With Army of Ghosts/Doomsday being the latest episodes of the TV Club, and with me having a lot of thoughts on cybermen, thought it’d be a good idea to have a discussion post about The Cybermen!
What’s your favourite Cyberman story?
What’s your favourite Cyberman origin?
Do you agree with me that there hasn’t been a good cyberman focused story in Doctor Who since the revival?
Oh also “something something Sins of the Flesh good”?
…I really need to listen to 11/Valerie don’t I?
Sins of the Flesh… obviously.
One I recently came to love was The Wheel in Space. Great atmosphere. Interesting story.
I like the origin idea presented in World Enough/Doctor Falls. Self-preservation in a bad situation.
Know what, fine, 11/Valarie will be my next set after Stranded
I’ve heard so many good things about the set and Sins of the Flesh especially, genuinely sounds like everything I want from a cyber story
It’s my favourite story from BF. It hit me a lot in the feels due to personal stuff. I do worry that it won’t hit for all like me.
11/Valarie is good stuff, but that is a bias opinion from an Eleven lover.
I love the Cybermen - easily beat the Daleks for me. But their actual stories are a real mixed bag.
Good stories for me are Tomb of the Cybermen and Earthshock. I like The Haunting of Villa Diodati and Rise of the Cybermen two parter in the modern series.
Spare Parts on audio, obvs and the novels Iceberg and Illegal Alien are both very good, as far as I remember.
Oh I also wanted to throw out there The ArcHive Tapes. I rather enjoyed the in-universe history of the Cyberman, in broadcast chronological order.
See I’m personally an Eleven hater
Well, not really, but I don’t really get the love for him all that much and he’d probably be on the lower end of my doctor ranking if I had one… But I’m not sure how much of that is Eleven, and how much of that is the way Moffat wrote Eleven and especially how he structured his era
I haven’t listened to them for years, but yes, I was very fond of those tapes.
I got the CD box set a few months ago, but sadly it isn’t available any more.
Spotify has it though:
Yeah, I keep meaning to give it a relisten on Spotify.
I came here to post about Sins of the Flesh, but others beat me to it. It’s brilliant!!
Cybermen are too often just portrayed as monsters who go around shooting people and all the body horror / assimilation is forgotten about.
The Borg are my favourite villains in Star Trek (yes, I know they are a little overused) and honestly I think Cybermen have never been used as effectively as Borg were (I believe Cybermen were invented first).
I do think World Enough and Time was a great Cybermen origin story, but it got a bit generic at the end.
Being a force of un-nature. A Crononberg, unrelenting force that is just not going to stop, is their best version. Sadly it doesn’t appear much.
This is exactly it, I think there’s three things that make cybermen (in theory) my favourite Doctor Who Villain:
It’s a shame that it’s so rare for all those things to come together. 2/3 happen, in various permutations, in a lot of stories, but sadly there is so little releases where the full horror comes through. Most of the time they start talking, and it goes down hill from there.
Hey, that’s me too. Hence, Sins of the Flesh hits hard.
Yes 100%, though World Enough comes close. However I think I might actually just not be a Cyberman fan. I think they only work, as you say, when they lean into the body horror and the stripping of autonomy, but so rarely does anyone do anything interesting with that
See my problem with most stories they’re in isn’t with the stories, it’s that they’re not ‘Cyberman focused’ stories, they always have to share the limelight.
Which leaves Nightmare in Silver and… meh
It’s why I say Cyberwoman is the best Cyberman story since the revival. I genuinely think it’s really good and let down by a bad costume.
Going down the checklist:
- Even with their fall at the battle of Canary Warf they still find a way to come back. - Body horror in full effect, the ending is terrifying, and we see the impact it has on people who care about the converted. We also see the result of a failed conversion which is horrific. - The Torchwood team can’t really do anything but run from it until it ends up changing bodies, and it punches a pterodactyl!I think you mean Stormageddons story. Craig is there as his vehicle.
At least with this we get a lot of Bill experiencing the horror of conversion. Shame it turns into a Michael Bay film.
Love me some zombie/horror like Cybermen, Mondasians especially. WEAT/TDF on TV and Spare Parts are obvious favourites but I find Way of the Burryman/The Fourth Generation to be a really underrated one from the 9DAs. Really makes you feel for the converted.
The Silver Turk too. I lowkey ship the two cybermen in that.
You have a @realdoctor sort of list going there for the Cybermen. I love it!
The best televised Cybermen story is obviously Tomb of the Cybermen. While the best design is the original - but quite human, yet far from robot. Haunting stuff!