Doctor Who: EVERY Version Of The Cybermen Explained

Upon arriving in Victorian London, the Cybermen needed a quick and easy way to expand their workforce.

Ever-resourceful, their answer was to create animalistic foot soldiers (which, the Tenth Doctor speculated, used the brains of cats and dogs).

Dubbed Cybershades, these creatures had copper-coloured heads and hands (presumably due to the fact that such metals were more readily available in Victorian London), with the rest of their bodies covered in furry black robes. Rivets on their helmets also belied their industrial origins, while their angled handlebars evoked an animal’s ears.

Due to their primitive minds they were far less intelligent than regular Cybermen, and were unable to speak or follow more complicated commands.

However the Cybershades were much more agile than their masters, tending to move around on all-fours. As such, they were well-suited to gathering intel, with cameras in their eyes relaying images back to Cyber HQ.

The Cybershades were ultimately defeated by the Tenth Doctor, who repeated his earlier trick of forcing them to see what they'd become, driving them insane and causing them to explode.

With the Cybermen never having had any reason to convert animals again, the experiment has never been repeated.