Doctor Who: 10 Worst NuWho Villains
6. The Cybershades (The Next Doctor)
Just like the Daleks, the Cybermen have had many different designs over the years, from the classic Mondasian look to the advanced metallic soldiers of Pete's World.
But also like the Daleks... not all of these redesigns have been successful. Case in point: the Cybershade variant, a major misfire seen for the first (and the last) time in the 2008 Christmas special, The Next Doctor.
These primitive hairy beasts look like monkeys wearing masks, a weak design that ultimately amounts to nothing more than a gimmick. Because the episode never really explains what the Cybershades are or what they can do, they end up feeling completely pointless, almost like the crew just wanted to make the weirdest Cyber design possible, without having to put too much thought into it.
Worse still, they do nothing important for the plot, and they don't expand the lore of the Cybermen in a meaningful way. In fact, because they're basically just mindless beasts, they're actually a regression from the more calculated Cybermen we're used to.
A Cyberman/animal combination is an interesting idea, but this just wasn't the way to do it. Cool bronze mask aside, the Cybershades were a complete Cyber-shambles.