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History of the Cybermen - Cyber history and trivia

Spare Parts
  Origins of the Cybermen.

The stars of Real Time are Doctor Who’s second scariest monsters, the Cybermen. Emotionless silver giants, they have the strength of ten men and can survive in the airless vacuum of space. They were also responsible for the death of Adric, for which many people are eternally grateful.

The metallic meanies were originally created in 1966, the brainchild of the late Doctor Kit Pedler. Pedler was Doctor Who’s unofficial scientific advisor, and found himself intrigued by the possibilities of a species that had taken the concept of replacement surgery too far. At what point, Pedler posited, did a man cease to be a man and become a collection of spare parts?

Pedler teamed up with Doctor Who’s story editor Gerry Davis to develop the concept of cybernetics further, exploring the idea that a creature composed almost entirely of metal and plastic would lose the capacity for emotion.

The Men from Mondas
  Emotions are a weakness.

The Cyberman became the embodiment of detached, heartless, emotionless logic - except for they times they flounced about, shouting and waving their fists, or stood around in spaceship corridors seemingly nattering about the weather.

As the Fifth Doctor noted, the Cybermen were unable to appreciate the small, beautiful things in life: a flower, a sunset or a well-prepared meal.

The Cybermen were the inhabitants of the planet Mondas. Originally twinned with Earth, Mondas drifted off into to the far reaches of space, only to return in 1986 with its energy supply completely tapped out. In The Tenth Planet, the Mondosians decided they would recharge their doomed world using Earth’s power - until they got their sums wrong and blew up Mondas through an overload.

Human Allies
  Traitors and mind control.

Cybermen tend to invade by stealth, often employing human agents to do their dirty work whilst they prepare to strike in earnest. Tobias Vaughn in The Invasion and Kellner in Revenge of The Cybermen are probably the best examples of this.

Alternatively, some Cyberman seem to have the power to control minds, creating willing slaves to do their bidding. If your mate starts talking in a flat monotone and staring blankly ahead, they’ve probably been got. Either that, or they’ve watched The Wheel in Space too many times.

Nice Outfit
  Silver is the new black.

Cybermen have always been the fashion victims of Doctor Who, seemingly needing a new outfit for every occasion. Originally sporting cloth faces, car headlamps and chest units like accordians, the creatures gradually adopted a sleeker image.

Out went the cloth, in came PVC, plastic balls and ribbed tubing. As the 1960s drew to a close, the Cybermen slipped into rubber wetsuits and Doc Marten boots, before discovering flares in the mid-1970s. Thankfully they never experimented with mini-skirts.

After a lengthy absence, the Cybermen returned to Doctor Who sporting outfits based upon water-cooled fighter pilot suits, with glass jaws in their helmets that allowed you to see the remains of the human inside. Apart from the addition of chunky cricketer’s gloves in Silver Nemesis, their look remains pretty consistant throughout the 1980s.

Gold
  How to kill a Cyberman.

The best way to kill a Cyberman is with gold. Unsurprisingly, their greatest enemy were the Vogans, a race who live on a planet made almost entirely of the stuff (or at least they did, until the Cybermen blew it up out of spite).

During the great Cyber Wars, scientists invented the Glitter Gun, a device capable of firing gold dust into the breathing apparatus of a Cyberman, suffocating it. It must have come in handy at Christmas...

In later years, script writers became somewhat over-reliant on the use of gold as a weapon against the Cybermen. By the time of Silver Nemesis, it seemed that anyone with a bag of sovereigns and a catapult could take one out.

Another spectacular way of massacring Cybermen is the Raston Warrior Robot. A sleek, silver killing machine, the Raston Robot despatched an entire Cyber-patrol in seconds during The Five Doctors.

You can also kill a Cyberman by melting the plastic bits in its chest unit with nail varnish remover or other strong solvents. Or running over it with a steamroller, probably.

Tomb Raiders
  Putting the Cybermen on ice.

After the Cybermen managed to annoy most of the known Universe, to the extent that they were almost completely wiped out, they decided to stay out of the limelight for a few centuries. Having invaded the Planet Telos, which became their main base following the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen stole the deep freeze technology created by the planet’s native inhabitants, the Cryons.

They built tombs in which to hibernate until the heat wore off, and froze themselves until, in The Tomb of the Cybermen, a group known as the Brotherhood of Logicians decided to defrost them in the hope of forming an alliance. Not a very logical move, really.

Be careful how you defrost a Cyberman, as they have a tendency to go mad and hit things if it’s not done properly. Practice with fish fingers and work your way up.

Speech Therapy
  Talking like Mr Blobby.

The Cybermen’s voices have evolved almost as much as their costumes over the years. They were originally provided by Roy Skelton, who later went on to voice Zippy and George from Rainbow, and were created by the voice artist deliberately placing completely the wrong inflections on all the words.

Later Cyberman voices were created using speech devices given to patients who have lost the use of their vocal cords. Place the gadget against the throat and mouth the words - and voila! instant robot voice.

Modern Cybermen sound a lot like Mr Blobby although, oddly, this doesn’t seem to make them any less scary. Real Time sound designer Alistair Lock uses a gadget called a harmonizer that repitches the original speech by -2 and -4 semitones, plus a sound manipulator know as a vocoder, as used extensively by Cher.

Cybermats
  Slippery cyber-silverfish.

The ‘pets’ of the Cybermen, these nippy little armoured silverfish were first introduced in The Tomb of The Cybermen. Although anyone with a reasonably sturdy pair of boots could probably squish one with ease, they have been known to terrify grown men with their scary scuttling.

Cybermats are used by the Cybermen as advance guard, slipping in and snooping about where their masters would be too easily spotted. They have been known to pounce on their victims, injecting poisons into a person’s neck.

Cyber Trivia
  Things you may not know.

The Cyberman were originally created to fill the void left by the Daleks when Terry Nation, creator of the deadly pepperpots, went off to make films with them and tried to set them up with their own series in America.

Cybermen helmets are notoriously claustrophobic - the poor actors had to be literally screwed into them. During their first adventure, The Tenth Planet, some of the Cyberman actors passed out under the hot studio lights.

The term ‘cybernetics’ was first coined by mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1948. It derives from the Greek word for 'helmsman' and was used to describe the study of feedback systems.

Kit Pedler’s original idea for The Tenth Planet was to populate it with a race of ‘Star Monks’.

Great Cybermen plans include diverting Halley’s Comet towards Earth and taking over a base on the Moon by poisoning the crew’s sugar. Sweet.

Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University is the world's first real Cyberman. A leading expert in Cybernetics, Warwick has microchips embedded into his arm which allow his nervous system to communicate with computers.

You can find out more about Professor Warwick at his official web site.

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