Doctor Who Series 12: Ten Huge Questions After The Haunting Of Villa Diodati
3. Who Sent The Cyberium Back In Time and Why?
So we now have some answers to Captain Jack’s cryptic message
about the Cybermen. The object the Alliance sent back in time was the Cyberium,
a device of extraordinary knowledge that would enable the restoration of the
Cybermen if their race was ever to face extinction. The Lone Cyberman, the last
of his kind, and a half-finished one at that, wants it back to rebuild the army
from scratch.
How he managed to travel in time isn’t explained, nor is it clear who the alliance is or whether or not Jack is even a member of it. The answer may lie in the series seven episode Nightmare in Silver. The Neil Gaiman episode is set centuries after an alliance had wiped out the Cybermen, taking out an entire galaxy in the process.
Who belongs to this alliance is unknown. Were they exclusively human, or were they a multi-species agency similar to the Alliance in The Pandorica Opens? They have time travelling capabilities, that much we do know, and maybe that’s how the lone Cyberman is able to go back in time to find it.
Could the Master be involved, having reunited with his TARDIS? Or what about the other Doctor from Fugitive of the Judoon? The former seems the most likely at this stage, offering the opportunity to bookend the series with a finale that connects to Spyfall. There is something fishy about all of this, it seems odd to hide it back in time, for Shelley of all people to conveniently find it.
If it was indestructible, why not lock it away in a secure and guarded location? The Master of deception could be at it again, using the shape changing Kasaavin to manipulate the Doctor. Can we even be sure that was the real Captain Jack?