9. What If The Cybermen Are Becoming More Robotic To Reflect Humanity?
There's a sketch in Dead Ringers, in which Doctors One to Ten spend Christmas together. One Doctor's surprised that he's receiving a gift he receives next year; another of the Doctors chases one of them with some tin foil. "That's cruel," a Doctor remarks, "You know he's scared of tin foil because all of his monsters were made of it." It's very funny. The point I'm arriving at, slowly but surely, is that the production values of Doctor Who are slowly but surely improving. Compare the cinematography of Series 1 even, the Nestene Consciousness in 'Rose' with the shots of the Time War in 'The Day of the Doctor'. And the Cybermen have perhaps taken the biggest evolution of any Who monster. But what if, their upgrading, so to speak, reflects the upgrading of the human race, further and further away from humanity? They looked like men in silver suits in the '60s, but now they're fully-fledged cyborgs, immune to nearly everything, and capable of mass destruction. Yes, production values play a huge part in that, but it's a fantastic, fifty-year metaphor for the human need to become stronger, better, more technologically-savvy and less emotionally attached. No, it's probably not something that was planned from the start, but it's a wonderful idea.