This will sound like a weird one since they only just got a makeover in last year's Nightmare In Silver, but the Cybermen are in need of some serious adjustments. Aesthetically theyre fine but their abilities really need to be taken down a notch if theyre going to be a credible villain in the long term. For the Cybermen to function well as Doctor Who villains, they have to be beatable. Hard to destroy, certainly, but ultimately killable. The parallel world Cybermen in Series 2 got the balance of this just about right. They were immune to bullets as youd expect and finally ditched the weakness to gold but it was possible to take them out with explosives or energy weapons. The new Mondasian Cybermen are practically invincible as they are able to almost instantly develop a software patch to counter every form of attack they are hit by. Rendering them all but indestructible to the point where blowing up an entire planet is the only way to destroy them. While the impossible odds scenario of Nightmare In Silver made for a good story as a one-off, its unworkable in the long term since a story against a practically unbeatable enemy can only be interesting so many times. It works for the Daleks because of both their iconic status and them having weaknesses but not constantly overcoming them. The new Cybermen are cripplingly overpowered and dont have the potential to carry on as long-term villains. For the Mondasian Cybermen to last as effective and interesting villains, they have to be brought right down to a much weaker level. An alteration that would be entirely possible to write into future scripts as the Cybermen seen in Nightmare In Silver were a more advanced generation from thousands of years into the future.
JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
