Cybermen – The Ultimate Guide

As staggering as it may seem now, there genuinely was a time when the chances of seeing any existing ‘old’ episodes of Doctor Who seemed almost even more remote than the likelihood of seeing any of the missing ones. If you were lucky you might very occasionally unexpectedly catch sight of a brief clip in an unrelated documentary or an even more unrelated local news report, but other than that, you had to rely on still images and your own imagination. Even those still images were not exactly easy to come by outside of the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, and could generally only be found in whatever Doctor Who-related books were in your local or even your nearest next to local library, which the same fans would invariably take out on loan again and again and again. One such relentlessly borrowed volume was The Adventures Of K9 And Other Mechanical Creatures, an amusingly circumspectly titled non-fiction chronicle of the exploits of The Doctor’s faithful silicon chip-driven canine associate, accompanied by photocopiable plans for cutting out and making your own miniature paper K9 and profiles of numerous other Doctor Who-related mechanical creatures – most of whom would pedant-invitingly fail to meet the popular definition of ‘robots’ – accompanied by striking black and white images of them going about their mechanical business. One of these, taking up an entire page, was a still of one of the original cloth-faced Cybermen from 1966’s The Tenth Planet. Fuzzy and slightly out of focus, it looked like those haunted and shuddering descriptions of the long distant black and white chills of the Quatermass serials always sounded. It leapt out from the printed page with such impact that you could almost hear an abrasive electronic sting accompanying it.

Later, of course, it did become possible to watch The Tenth Planet as often as you had taken out The Adventures Of K9 And Other Mechanical Creatures from the library – well, apart from the fourth episode – and although it tends to command attention primarily on account of featuring the first ever regeneration, it has to be said that the rest of it more than matched up to the inadvertent promise of that indistinct image. Partly on account of the nightmarishly convincing realisation of a besieged remote research station surrounded and cut off by literal Antarctic conditions, partly the equally believable near-future setting and the notions of familiar if not quite everyday technology gone too far, partly the sharp and agitated dialogue led by William Hartnell’s celebrated “Love, pride, hate, fear – have you no emotions sir?”, but mostly the Cybermen themselves with their distressingly surgical appearance, flat and buzzing yet still clearly non-robotic voices and dispassionate mathematically-governed whataboutery, with their refusal to engage with Polly’s emotive pleas holding disconcerting resonance with the manner in which ‘debate’ is all too often conducted in public in the present. Over and above all of this, however, are the suitably harsh and eerily distant sound effects and music that complement those voices, in particular one ominous juddering march of manipulated brass instruments that would recur throughout their early appearances. Like the Cybermen themselves, the music, the effects and even the voices would go on to change in tandem with technology, but in a sense they have never strayed very far from that template set by their first ever appearance. Well, maybe in Revenge Of The Cybermen, but that’s another story in and of itself.

What’s more, it’s a story you can now read in Cybermen – The Ultimate Guide, a new book from the makers of Doctor Who Magazine which includes a chapter by me about the history of Cybermen sounds, voices and music from The Tenth Planet up to the present, including one soundtrack that was adjudged to be too abrasive for viewers, another that was not considered abrasive enough, and the various feats of sonic ingenuity devised to fit their dialogue seamlessly into the on set action. There’s also a look at how these sounds corresponded with what else was going on elsewhere in music and entertainment at the time, and how and why the Cybermen had more in common with Depeche Mode, The IPCRESS File and the Clangers than you might expect. Elsewhere in this massive volume you can also find profiles of Cybermen creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davies, an account of the controversy over a widely complained-about scene in The Tomb Of The Cybermen, thoughts on the possible reasons for their low profile throughout the seventies, a complete guide to all of their on-screen appearances – including what happened in those lost early episodes – and off, taking in comic strips, action figures, novels, audio plays, exhibitions, stage shows and of course Wogan, and tons more besides. There’s even that same familiar photo from The Tenth Planet, albeit slightly clearer this time.

You can get Cybermen – The Ultimate Guide directly from Doctor Who Magazine‘s website here, from Amazon here and from all good bookshops. YOU WILL BUY IT FIRST. AND YOU WILL BUY IT NEXT.