CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES: HISTORY OF THE CYBERMEN - PART 2

With the Lesser Races examined, we can get to the meat of things. Let's look at the strain that star in most of the Cybermen stories we've seen. 




PART 2: GENESIS



LEGENDS OF MONDAS

An old galactic legend would have us believe that Earth once had a sister planet known as Mondas. Through some strange twist of cosmic circumstance, Mondas was knocked out of its orbit in our solar system and sent to a distant point on the other end of the galaxy. There, it settled into a new orbit. The truth of this legend is subjective, at best. But Mondas certainly looks very similar to our own world. No one can properly account for the resemblance.

Like Earth, a race of humans evolved on Mondas. They seemed to advance quite quickly. Interstellar travel was developed and contact established with other space-faring worlds that were nearby. Mondas, however, was a dying world (perhaps a long-term effect from its massive trip across the galaxy - if such a thing happened). They lacked the proper resources to build a substantial fleet of ships to take them offworld but they were able to strike some sort of deal with a neighboring world to build them a colony ship.

The colony ship was massive. Most habitable planets in that part of the galaxy were already densely populated.. The Mondasians knew they had a long trip ahead of them before they could reach a place to live. During the extensive journey, their population would grow so they would need the space.



COLONY SHIP PROBLEMS

As the colony ship was travelling to Mondas, an unfortunate accident occurred. A glitch in the navigation computers caused it to ignore a black hole and the vessel started getting drawn into it. The skeleton crew onboard noticed the imminent disaster in time and switched to manual. They threw the engines into reverse as they were nearing the black hole's threshold. This saved them from plunging in but now they had to get out of it. Part of the crew traveled down to the thrusters and made the necessary modifications that would enable them to actually pull out of the black hole's influence and resume their journey to Mondas.

No one thought to compensate for the time dilation that would happen under such circumstances. At the thrusters, time flowed more quickly. Minutes would pass at the front of the ship and years would fly by at the rear. The crew that had gone down needed to stay there to maintain the modifications they made. With time moving so fast in that section of the ship, they were living out their full lives while little time was passing on the bridge.

The crew at the back of the ship procreated and grew into a legitimate colony. All the time, staying near those thrusters to keep them firing at full force in reverse. This caused some major health issues as various toxins from the engines began to affect them. On top of that, the Master arrived and took over the colony for a while. Eventually, the evil renegade Time Lord was usurped. But he disguised himself and manipulated the colony from behind the scenes. A medical program was developed to strengthen the ill colonists. Project Exodus came into play as the population began to experience varying levels of cybernetic conversions. A race of Cybermen was born. Some might even call it the race of Cybermen.

Around this time, the Doctor arrived with the Master's next incarnation. The events of World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls transpired.



CYBUS DEBATE

Since the New Series introduced Cybermen from a parallel reality, there has been much speculation regarding which Cybermen we've been seeing in certain stories. We know that Cybus Cybermen have broken into our universe. So we're wondering if any appearance that we've seen of this particular model is a Cybermen that hails from this parallel reality. Or have Cybermen from our plain of existence also developed a model like this?

The answer comes, at last, in The Doctor Falls. Once the colony ship crew had perfected a basic model of Cybermen, they began to work on upgrades. At first, they found a way to give themselves' flight. Then they actually started working on more advanced models.

One of those models looks exactly like the Cybus Cybermen created in another reality by John Lumic (with the exception of the bold "C" on the chestplate, of course). It's entirely possible that the models could resemble each other so much since we are dealing with parallel evolution. So now we know that local Cybermen also have models in the same style as the ones that come from the version of Earth that has the Cybus Corporation.

For the sake of distinction, we will refer to Cybermen from our reality that look like Lumic's Cybermen as Cybus Style Cybermen. Cybermen that actually come from the parallel universe will be called Cybus Cybermen (as they have, already, been named in the first part of this essay).

The Doctor seems to put a big dent in the stock of Cybus Style Cybermen that were built on the colony ship when he blows up the solar farm on Floor 507. Some were still probably kicking around, afterwards, though. But more advanced models were too big of a strain on resources so the colony ship crew went back to the more basic version that they first developed. For similar reasons, they also stopped building them with boot thrusters.

SIDENOTE:  We'd like to think that Nardole found a way to get the solar farm colonists off the ship before another invasion force could ascend to their level and upgrade them. More than likely, there was more than one shuttle in that hangar he found his way to. Perhaps the colonists snuck through more of the infrastructure to get to some transport. They used a fleet of shuttles to get off the colony ship and built their own home on a nearby planet.

"But how would the shuttles get off the ship without getting sucked into the black hole, Rob?!" some of you may be asking. There are a few possibilities. Either the escape occurs after the colony ship breaks free of the black hole or clever 'ole Nardole makes some sort of modification that enables the shuttles to achieve the appropriate velocity that could resist such intense gravity.

ARRIVAL ON MONDAS

It's entirely possible that what happens on the colony ship meant for Mondas is its own self-contained story. That it never escapes the black hole and that parallel evolution happens, once more, on Mondas. This would account for some fairly radical differences in design between the Colony Ship Cybermen and the Proper Mondasian Cybermen.

It's more likely, however, that the colony ship did pull free of the black hole's gravity and arrive at its intended destination. Those poor Mondasians, eager to escape their dying world, get quite the surprise. Cybermen from the colony ship descend upon them and induce a mass conversion of the population. The Cyber-race grows. The Cybermen that we see in The Tenth Planet look as different as they do because the story takes place quite a few years later. Upgrades were performed over the years that caused these changes in appearance.

It wasn't just the people of Mondas that were altered - the planet, itself, also went through some radical changes. Recognizing that there was little life left in their world, the Cybermen found a solution to the problem. The colony ship was no longer large enough to support the entire population of Mondas and the civilization that had developed on it while it was stuck at the black hole so they canabilised it. They turned Mondas into a planet that they could actually pilot and created technology that could absorb massive amounts of energy from other worlds.

These alterations, however, dramatically weakened the crust of the planet. The Cybermen needed to be careful about the energy levels of the planets they were attacking. If they overloaded on power, their entire homeworld would collapse in upon itself.

They came up with a clever strategy to avoid this.



THE CYBER FLEET

Once more, the Cybermen started working on different models. Their main focus would still be the style of Cybermen we saw in World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, but modifications would be made. As mentioned before, some of the changes were aesthetic - others were far more significant. The biggest was the way the Cybermen became linked to their own world. As Mondas gathered energy from other planets, that power would transfer directly into its denizens. In many ways, it was a very efficient way to do things. But it did present one major weakness: if Mondas fell, all of the Cybermen would die with it.

The logical way to work around this weakness was to create versions of Cybermen that would draw energy from sources that were independent of Mondas. Several different models of this nature were made. We would see them in stories like The Invasion, The Moonbase and Wheel In Space. There were even some Cybus-Style Cybermen lurking about. They may have been left over from the colony ship or the Mondasian Cybermen may have decided to re-explore the model.

These Cybermen that existed independently from their homeworld became focused on interstellar travel. Mondas, even in a depleted state, had built a handful of spaceships (they may have also used some spare parts from the colony ship to build more). These models were sent into the solar system to attack other worlds ahead of Mondas. At first, they attacked poorly defended planets that were populated by humans. They converted the population into Cybermen and then stripped the world of the bulk of its resources. Once the conquered planet was at a low enough energy level, Mondas could move in and safely absorb what was left. This became the established attack protocol as the Cybermen expanded into the universe.

These models that were not directly connected to Mondas became known as the Space-Faring Cybermen. As their numbers grew, they developed a main fleet that attacked larger planets with better defenses. But there were also subsidiary fleets that were invading easier targets. These might be minor colonies that were not even worth the attention of Mondas but still had resources that could benefit the Cyber-Race. There were also a handful of smaller ships that were used as long-range scouts. They went to the deeper reaches of space to find new worlds for the fleet to move in on.

And so, the Cybermen began to spread out into the Universe like a plague. Space-Faring models would invade first and do the bulk of the damage. Then Mondas would come in and clean up what was left.

This method worked very well for them for quite some time. But all of that changed as they eventually found their way to Earth.....



We've, now, laid down the foundations of the society for the largest breed of Cybermen in our universe . Technically, we only really discussed two episodes in this chapter. But we've created the circumstances that will breed a whole cluster of stories that will get examined in the next post. 

Missed Part One? Here's the link: 
https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of.html