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| “ | Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class and color and creed. You will become identical, you will become like us. | „ |
| ~ CyberLeader One's broadcast. |
The Cybermen are a race of cyborgs from Doctor Who, serving as one of the series' most recurring and dangerous antagonists, rivalling the Daleks in that regard. The Cybermen are created out of humans, or humaniod species, who need to survive no matter what, whether to preserve their dying species, a bid for immortality, or an attempt to improve all those around them. Various factions of Cybermen have orginated independently due to parallel evolution, but are essentially the same in core.
Contents
History
As the Cybermen have no one "official" history, this article will mostly list their appearances in the Doctor Who franchise in the order the Doctor experienced them.
Origins
Cybermen from Mondas
The first model Cybermen.
The first Cybermen were originally the people of the planet Mondas, the Tenth Planet of Earth's solar system, who converted themselves to survive when their world was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into the deep space.
Having installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself, the Cybermen began conquering planets to convert the native life forms into more Cybermen to increase their numbers.
Other Cybermen origins
The Cybermen were said to have originated in many times and places, including the mysterious "Planet 14", where a faction of Cybermen encountered the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. A batch of Cybermen evolved on the planet Marinus, as seen in the comic The World Shapers. These Cybermen were the descendants of the Voord, who used a World Shaper to evolve themselves into cyborgs.
Invasions of Earth
Mondas arrived in Earth's solar system in 1986, in The Tenth Planet, and began draining Earth of it's energy. The First Doctor met an advance force of Mondasian Cybermen near Snowcap Base in Antarctica. This force was to use the experimental Z-Bomb to destroy Earth before Mondas absorbed too much energy. Due to the efforts of the Doctor and his companions, Mondas absorbed too much energy and was destroyed, as were the Cybermen on Earth who depended on Mondas for power.
By 2070, humanity presumed the Cybermen were wiped out. However, in The Moonbase, the Cybermen subtly invaded the Earth's Moonbase, which could control the weather with the Gravitron, poisoning the crewmembers, and taking over others. They planned to use the Gravitron to destroy humanity. They were defeated by the Second Doctor, and his companions Polly, Ben and Jamie, who fought off the Cybermen in the base, and being thrown into space via altering the Moon's gravity.
In The Wheel In Space, a faction of Cybermen attacked the Space Station W3, also known as The Wheel, as part of a plan to use its direct radio link with Earth as a beacon for their invasion fleet. They infiltrated the the station with the aid of the Cybermats, but the Doctor, who was "known and recorded", thwarted them with the aid of the crew.
The Cybermen's chronological first invasion of Earth was in the late 20th century, when a group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" use industrialist Tobias Vaughn to pave the way for a ground invasion. The Second Doctor, working with UNIT, The Doctor discovered Vaughn was hiding the Cybermen in the sewers while Vaughn planted secret chips in all of his company's equipment that would broadcast a signal capable of rendering humans unconscious. However, when Vaughn realised that the Cybermen had duped him he changed sides and helped The Doctor defeat the Cybermen's invasion fleet by deploying a transmitter Vaughn had developed to force the Cybermen to experience intense emotions and overload. While Vaughn helped The Doctor destroy the active Cybermen on Earth, the destruction of his office damaged the receiver that the Cybermen were using to amplify their signal and keep the rest of London asleep, while Zoe managed to calculate a missile trajectory that would destroy the formation of Cyberman ships approaching them from their secret moonbase.
A Cyberman was once among the many creatures that Vorg had in his miniscope in Carnival of Monsters. In 2012, as seen in Dalek, the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler found a head of a dead Cyberman in Henry Van Statten's museum along with the arm of a Slitheen and other alien artifacts.
Telos
The faction the Cybermen that attacked the Moonbase belonged to would later colonise the planet Telos for it's access to cryogenic facilities, defeating the native Cryons, who would form a resistance. The Cybermen would go onto freeze themselves in gigantic "tombs" to preserve themselves.
In the 25th century, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend. The Brotherhood of Logicians scoured the universe for Cybermen, believing that they would be receptive to the Brotherhood's cause. In The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Brotherhood of Logicians financed Parry's expedition to find the cyber-tombs on Telos. With the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria Waterfield the expedition found and opened the cyber-tomb. After the hibernating Cybermen were reawakened, Klieg and Kaftan, the secret representatives of the Brotherhood attempted a negotiation, which inevitably failed. Realising the true danger of the Cybermen the expeditions quickly resealed the tombs.
Hunting Voga
At some point, the Cybermen fought a war with humanity, and Voga, the planet of Gold, aided humanity by providing humanity with resources. The Cybermen were seemingly defeated with a weapon that used gold against them, nicknamed the glittergun, seemingly wiping them out. The war resulted in the near-complete destruction of the Cyber race.
After the war, in Revenge of the Cybermen, several Cybermen and a few Cybermats survived and hounded Voga, and tried to destroy it. They allied with Kellman, offering him power, and he wiped out the crew of Nerva Beacon. The Cybermen took control and forced the remants of the crew, including the Fourth Doctor to wear Cyberbombs to destroy Voga. Their attempt to destroy it was defeated and their craft and themselves destroyed due to the involvement of the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan.
In the year 2526, in Earthshock, a force of Cybermen attempted to destroy Earth to prevent a peace conference that could unite the enemies of the Cybermen. The initial plan was to use a Cyber-bomb, guarded by androids. However, after an archaeological team was mostly killed, a military force ended up uncovering the plot, and the Fifth Doctor managed to disable the bomb. As a back up plan, the Cyber-Leader elected to crash a human freighter into the Earth. However, due to the interference of Adric, the freighter instead jumped back through time, to crash into Earth 65 million years ago, as part of it's history.
Cybermen in the past
After a timeship landed on Telos, in Attack of the Cybermen, the Cybermen captured it and formulated a plot to save Mondas by diverting Halley's Comet to Earth to destroy it in 1985. A party of Cybermen travelled back in time and established a command centre hidden in the London sewers from which they could affect the comet. When the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visited London in 1985, the Cybermen captured the Doctor's TARDIS and forced him to take them back to Telos. Bringing the Doctor and Peri to Telos led to several losses for the Cybermen, including the death of the Cyber-Controller and the Cryons gaining help in their revolution against the Cybermen.
After their time travel scheme was thwarted, a group of Cybermen remained stranded in the 20th century, and allied with their past selves. In Silver Nemesis, during November 1988, a scouting party was sent to Earth in search of a statue made of validium called Nemesis, a Time Lord weapon, planning to use to transform Earth into the new Mondas. The Cybermen met Lady Peinforte, who brought many of their number down with gold-tipped arrows. They allied with Neo-Nazi De Flores, but both inevitably betrayed each other. The Leader apparently forced the Seventh Doctor to surrender the Nemesis. Their force was destroyed by Nemesis as the Doctor had instructed.
Manipulating the Orion War
In the audio Sword of Orion, during the humanity's war with it's Android creations in 2503, while the Cybermen were in their tombs, a Cybership was found in the Garrazone system. Human agents planned to steal Cyber-Technology under the guise by using a salvaging team, bu the plan was hijacked by a Android double agent, Jensen. However, the Cybermen and the Cybermats were revived, and began converting the crew. The Eighth Doctor, Charley and Jensen was able to defeat the Cybermen, allowing them to be destroyed by an Ion storm.
Twenty years into the Orion War, Earth's Scorpius Project uncovered a Cyber-Ship from a past invasion in the Isle of Wight. However, their attempt to seize Cyber-Technology went horribly wrong when the Cybermen and the Cyber Planner awakened, and took control of the Scorpius Project. As well as this, they converted Paul Hunt into the first Cybrid, a link between human and Cybermen, to act as their obedient agent.
Cybus Cybermen
The Cybermen created by Cybus Industries in Pete's World.
In a parallel universe, the Cybermen were created on Earth by dying transhumainist John Lumic, founder and owner of the multinational company Cybus Industries. The first generation of Cybermen were created from homeless people and began the conversion all humanity. However, being from another dimension, the Tenth Doctor, Rose and Mickey, along with resistance group the Preachers fought the Cybermen, and eventually deactivated the emotional inhibitors that kept the Cybermen from going insane. After the destruction of the Cyber-Factory, including their Controller, Lumic, the Preachers, set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world.
A few years after their creation, thanks to the Cult of Skaro, the Cybus Cybermen exploited a breach between universes found by Yvonne Hartman to invade London in 2007 under command of their Cyberleaders. Initially believed to be ghosts, the Cybermen took over Torchwood One, and commenced their worldwide invasion. However, when the Cult emerged, the Cybermen found themselves fighting the Battle of Canary Wharf.
Though the Doctor manages to send the parallel Cybermen into the void, traces of their actions in Canary Wharf remain such as a partially converted Torchwood employee named Lisa Hallett who was killed months later by her follow Torchwood operatives.
However, due to the actions of the New Dalek Empire, the parallel Cybermen escaped the void and ended up in London 1851, where they enlisted the aid of a human named Mercy Hartigan before they are destroyed for good by the Doctor by sending their giant robot, the "Cyber-King" into the time vortex.
Cyber Legions
At Stonehenge the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond encountered Cybermen whose exact origin was never explained, although resembling John Lumic's Cybermen. They had teamed up with others of the Doctors enemies like the Daleks, the Judoon and the Sontarans to save the universe by trapping the Doctor in the Pandorica. However, they vanished from existance when the TARDIS exploded.
Others of these Cybermen, called the Twelfth Cyber Legion, were visited by the Eleventh Doctor and Rory Williams, when they were searching for Amy Pond, who was imprisoned by Madame Kovarian. Their Cyberleader told Rory her location after the Doctor destroyed some of their spaceships.
After one of their ships later crashed on Earth in Colchester, they fought the Doctor one more time, when he visited Craig Owens. Like the Cybermen from Mondas, they used Cybermats. They tried to convert Craig into their new Cyber-Controller, but his feelings for his infant son were so strong, that he was able to override to process and blow up their ship.
Post Cyber-Wars
An old Cyberman converted into a chess playing machine.
Thought to have been extinct for centuries, using advanced minuscule Cybermats known as Cybermites to spy and gather parts for them, Cybermen underwent massive upgrades to make them invincible to the point that only a planetary destruction device can be used against a single Cyberman if not dealt with quickly. These enhancements include Cyber-conversion by Cybermites, detaching their limbs, super-fast speed, and the ability to convert non-humanoid life forms as the Eleventh Doctor found out. The Doctor got briefly possessed by their Cyber Planner who called itself Mr. Clever. However the Doctor temporarily immobilised them which gives enough time for him, Clara, and other human troops to evacuate and destroy the planet they are on.
This model was also present in the siege of Trenzalore in Time of the Doctor, devising one with a wooden exoskeleton armed with a flame thrower to avoid detection. The Eleventh Doctor is able to trick and destroy it by using it's own weapon against it. When the shield was lifted, the Cybermen invaded Trenzalore, but was fought off by the Doctor and the Silents, and were either destroyed, or saw fit to retreat.
UNIT and the Master
Cyber-Reality
In the Big Finish spin-off UNIT: Cyber-Reality, a particularly ambitious version of the Cybermen evolved in one universe, resembling the Cyberiad Cybermen. Led by a Cyber-Controller, they utilised virtual reality technology to conquer numerous parallel universes in a bid to upgrade the entire multiverse. They were, unfamiliar with the Time Lords, an ignorance which proved their undoing when the Master visited a parallel world they had occupied while attempting to escape the Last Great Time War. Returning to his Earth, the Master chose to join forces with UNIT against the Cybermen, who attempted to convert him, only to be destroyed when he overloaded their systems with power from infinite dimensions.
3W and Missy
In Dark Water/Death in Heaven, a group of Cybermen allied with Missy, who developed a way to convert the deceased into Cybermen. They also gained the ability to fly via rockets built into them. Once a large enough army was raised they invaded London once again. These Cybermen self destructed over graveyards, dispersing Cyber-pollen to infect and convert the bodies of the dead into Cybermen. However, when the Twelfth Doctor took the control bracelet from Missy (which controlled all the Cybermen), he gave it to a converted Danny Pink who lead all the Cybermen up into the sky where they all simultaneously self destructed, destroying the Cyber-pollen.
Mondasian Colony Ship
On an enormous Mondasian Colony Ship, which was trapped in the gravitational field of a black hole, the Cybermen rose once again. This was due to time dilation caused from the black hole, which led to 20 crew members, who traveled to the back of the ship to fix the engines, to experience time much faster than the front of the same ship. This led to minutes matching years at the two ends. Within two days/thousands, the crew was long gone and their descendants had built an enormous city. Due to pollution, lack of resources, and a brutal regime by the The Master, chances of survival were getting slim and a group of doctors decided to convert the population. It appeared that the Master (now in disguise after being overthrown by the people) was also the key architect in this plan. The converted would eventually become the Cybermen, who would later convert Bill Potts to lethally injure the Twelfth Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor managed to destroy most of the Cybermen in the end, but it appeared that at least some survived.
The Last of the Cybermen
At the end of the universe, a group of Cybermen living within an asteroid were found by Rassilon after he was banished from Gallifrey. Rassilon saw the potential in allying with the Cybermen and let himself be converted into a Cyber-Leader. With Rassilon's assistance, the Cybermen attacked and conquered Gallifrey, and rewrote history with the Time Lords' technology to keep the Doctor occupied.
In the new timeline, Cyber-Silurians seeded the universe with ark ships containing cyber-technology. The 11th Doctor attempted to stop the launch of the arks, but he was captured and assimilated. After the CyberKings captured the Sontaran cloning worlds and caused the extinction of the Rutans, the 10th Doctor was unable to stop an ark from converting Sontar on a planetary scale. The Sontaran cloning factories were then altered by the Cybermen so that they produced an endless supply of Mondasians to convert. Earth was completely taken over by Cybermen in 2006. After Rose Tyler was converted and Jack Harkness was killed, the 9th Doctor tried to destroy the Cybermen. Instead, he was infected with nanobots and cyber-converted.
At the end of the universe, the Cybermen used looms to siphon the regenerative energy from Time Lords into the Eye of Harmony. They planned to use the Eye of Harmony to shape formation of the next universe, making a reality perfectly suited to the Cyberiad. The Twelfth Doctor came to Gallifrey and confronted Rassilon and the Cybermen. When the Doctor was forced into a loom, the Cyber-Controller betrayed Rassilon and put him in a loom as well. The Doctor and Rassilon used their combined willpower to influence the energy being pumped into the Eye of Harmony and instead of regenerating the future, they regenerated the past. Everything the Cybermen had done was reversed and their supremacy over all of time and space was wiped from the memory of the universe.
Revival with the Cyberium
During a Cyber-War fought in the "very far future", the Cybermen and humanity nearly wiped each other out. An Alliance against the Cybermen sent the Cyberium, an AI containing all knowledge of the Cybermen back through time, to prevent the Cyber-Empire being revived. In The Haunting of Villa Diodati, Ashad, a fanatic who had been partially converted and was dubbed the Lone Cyberman, travelled back through time to follow it to 1816 at Villa Diodati. The lone Cyberman managed to recover the Cyberium, despite the interference of the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends, by forcing them to choose between stopping him and irreparably damaging Earth's history.
After returning to his own time in Ascension of the Cybermen, the lone Cyberman managed to merge with the Cyberium, which instructed him to destroy all organic life. and him and his entourage, relics of the Cyber-Legions, hunted some of the seven surviving humans in the galaxy, and uncovered a Cybercarrier containing a legion of "warrior class" Cybermen. The lone Cyberman began reawakening them, and removing the organic components, so they could be ascended. He also contained the Death Particle, a weapon created by the Cyberium to destroy all organic life.
In The Timeless Children, while attacking the Doctor's companions and the humans at the Boundary, the lone Cyberman was contacted by the Master, who offered him the chance to conquer Gallifrey. The Cybercarrier went through the Boundary to Gallifrey, but Ashad was betrayed and killed by the Master so that he could gain the Cyberium for himself. The Master converted corpses of the Time Lords into a new breed of Cyberman, which he named the CyberMasters. The Doctor's companions and the human survivors of the war destroyed the Cybercarrier and the Cyber-Army aboard it, foiling the Lone Cyberman's plot. The Doctor weaponised the Death Particle against the Cybermen and the human Ko Sharmus subsequently sacrificed himself to use it against the Master and the CyberMasters.
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