When the question of favorite Who monsters comes up, the recurring classics are always high on the aggregate list of fan faves. And when you add the term “iconic,” Daleks and Cybermen pretty much always top the list. I’ve already ranted a bit about how overused the Daleks are, so now it’s time to pass judgement on the Cybermen.
Here’s the deal. As I understand it, the Cybermen were originally designed to be a creepy near-human-but-not-human foe (remember the Uncanny Valley?), made the more so by the idea that they might also try to convert you and make you into a “thing,” too; classic body horror. By the time the show was into what was arguably its heyday in the (’70s and) ’80s, though, the Cybermen sort of turned into plain ol’ robotic baddies.
Granted, I’m not overly familiar with the particular stories in which they appeared with those “middle” Doctors, so perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems to me they lost most of their menace somewhere along the way. Aside from having certain physical advantages associated with their non-biological aspects, their main characteristic seems to be “lack of emotion” (which doesn’t always come across during this period, either). How is that threatening?
Sure, it gives them the “cold hearted” advantage, in that they don’t particularly care if one of their own is in trouble. Plus, being – like the Daleks or Sontarans – essentially cookie-cutter copies of each other, they’re all completely replaceable and indistinguishable, so why would the loss of any given individual matter? Thus you have the “alien horde” threat in that our heroes are always simply outnumbered, but that really does reduce them to the ranks of just another army. I have a hard time, then, seeing why anyone would consider such Cybermen to be their favorite “monsters” – to my mind, they’re primarily rubbish.
Once we get into the post-Hiatus era, we also have to change gears (so to speak) when discussing what Cybermen are. No longer one-time completely biological, humanoid inhabitants of Mondas, the Cybus Industries version of the Cybermen were designed (again, a bit like Daleks) to house a living (human) brain in a mechanical body. From a narrative standpoint, I find this slightly less compelling, but at least for those first few stories in Series Two where the conversion process was front and center, they regained the body horror aspect in spades. Those Cybermen creeped me out because we got to see the industrial bone saws and such at work, though only peripherally.
Since then, they have again seemed less threatening other than in the aforementioned sense of a massive army with superior weapons. In The Next Doctor, one (or at least I) had a hard time feeling overly sorry for Mercy Hartigan when she got (sort of) converted into the Cyber King, not least because she effectively kicked cyberass in return. Humanity: 1; Cybermen: 0.
Then there was Closing Time, in which the stranded Cybermen were famously “[blown] up with love” (pardon me, while I go vomit in the corner…). If that isn’t a sure sign that the Cybermen are absolute rubbish, I don’t know what is.
Suffice it to say, then, that for the most part the Cybermen have failed to impress me over the long haul. In their very early days, both pre- and post-Hiatus, they managed to be suitably oogy when the focus was more on body horror than on “we’re a huge, mechanical army,” but once that flavor was lost or de-emphasized, they have struck me as pretty blasé. We know from the Next Time trailer that they’re returning later this year. Let’s hope Neil Gaiman can work his magic and turn them back into a creature to fear rather than one to endure.
Yes, Yuck on “Closing Time!”
Ugh, I know. Blowing up anything “with love,” but especially, the Cyberman, just rates an eye roll. What were they thinking? If anything makes an alien or monster less menacing, it’s that!
I thought, as you did, that the Cyberman were creepy in post-Hiatus Series Two, especially with the pull-out the ear-plug goo. Something about the Cybermen picking off people in the Torchwood office one-by-one in the Canary Wharf Battle… and the earlier episodes in the alternate universe…
Yes, let’s hope they are more scary this year than they were in “Closing Time” and “The Next Doctor.” I never quite understood the “ape” Cyberman. Was he an experiment? If so, why?
Cybershade
Oh, you mean the Cybershades? I didn't get it either, but sources say they were converted from cat or dog brains, rather than human ones. Not sure what the point was…..
Limited Resources
It was the best they could make with the limited technology and resources at their disposal (I think)
Yes, Cybershades
Yes, thanks, forgot what they were called. I did remember they were supposed to be “experiments” because they were limited in terms of technology in Victorian England, but they seemed to take over human brains just as easily as they did in other stories, so I wasn’t convinced. They also made the huge “Cyber-King,” which seemed very advanced, so…
Yes, well…
Plot Holes “R” Us…
Great Concept
It has been stated elsewhere that the Borg are how the Cybermen should be and behave
Perhaps part of their longevity is the simple fact that they were introduced in Hartnell’s regeneration story, although I think the flesh hands were an excellent feature in that story
Whilst I also reached for the retch receptacle as a result of the dénouement in Closing Time, this was consistent with previous cyber stories. For example, the classic Troughton story, Invasion where induced emotions had a very negative effect on the cyber race. Maybe it was stretching it a bit too much though
Maybe we just need an old fashioned claustrophobic gothic horror story with the cold logic of the cybermen being both their strength and their undoing. Moff, I hope you are reading this 🙂
Not Moff
It’s not Moffat who’s responsible for the next Cybermen story, though – it’s Gaiman. I actually trust him to do them justice tons more than I trust Moffat. We’ll see how it pans out.
It’s the down side of monster of the week
It’s kind of standard fare, once something becomes Monster of the Week, isn’t it? The Cybermen, like most of the recurring bad guys of the Dr. Who universe eventually simply became spacefaring kobolds – while allegedly being nasty enough to be a threat to entire civilizations, the Doctor and whomever he was dragging along with him could always take them down without really breaking a sweat. I suppose that it’s part of the problem with a show that can’t seem to get away from trying to get you to think that the Doctor and company are actually in peril, when the Doctor always has to win in the end. So all of the bad guys are Nerfed by requirement.
And yet…
That’s a great observation. The whole thing about how the Doctor needs to be in danger but has to win has bogged down several stories lately – not least the whole Series Six arc in which the Doctor was supposedly going to die; no one believed he wouldn’t get out of it.
On the other hand, somehow it’s continued to work for 50 years, so at least part of the formula is effective. 🙂 I would suggest it’s more “how’s he going to get out of this?” than “will he get out of it?” Even so, the Cybermen have often failed to make even that question a terribly difficult one to answer.