Diminishing Returns

Ever since Doctor Who returned in 2005, it has been bringing back more and more villains and enemies from the classic series. For the most part, these recurring monsters have been handled well; the Daleks, though overused, are for the most part done brilliantly; the Sontarans are a vast improvement on their classic series counterparts, and I personally am absolutely in love with the RTD era's portrayal of the Master. However, there is one nemesis of the Doctor's who I think have been mishandled during the show's revived run; more specifically, his silver nemesis. The Cybermen have graced our screens no less than six times over the last seven years of Who, and each of those appearances, I think, has lacked the certain quality that makes the Cybermen the iconic and memorable villains that they are. That's what today's post is all about.

Our first glimpse of the new Cybermen was also the story that came the closest to restoring their 'alpha enemy' status; 2006's two-part adventure Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel. This story is a near-miss, coming the closest to re-establishing the sinister cyborgs, but it trips up in a few vital areas. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey crash the TARDIS through a tear in the fabric of reality, ending up in a parallel universe where 'everything is the same, but a little bit different'. They quickly discover that this new world has its own breed of Cybermen; rather than the augmented, humanoid aliens the Doctor had encountered in the past, these were humans encased in machinery and cybernetics, devoid of emotion, manufactured by the malevolent Cybus industries. The story follows the Doctor and his companions - plus a ragtag group of freedom fighters - on their mission to shut down Cybus industries and stop the creation of these 'upgraded' humans.

As I said above, this story is definitely the strongest for the Cybermen in the new series, possibly because it was their re-introductory story and the DW team wanted the old villains to come back with a bang; their last appearance had been almost twenty years earlier, so many of the show's younger viewers would never have seen a Cyberman before. They appear in the story as threatening and intimidating, and the horror of their creation (a whirl of buzz saws and screaming) is sure to send a shiver down the watcher's spine. Unfortunately, the thing that makes this story so interesting is also its downfall for the Cybermen. These parallel world Cybermen are intriguing in the emotional dilemmas that they present, from Pete realising his wife has been converted to the Doctor defeating them by disabling their emotional inhibitors; but it's a one-shot deal, a clever take on a classic villain, but not one that can be repeated. There's no way of keeping these parallel Cybermen interesting after this initial story has fallen by the wayside, so all of the advantages that these episodes give them are too short-lived to be truly effective. While clever variations on the themes of this episode have appeared elsewhere - most notably in the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman - these ideas are few and far between. To really bring the Cybermen back to their former glory, they need to be given a firm base on which new and interesting ideas can be tested; by starting their new-Who run off with a unique take on them, rather than the definite article, the show left the Cybermen on shaky ground for future appearances.

But return these parallel Cybermen did, in the series two finale The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. The Doctor and Rose return to present day Earth to find the streets being walked by 'ghosts' - but these blurred figures are not as serene as they seem, and are soon revealed to be Cybermen pushing across from their reality into ours. This time round the Cybermen themselves are less of the focus, as the story also has to deal with the departure of Rose and the return of another classic villain, the Daleks. As a result, the alternate Cybermen are slightly sidelined, and don't get any development or innovation as antagonists. While it isn't always necessary to do something completely different when an old enemy is brought back, this isn't the only problem the Cybermen have in this story. They also suffer at the hands (or plungers) of the aforementioned Daleks; for much of Doomsday, the two species are locked in combat with each other, and it doesn't take long for the Daleks to emerge as the clear victors. It doesn't do much for the Cybermen's status as major villains when we see them getting taken apart so thoroughly by just four Daleks. While it's obvious that the Daleks are a superior race, having it hammered home like that really knocks the reputation of the cyborgs.

The Cybermen then disappeared for a time, making not a single appearance throughout series' three and four. This long absence made their eventual return more effective - but unfortunately, the story they returned in did them no favours. The Next Doctor is really two stories in one; it follows the Cybermen as they attempt to unleash a dreadnought ship upon Victorian London, but it also unravels the mystery surrounding David Morrissey's eponymous character, a man claiming to be a future incarnation of the Doctor. The majority of this episode concerns discovering the truth behind this impostor, and the interactions between Tennant and Morrissey. Just like in Doomsday, the Cybermen become B-plot villains, filling up space and adding tension to a story that they don't quite belong to.

That was the last showing of the Cybermen for the RTD era; when the CybermenMoffat in series five's The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. As the Doctor and Amy are exploring the underground chamber beneath Stonehenge, a battered, torn-up Cyberman guard advances on them. This is actually an extremely effective scene; the Cyberman's head, detached from the rest of the body, attacks Amy with tentacles of wiring and a snapping 'jaw', making for a scarier Cyberman scene than we've had in a long time. Sadly, though, that's all it is - a scene. Once again, the Cybermen are not the main focus of the story; they are one facet of the Alliance, a collaboration of the Doctor's greatest foes. More than once, Moffat has assembled multiple Who villains in a single story, and - while this generally lends the episodes involved a grand, epic feel - it lessens the impact that the villains can have. This comes across in the next appearance of the Cybermen, A Good Man Goes To War, where Rory sneaks onboard their ship in an attempt to gain some vital information. The Cybermen are shrugged aside almost instantly, in a story that also features Sontarans, Silurians and Judoon. Moffat's bombastic storytelling in that episode comes at the cost of the reputation of the Cybermen as A-grade villains.

The most recent story to feature the Doctor's silver nemeses was Closing Time, the penultimate story of series six. The Doctor, travelling alone, meets up with his friend Craig, and discovers that there are Cybermen hiding underneath a local department store. I wish I could say that this is where things turn around for the steel soldiers, but they are regrettably worse than ever. Between Craig's struggling relationship with his baby son Alfie (Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All!) and the Doctor contemplating his imminent death, there's barely any time left for the Cybermen to do much more than stomp around and look menacing. They get maybe ten minutes of screentime throughout the story, spending most of it confined to the background, leaving most of their monster duties to the pseudo-comical Cybermat. It's yet another example of a recurring problem throughout most of the stories I've discussed here; the Cybermen don't make the story. It could have been any other villain. With the exception of series two's parallel dimension stories, every episode to utilise the Cybermen in the new series would work just as well with any other villain. They don't put an iconic stamp on the stories they appear in, and are relegated to B-plot bad guys, playing second fiddle to other plot lines and characters. If they aren't allowed to preside over their own episodes, how are they supposed to re-establish themselves as the dangerous, threatening forces that the Doctor fought in days gone by?

This has been by no means a comprehensive look at the new Cybermen - I haven't talked about the various additions to their mythos such as Cybershades, for example - but, as an overview of why the Cybermen have been somewhat lacklustre in their recent showings, I think I've covered quite a few key areas. Thank you very much for reading, and feel free to leave a comment if you enjoyed what you read.