Doctor Who & The Problem With The Cybermen
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Such a great concept that I feel isn't being utilised.
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I always loved how from Tenth Planet through Earthshock, and in the Troughton era in particular, the Cybermens designs kept changing in every story, showing how their desire to survive keeps upgrading and modernising, a genius concept by Gerry Davis. This is something that needs to be bought back in a story, in a way referencing how technology keeps changing in todays world, especially with phones and technology. It’s more relevant now than it was back then.
It's kind of an obvious angle but I'd go for something like The Happiness Patrol that explores cherishing anxiety and sadness rather than trying to suppress our negative emotions.
Maybe Helen A, still hell bent on eradicating negative emotions, works with a Cyberleader to convert a new Earth colony into Cybermen?
I've always thought the cybermen deserve more of a 'Dalek' type story with a singular one in a base under siege story to show the power and danger just one can bring - not unlike Cyberwoman however that is where the similarity with that TW episode ends... Similarly to S1 if this one cybermen somehow survived then it could lead into something bigger once they've multiplied in the finale to show the consequences of letting just one survive and now there's a fleet of them (not that they need to be in large numbers to be scarier, but to up the stakes and danger of them esp if we show that defeating 1 is hard enough). I also think they should utilise the modern world more things such as social media particularly instagram filters and cosmetic surgery and the idea of needing to look perfect as well as other things such as over reliance on tech such as credit cards - most don't even seem to use them now but apple pay so you don't even have the physical bit of plastic anymore!
I'd say they really played up the Cybermen's creep factor in Earthshock, since the mouth plate is slightly transparent and you can see what is left of the human inside there. It's very morbid and horrible.
I consider them DEFINITIVE and wish they wouldn’t get so EXCESSIVELY “retro” in Cybermen evolution with New Who 🤬
Totally agree - love the organic chin, scary as hell!
Peter Capaldi blowing up Cybermen in the forest is one of many fave scenes ever.
as someone who also has the cybermen rank as the #1 favourite villain, I totally agree. My favourite story with them probably has to be the Silver Turk because it's pretty unflinching in its portrayal of the cybermen
One controversial thing I wish doctor who would be would be more violent so the villains appear more threating
not on doctor who but ina spin off series that would be possible
Have you watched 80s Doctor who? In the 80s, there would be plenty of violence and even showed blood in some occasions. New who should do that too or else I'll start calling it a p***y show.@@chaserseven2886
Couldn't agree more Wingy. As much as I love them and (some of) their stories, the Cybermen are such wasted potential.
I agree about the gore (though I do like a good body-horror flick now and then), however, leaving things to the imagination can be so much more terrifying (edit to add:) if done well!
I totally agree with you , i must admit in the Attack of the cybermen story when they were converting commander lytton i thought that was very creepy.
Years ago I had an idea for a Cyber-trilogy, The first story is basically a big flash back being told by the current Doctor (whoever that may be) to his or her current companion, after they find the remains of an old crashed dead Cybership on Mars. The story explores the Doctors first ever encounter the Cybermen (or in this case the first ever Cyberman) and the origin of the Mondasian Cybermen as witnessed by the 1st Doctor & Susan when they accidentally materialize onto Mondas when the Tardis (not yet in it's Police Box form) mistakes the planet for Earth, using the Hand of Omega the 1st Doctor assists a genuinely benevolent scientist (as a counter to Davros) who, unwittingly creates the Cybermen not realizing the dark secret behind what they're building, however Susan & the robotic assistant of the scientist (a powerful alien robot called a Golem which the scientist based the Cyberman on) uncovers this secret, that dangerous mentally ill criminals are being used in the conversion project which is forbidden and the person who became the first Cybeman is Mondas' most dangerous criminal and something the scientist was unaware of and wouldn't allow it turns out the person was behind this turns to be the planet's top leader, the Controller of Mondas but when the Cyberman is activated it kills the scientest and trys to attack Susan however the Golem sacrifices itself to protect her and Susan is captured, meanwhile the 1st Doctor confronts the Controller but the Cyberman arrives and reveals that the Controller's plans to use it have failed before killing him, the 1st Doctor uses the Cyberman's violent emotions against it rescuing his granddaughter and causing the Cyberman to decide that emotions are a weakness that needs to be removed and it plugs itself into the planet's main bio-mechanical super-computer, the Cyber-Brain, removing its emotions and taking over all the Mondassians brain implants, unable to do anything to stop this, the 1st Doctor & Susan narrowly escape from Mondas, the Tardis is set course to Earth 1963, arriving at a certain London junkyard.... After the next story the the trilogy continues
I think a story idea could be like 42 with one cyberman aboard a ship, slowly converting members of a crew who aren’t looked out for or just rejected and then by the end of it you have the more loved and cared characters (by the vain standards of the crew) be ripped apart from the others but the doctor ends up saving the last few (say there’s a crew of 20 only 1 or 2 get out alive, but not necessarily living if you get what I mean)by just letting the cyber men get their ship. They escape in the tardis because it’s all they can do. The victory is simply that they survive and weren’t converted, the cyber men live stronger and it can show a range of humanity and how far someone would go to survive (both as a cyberman but as a human that acts as coldly as a cyberman).
I like that and if the cyberman wasn't defeated it could lead into something bigger in the finale following on from the consequences of one being allowed to exist similarly to how S1 had a single Dalek in 'Dalek' (which I've always thought the cybermen should get an equivalent of and this could fit in with that) but then also a whole fleet in the finale.
@@dexterhill5843 yeah or on a similar note the whole twist with satellite 5, the consequences catching up with the doctor. Maybe the ship was heading toward a massive human colony that has become fully converted.
@@peter7711 that's be good :) see Chibnall its not that hard to at least get the inklings of a decent concept!
Here’s my idea for a Cyberman story:
The Doctor encounters a group of Mondasian Cybermen who are partially human as well and want to renounce their ways by helping humanity but not by upgrading them. These rogue cybermen are helping some stranded humans to survive, but a squadron of other Cybermen arrive to destroy the rogue ones and the Doctor is stuck with a moral dilemma: Let the rogue Cybermen die or help them?
Here’s the episodes title: The Children of Mondas
That’s such a brilliant, thought provoking, fascinating idea
I like it - perhaps their emotional inhibitors failed and now the human side has taken back control? :)
Good idea but the pain side of conversion maybe a sticking point
"Weee are cybermen. Wee werre processed for survival. We noooh longer deeeem processing necessaaary. We wiill heelp anyway we caAn"
Love the cybermen . The sonic screw driver the most overused thing about modern who
The two main problems I have for the cyber men are
1: They’ve became to robotic since nightmare in silver (although I think that is being fixed with Ashad)
2: The can be overpowered like in nightmare in silver again and underpowered in parts of classic who
I'd argue that they've been too robotic since their introduction (minus World Enough + Time, and Ashad) as there aren't many passive displays/details that they're converted humans rather than just robots aside from being able to see the brain of the Cyber Controller and certain Cyber Leaders, the rest of the time it has to be overt scenes based around showing it like the first emotional inhibitor scene and the Yvonne Cyberman's tear in Doomsday.
7:00 - That would be a great idea. Have a story where the Doctor finds himself on Mondas at the beginning of the Cybermen. Or would that be too much like World Enough and Time?
What's great about the cybermen is that they're not all uniform like the Borg so they can be different in every episode. There should still be some where they're more robotic but I agree there should be more creepy cybermen
To me the cybermen also need a good setting and plot mainly focused on them being the antagonist, now depending on the plot of the story whether or not its a conversion story or cyber invasion/other cyber story plots i prose two setting ideas i would love to see work as cyber stories. Also do want to point out that certain eras of the cybermen work well for certain themes though.
Conversion: The black Death Outbreak between 1347 to 1351, probs in some small rural English village where the cybermen are using it as a foothold in converting humanity to "cure them from the plague." Would use extensive body horror with plague victims, partially converted peasants, maybe partially converted plague doctors to act as lures, but the cyberman's ultimate goal is back in its rots of saving a species using conversion and technology. i do feel possibly and very much a possible, Mondasian style cybermen or Cybus style cybermen work well for this episode.
Cyber-invasion/other cyberman related stories: The Gold Rush in the US. probably in some frontier/outback wild western town the cybermen are attacking gold miners, for them mining gold and the cybermen thinking its being used a a weapon to kill them. Would be cool to see cybermen vs cowboys not gunna lie, maybe even a Mexican stand off between a cyberman leader and sheriff would be neat to see. I am thinking the Earthshock style cybermen would work well this one, i can imagine them saying excellent all the time.
Love Invasion, Earthshock, Attack. Haven't seen many of the more recent ones as I couldn't tolerate Moffat's psychological problems imposed upon everything. I don't like the new plastic Cybermen, they look like dull robots from an American kids tv show in 1991.
Also - it's a travesty to have them go "delete" all the time, and have an entirely diff origin.
Don't worry, New who isn't considered canon to the original series and the original series' extended media media. New who is just a non canon continuation.
I agree with you Wingy! The cybermen are my favourite villains in the show!
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine. Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you.
There’s a Great War Master episode in the first box set that was a perfect Cybermen origin type story. Not the Mondasian version. I won’t say much incase I spoil it for anyone but it is a very dark shocking story.
It's tragic what has become of the Cybermen... when I think of a Cyberman I think it should be like Frankensteins Monster. A brutal giant only without any emotions. A cold killer.
I love how in Earthshock their brutality is hinted at. "Ive seen wounds like this before."
I once wrote a short story which was literally just a group of humans trying to survive on a spaceship with one Cyberman. Kinda like Alien.
I wrote it to be utterly terrifying. And being able to fix on the nasty details as it kills with its bare hands was awesome.
The Cybermen are so much more interesting than any other villain it baffles me that the people running the show keep dropping the ball on them
Tomb is definitely my favorite cybermen story
The idea I had for a while, was a Cybermen story, that takes inspiration from Seven Samurai
What's Seven Samurai?
I would love a good creepy Cybermen story. They are our future if we are not too careful. They are an extentiom of our own arrogance and our desire to outsit eternity. Our desire to so mute feeling, contain emotion and creativity, to quash individuality..... They are a fearfull possible future.
Thanks for the video!
Would love to see a re-design that didn't involve making them look like robots. People who complain that the classic Cybermen are just people in plastic / rubber suits are kind of missing the point. They're not robots, they're still people under all that metal and plastic and that makes it all the more creepier if done right.
Nice coverage of the issues! For me, the problem with the cyber men spans from the way they have always been portrayed completely inconsistently.
Way back even in the 60s every story to feature them either changed their look, voice, mannerisms, back story. Switch to the 80s and this continued but with weaknesses. Gold, being shot with normal bullets and even stabbed to death (?!) Coupled with more personality disorders like "EXCELLENT" moments with shear emotional tendencies being shown in the voices, joy, anger, humour and even sarcasm! All for a creature with no emotions?
I do think at least initially that the modern series tried to bring them back to their routes as cold and mechanical but it didn't really capture the chill in the process. They are, as you say, more like robots.
As for if they will ever be written properly again. As I have said before, the amount of box ticks and nods / signalling that Doctor Who needs now it's very difficult to actually fit a story in.. there is afterall only 40 mins.
The Cybermen are my top favourite dr who villain
I grew up with the Peter Davidson era Cybermen and earth shock voices. The delete voices suck in modern who. The old scary triumphant voices of the Davidson era was the best cybermen voices.
Spot on, it has been a long time since the Cybermen have been menacing. That showdown with the Daleks was a lot of fun though. Perhaps they could bring back 1980s Cyberleader, that would be 'Excellent'!!!!!
I love the Cybermen, The Daleks, The Master, The Sontarans, The Ice Warriors and The Rani in almost equal proportions and I agree with you completely. I rather like Age of Steel etc but that's about it from the Davis era concerning Cybermen and then the Moffat and Chibmonk era Cybermen are just a joke without a punchline... That and what they did to the Brigadier was unforgivable.
The Monsters need to be more story specific. Look at The Rani (Other than being entirely ignored in Nu Who) Her first Story is spot on, it tells us who she is and what she spends her time doing. Second story though she's not doing anything that meant it needed to be The Rani. She's a Chemist after all, what does she know or care about Strange MAtter and conquering all of time?
It is creepy how the Cybermen were once people and how they turn people they capture into one of them, which is actually a good shock factor, but they are a under utilized Dr. Who villain creatures.
A cyberman story where you follow a sympathetic character as they get converted into a cyberman BUT you’re encouraged to see the whole thing from their viewpoint after conversion too? “Why is the Doctor now trying to kill me? Can’t he see we are trying to help?” Also, I get that cybermen don’t technically have emotions- but something which really gets you inside a cyberman’s head- why would a cyberman feel better off this way? What motivates them to convert everyone ?
And this is the primary reason why I dislike the Doctor Falls so much. As a stand alone episode, while it isn't great, it's ok. But it's the fact that it's the 2nd part of World Enough and Time that really makes that episode unwatchable for me. World Enough and Time finally portrayed the Cybermem perfectly, while still being appropriate for Doctor Who (maybe pushing it to the extreme just a little bit in a couple of scenes). However, instead of building off of this perfect characterization and plot, the Doctor Falls completely drops all those ideas in favor of nonsense that I don't care for.
Now my ideal story for Doctor Falls probably is too grim for Doctor Who, and I know Moffat would never make a story where the Doctor is in complete defeat and sorrow, but that really is the only satisfying ending to World Enough and Time, because the alternative is doing what the Doctor Falls did; making the cyberman look crap, weak, and completely different than the previous episode.
So I completely agree with the points you made in your video, I think the concept of the Cybermen is just too grim and too much to try and write into doctor who in a satisfying way.
I agree and mucking up all of Capaldi's finales seems to be a trait of moffats - dark water is great then you get death in heaven.... heaven sent is amazing... followed by hell bent..... then WEAT and TDF and its such a shame! He always feels the need to then throw a enigma curveball and go somewhere else that feels totally detached with new characters and annoying child actors we don't care about. Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways is the only finale for me where I feel the story changes appropriately enough in the same setting after the build up then into the battle. It doesn't then go to floor 368 we've never been to of which is farm full of kids and the daleks are now coming and it feels like a totally different story from part 1 - it continues with the character's we got to know and care for in the same situation we left them in the same locations established and they all get killed and its brutal but really well done
@@dexterhill5843 I agree with you 100% Bad Wolf/ Parting of the Ways is the only finale in New Who that is good all the way through. And yeah Capaldi's final stories are so night and day it's baffling...
@@Haxprocess Indeed which is a shame but at least you can view Heaven Sent as more of a stand alone prequel rather than part one of Hell Bent, more like Utopia. Maybe we'll get some decent finales with RTD back! Can only hope 😁
Please make videos more often.
Great points. Cyberman stories are always nice, but usually never outstanding. I would argue though that World Enough and Time works without The Doctor Falls, just like Heaven Sent works without Hell Bent.
You know idk if this is a good idea, but it just popped up in my head while watching this. And what if we have a doctor less story with just the cybermen, taking on one dalek. Now hear me out, we seen stuff like dalek in 2005 where it took alot of stuff to stop the dalek. But let's see it where there's a group of cybermen, emotionless cybernetic zombies try do that. But unlike humans they don't have emotion or not alot of emotion. While in dalek it took emotion in a way to stop the dalek, the cybermen dont have that but they have technology and they retain a human quality of surviving. Just an idea btw :)
Last time I was this early, the Cybermen were still scary
For me NuWhos biggest problem with the Cybermen is that they often play second fiddle to another villain or story, but I think there's been great standouts like Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel and The Haunting of Villa Diodati where they've shone on their own. However I still the S10 finale because of how they show the horror of cyber conversion, those are the best types for me they remind you of the horror underneath. It's something I think writers like Maxine Alderton and Eric Saward got right when adapting from their original creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis.
My suggestion would be to have them all wiped out bar some cyber tech remaining in a lab that escapes and the whole process has to start again. Go back to basics so we can get to see a new origin. No more stompy-stompy, no more flying, no more Queen of the Damned embarrassing speed walking, and really focus on the body horror, the conversion, the politics that leads to this process, add some morality conundrums to it by showing how it was initially done to save humanity and why… explore the dangers of conformity and peer pressure too.
as much as I love them, tbh there's not alot you can do with them is there same for the Daleks, they are a product of their time arent they, dont get me wrong I love them but whats is there to do with them?
great vid as always
Cameron
Well Elon Musk is looking to go in this direction. I think the problem is that the CM are a revived pre-internet futuristic vision and don’t reflect the modern dystopian tech nightmare which would look very different. For example, the CM are essentially an army of individual infantry units, and all predictions and developments are moving away from that paradigm.
and that’s what i love about the cybermen, the daleks are squids from a far distant planet and the weeping angels are these sort of fantastical gothic creatures but the cybermen are literally us, which makes them so fucking terrifying. I actually don’t think there’s ever been a cyberman story that’s lived up to the concept. even spare parts which is obviously great doesn’t really get it in the way that i’d want to see it or had imagined it. just a picky bastard maybe but i’d love to see them done proper, proper justice one day
Actually a kaled story of pure genetics’ that hasn’t been affected by skaros radiation with them in balance or hunted for genetic material to make new daleks
The six million dollar man was half cyborg and super fast and strong.
Cybermen trudge around like they are following the grand old duke of York.
Why don’t they move as fast as the Raston robot (five doctors) instead of being it’s cannon fodder?
Just here for the spicy ginger!
The Cybermen should be an intergalactic threat perhaps extra-galactic or multiverse threat, more so than the Daleks, really there should be Trillions of them throughout time and space, yet they are reduced to a few remnants.... why does Doctor who always do this? Give The Cybermen a sense of belonging a sense of empire for once!
Sup dude, can you help me remember a show i used to love watching when i was young. It was a comedy tv series where the town was full of old people and one of the funniest old dudes on there was after this tall lady that didnt like him..i think the main characters were four old dudes. lmao it used to air late at night coz bbc was only available a few hours at night.
I maintain that they’ve not gotten the Cybermen right in the NuWho era, with the exception of World Enough in Time, and that was because they leant into the classic feel; shame about the second part. Can we also just STOP the ‘stompy-stompy’ too?
I personally subscribe to the opinion that the cybermen started to suck since the Tenth Planet. Yes, I'm including the Troughton stories. The problem is that they very easily become discount Daleks. That's what they used them for back in the 60s. And so many cybermen stories since do stuff with them that we could do with the Daleks.
I know RTD wants to create more spinoffs, I really hope some are aimed at older audiences so that they can really make the most of the Cybermen.
I think there is fear that the show will alienate the family audience with horror aspects. The BBC isn't brave enough to scare kids. Also, modern audiences seem to be repelled by messages and things that insult the audience, which an anti-tech story would be seen as. Ironic cause those stories are what the show is made of
Doctor who isn't and shouldn't be cut out to appeal to modern and mainstream audiences. If it does cater to them, you just end up with stuff like The Doctor Falls and Nightmare in Silver 😭
What’s the outro music called?
Ship Wrek & Zookeepers - Ark
@@WingyMedia thank you
I think the 60’s got it right especially the tomb of the cybermen era and since then they’ve not got the right idea, rise of the cybermen is the closest they’ve got and they’ve been boring ever since then
Daleks are cybermen if you think about it... which makes sense, since they presumably were made to replace the daleks.
Totally agree that the use of cybermen is super frustrating. Why are they obsessed with killing humans? It's so frustrating.
New who just made them bipedal Daleks.
@@Freezer28528 I think the series 2 parallel world story and the series 10 finale treated them as cybermen, so it's not all bad
I liked the series 2 Cybermen two parter. That Series 10 one though with Bill turning into a Cybermen and the bloody kids at the barn was awful.@@LucyGooseyLicious
@@Freezer28528 I guess I found Bill having no control how people respond weirdly and fearfully to her to be very affecting. It's easy to relate it to various marginalisations... it was a super interesting use of the cybermen... I adore the whole of series 10 though, and Bill and Capaldi are the perfect pairing for me... but it was very disappointing to see the cybermen evolve to the point of just being regular nuwho cybermen... they also started to act like nuwho cybermen by acting like Daleks once they had evolved.
Yeah. The Doctor falls is genuinely overrated crap. The first part is okay ( the one with the mummified Cybermen saying pain ) but since it is a two parter, the second part ruins it and it all falls flat.@@LucyGooseyLicious
Basically you’re asking about the soul. If we, as biological beings, surrender to technology what happens to our humanity? That’s always been a ripe topic for sci-fi. And I agree with you, no writer has plumbed those depths.
I respectfully disagree. Cybermen were always a little "age inappropriate' for Dr Who's family audience, it was way too chilling and horrific a concept for kids watching. And that was part of the appeal of course because kids LOVE horror. But it only stays on the right side of the line when it's potential, when it's psychological and implied. As soon as you actually go there, it stops being Dr Who and becomes something far more nasty. The run of stories from Moonbase to Earthshock really got them right, with the horror there as an idea, a subtext. Modern Dr Who has tried way too hard to make them truly horrific (as in World Enough and Time) or has treated them as robots who are just cannon fodder (Closing Time et al.)
Where do you live that you don't use physical money anymore? It's still the most common payment method where i live.
Stop making the Cybermen into drones. They all talk the same, look the same, act the same, etc. Emotionless doesn't mean personality-less. It doesn't mean they all just march in lockstep. Show some character with them! Make them disagree with each other, or discuss strategy, or even work against each other. Given them a culture! Give them a history. Do some world building with them! Hell, we don't need to turn them into the Borg every episode either - trying to assimiliate everyone. Maybe they don't need to. They are above humanity so much they consider humans inferior - something to be swept aside as they stride across the universe. That's how you make them scary - not because they are malevolent, but because they are a force of un-nature rolling dispassionately and relentlessly over everything in the way of their goals.
It's the same complaint I have about the Daleks frankly.
3:34 Sorry I still don't get the criticism, we can't see the cybermen defeated? We can't watch them die? Like surely the fear factor of the cybermen doesn't come from them being invulnerable
The point is they shouldn't be so easy to kill, seemingly now you just point the sonic and they're out
@@WingyMedia But they're not just easy to kill in The Doctor Falls, they've been easy to kill throughout the show. That episode used explosives to kill them, not that much different from Earthshock using guns
To me, World Enough & Time & The Doctor Falls are the only good Cybermen stories in the modern era. The Next Doctor is pretty decent, as is that Lone Cyberman story with Jodie, while the rest are pretty bland to bad. They have been defanged & no longer scary, much like what happened to the Borg in Star Trek Voyager.
Unlike the Borg, the Cybermen are not supposed to be entirely uniform so it's possible to make them scary again while also being able to appreciate the stories that are good but make them less threatening