CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES: THE STATE OF FLUX - PART THREE: THE REST OF 'EM!

And so we move into an unexpected third part to this essay. I really did think I could get it done in just two chapters but there was so much more stuff involving Daleks than I'd originally realized!   

Just in case you missed the earlier segments, here are links to them. It would help if you read them first: 

Part One:

https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/02/chronologies-and-timelines-state-of.html

Part Two:  

https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/02/chronologies-and-timelines-state-of_19.html 

And now, Part Three...

As we move into our final chapter of STATE OF FLUX, we are going to mainly deal with one particular species. Like the Daleks, I am certain these are time travellers rather than creatures from the Present Day. While I'm quite sure the Sontarans and Weeping Angels were contemporary, these infamous cyborgs hail from the future. 

Once we have determined which era they are from, I want to explore a theory as to why they and the Daleks have come back in time the way they have. It's a bit of a complicated idea, but it could make sense of things. 

Before we finally wrap up this exploration of the Flux, there is still one more creature that we have seen before on the show that we need to put in a timeline of some sort. We don't see much of him, but he's there! 

STILL IN THE NURSERY 

In case you haven't guessed, we're going to be trying to figure out when exactly the Cybermen that we see in Flux come from. As was clearly established right in Halloween Apocalypse, the events of that particular cosmic disaster take place in 2021. But we do not see any Cybermen from that particular period. I believe the Cybermen that do show up in the story come from the distant future. 

Like the Daleks, I'm basing my opinion mainly on aesthetics. If we were seeing Contemporary Cybermen in Once, Upon Time and The Vanquishers, they would not appear the way they did. More than likely, they would resemble the model we saw in The Invasion. Or, quite possibly, the ones from The Moonbase. Those are the types of Cybermen that were around during that particular period (I'm ruling out Mondasian Cybermen as they do seem to get completely decimated when Mondas burns out during The Tenth Planet in 1986). There are a few other versions that we see here and there during the 20th and 21st Century (Neomorphs in Attack of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis, Cybus Cybermen in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and Nightmare-Style Cybermen in Dark Water/Death in Heaven), but they are not what I would call "locals". They are time travellers or intruders from another reality or a specially-designed version by Missy. So we'd be less likely to see those particular kinds of Cybermen during the Flux as they only pop up incidentally in that era. Invasion and Moonbase Cybermen would be in greater proliferation. So those should be the ones being featured.**

But we see neither of these two models in Flux. Instead, it's the warrior-class Cybermen from Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children. This type would have fought during what I labelled the Second Great Cyber War that took place sometime around the 31st Century (for more details on this era, read here: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2020/06/chronologies-and-timelines-appendixes.html). These Cybermen were capable of time travel. The Lone Cybermen does, after all, go into the past to recover the Cyberium. So it is possible for them to be able to make such a journey to the time of the Flux. 

How there is another army of this particular model might be a bit more difficult to explain. A troop carrier of them is discovered during Ascension but appears to get wiped out during Children when their ship is blown up. My guess would be that there were still other Cybermen of this nature out in space in ships that had been abandoned during battle. One of these groups of hibernators was, somehow, awakened. They probably caused some trouble in their own time zone but, eventually, went into the past. Where they then pop up for two episodes of Flux. 

Like the Gunmetal Grey Daleks that we also should have seen, I'm guessing the Contemporary Cybermen models were, more-or-less, destroyed fairly early on as the Flux spread across the Universe. Only the temporally-displaced Cybermen really remain. 

** To better understand the different models of Cybermen, check out this link: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/03/special-glossary-models-of-cybermen.html

BUT WHY ARE THEY THERE, ROB? 

Okay, so we've worked out where this particular batch of Cybermen comes from. We've also done the same for the Daleks in the previous entry. When discussing the Daleks, I claim they were time travelling to accomplish some sort of secret mission and just happen to get caught up in the events of the Flux. 

Should we say the same sort of thing just happened to be going on with this army of Cybermen? Were they, too, on some sort of unrelated expedition into the past and got swept up in events? Admittedly, it does seem like a bit too much of a coincidence. 

It might make more sense if we just assumed that these Daleks and Cybermen from the future actually came back in time to investigate the Flux. It's entirely possible that the two armies were trying to save their own timelines because the catastrophe was powerful enough to re-write the future. That, indeed, the Universe was going to get totally destroyed by the Flux and the Daleks and Cybermen were trying to prevent this from happening before they became an aborted timeline. 

I'm likening the whole thing to that experience the Doctor has with the Ood at the beginning of The End of Time. Where they actually explain to him that "events of the past are affecting the present" (or words to that effect). The Oods' psychic ability enabled them to see a divergence in the timeline that was about to happen that would erase them from existence and enlisted the Doctor's help to stop it from happening. 

While Daleks and Cybermen don't have psychic abilities (it is kinda cool that Sontarans have developed a special psychic division, though) they are both proficient at time travel. That proficiency caused them to create some sort of technology that allowed them to view the causal nexus and see that what was happening in 2021 would change the future and wipe them out. 

As usual, the two races applied brute force to solve the problem. Sure that a gigantic army could fix anything, they sent a huge force back to 2021 to take care of things. Once there, they saw that even their great numbers were useless against such a disaster. But they could not escape back to the future. That timeline was now gone and wouldn't return unless someone could stop the Flux. 

All that's left for these time-travelling Daleks and Cybermen is to consolidate their losses. They try to occupy what little of time and space is left. Eventually, they get lured into a trap by the Sontarans. The events of The Vanquishers happen here.   

Clearly, there are still some Daleks and Cybermen around after the Sontarans spring their trap. Either some escaped when they realized they'd been betrayed or there are some Daleks and Cybermen in the future that still exists because the Flux didn't completely destroy the Universe. Whatever the case, we have already seen the post-Flux Daleks harassing the Doctor. No doubt, Cybermen will come along too.   

JUST ONE LAST THING.... 

Okay then, the Daleks, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and Cybermen all seem to be taken care of. We're done, right?    

Not quite. 

I almost don't think about that nice little Ood we saw in Survivors of the Flux and The Vanquishers because he isn't actually a baddie. But I did create a timeline for the Ood a while back (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2021/02/chronologies-and-timelines-odd-history.html) so I should give these two episodes a place in their history. 

No doubt, Tecteun has the ability to pluck the Ood from anywhere in time and space. But, once more, we're going to let aesthetics have a role to play in things. The Ood does have a translation device so we're going to say he was taken from some time during the Halpern Family's occupation of the Ood Sphere (some time between the 40th and 42nd Century). I'm guessing Tecteun just time scooped one of them out of the warehouse and everyone chalked up the sudden disappearance of livestock to a glitch in the inventory program! 

Clearly, snatching the Ood took place before the events of Planet of the Ood. Yes, there were Oods that still had translation devices after they were liberated, but I doubt they would still be all that subservient. And Tecteun would have wanted an obedient slave. Although, we could argue that the Doctor gets the Ood to help her as much as it did because it is one that has been freed. But I'm more inclined to think that the Ood just saw the sheer magnitude of what its master was commanding it to do and broke its conditioning. It just couldn't do what was being asked of it. 

We could really nitpick and try to decide whether or not this Ood hails from before Impossible Planet/Satan Pit or after but I don't think we really need to be all that precise. I'm fine with just saying it comes from somewhere within those two centuries when the Halpern Family ruled the planet. 

There we go, we've now taken care of everything that happened during The Flux (and a little bit before and after if we're counting some of the Dalek stuff!). Everything has been neatly arranged into the various timelines that I've conjured up over the years. 

No doubt, I'll be adding an Appendix soon to my CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES essay about Homo-Reptilia. In the meantime, I'll write about some other stuff. Easter is still a long enough way off!