And then Pete and Rose make a note that they'll come back and rescue her, but can't remember which one she was. Age of Steel/Rise of the Cybermen was honestly my favorite story of Series 2.

Best nuwho cyberman story

Age of steel has plenty of subtle body horror. The sammy cyberman was genuinely depressing.

@@OscarOSullivan still world enough and time/the doctor falls for me. both great though

@@OscarOSullivan *thinks back to the machine with all the saws* Subtle. yes.

The cybus men were really stretching it Like it worked because of the mesh keeping them together but the armour while practical removed that humanity The nightmare in silver designs just said fuck it and gave them automated hardware updates

i like to think that all cybersuits have the one goal to first convert themselves and then convert others, as each without a body inside would immediately want to produce more cybermen, and obviously the first thing it would do is convert one human with itself

@@jmurray1110Cybusmen felt realistic. Indestructible suits of armor housing a human brain inside. They were feasibly industrial. The ones after the fact just felt ridiculously over the top.

Also, that Cyberman gets impaled by a damn sword. They're literally meant to be impervious to bullets, yet Moffat made them killable with Roman weaponry.

@@Gojirawars03 I never liked the idea of it just having a human brain inside of it. It should be a person that's just been modified a lot. The second it's made into a robot that has a brain into it then it makes you ask why they don't just use a computer instead and that completely loses all of the body horror. There shouldn't be any separation between the organics and mechanics. It should just be one augmented person

The mindless cyborgs having human hands kind of reminds me of that robot arm that uses dead spiders as grabbing claws. Maybe the meatbags have some useful parts on them after all

If you enjoyed the proper cybermen. Big Finish - Spare Parts.

@@paulashe61a man of culture I see

Completely agree - that was horrifying

I like that idea, but I really wish they did more with it besides the reveal.

A shame that episode was so bogged down by the presence of not one, but TWO Masters.

Thank you for bringing up Attack of the Cybermen. Very underrated in my opinion.

Yeah but trouble is in the classic show they did start to become synonymous with Daleks because they often didn't care about converting humans they just wanted to dominate for domination's sake which is a very boring plotline cos then they don't have any depth to their motivations. In tom bakers one Cyberman story not only do they have zero interest in converting the humans they even allow them planned escape time after a mission is concluded involving the doctor and company

That's a great horror aspect to explore in itself. You can wipe out every cyberman and every trace that they ever existed, but still they would independantly develop again at some later point in the future of humanity (or whatever similar species). How do you keep humanity from taking its own humanity away?

We survive

ITs kinda like how tons of species evolve into crabs over time. It's like the "peak" of evolution

Cylon type story lines where they can mate with humans? Till you can't tell whats what no more? Start talking about "beings" as many do today?

Ah, the good ol "theres nothing more human then inhuman mechanical death" philosophy.

Yes

Wow, with this kind of response, maybe I should write the story myself. I’ll do some research on Theseus and see if there’s opportunities to include the Doctor and the Cybermen within a story and present it to this channel.

if ever I was given the reigns, I think a concept basing initially off of the Ship of Theseus would work, but also go into the gradient of cybermen. At what point is it...cyber anymore? Showing a history of multiple cyberman factions which are disagreeing on how to handle their race, the doctor showing up to stop them at each turn causing frustration and unknowingly destroying the unity they had. Some cybermen become more and more robotic as a militaric response against the opposition of armies and the Doctor, some of them choose to remain closer to human and "Upgrade" people out of a sense of warped justice that they are saving them from themselves and would simply take the side of fixing humanity from the sidelines, some would be an empire that believed it had achieved closeness to perfect form and thus had to educate the lower races into understanding this perfection of logical persuits and optimization, but all 3 ideologies would eventually collapse into extremes. The Military ones fighting the Doctor and moving to conquer the doctor would be two seperate factions of cybermen that generally compete but do not fight one another often. Instead prioritizing on adapting to fight against their foes more and more until ending up becoming little more than mindless machines with no amount of flesh or biomatter remaining leading to the question of "is this a cyberman or just a robot that identifies as a cyborg". This would end up explaining the super cybermen from that episode with "Mr Clever". The "Saviors" would upgrade people more and more, while being more and more aggressive, until they see themselves as saboteurs trying to outright destroy humanity as they do not see a reason to believe humans could ever be redeemed except through assimilation or control outright, this would comprise of a mix of Mondasian and Cybusian Cybermen and end up be a group that believes it knows best and that it would be the smarter of the three in the end, manipulating puppets that were once governments and people. The "Educators" would start by assimilating with genuine sharing of their ideals and consent, but end up as infultrators similar to the "Saviors", but focusing on the benefits of their craft, trying to achieve perfect ideals and systems that turn out to be dangerous and harmful. "No Cost is too great" becoming a mantra for them. In the end they would have empty paradises and no movement, showing the true escapism in their intentions. They were aiming to escape imperfections of mortality only to end up losing meaning. This would explore the "Ship of Theseus" concept but with how the Cybermen lost their meaning over time, and why. However, this is not a good perspective, I would probably butcher it.

They're the best modern Cybermen

Cybus men in their first appearance second

I wish they'd bring back the Moonbase/Tomb designs. That was always my favourite.

one of the greatest cyberman stories by virtue of also being one of the best stories of the whole show. (pro tip: if you're watching s10 for the first time and happen upon this comment, SKIP THE PREVIEWS: they'll spoil this particular episode completely. also this comment.) the way it recontextualizes the mondasian cybermen from that shoddy cloth suit making you go "wow, what a shoddy cloth suit" to it making you wonder what grotesquery could be concealed under it. incredible. sure, it was kind of signposted that all the "healing" full conversion promised was less than so, but that surgeon guy going "this won't help the pain. but it will make you stop caring about it" and holding up the identifiably cyberman head handle thing as the final reveal that Yeah These Are Cyberman still makes me shiver. they made the HEAD HANDLES scary. going full body horror due to treating the actual cyberman part as a big twist was an amazing choice. also the doctor falls follows this up by convincingly explaining away the many origins of cybermen in a way that's actually thematically cool and resonant and not just a handwave

@@minicle426omg yessss

One of my favorite scenes from season 2. Hearing the Cyberman go "I'm so cold. Why am I cold..." in its monotone robotic voice is spine chilling.

when i first watched ascension of the cybermen i really thought they were leading to something with the "cyberman that makes other cybermen scream" thing, along with the timeless child flashbacks i thought the idea was going to be that the dormant cybermen were being fed their old lives as a way of conditioning them with familiar imagery without completely getting rid of emotion, something along those lines leading to ashad making some sense as a leader since he found the value of using emotion as a tool for control but no... ashad still just doesn't make sense and the other cybermen screaming didn't make sense cause they were literally just robots

Like He/She did post Moffat era for almost every Cybermen story...

Still one of the best. Only World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls is better imo.

Nah

Chibnal era. we will NOT let an innocent actress take the fall for his shitty writing just because he didn’t last long enough to have more than Doctor.

I rather liked one of their few comic interactions, just because it conveyed a lot with very little: Two characters who have almost no body language and were still able to convey meaning with the most basic of movements and no language. In The Power of the Doctor, where The Master is in full-on villain gloating and breaks out in a song-and-dance number by way of taunt. There's a moment representatives when his allies-of-convenience, a Dalek and a Cyberman, just turn towards each other in the background. A moment of face-to-eyestalk exchange that sums up their unspoken agreement: "I know he's a monumental prat, but just ignore it, we need him."

Jesus Christ you’re right, and I hate so much that you are.

It would be interesting to see a story where there’s a cyberman “civil” war, where two separate colonies of humans each individually became cybermen, and those two groups of hive minded cybermen clash over their ideals of what is the best way forward. Like, could be a message that there’s no real “perfection”, there’s always little things you improve by sacrificing others. Like maybe one of the cybermen have the guns, while the other is purely melee, but they’re more durable as a result. Could be interesting.

The funny thing is that the Time Lord process of Regeneration is basically what the Cybermen are after ultimately. The Cybermen are humanity's ill-fated attempt at becoming Time Lords.

honestly all the best doctor stories come from when he has to deal with an intangible threat. he could easily beat the daleks, the master, etc. but how do you fight the concept of self-preservation? how do you fight the concept of capitalism? there's a reason why episodes like midnight, listen, rise of steel/age of the cybermen, dark water/death in heaven, and world enough and time/the doctor falls, oxygen, and hell bent are among the most loved episodes of the show. because sure the doctor can escape, he can get people to safety, he can destroy the immediate threat, but he can't destroy a concept, and we see what happens if he tries with the timelord victorious (which i'm fully convinced is the only reason the waters of mars is as highly rated as it is). those kinds of episodes are where we see who the doctor really is. they're not perfect, not some overpowered being, they're just a madman in a box, passing by and helping out if they can

I like your idea, but not for the cybermen. It should be its own thing, a new creature. Cybermen should be body horror, based on humans becoming so integrated with technology (with a good thing taken to extremes) that they become no longer human. They lose a part of themselves. It's a nice transhumanism concept from classic sci-fi that's still relevant today, and will still be relevant in 100 years. But if you add this "alternative medicine" thing in there, it's not going to help the cybermen. It's just going to add a bunch of baggage that goes along with the term "alternative medicine." Especially after Covid, where people weren't following traditional medicine specifically because they didn't trust what became a politicized discussion about the institution. People aren't going to chop off their arms and replace them with robotics limbs just because of "alternative medicine" and not trusting the institutions.

I always thought the Cybermen were a Communist allegory? "You will be like us", individuality being consumed by the collective, etc.

@@Sir_Gerald_Nosehairs. sure, I can see similar themes there comparing communist society to a machine, since communism was created around the time of industrialization, and the mechanization of production in society. But it's really about transhumanism. The 60s when Cybermen first came out was the time when sci-fi started really dealing with transhumanism, since Huxley had just come up with the term. Apart from that, the guys who came up with the Cybermen was inspired by what was then a type of new medical procedure that was literally called "spare parts surgery," which is the replacement of organs or limbs through either transplants or artificial replacements. In the scientific world, they had just invented some sort of artificial heart/lung machine that everyone was hearing about. The writers were concerned about the technology that helps us actually leading to a loss of humanity. Tie that to the inhumanity of the communist system and yeah, I can see parallels.

The problem is we no longer by and large fear transplants. Technology making us less human is and that is why I love the age of steel story.

@@davidpo5517 The point is precisely this: I am not talking about current conventional medicine, but about a more sci-fi version, in which there are nanorobots and an increasing integration of technology into humanity. Today, we no longer live in the 1960s: there is already a reality in which very few people can partially recover their sight thanks to a microchip under the skin, wirelessly connected to a computer that sends impulses to the brain, allowing them to see. From today's perspective, the integration of people with technology is already a reality and will continue to develop more and more. For me, the Cybermen come from the distant future and my idea of 'Alternative Medicine' is relevant. These Cybermen derive from people who use this technology even though they do not need it (such as those who perform surgeries at home or in other non-legal places) or those who do not trust conventional medicine and, instead of using the nanorobots prescribed by their doctor, employ nanorobots found on the dark web or the like (such as those who avoid vaccines by undergoing unregulated injections with serious consequences). I imagine that the 'Upgrade' process of Cybermen is slower and comes from within, a change that can only be detected when it is too late. In the series we could visualise this transformation from human to Cyberman in a visceral way, through a moment in which the skin of one of the characters falls off, revealing underneath it muscles transformed into metal.

Join the club, mate! I _hate_ how this weird association between them and the Master has kinda consumed them. Like, did Moffat just watch the 5 Doctors and get it in his head that that's what Cybermen are supposed to be? We need another Cyber Controller to speak for them, not someone who's not alligned with them at all. In fact, this bizarre association got so bad that in the miniatures game (yes, there was 1 that was a bit like Warhammer 40k but for Doctor Who, but it got killed when it started referencing the Whitaker stuff) they had a Cybermen army box that was - you guessed it, "Missy and the Cybermen". The only actual Cyber character we got was the Cyber Controller from Tomb of the Cybermen in a 5-pack of metal figures.

this is where my cyberman fatigue came in, it was essentially the same thing over and over and I just got sick of it. I am hoping with the return of RTD he does good with them, if he brings them back

I think it's meant to be a reflection on the Doctor. The Doctor allies with the best of humanity and the master allies with the worst, the worst being the cybermen.

@@TheJonesdude But again, that's more about the Master than the Cybermen themselves. I think the last time they had a Master-free story to themselves was the one with James Corden in 2011...

But the Daleks aren't really good embodiments of fascism or bigotry, if you think about it. They have had traits like empathy genetically bred out of them by their creator, they can't act any other way than how they do. The real horror of fascism, especially the Nazi strand of it, was how it was ordinary people, often decent and kindly ones in their personal life, doing terrible things.

​@@Sir_Gerald_Nosehairs. I think that some of the best Dalek stories are those were they go after themselves and show the hypocrisy in the concepts they represent. Like the episode of the 13th doctor where the one recon dalek cloned itself and basically took over the world but was killed by the normal Daleks because they were "impure".

@@Sir_Gerald_Nosehairs. Daleks are supremacists. They are embodiments of the idea that "We are superior, all others are inferior". One of the things I love about the Daleks is that they are repeatedly self-defeating, because any time Daleks make moves to change and grow, the others immediately smack them down for being not Dalek enough.

This show is awful and I hope it goes for another thousand years ❤

I can remember watching torchwood's cyber women with my brother. Lisa being left partially converted explained a lot for me

'Illegal Alien' is a very underated Cyberman story.

And I like all of your opinions, but of course that’s not the point. They’re all good videos/ essays.

Huh? That’s still a mutilated human they literally cut the head open

@@chaserseven2886 still more boring than the person in a suit. They're one bodypart away from a robot

I agree. It's why I find the Cybus versions overated.

Oh he'll retcon Lady Cassandra for sure.

Which is a stupid mentality, really. Why can't someone in a wheelchair be evil? Are we to believe they're all exactly the same and good at heart? Ridiculous stupidity.

I would do many great and/or terrible things to see a story set during the Fall of Mondas. Imagine the desperation of an entire dying civilization. Maybe they could steal some ideas from Frostpunk? 😯

@@affsteak3530 it would be fascinating, and would give us multiple things we haven’t seen in a long time: effective twists, impossible situations and a dark plot. Newer Who needs it