This page covers the IDW Publishing comicbook hero Doctor Who also known as The Doctor , John Smith , Dr. W , Doctor John Smith , Dr. John Smith , The Last Time Lord , Doc , Ka Fariq Gatri , The Lonely God , The Wanderer . If this is not the page you were looking for check here.

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Doctor Who

First Appearance:

Television: An Unearthly Child, BBC1 (23rd November 1963)

Comics: The Klepton Parasites, TV Comic#674 (14th November 1964)

Marvel UK: The Iron Legion, Doctor Who Weekly#1 (17th October 1979)

Marvel US: The Iron Legion, Marvel Premiere#57 (December 1980)

First Interaction with Marvel Universe Character: The Neutron Knights, Doctor Who Monthly#60 (January 1982)

History of the Time Lords

When the universe was young, one of the first planets to sustain life was Gallifrey, a planet close to the centre of the universe itself, orbiting twin stars. The Gallifreyan’s were extremely long lives people, bordering on immortality itself, they were naturally sensitive to time, the fourth dimension and extremely mentally advanced with psychic and telepathic powers unequaled.

For millennia the Gallifreyan’s were lead by the Pythia, a cult who ruled with a iron fist of occultism and sorcery, gradually, over many millennia an opposing cult spread, one which embraced science instead of magick. The opposing faction gained many members and slowly took control of the planet and led the Gallifreyan’s into a peaceful golden age where they mastered many technological marvels, the Gallifreyan’s spread throughout the known universe, mastering first space travel and then establishing the great Gallifreyan Empire.

In the fifth golden time of the Gallifreyan age, three Gallifreyan’s prodigy came to the attention of the science council. Omega, Rassilon and one known only as ‘The Other’. These three Gallifreyan’s mastered many of the realms of science that had eluded the Gallifreyan’s for so long, most notably the science of Time Travel.

With the technology of Time Travel now at their fingertips, the Gallifreyan empire spread throughout the universe, there was no secrets left that they could not unlock, they even dared to capture and use Black Holes for their own devices, one even said that they ‘looked upon the face of god’. Unfortunately, it was during this great and bountiful time that the Gallifreyan empire was brought to its knees.

The last member of the old cult of Pythia struck her last and deadliest blow against the Gallifreyan lords, she used her vast psychic powers to curse her own people with sterility before committing suicide, no more children would be born on Gallifrey, and The Gallifreyan people were doomed to extinction.

Rassilon turned his efforts to conquering this new danger, his answer to the threat toward his people was to create vast looms of primordial soup, capable of ‘decanting’ new Gallifreyan’s from the genetic material contained within. The first seven ‘loom born’ were named the ‘Special Executive’, but there was a problem, as more and more of the ‘loom born’ were created, their telepathic powers lessened, eventually becoming nonexistent. They also had lesser life spans, living now mere millennia but now could ‘regenerate’ their forms to live more millennia time and time again.

To combat the now growing ‘over crowding’ problem the Gallifreyan’s had themselves created, Rassilon created the Gallifreyan Houses, and decreed that each House could only have forty five ‘cousins’ at any one time.

Believing he had solved the problem of ‘sterility’ in his people, Rassilon turned his attention back to Time Travel, they had come to agree that a very special power source was needed to make Time Travel possible, that of a Black Hole. Turning their attention to this problem, the three prodigies created a new device capable of accelerating a star’s development and capturing the eventual Black Hole created by this action. They named their creation ‘The Hand of Omega’.

Unfortunately, several in the Gallifreyan council believed this to be sacrilege. “To destroy an entire solar system just for their own benefit should not be allowed.” They sabotaged the device and caused Omega’s ship to fall into the Black Hole he had just created, Omega was believed dead, but his technology was mastered, and the Gallifreyan’s became the first race to master time travel, and they created the new Lords of Time.

Back on Gallifrey, Rassilon was a hero; he had brought the Gallifreyan’s into a new prosperous age. A decade after the death of Pythia he ordered a massacre of her remaining followers, killing all who now stood in the way of ‘scientific progress’. He felt no pity towards her acolytes, now knowing that his wife had miscarried, and his child was dead now because of the curse.

‘The Other’ could not stand for the new view on life, the Gallifreyan’s were turning into a militaristic people and were conquering new galaxies every day to ease the spread of their ever growing population. He carried his sole surviving relative and his granddaughter Susan to a far off galaxy before throwing himself into the Loom’s, now mixing his own genetic material with the primordial soup that was within.

Millennia later, The Other was proven right. Rassilon fought war after war with any alien race that could, at any point in time, threaten the great Gallifreyan empire. Species such as The Charon and The Great Vampires were simply erased from time, their galaxies harvested for their sun’s to power the new ‘Time Ships’. Fearing Rassilon would turn on his own people one day, the ‘Loom Born’, now sick of being treated like second class citizens started a civil war, Loom Born against Womb Born.

The Civil War lasted for Millennia, and in the end the ‘Lomb Born’ exterminated all but a few of the Womb Born, though some still remain, hidden within the new Gallifreyan society even today, millennia after millennia, living secret lives, moving from place to place so that no one would know they weren’t aging instead of ‘regenerating’, immortals amongst their own people.

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Time War

The range and scope of the Last and Great Time War is hard to explain as its nature, and the attacks cannot be linearly understood, from the time lords perspective they were attacked first, but to ‘The Orders’ perspective, they were attacked first and retaliated.

From the time lord’s view, they were attacked first in the past, as part of their history. An Agent of ‘The Order’ goes back in time and attacks the Time Lords when they are first testing their experiments to turn the star Qqaba into a Black Hole using the ‘Hand of Omega’.

‘The Order’ caused the ‘death’ of Omega and helped create the Time Lords as they stand today, from the Time Lords perspective they did nothing to cause the attack, so they theorised that either it was the first attack, or that is was in response to something they had yet to do.

Millennia later at a diplomatic meeting, a representative of ‘The Order’ is killed by the Sontarians, who then blamed the Time Lords for the attack providing ‘The Order’ with reason to attack the Time Lords in the past.

It is unclear as to the events that happen during the time war, it is said several times that at one point the Dalek’s became involved, and the war engulfed entire galaxies, destroying all in its wake, leaving only the ‘Higher Beings’ unaffected.

The Time Lords and the Dalek’s were the two major fronts in the time war, and in the end both lost.

Towards the end of the time war the Dalek’s changed history in a final blow to the time lords, erasing Gallifrey from time itself.

From what is known, there were only a handful of survivors from the Last Great Time War. The Doctor, and some Daleks who were ‘outside of time’ during the last strike.

During the TV episodes, The Doctor has said many times that he was the one who caused the destruction of the Dalek fleet, and that he was on the Front Line of the war, quite what this means for a Temporal war is unclear.

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The Doctor

During one of the many time wars, a new child was born to Gallifrey, his name unpronounceable to anyone who isn’t true Gallifreyan. He possessed a strange marking on his stomach, and such received nicknames suck as ‘Snail’ or ‘Wormhole’, it was later discovered this ‘abnormality’ was due to ‘The Others’ genetic material that had mixed with the primordial soup in the Lomb’s.

During his time at the academy, Snail rose through the academy’s elite, showing time and time again an intelligence, and thirst for knowledge that was unmatched since the time of Rassilon and Omega. He was quickly given a new nickname, Theta Sigma, Thete for short. Rising through the academy, he soon came to the attention of the Deca, the brightest of the Gallifreyan people and, who like Thete, yearned for a life outside Gallifrey’s now stagnant unchanging world.

While he was a member of the Deca, Thete now chose his own name, rather than letting his peers choose for him as was the Gallifreyan custom. He finally became known as The Doctor and erased his own name from history, now being the only one left who knew his name.

During his last year at the academy it came to his attention that Quences, the head of his House, had ambitions of High Office for The Doctor. Fearing that future, he deliberately sabotaged his own future, scraping by with only a passing mark in his exams at the academy. Furious with The Doctor, Quences disowned him and had the family Loom decant a new cousin to replace him.

Angered by this, The Doctor informed the Head of the Time Lords of this illegal move and finally decided to leave Gallifrey for good. Stealing a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) from the repair bays he left his home world for good, only later finding out that the rest of his House had been excommunicated for their illegal activity in creating a new cousin, their house stricken from all Time Lord records and his entire House buried alive.

During his travels, The Doctor found out that he had a stowaway on his TARDIS, The Hand of Omega. It had been in storage for millennia, not being used for fear that they would receive another attack, or the use of it itself would actually be the cause of the first attack.

The Hand of Omega recognised The Doctor as one of its own creators, the genetic material of The Doctor being primarily made up of material from ‘The Other’, and overrode all safety protocols in the TARDIS, allowing time travel into Gallifrey’s past and future.

The Doctor, taking his first trip into Gallifrey’s past came across a young girl living on the streets. Susan, The Other’s grand daughter had not made it off planet after all, as soon as they met they shared a connection. Susan immediately took to calling The Doctor Grandfather, and somehow The Doctor knew it was right, even though it defied all logic that he had been taught.

The Doctor and Susan then left Gallifrey for the last time, using the TARDIS to travel the entire universe, seeing things no one had ever seen before. The Doctor took Susan to see the very birth of the universe, and its eventual death.

The time was glorious, Susan and The Doctor saw everything they could in their time together, until finally Susan wanted to try and live life as a ‘normal’ teenager for once. They decided to stop on a relatively new planet, Earth. Where Susan enrolled in a school near to where the TARDIS had landed, Coal Hill in England, 1963 A.D.

While Susan was in school, The Doctor took this time to hide the Hand of Omega on earth somewhere, unknown to this day. But Susan’s strange alien nature had drawn the attention of two of her teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who followed her home one night to the TARDIS and followed her inside.

Realising his predicament, The Doctor ‘kidnapped; the two teachers and took them with him on a quick ‘tour’ of the galaxy, eventually earning their trust The Doctor returned them to their own time.

Returning to earth, The Doctor soon acquired new companions, and saw more and more of the universe, frequently encountering aliens bent on universal destruction, he opposed as many as he could until his now millennia old body could take no more and regenerated.

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Technology of the Time Lords

TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space)

possibly the most recognisable of Time Lord technology is the TARDIS, the ‘vehicle’ for travelling in space and time. The Doctor’s TARDIS permanently looks like a police box, but other fully functioning TARDIS’s have chameleon circuits that adapt to any era they are in, camouflaging the TARDIS to look like a standard object for that time zone.

Most notable instances of this have been The Master’s TARDIS which has camouflaged itself as a Cupboard, a stone pillar and a Wardrobe on several occasions.

The inside of the TARDIS can be huge, some can even be city sized, and though this is limited be the amount of power that the TARDIS can generate. All TARDIS’s draw their power from a captured Black Hole, which can feed them unlimited power for an Infinite period of time.

One of the most interesting characteristics of a TARDIS is the fact that they are not built, rather grown and are sentient creatures in their own right.

TARDIS’s are quite capable of movement, and even interstellar flight, though this does put an enormous strain on the TARDIS as its normal movement is to simple fade from one area of Space and Time and enter the time vortex, reappearing in another Space and Time.

When The Doctor’s companions or enemies first encounter the TARDIS’s strange ‘Tesseract’ ability of warping space-time to fit the outside over the inside, they are understandably quite baffled. This feature of the TARDIS’s is possibly its most famous feature and can be explained quite easily using mathematics and Four Dimensional Engineering.

One of the most famous examples of theoretical four dimensional engineering is a ‘Hypercube’, or a ‘4D cube’.

this can be easily explained using a dimension that exists away from normal three dimensional space, and is only accessible to a fraction of three dimensional space. This is the theory behind the TARDIS, that the inside of the TARDIS is on another dimension, or realm, and the TARDIS itself only acts as a door to that dimension.

Another amazing fact of the TARDIS is that the Regenerate with The Doctor, to a new ‘face’ or style with each new Doctor. This has been a running theme through the TV show and the Comic’s as each new Doctor appears, the TARDIS has a new, but familiar feel to it to match the new Doctor’s personality and appearance.

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Second incarnation

During this incarnation of The Doctor his personality had changed as well as his body, now preferring to act more the fool while manipulating time and people from the shadows. He continued to fight the evils of the galaxy and change time for the better, until he came up against an enemy he could not fight by himself.

Finally having to return home, he went to the Time Lords and asked for their help.

Putting him on trial for breaking their own rules of Non-interference, The Doctor faced execution. Finally winning the argument after years of battle, the Time Lords agreed to assist him, but in return he would be exiled to a single planet, and a single time zone. The planet was earth so he was happy, and the era he was exiled to was when the earth would be under regular alien threat.

As a final punishment, the Time Lords forced another regeneration upon him.

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The Doctor in Mythology

During his travels The Doctor has managed to immerse himself in the myths and legends of the planets he interacts with, this is mainly because of his Time Travelling and his ability to ‘Regenerate’ his appearance.

Frequently he will appear in Myths and Legends from species he has met, even though some of the things that have happened in the myths have yet to happen to The Doctor, if they even happen to him at all.

A few of these note worthy appearances are documented well in the TV series and Comic’s.

To the Dalek race he is known as the ‘Oncoming storm’, or ‘Destroyer of World’s’.

To the Nestine Consciousness and ‘The Beast’ he is known as the ‘Killer of his own kind’

But possibly most famously in both the comics and other media, he is known to Human’s as Merlin.

One of The Doctor’s future incarnation’s will become Merlin, during that time The Doctor will take on the name ‘Muldwych’ and has met several of his past incarnations while wearing this face. This Doctor will go on to give Captain Britain his power’s in the issue Daredevils #1.

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Third Incarnation

Landing on earth shortly after Human’s had landed on the mood, The Doctor agreed to help UNIT, a United Nations task force specifically created to tackle the alien menaces that were now turning their attention towards earth.

He constantly worked to repair his TARDIS and beat his exile, finally his opportunity came when Omega returned and declared war on the Time Lords.

Unable to defeat Omega themselves, the Time Lords brought all three regenerations of The Doctor to one time frame to battle Omega, succeeding in defeating him, the time Lords granted the Doctor his freedom, and restored his ability to travel in Time and Space.

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Technology of the Time Lords

Sonic Screwdriver

Another recognisable piece of Time Lord technology is the famous Sonic Screwdriver, like the TARDIS this piece of equipment has gone through change after change, above are four incarnation’s of this gadget.

The Sonic Screwdriver has been a piece of Doctor Who history since the second series of the show, where the doctor used it as a sort of multipurpose tool to unlock doors and other locks, as well as a variety of other uses.

The Sonic Screwdriver has many uses, such as opening locks, repairing objects, detecting radio and other frequency transmissions, creating fire and amplifying sound waves and most notably of all, being used as a normal screwdriver.

The origins of the Sonic Screwdriver have never been properly addressed in either the TV series or any other media, though during the TV series ‘The Empty Child’ another character, Captain Jack Harkness uses a ‘Sonic Disrupter’ that appears to have the same uses as the Sonic Screwdriver, and more than likely share a common origin. The Sonic Disrupter was said to have come from ‘The Weapon Factories of Villengard’, which The Doctor later claims to have destroyed. It is possible that The Doctor picked up his Sonic Screwdriver there during this adventure, though this has never been shown on TV or any other media.

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Fourth Incarnation

After many years, The Doctor died again, and he suffered his third Regeneration.

This new incarnation of The Doctor was possessed with a thirst for knowledge that surpasses even his first incarnation, likely a reaction to his third incarnation’s enforced stay on earth in a specific time period. Finally able to return home to see Gallifrey for the first time (to this incarnation, he had never seen Gallifrey before) he was accused of murdering the President of the High Council upon landing for the first time, not exactly the welcome home he had been hoping for.

Remembering a law from the old days, The Doctor managed to prevent his execution by running for the post himself, the law preventing protecting him as it was put in place to prevent tyrants from murdering their rivals.

Doing his best to uncover the true killer while running for President, The Doctor finally uncovered the killer to be the other Presidential candidate, who was killed while trying to eliminate The Doctor.

With the other candidates dead, the only surviving candidate was elected President of the High Council of Gallifrey, The Doctor. Almost amused by this turn of events, The Doctor did the only thing he knew how to do when faced with something of this nature.

He ran.

Even though he had fled Gallifrey and the post of President of the High Council, the title remained his, as the Gallifreyan people had no laws in place to cover this.

Fleeing from known space, The Doctor and his companions arrived in another dimension known to the Gallifreyan’s as E-Space. During this time The Doctor battled The Master several times, the last time leaving him mortally wounded.

At the end of his last battle, The Doctor fell to the floor in front of a white clad person.

“It’s the end... but this moment has been prepared for.”

With that said, The Doctor and the White Clad male merged, regenerating himself into The Doctor’s fifth incarnation.

It has been said that the White Clad figure was actually one of The Doctor’s future incarnation’s who had come back in time in a predetermined paradox to save his own life, though this is unclear as it has yet to happen in the future, though it has happened in the past.

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The End of the Time War

The Time War came to an explosive end during the eighth Doctor’s regeneration. It has yet to be actually shown on screen but during the episode ‘Rose’ (The first episode of the ninth regeneration), The Doctor explains to Rose that the Nestine’s planet was destroyed in the war.

The time war was mentioned as a running theme throughout the Doctor Who series, from the ninth Doctor to up to date in the tenth Doctor. During the Episode ‘The End of the World’, The Doctor encounters someone from the year 5,000,002,006 who is amazed that the there is still a Time Lord alive. At the end of the episode, The Doctor finally confesses to Rose that his home planet, Gallifrey was destroyed in the Last Great Time War. Leaving him, the only survivor.

During the episode ‘Dalek’, The Doctor finally reveals that the Time Lords adversaries during the last Time War were the Daleks, and that he believed that he had finally killed ever last Dalek in existence. One of the possible starts for this Time War was shown in the episode ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ when the fourth Doctor went back in time to destroy the Daleks before they actually evolved. This is the possible action that started the Time War, and may have been the direct cause of the Dalek’s wiping the Time Lords from history.

Much of the Time War has never been talked about in the TV show or the comics, several planets and species have been mentioned, and The Doctor, the last survivor of the Time Lords, is the only one now who remembers any of these species.

The Doctor was definitely on the front lines of the Time War in any case, it was said in the episode ‘Doomsday’ that he fought on the front lines and as present at the fall of Arcadia. The last battles of the Time War however are yet to be seen as The Doctor has yet to say what actually caused the fall of Gallifrey and the Dalek Home world, but it is certain that not only did the Doctor survive, but several Dalek's did as well.

Most promisingly of all to The Doctor, in the episode Gridlock, the Face of Boe tells The Doctor that ‘he is not alone’. The Master also survived taking on Human form as Professor Yana, he discovered who he was, took the Doctor's TARDIS but was shot and regenerated.

Many people have come up with thoughts on who else has survived the Time War, so that The Doctor is not alone in his adventures. Several possibilities include; The Daleks who we know survived, and The Doctor’s granddaughter.

Any of these are possible, and have yet to be proven or disproved in the current TV show or Comic.

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Fifth Regeneration

The fifth Doctor seemed to be more of a culmination of the previous Doctor’s rather than a fresh and new personality. During this Doctor’s incarnation we also were introduced to many of The Doctor’s most famous enemies, such as The Master, The Cybermen, Omega, The Guardians, The Sea Devils, The Silurians, and The Monk.

This Doctors dress sense was rather different to the bohemian style of the last Doctor, while the previous regeneration preferred a long coat and scarf with unruly hair, this doctor wore a modified cricket uniform complete with cricket ball in the pocket which saved his life on more than one occasion.

This Doctor was also one of the last to use the Sonic Screwdriver, as it was destroyed in one of the episodes after saving his life. In reality the tool was taken out of the show because the writers felt that it was being used as a ‘get out of jail free card’ for The Doctor, and felt that they needed to bring the character back to the basics of using his intelligence to get out of situations.

One notable facet of this Doctor’s character, was the fact that he often shyed away from violence and would try and work things out peacefully if there was a chance. More often than not he would actually consult with his companions, rather than acting as a commander as the previous Doctors had done.

Towards the end of this Doctor’s reign, both him and one of his companions, Peri were poisoned by spectrox, a poison from Adrozani Minor. Realizing that he only had enough antidote on board the TARDIS for one of them, The Doctor sacrificed himself, regenerating into the sixth Doctor so that Peri could use the antidote on herself.

It was perhaps this act of selflessness that actually defined the fourth regeneration as a Doctor, he was a kinder and more caring Doctor than any of the previous regeneration’s, and his conscience and character made him more human, and as such more liked by the fan’s.

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Enemies

Dalek’s

Before the Daleks can be mentioned, Davros must be examined. Davros is the only reason the Daleks exist. Davros is crippled humanoid creature who used his keen intellect to create a new race of creatures capable of destroying societies across the universe.

“Davros is the brilliant Kaled scientist on the war-ravaged planet of Skaro. The Daleks (originally intended as travel machines for the benefit of mutant Kaleds) became the scourge of the universe under Davros’ dastardly direction” (Remembrance of the Daleks).

The Kaleds were hell-bent on conquering the worlds around them; however their blob like bodies were neither menacing nor efficient for this matter. Davros created the bodies that the Daleks live within. These bodies are technologically superior to anything seen within the Doctor Who universe. They can fly, numerous guns are fitted to the new bodies and they can communicate with each other vocally.

The Daleks do not all serve Davros however. There was a rebellion; many Daleks believed that Davros’ objectives were not the way to conquering the universe. The Daleks that are colored Gold and the ones colored white are the ones who serve Davros full-time. Due to Davros’ incompetence and pure dedication to enslaving the human race and conquering of Earth, the Doctor destroyed not only the sun of the Dalek’s home world, but also their planet of Skaro. Davros wanted Earth to start his new breed of Dalek using human components and to make Earth into a new Skaro. However, the intellect and cunning of the Doctor proved to be more powerful than a fleet of Dalek ships (Remembrance of the Daleks).

The ones who do not follow Davros are the grey Daleks. Most of the time these Daleks follow an Emperor. A Dalek without a leader is a Dalek with no purpose, they cannot make decisions on their own, most of the time, and they will self destruct. This is seen in Remembrance of the Daleks story and in the Resurrection of the Daleks story arcs.

Cybermen

The second most recurring villain in the Doctor Who series is the Cybermen, a humanoid who betters itself by replacing its flesh components with robotic components. Story editor Gerry Davis & Doctor Who science advisor Kit Pedler came up with the idea of the Cybermen in 1966. The thought of living beings gradually losing their humanity as they replace more and more of their body parts were the basis for the character. What separates the Cybermen from the Daleks is that the Cybermen think in a collective, with a controller or a master Cybermen doing all of the thinking and planning for them.

There have bee 7 different versions of the Cybermen, each time they appear they are more mobile, sleeker and more deadly. The Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel (2006) reintroduce the world to the Cybermen when the Doctor visits a parallel world where the Cybermen are being created.

“The Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel concern the efforts of John Lumick - a dying cybernetics genius in a parallel world - to prolong his life by downloading or replicating his consciousness in a mechanical body. This is described in terms of a brain welded to an exoskeleton. However, Lumick sees the Cybermen project as, not only, his way to circumvent the wheelchair we see him in and his immanent death, but also, as the future of the human species - what he refers to as his greatest step into cyberspace. In order to secure this future Lumick unleashes the Cybermen on human society where they go about suggesting that upgrading is compulsory and that humans are inferior and will be reborn as Cybermen.

The Cybermen are once again defeated by the Doctor, however the Cybermen manage to get back to the universe the Doctor is from and the threat may not be over. The Cybermen from that universe appear in an episode of Torchwood, where a Cyberwoman (not completed) tried to turn the Torchwood crew into more Cybermen, but ultimately fails.

The main goal of the Cybermen is not only the conquering of planets, but also to assimilate the inhabitants in order to make their armies stronger. They use human brains to power their soldiers under the command of the controller or emperor. The one flaw that the Cybermen do have is their weakness to gold dust. However, getting enough gold dust to clog the internal breathing of a Cybermen is quite a task and normally not the way they are defeated. One of the bragging rights that Cybermen claim to have is that they have removed all emotion from themselves. This is the key element that makes a human become a Cybermen. Although the Cybermen do show smugness, pride and anger quite often they are in fact emotionless for the most part. They do have some morality left within them, especially in the ones who were once human, so a person could talk themselves out of being killed, however that person would then become a Cybermen, there is no other choice, and these are their goals.

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