Cybermen in new Doctor Who

As has been discussed, the original Cybermen came from Mondas, the Earth’s twin planet. We’ve seen one of the original Cybermen helmets in a museum in new Doctor Who, so we can safely assume that all of that history is still canon. However, the writers decided to create new Cybermen for the new series with a different heritage. It’s possible that this is because the original ones were a little silly at times and that whole gold allergy thing always bit them on the butt in silly ways.

The new Cybermen were created on an alternate Earth that the Doctor and his companion (Rose) just happened to get sucked into just as the Cybermen first came about. They were created by a mad genius (aren’t all bad ideas?) who thought they were a great way to achieve immortality. As with all things, his creations didn’t work out quite the way that he intended.

The Doctor did try to talk him out of it, because they look uncannily like original Cybermen so he knew what they were, but the mad genius didn’t buy it. These Cybermen wanted to convert everyone in their world. They set up factories with nasty cutting machines to do it. Yuck.

Their downfall was a computer program that unlocked their memories of what they were before their conversion and returned their emotions. Most of them went mad. A task force on the alternate Earth dedicated itself to wiping out the factories that they hadn’t managed to get in their first battle.

They appeared again at the end of season two. This time, they went through the dimensions to ‘our’ Earth and tried to convert everyone. The task force from that other universe followed them to stop them. The Cyberman invasion coincided with the Cult of Skaro Dalek invasion, and all of fandom burst into laughter at the Cyberman/Dalek face-off. Between Daleks, the task force and the Doctor everything was sorted out and never went beyond a part of London called Canary Wharf. It’s been referred to on the show as the Battle of Canary Wharf a couple of times and it appears that people on Earth actually noticed the thousands of Daleks flying around that time.

The Cybermen haven’t been seen since. The rip that allowed access to the alternate Earth is supposedly repaired, although we’ve had it open again once already so I wouldn’t discount the chances of it happening again and the Cybermen reappearing.