h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I bet they are in the next series.

That's a little like saying you bet David Tennant's going to play the Doctor

Russell T Davies confirmed a couple of months back that the Cybermen will feature in two episodes. Good, eh?

I can't wait to see how they have redesigned the Cybermen for the new series. Spook reckons that they won't change the appearance of the Cybermen very much from their "Earthshock," "Attack of the Cybermen" and "Silver Nemesis" counterparts, but I think they will use the latest in costume design and electronic special effects to really bring the Cybermen into the 21st century! I wonder if they could get David Banks to play the Cyberleader again? I also wonder what their new voices will be like, i.e. will they be electronic and mechanical, like in the early days, or will they be deep and throaty like they were in the 1980s? Personally I prefer the electronic and mechanical, as it's less easy to put emotion into an electronically-altered voice, but we will have to wait and see.

And what of their weaknesses? In the past, the Cybermen had quite a few weaknesses - radiation, gravity, a high voltage electrical charge, the Cerebratron Mentor (a device that emitted huge amounts of emotion which was fatal to the Cybermen), grenades, bazookas, gold dust, gold-tipped arrows, gold coins and even their own weaponry! It will be interesting to see what weaknesses they have nowadays, and if they've managed to overcome any of their weaknesses of old.

2.
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I am looking forward to seeing the new Cybermen, and to the episode "School Reunion" where the Doctor and Rose meet up with Sarah Jane-Smith and K9.

Looks-wise I'm hoping for a streamlined version of the Tomb look.

Wow. I have missed so much

I doubt whether the Cybermen will be seen on Telos. I reckon it will be another Earth-bound adventure, or on a spacecraft near to the Earth. I wish Russell T. Davies would hurry up and introduce the viewers to a planet that is not Earth. Otherwise the new fans will be thinking the TARDIS only ever visits the Earth.

Although, to be fair, there was a brief moment in "Boom Town" where Rose was telling Mickey about going to the planet Womenwept.

SFX is running a redesign the cybermen compo, as it did for the Daleks.

It's a tricky one. Make 'em too roboty and you don't get across the fact that they're not robots, add too much organic and the great unwashed shouts "borg rip-offs!".

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Bah! I've been shouting "cyberman rip offs" at the Borg for donkey's years.

I don't think that there are many people in the UK that actually know what the Borg are - after all, Next Gen never scored more than about 3 million viewers on BBC Two, and First Contact didn't exactly challenge 'Titanic' at the box office...!

Paully

Haven't we all? Trouble is, the great unwashed tend to have short memories.

Missed your post, Paully.

Mmm, I suppose that's true. I keep forgetting that Next Gen isn't really as 'mainstream' to mundanes as it is to us.

Quite frankly, the Borg are just cheap and less well-created imitations of the Cybermen. Even their catchphrases are pretty similar - the Borg saying "We will adapt" and the Cybermen saying "We will survive." In terms of the intelligence and sophistication of their creativity and originality, the Cybermen will always come out on top.

Not to mention the 'Resistance is useless'/'resistance is futile' debate.

And then theres the Amnion in Stephen R Donaldson's Gap series and their "Invested with authority".

Hopefully the Cybermen in the new series of Doctor Who will be physically stronger and more powerful than the Daleks, as otherwise the Daleks will take over the Cybermen once again in popularity.

I liked the little Cyber-Mat things. Anyone else like them?

The Cybermats were quite weak and insignificant really, and they never really did anything, except for in "Revenge of the Cybermen" where they actually appeared to be threatening. I doubt they'll be back in the new series.

I've no idea at all whether they will or they won't, but surely there has to be some room in the story for vicious, poisonous, creepy-crawly metal rat-type things? Done properly, they could be really really effective. Shudder...

Paully