun. Reducing the Cybermen to a limited number of scavengers diminishes a core aspect of their horror. In The Moonbase, there really was a sense of them being a limitless relentless army of the undead, and that like a hydra, if you cut off one head, another immediately takes its place. Less so here.
I don't regard this as the Cybermen's point of decline, however, because their next outing, Earthshock was one of their best. A story that took everything wrongheaded about Davison's first season - the unmanageable cast swelling, po-faced melodrama and artifice - and somehow made it work in the story's favour. Even JNT's moronic idea of making Davison's Doctor a failure and an active anti-placebo for the audience actually works beautifully here.
There's a sense that Davison's companions, despite their complaining, had been chosen and brought together for this purpose, to save Earth. Despite its plot holes, it's a fantastic thrill ride, through which we end up bonding with this new TARDIS crew. It really did look like the Cybermen had finally superseded the Daleks.
However these weren't quite the same Cybermen. Yes they're filmed like a silver, unceasing tide, but the 80's redesign and vocals makes them a lot more caricaturist than they used to be, and far less remote or unreachable. It's often SAID that these Cybermen have a camp quality, and there's a certain delight in their inflections and exclamations, like "I KNOW that object!" It's also true that, as a result, they don't feel quite as inhuman. They don't quite feel as though they've surrendered their minds and souls to a cold, binary computer system. They just feel like stoic, macho bad guys playing dress up.
Why Earthshock works in spite of this is by keeping everything tight and filming the Cybermen with an in your face intensity that keeps them robust and intimidating enough to stave off any inclination to laugh at them. Frankly, they'll never be this formidable again.
Maybe The Five Doctors was where the Cybermen began to lose their stature. In it, the Cybermen are rather seen as comical figures in a comical plot. Something the story plays just right as a fan treat. Strangely the atmosphere of the Death Zone is so unnerving and ominous that the familiar Cybermen almost become a reassuring presence.
Elizabeth Sandifer condemned Earthshock for its worryingly uncritical militaristic jingoism that coincided with the Falklands war. This is odd, given that her similar scathing review of The Five Doctors overlooks how there's actually a perfect anti-war statement in the scene where the Master leads the gullible Cybermen onto the chessboard minefield to be massacred. It's a masochistic, horrifying, uncomfortable sequence where we can't help but pity and empathise with our foes rather than relishing the idea of gunning them down in battle.
For much of this story, the Cybermen are depicted as victims. Massacred by the Raston Warrior Robot and duped by the Master into a minefield. This helps reinforce the perilous nature of the Death Zone as being populated by greater, deadlier threats than the Cybermen, and these scenes are deliberately horrifying, going straight for the jugular, even managing to evoke our sympathy for the metallic monsters.
This leads however into the issues of Attack of the Cybermen. There's a sense that, when Cybermen aren't handled right, they can come across as quite naive and vulnerable in a way that frankly makes the Doctor seem like a bully when destroying them with impunity and leaving them screaming and spewing silver vomit.
Even Troughton approached the Cybermen with a degree of pity. His solution to them in The Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen wasn't based on destroying them but simply repelling them. But there's definitely a sense in Attack of the Cybermen that they've become the unfortunate victims of Saward's sadistic impulses.
Attack initially looks like it's going to be a glorious relaunch for the show. As though pre-empting RTD's exhilarating blend of alien monsters in modern London. But quickly the problems of how to fill that new 45-minute runtime become apparent. If only they'd looked back to Seven Keys to Doomsday for how to make that format work.
If Earthshock was the vindication of how JNT and Saward could boost the show's popularity and impact and The Five Doctors was a nice encore that justified the expense of the reusable new Cybermen suits, then Attack of the Cybermen arguably represents how we're past the point JNT and Saward have stayed too long.
Earthshock was a curse as much a blessing. Creating the demand for more stories like it, even though Earthshock had caught lightning in a bottle. The unpardonably cynical Warriors of the Deep and Resurrection of the Daleks were contrived to supposedly be the 'next' Earthshock.
Attack of the Cybermen was everything Earthshock wasn't. Earthshock was simple, relentless and built itself well around its central ticking clock. Attack, however, is meandering, inconsistent and slapdash.
Comparing the two demonstrates how continuity can be a handicap to a story. Earthshock stays far away from the Cybermen's established timeline and works beautifully as its own beast. Attack of the Cybermen tries to satisfy too much nostalgia for too many memories of the show and ends up an unsatisfying mess. The more stories it engages with and tries to 'explain', the less it succeeds as a story in its own right.
It was a huge mistake acknowledging the events of The Tenth Planet just because 1986 was nearly due. But what's really frustrating is huge portions of Attack's backstory have nothing to do with continuity but are still badly conveyed.
There's probably a great story here about a human time-ship that got hijacked by Cybermen, its captured crew now having to escape Telos' mines. But Attack brings us in at the end of the movie. Worse still, it's exactly the kind of story the Doctor should be involved in, but Saward's decided to make Lytton the protagonist who gets to meet them instead.
Likewise with the story of the Cryons' fight for survival against the Cybermen. To be honest, this part of the story is apocryphal. The 1960's Cybermen Tombs conveyed a feat of Cyberman engineering surrounded by their diabolical ingenuity. This retconned idea that they'd scavenged it from the Cryons doesn't sit well. There's also the question how a race so vulnerable to Telos' warm temperatures could've naturally evolved before they built their freezer units.
But chiefly this portion of the story falls apart from a lack of commitment. If the Cryons were central to the serial, their story would carry too much meaning to dismiss over its logic. As it is, the story as good as does dismiss them (for instance, why doesn't the Doctor try to think up a way to save Flast from her cell rather than being immediately defeatist about her fate?).
The Cryons are a late addition and a rather annoying, grating, unsympathetic one. When first introduced, one of them contemplates killing Peri and later gripes that she should have been allowed to. Even adding a significant woman's touch doesn't make the story's tone any less mean-spirited.
This is a huge problem. There's almost no sympathetic characters. Everyone is a hardened, aggressive bully or a double-dealing self-serving survivalist. The Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen were stories populated by sympathetic, principled, likeable characters fulfilling a humanitarian mission, and those that survived to the end were personally affected by the loss of those close to them. Even Earthshock had this quality, with Scott being determined to get Adric to safety.
It's caring about the human guest cast that allows the Cybermen to work as the terrifying, inhuman antithesis to them, framed in binary opposition. The problem seems Saward isn't as interested in the Cybermen as he is Lytton, who takes over the story far too much and even has the aforementioned railroaded backstories constructed to serve his supposed redemptive journey. Even though Lytton's never been anything but a ruthless mass-murderer beforehand, luring Griffin and the others needlessly to their deaths. Griffin's plight doesn't come off particularly strongly when the script seems more interested in having him debate Telos's past continuity.
When I read DWM's story synopsis on this, I was under the misapprehension that Lytton was a Dalek duplicate who'd broken his programing and naively fallen in with a criminal gang. Had that been the case, having him in a Cyberman story trying to rediscover his humanity would make perfect thematic sense, as would the Doctor's lament that he misjudged Lytton. Instead, because Lytton's a poor character (just saved by Maurice Colbourne's charisma) whom Saward believes he can mould into anything he wants, none of it comes off, and it just seems another contrived excuse at a downbeat ending.
The main strength of the Cybermen never comes across. The story's too busy abandoning story strands, fixing chameleon circuits, and shifting locations to ever focus on a specific goal for the Cybermen that accentuates their relentlessness. The Cybermen are seemingly here just to be action cannon fodder and worse, the sloppy action scenes become the point of the exercise. In the end, Saward seems to even lose interest in making them any kind of physical challenge to our heroes.
Basically, the best Cybermen stories establish a concrete goal of what they're single-mindedly intending to do. Attack of the Cybermen failed by being too fixated with what they've already done.