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

The bbc 2 announcer told me that h2g2 would give me the answer... having been scared to death of Dr who as a child and never having watched it since, I'm itching to know...

A bigger budget.

Gold dust doesn't kill Borg... (unless you drop a big box of it on them - "Assimilate *this*!")

Cybermen don't have a tennis-related smiley...

The Borg, as you may know, are a cybernetic race. They're basically normal beings with machinery implanted in them (terribly clever machinery at that). The thing about the Borg, though, is that every single one of them is linked into a single group mind, so the entire race acts almost as one enormous entity. Borg drones don't have the capacity for independent thought or action. They have an aim to improve quality of life throughout the galaxy, but they believe the only way to do this is to incorporate all individuals into their collective, which they consider to be perfect (although they don't say no to the technology they pick up from species they assimilate either). Sometimes the Borg have been known to appoint a single drone to speak for the entire collective. This was first done when they assimilated Captain Picard of the Enterprise-D, in order to facilitate the assimilation of Earth. Later on, they used a specially-made drone called a Queen, and these keep popping up all over the place. However, although these spokesdrones refer to themselves using 'I', they're really referring to the entire Borg consciousness, and aren't particularly different.

Cybermen are also cybernetic beings. I'm not as clued up on Doctor Who as I am on the Borg, but I believe that Cybermen don't have a collective consciousness like the Borg do. They also can't walk properly, and on the whole are far less dangerous, even if the only sure way to kill them is with gold. There is no sure way to kill a Borg drone.

I think Kit Pedlar's original idea for the Cybermen was to have an instantaneous communication between them, which may not mean a group conscious, but allows every cyberman to know what the others know. However, I don't think it would be too difficult to find scenes where this idea is flatly contradicted. Oh, one idea that lasted a little longer is that Cybermen never use "I", but always talk about "we" refering to the entire race indicating, perhaps, that they have no concept of individuality. And the original design for the Cybermen wasn't so different from the Borg, except with a little more plastic and flashy lights.

Unfortunately they became a bunch of boss-eyed robots with the inability to hit the broad side of a bus and a tendency to collapse if somebody threw glitter at them.

"Unfortunately they became a bunch of boss-eyed robots with the inability to hit the broad side of a bus and a tendency to collapse if somebody threw glitter at them."

Ah, the lament of so many '80s bands still touring till this day...

...About 15 minutes an episode?

Interesting to note how the Cybermen in the rebooted series have gone further down the Cronenburgian body-horror route than before, and got more like the Borg.

I'm ignoring the flying and being able to move at super-speed...

<BB<

The Borg run our IT department. Cyber(wo)men run HR.