Oh yeah. Cybermen rant
I'd better post this while I'm still thinking about it.
I admit the new series of Doctor Who has a bit of a problem re-introducing elements from the old. You've got to re-establish what these things are and what they represent so they're meaningful to a new audience. And that's the problem with Cybermen. It's pretty easy to see them as just unstoppable (although some times less unstoppable than others) metal monsters. But they were once much like us. Unlike the Daleks, however, they aren't driven by a cold malice. Unlike the Borg (to whom some have noted they bear a passing thematic resemblance), they aren't driven to consume and grow. They're driven by a sheer, unstoppable, desperate need to survive.
In the canonical version, the Cybermen come from Earth's twin planet of Mondas—an anti-Earth on the other side of the Sun. Long before humans had evolved on Earth, Mondas had a flourishing civilisation. Then, catastrophe: the moon is captured in Earth's orbit, destabilizing the equilibrium, and Mondas is flung from its orbit. As their planet heads further and further from the Sun, the Mondasians become Cybermen in a desperate gamble to survive.
I guess the idea that we could be sympathetic came in the 90s, after the original series was cancelled. A lot of that likely has to do with the discovery of The Tomb of the Cybermen in Hong Kong.
Last year when they were first talking about this second season, it emerged fairly early that the Cybermen were coming back. An early rumour I'd heard had it that, just as they had done with Dalek, the production team was going to adapt the Doctor Who audio play, Spare Parts for the new episode.
And this was great news. Spare Parts is easily one of the best audio plays in the series. It's beautiful and moving. It tells the real story of the origin of the Cybermen—something that hadn't been done before. And it's utterly, utterly heartbreaking.
It became clear, though, that Rise of the Cybermen wasn't going to be that. Touches are there, like the idea that the Cybermen suppressed their emotions because they wouldn't be able to bear what they'd become if they didn't. They did give Marc Platt, the writer on Spare Parts, a "special thanks to" credit. Really, though, Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel are, together, another unstoppable monster story. True, they're a nice homage to The Invasion, and my fanboy heart loves the International Electrodynamics ref. Mostly, I'm disappointed because it could have been something much more.
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