The Moment Doctor Who Rebooted Its Own Weird Canon — With Mixed Results
Which Cybermen are these again?
Like Batman, the various enemies of the Time Lord known as the Doctor, define the ethos of the franchise even more than the central character. Other than the TARDIS, the most universal image of Doctor Who is the iconic Daleks. And in second place, right behind the Daleks, is the Cybermen. The “upgraded” humanoids, who are essentially people strapped into robot suits, predated Star Trek’s very similar adversary, the Borg, by two decades. And so, in 2006, after Who successfully rebooted the Daleks the previous year, it was time to relaunch the Cybermen. But the way modern Who rebooted these iconic sci-fi baddies was decidedly different than the return of the Daleks in “Dalek” and “Bad Wolf.” During the weeks of May 13 and May 20 in 2006, Doctor Who dropped a strangely forgettable two-part story, which had massive implications for the rest of Season 2 and the eternity of the modern Who canon.
When Rose (Billie Tyler), Mickey (Noel Clarke), and the Doctor (David Tennant) land in a parallel universe, Who attacks a trope it had only played with a few times before: alternate dimensions. This is another Earth, and here, Rose Tyler’s father, Pete (Shaun Dingwall), didn’t perish, and her parents are wealthy. The big joke here is that although there’s not a parallel version of Rose in this dimension, though her folks do own a dog named “Rose,” which gives poor human Rose all sorts of feelings about who her parents might have been had she never been born. Like much of the first Russell T Davies Who era, this is what the modern version of the show does best: make the sci-fi conflicts grounded in the people we care about, which often includes their extended families.
Doctor Who’s biggest reboot in 2006 remains controversial.
To put a fine point on it, “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Age of Steel” constitute a story that navigates parallel universe tropes fairly well, with some great Who flourishes (“What am I doing over there?” but does a less-than-great job with rebooting the Cybermen.
In order to seemingly avoid some complex old-school canon about Cybermen coming from Earth’s hidden twin planet, Mondas, this two-parter asserts that parallel Cybermen, who use the exact same nomenclature as the classic versions, sprang into existence because of a mad scientist named John Lumic (Roger Lloyd-Pack). This means that these Cybermen are, in essence, entirely brand new for both this dimension and, in theory, for the new audience who are hypothetically getting into Doctor Who for the first time. This was similar to what Davies had done with rebooting the Daleks in Season 1 because in the new Who canon, the Daleks were supposedly defeated in the Time War, which happened off-screen. This two-parter philosophically does something similar insofar as it takes control of the new mythology by pushing aside canon from the past.
Generally speaking, this was a very successful approach in the first Davies era, and the pattern was followed in Season 3 when the Master was rebooted. Oddly enough, Davies did not take this newbie-friendly approach to classic Who villains in 2024 or 2025 at all, and instead drenched both of those newer Nctui Gatwa-led seasons in an overload of obscure lore. And yet, with the Cybermen in 2006’s Season 2, having these iconic baddies spring from basically nothing simply didn’t work as well. And the reason why is wrapped up in the parallel universe problem.
Because “The Rise of the Cybermen” asserts that these are not the Cybermen we’re used to, it automatically, perhaps, even subconsciously, lowers the stakes. If this isn’t the “real” universe, then the mortal fates of various people in this world don’t matter as much. Case in point: the Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri) of this universe is turned into a Cyberman, and we’re not really shedding any tears because we know this isn’t really Rose’s mom.
While that situation is a win for our Jackie, because she gets to be reunited with Pete later in the series, it demonstrates the issue with the parallel Cybermen. If we can selectively not worry so much about parallel versions of Jackie or Mickey (Ricky), then why should we invest so much fear into the brand-new, just-created Cybermen? Although Who brings this menace back by the end of Season 2 in “Army of Ghosts” and “Doomsday,” the Daleks are oddly required to raise the stakes.
The Cybermen in Season 2 of Doctor Who were simply not scary enough nor believable enough to be truly great. Tellingly, the Steven Moffat era brought back the original Mondasian Cybermen in the 11th and 12th Doctor eras, and those various appearances (notably “The Doctor Falls”) constitute some of the best Cybermen stories in all of Doctor Who. In 2006, Who was certainly in a new golden era, and Tennant’s performance as the 10th Doctor was making history with every episode. But, for as pivotal as these episodes were for later stories, the rise of these specific Cybermen has not aged well.
