Here we are at the Fifth and Final Chapter of The History of the Cybermen. We'll start by discussing the last few Cybermen stories from the Classic Series and then figure out how the remaining New Who stuff fits in...
PART 5: THE REALLY DISTANT FUTURE
Once more, the Cybermen seem to be in a crisis. They have taken a heavy beating at the hands of a special Alliance created by the humans of Earth. The First Great Cyber War stretches through the better part of the 26th Century. Near its end, the Neomorphs' vulnerability to gold is discovered and utilized to its greatest potential. Thanks to the planet Voga, the Cyber Race is utterly defeated.
The Alliance, however, did overlook those Cyber Scavengers lurking in the deep fringes of the galaxy. One group of scavengers does attempt a comeback - but fails. I would guess their gambit to destroy the remains of Voga took place sometime around the 29th Century.
With their attempt at revenge quelled, the Cybermen seem to be truly extinct. Conveniently enough, the Daleks during this period also seem to have disappeared (this is a cross-reference to my Dalek History posts I did a while back - you'll see more of these in this entry. Here's a link to the chapter I'm referencing:
http://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2015/07/chronologies-and-timelines-episode.html).
All seems quiet. The Universe can rest easy for a while.
But only for a while...
RETURN TO THE FUTURE
The Cyber Scavengers were not the only important point that the Alliance missed. During the late stages of the Great Awakening on Telos, the Cybermen were able to capture a time vessel. They, immediately, used it to try to alter the course of history. The Time Lords sent the Doctor in to stop them but the time ship remained in the Cybermen's possession after the incident.
Now that they had the technology, the Cybermen wanted to become masters at time travel. At best, they were only able to scrape a bit of the surface technology off their time machine during this period. The Alliance against them banded together quite quickly and they needed to focus everything on the war effort. Research into time travel was put on the back burner. The time vessel, itself, was rarely used during the First Great Cyber War.
However, when it looked like the Main Fleet was doomed to lose, a group of Neomorphs boarded the time ship and simply took off into the future. They set a course for two centuries ahead in time.
The Alliance had only ever heard rumors of their enemies having the ability to travel through time. They figured that if such technology did actually exist, then it was destroyed when they took out the fleet.
Sometime in the late 29th Century, the time vessel re-materializes. The crew immediately assess their situation. As anticipated, there is no longer a Main Fleet. They learn of the one group of Scavengers that tried destroy to Voga (they even recover footage of the event from the security cameras of Nerva Beacon). Since
Revenge of the Cybermen, Voga has re-emerged into the public light and involved itself with the galactic economy. They've emptied their mines and sold their gold to the rich of the Universe. Which means, of course, that Voga is no longer the threat it once was. The Alliance will have a much harder time arming their glitter guns now that ammunition can no longer be acquired from a centralized source. Plans of conquest can begin anew.
FIRST LAST DITCH EFFORT FROM THE NEOMORPHS
These Cybermen who have slipped into the future immediately embark upon two vital missions. The first is to re-build the fleet. One group of scavengers were destroyed in the Voga Mission but there are still several more out there. They are called in with whatever supplies they've gathered. Once more, the Scavengers acquired enormous resources that will create a new army. Once they've delivered their cargo, they are sent back out. The Scavengers are an excellent
ace-in-the-hole that have saved the Cyber Race several times, now. As long as they can remain hidden from the eyes of the Major Civilizations of the Universe, they will continue to be effective.
The second mission the re-emerging Neomorphs undertake is to better understand the time ship they've stolen. After much research and development, the Cybermen are able to make time travel capabilities an integral aspect of all their navigational equipment. The huge fleet that they have re-built can, now, time-jump whenever it wants to. A very handy feature to have should they find themselves' close to defeat like they did during the First Great Cyber War. Some might even say the fleet is now unbeatable.
With their new abilities, the Cybermen decide to try to meddle with history again. The Fleet (or, at least, part of it) travels back to 2526 to prevent the Alliance that defeated them in the Cyber War from ever forming. Earth is on High Alert and will be near-impossible to take out in a direct assault. So the Cybermen take advantage of the various merchant vessels that are still making regular deliveries to the planet. They arrange the smuggling of two androids and a massive bomb to be delivered to Earth. The androids set up the bomb in a hidden cave and protect it until it is time for it to be detonated. The Cybermen are waiting for a major conference that they know will be taking place shortly. The bomb will destroy the better part of the Earth and kill all the delegates assembled, there. Which will, in turn, destroy the unity the Alliance was meant to inspire. The 26th Century Cyber Fleet will be able to thrive, after all.
Just to ensure that their plans are successful, a small army is hidden in the cargo bay of a second merchant vessel. They will commandeer the ship once the bomb is set off and mop up anyone who survived the bomb's explosion. Earth will definitely be destroyed and the history of the Cybermen can move in an entirely new direction.
The plan fails, of course. Thanks to the intervention of the Fifth Doctor and Lieutenant Scott's taskforce.
Earthshock happens here.
SPECIAL NOTE: Making the Cybermen time travelers in
Earthshock gets a few of its continuity problems to work better. Firstly, the flashback to
Revenge of the Cybermen now makes sense. If these were Cybermen from the Year 2526 - how would they have footage from an event that clearly takes place after the Cyber War? Since they are from the future, they can do this now.
Also, the freighter suddenly being able to time-jump at the end can have a sort of logic to it. Adric accidentally unlocked the time travel capabilities found in all navigational equipment that the Cybermen use.
SECOND LAST-DITCH ATTEMPT OF THE NEOMORPHS
News of another Cyber Fleet soon reaches the ears of the humans. Without any intergalactic tyrants to fight, the Earth has become an empire, itself. Like most empires, a greater concentration has been put on military funding. This time, the humans don't need an alliance to defeat the Cybermen. They have a big enough army, already. They aren't aware, however, of the fact that these Cybermen can escape through time if their opponents are overcoming them.
The ever-scheming Seventh Doctor takes care of this tactical advantage. He intentionally leaks some information to the Neomorphs about a Gallifreyan super-weapon that he has sent into orbit around the Earth in the late 20th Century. The Cybermen cannot resist the lure of such an opportunity
The Human Empire start engaging the Cyber Fleet. They're showing enormous success in the limited skirmishes they've had. The Cybermen can see that they will not defeat this enemy so they all slip back into the past and shroud themselves' as they orbit the Earth in 1988. A small command force descends to the planet to retrieve the Nemesis statue once it crashes, there. Again, they intend to pervert history. With the Nemesis Statue, they will have the might to convert the Earth into a New Mondas.
They were lured into a trap, of course. The Seventh Doctor defeats them in the story
Silver Nemesis. With the destruction of this particular fleet, the Cybermen's knowledge of temporal physics is also lost. While there are still scavengers in the 29th Century, time travel technology was not passed on to them.
THE SECOND GREAT CYBER WAR
No one from the 29th Century actually knows what happened to the Cyber Fleet. They guessed that they time traveled in some way - but the fleet never seems to return. They appear to have completely disappeared from the Universe.
A century or so passes where, again, we don't hear from the Cybermen. The Scavengers are still out in the outer fringes, though. This time, they decide to just come together on their own and share their resources. A new army is built.
Deciding the Neomorph model isn't all it was cracked up to be - they go Cybus-Style, this time. Cybus-Style Cybermen prove to be highly adaptable. If the enemy starts exploiting a certain weakness, this model can perform internal upgrades that will neutralize the vulnerability.
On top of that, the Earth Empire is now in a state of decline. They don't have the same military might that they had back in the 29th Century (we're probably somewhere in the 31st Century, at this point). Nonetheless, they have to engage the enemy. The Cybermen are attacking the humans in full force. A Second Great Cyber War commences. Like the first one, it rages on for the better part of a century.
Humanity has to take more drastic measures in this war if they are expected to survive. A special protocol is introduced to the armies of the Empire. Each platoon is issued a powerful bomb that has the ability to blow up an entire planet. If even a single Cyberman is found on a world - the bomb is detonated.
Using this plan of attack, the Empire eventually defeats their enemy. They also end up destroying the entire Tiberian Spiral Galaxy. It is now just an empty space in the cosmos. No planets. No stars. Nothing.
The Cybermen made one fatal mistake during this war. So confident were they in victory, that they did not bother to send their Scavengers back out to the remote corners of the Universe. There was no way to re-marshal their resources in a century or two like they had been after their last few defeats. This time, the Cybermen really do seem to be wiped out.
MORE CROSS-REFERENCING
In Part Five of my Dalek History post (
http://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2015/07/chronologies-and-timelines-episode-5-of.html), I try to postulate what period of time the Daleks return to after the Time Wars. Some dates are given in certain early stories like
Dalek,
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways and the whole arc involving The Cult of Skaro. But there also seems to be a large army that takes up occupancy in the far-flung future. Full Dalek stories such as
Into The Dalek, Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar and cameos like
Wedding of River Song and
The Pilot all seem to support this idea (as do several more stories, really, but listing them all gets a bit tedious). No specific dates, however, are appointed to any of these tales. I suggest that the Daleks pick up where they left off from in
Dalek Masterplan (the latest point in their
pre-Time War timeline)
and are back in the 42nd Century - but I don't fully commit to the idea. It's entirely possible they're at some other point in the future.
Now that we are reaching some stories where the timelines of Daleks and Cybermen are intersecting again, I'm going to set some proper dates in stone. The time for wishy-washiness is over.
So, as the Time Wars end, a group of Daleks return to the early 42nd Century. Using a Progenitor, they re-design themselves' and begin building their numbers back up. As they are re-establishing their reign, they learn of an impending disaster that will be caused by their greatest enemy. The Doctor's TARDIS will explode and destroy the Universe. In order to truly ensure that they can capture the Doctor and stop this cataclysm, they create an alliance with other races who have clashed against him. Using their time travel technology, they transport all of the members of the Alliance back to Stone Henge on Second Century Earth where they have set a massive trap for him.
The Daleks decide that the Cybermen could have a lot to offer to such an Alliance. But they can't find any of them. Their light seems to have been extinguished from the Galaxy. Remembering that there are still some of them stranded in the Void - they extract a small force and bring them back to our reality to assist in the operation. This is why we see Cybus Cybermen in
The Pandorica Opens and not Cybermen from our universe.
What becomes of this particular group of Cybus Cybermen is unknown. Perhaps they're still out there, up to no good. Or perhaps they were defeated in an offscreen adventure.
MORE SILVER
While the original Earth Empire did collapse sometime around the 32nd Century, the Royal Family that reigned during that period survive. A thousand or so years later, they manage to rise back into power. The Second Human Empire, however, is fairly short-lived. Emperor Ludens Nimrod Kendric, called Longstaff the Forty First is reluctant to assume leadership and runs away from his responsibility. His escape lands him on the now-derelict Hedgewick's World. An amusement park planet that ended up going into bankruptcy and being abandoned.
Hedwick's World falls into ruin because a Cyber Army has been ever-so-gradually building itself up underneath the surface of the planet. Stealing the occasional child in the park and converting them.
Some major refinements get made as a new model of Cybermen is developed. The Cyber Controller is long dead - probably destroyed near the end of the First Great Cyber War. Cyber Leaders and Lieutenants have been running things most of the time but a new centralized intelligence has been created. Christened a Cyber Planner, it is very different from the ones that were used back in the day. There seems to be no physical form for this Planner. It operates within the Cyberiad - a highly organized neural network that can instantly access and control any Cyberman in the Universe. This is the most sophisticated of all the hive minds the Cyber Race has ever produced.
Another huge boon for the Cyber Race is the creation of the cybermite. A smaller version of the cybermat, it is used for a quicker more effective conversion rather than being a weapon. Even contact with just a few cybermites causes any organic creature to fall under Cyber control. The greater the number of cybermites, the more complete the conversion.
These two key elements and a few modifications to the basic model make these
Nightmare Style Cybermen some of the most deadly and dangerous we've ever seen. They are ready to rise back up from the catacombs they've built into Hedgewick's World and re-conquer the galaxy. They just need an effective housing for the Cyber Planner. When the Doctor makes an ill-timed visit to the amusement park, their plans can begin.
Nightmare In Silver ensues.
SURVIVING THE SECOND CYBER WAR
When Hedgewick's World is destroyed at the end of
Nightmare In Silver, we see that a single cybermite has survived the explosion and is floating in space. It's a moment that's vaguely reminiscent of the scene with the surviving cybermat in
Tomb of the Cybermen. We know that the Cybermen will be back for more.
My guess is that this was not the only cybermite that made it through. During the Second Cyber War, cybermites had not yet been invented. So the Empire's scorched earth policy was effective. But such a tactic no longer works. Cybermites were made to withstand the destruction of a planet so that the Cybermen can still proliferate after such an attack is used against them.
The surviving Cybermites make their way to a nearby world and begin, anew, the evolution of the Cyber Race. We get the impression that they are cutting a few corners as they re-build things. Any other time that we've seen Nightmare-Style Cybermen, they don't seem to show a lot of the capabilities that we saw displayed in
Nightmare In Silver.
As the Cybermen assert themselves' into the Fourth Millennium, they experience a similar problem that the Daleks did. During earlier times, the Cybermen were more technologically-advanced than most of their opponents.Which gave them all sorts of advantages. But these other races have now caught up to them and can contain them better. The Cybermen do end up conquering and controlling their own quadrant of the galaxy, but they're only allowed to spread so far. The same proves true with several other aggressive alien species that litter the universe. Their enemies accept that they can't truly wipe them out - but they are now powerful enough to, at least, hold them at arm's length.
It is within this geo-political landscape that Gallifrey starts transmitting its distress beacon from Trenzalore. Along with several other power-hungry military forces, the Cybermen arrive to investigate things. Eventually, the Doctor even comes to check out the situation. When he does, the events of
Time of the Doctor occur.
ONE LAST CAMEO
I estimate that
Time of the Doctor probably takes place sometime around the 44th Century.
Nightmare In Silver was probably in the 42nd or 43rd Century so I thought I would give those cybermites a good hundred years to get a formidable army in place by the time Trenzalore starts calling out to the Universe.
So the big question is: do the Cybermen survive much longer than this? Our last cameo that needs to be chronicled indicates there were still be Cybermen nearly a thousand years past
Time of the Doctor.
No specific date is given to any of the events that take place in the future time period that
A Good Man Goes to War transpires in. We do get certain dates subtitled as the Doctor amasses his army. But we don't know, for sure, when the battle of Demon's Run specifically happens. Through various bits of dialogue, we can ascertain that the attack on the Twelfth Cyber Legion and Kavorian's confrontation with Dorium also happen in the same time period as the Fall of Demon's Run. But, again, no specific date is given during these scenes.
However, if we take the time and trouble to go back to
Pandorica Opens, we see River Song visiting Dorium at the Maldovarium to acquire time travel technology. In this instance, the date 5145 flashed up in the subtitles. In
Good Man Goes to War Dorium appears to be closing down shop. So we have to assume his transaction with River Song took place before this event. That means the various events that take place in other locations in this time period are occurring sometime after 5145. So it looks like the Cybermen have, at least, made it to the 52nd Century.
By this time, the Cybermen are not just using Nightmare Style models, they have brought back older versions, too. We have never seen legions of Cybermen before this, so I'm guessing that each legion might actually be a different type of Cybermen (it was awesome to see a New Who update of the Mondasian Cybermen - how great would it be to see other Classic Who models brought into the New Series?!). The Twelfth Legion was a group of Cybus Style Cybermen. The bulk of their fleet, however, gets destroyed when Rory and the Doctor visit them for information concerning the location of Amy.
So it would appear that the Cybermen go on for over three thousand years after their first attempt to invade us in the late 20th Century. Like the Daleks, there are spells where they are nearly defeated and seem to disappear from the Universe for a bit. But they go on.
More than likely, they will be around for a long time to come.
And so, at last, we reach the end of this long and winding tale. I seem to have found times for all the stories and cameos to take place in. As complicated of a task as this was - I do find that a good consistent history was easier to build for the Cybermen than it was for the Daleks.
Yet one more reason why I think I might like the Cybermen better....
Other Parts of the Saga:
(referring to my own work as a "Saga" - how pretentious is that?! Thank God this is Pretentious Doctor Who Essays!)
Part 1:
https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of.html
Part 2:
https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_9.html
Part 3:
https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_13.html
Part 4:
https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_18.html
