B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (22 page)

The key plot point with the Silurians’ story is not that they existed at the time of the dinosaurs, it’s that as their civilisation thrived, the apes who were humanity’s ancestors were mere pests. The Sea Devil leader in
The Sea Devils
says “my people ruled the Earth when man was only an ape”.
Bloodtide
says the Silurians ruled “while humanity was still in its infancy”, and goes on to specify that the apes at the time were Australopith-ecus. The earliest evidence for that genus is around four million years ago - which ties in with the date for the earliest humans in
Image of the Fendahl
. Although
Doctor Who
continuity has established that humanity dates back millions of years more than scientists would accept, it doesn’t seem to stretch anything like as far as the Eocene, 55 to 38 million years ago.

We don’t know how long Silurian civilisation stood. One solution to the dating problem might be to say that it lasted for tens or even hundreds of millions of years, from before the dinosaurs (and surviving their extinction) through to the time of the apemen. But, all accounts have the reptile people as a technologically-advanced, innovative, stable and centrally-controlled civilisation. When they entered hibernation, they were merely “centuries” ahead of the twentieth century humans. This would seem to point to a civilisation lasting thousands of years rather than millions.

We have to conclude that the Silurians and apelike human ancestors were contemporaries, and that Silurian civilisation ended long after the time of the dinosaurs. There are more than sixty million years to fit the Silurians in, then, including the Eocene period that the Doctor cited in
The Sea Devils
. It seems most likely, though, that the Silurians flourished for a few millennia at some point in the last five to ten million years.

The Creation of the Cybermen

The origin of the Cybermen (in our universe, at least) has never been depicted on television, but the broad facts were established in
The Tenth Planet
, with additional information in
Attack of the Cybermen
.

DWM
has offered two distinct origins, Big Finish a third. (The creator of the Cybermen, Gerry Davies, pitched his own origin story for television in the eighties, and this was reprinted in Virgin’s
Cybermen
book.)

The three origin stories that were made might seem to contradict each other, but none of them contradict what we learn on TV. They can, with a little imaginative licence, all be reconciled with each other.

“The World Shapers” appears to diverge the furthest from the television account, roping in the planet Marinus and making the Cybermen the descendants of the Voord from
The Keys of Marinus,
but the story doesn’t contradict anything like as much as it seems. The Voord are human underneath their wetsuits, and they become Cybermen to survive global environmental collapse. It would mean Marinus is Earth’s twin planet - which is a stretch, but not an enormous one. (We know from
The Keys of Marinus
that it’s a planet where humans, wolves, chickens, grapes and pomegranates can all be found.) The issue of Marinus/Mondas leaving the solar system isn’t addressed, but neither is it ruled out.

“The Cybermen” strip in
DWM
takes fan speculation that links the Cybermen and Silurians, and is more consciously mythological in tone.

Spare Parts
has, perhaps, the most orthodox interpretation of what we’re told in
The Tenth Planet
- the civilisation on Mondas is roughly the equivalent of the mid-twentieth century, with a sickly population surviving in subterranean cities. Mondas travels into interstellar space, and as it does so, the population need to take existing medical technology to extremes to survive. Note that for a third time, an established
Doctor Who
race is part of the Cyberman recipe, as here the fifth Doctor’s physiology provides the template for the future Cybermen.

These stories can be placed in order. The
DWM Cybermen
strip comes first - it’s the only one that depicts Mondas leaving its original orbit. Not only that, it establishes that there’s a period of three thousand years when Mondas settled into a new orbit where the Cyber-civilisation has collapsed and an advanced, fragmented human civilisation dominates. This is an ideal place to fit
The Keys of Marinus
and “The World Shapers” - all it needs is for (some of) the humans on Mondas now to think of their planet as “Marinus”.

Again, this seems like a stretch - and, of course, it isn’t what any of the writers intended or planned. But there
are
elements of Marinus technology in
The Keys of Marinus
that look remarkably like remnants or precursors of Cyber-technology: the Conscience itself is based around the idea of negative emotions being eliminated to create an ordered society and is built with “micro circuits”; the Troughton era Cybermen had hypnotic and sleep-inducing technology much like that of the city of Morphoton; in episode three, Darrius’ experiments, like those of the Voord in “The World Shapers”, have increased the “tempo” of nature; there’s a group of soldiers frozen in ice; the Voord and Cybermen are the only two monsters the Doctor’s ever met who were human once, have handles on their heads and wear wetsuits.

So... Mondas settled into its new orbit and became known as Marinus. Within a thousand years, the Conscience of Marinus was built and soon came to control the population. For seven hundred years, the planet knew total peace. Then Yartek learned how to resist the Conscience’s influence - it’s hard not to picture the second Doctor breaking Cyber-hypnosis in
The Wheel in Space
and
The Invasion
. The Voord’s physical appearance might mean they’ve found some remnants of the legendary Cyber civilisation. They haven’t abandoned emotions in favour of logic and the good of society, though - ironically, it’s rather the opposite. If Yartek is part-Cyberman, it might explain why he apparently lives at least thirteen hundred years. Neither is it a paradox that Yartek manages to resist the Conscience - yes, the Conscience should have quelled his urge to break the conditioning if his intent was purely malicious, but it could have been an accident or motivated by... well, the fairly uncontroversial belief that having free will is a good thing. (The Doctor says as much at the end of
The Keys of Marinus
itself, and in many other stories.)

“The World Shapers” sees the Voord consciously evolving into Cybermen to survive sudden environmental collapse. We have to speculate to join the dots, but it’s not a wild thing to do. The surface of Mondas is, once again, uninhabitable for humans. The
DWM
“Cybermen” strip explicitly states it also leaves its new orbit. The Voord understand the problem and are ready for it - they now achieve their aim, and take control of the planet (presumably there are at least some other survivors), and build subterranean cities (or merely extend them - their base is already underground in “The World Shapers”). Perhaps the most highly-evolved Voord - the ones who had become the Cybermen at the end of “The World Shapers” - became the Committee from
Spare Parts
.

Spare Parts
itself is set later - how much later isn’t specified - when the people of Mondas are used to their sickly, subterranean life. Without the Worldshaper, while they know their destiny, the early Cybermen have had to learn the science of cybernetics gradually - until the fifth Doctor comes along, at any rate.

[
1
]
All-Consuming Fire, Millennial Rites, The Taking of Planet 5
.

[
2
]
Divided Loyalties.
These are the Gods of Ragnarok seen in
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

[
3
]
The Satan Pit

[
4
]
TW: The Twilight Streets
. “The Light” presumably bears some affiliation with the Disciples of the Light who imprisoned the Beast (
The Impossible Planet
), although
The Twilight Streets
references the Light-Dark conflict as only having run for “millennia”. Abaddon appears in
TW: End of Days
; Bilis in the same story almost seems to imply that Abaddon is the “son” of the Beast. The point is unclear, however, especially as “Abaddon” is also given as an alias of the Beast itself in
The Impossible Planet
.

The Cardiff Rift

The ninth Doctor, Rose and Jack’s discussion in
Boom Town
about the Cardiff Rift (a central feature of
Torchwood
) seems to indicate that it pre-dates events surrounding it in
The Unquiet Dead
- the Gelth “used” rather than “created” the Rift, and it was only “healed” afterwards. References to the “darkness” might mean that Abaddon is trapped in the void seen in
Army of Ghosts
and
Doomsday
, with the Rift merely providing access. Going just by what’s on screen, Abaddon’s presence might be what weakens space-time in the Cardiff area, facilitating the creation of the Rift in the first place.
The Twilight Streets
, though, specifies that Abaddon wasn’t imprisoned there until 1876.

[
5
]
Island of Death

[
6
]
The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories
: “The Entropy Composition”

[
7
]
The Forbidden Time

[
8
] This appears on the console screen in
Castrovalva.

[
9
]
Transit.

The Age of the Universe

The date of the creation of the universe is not clearly established on screen, although we are told it took place “billions of years” before
Terminus
. Modern scientific consensus is that the universe is about fifteen billion years old, and books that address the issue, like
Timewyrm: Apocalypse
and
Falls the Shadow,
concur with this date. In
Transit
, the seventh Doctor drunkenly celebrates the universe’s 13,500,020,012th birthday (meaning the Big Bang took place in 13,500,017,903 BC).
SJA: Secrets of the Stars
claims the universe is “13 billion” years old.
The Infinity Doctors
establishes that the Time Lords refer to the end of the universe as Event Two.

[
10
] The Doctor reads the book
The Origins of the Universe
in
Destiny of the Daleks
, and remarks that the author “got it wrong on the first line. Why didn’t he ask someone who saw it happen?”. The tenth Doctor also claims to have seen the creation of the universe in
Planet of the Dead
.

[
11
]
The Curse of Fenric

[
12
]
Terminus

[
13
]
Slipback
. This is a clear continuity clash with
Terminus
, and a discrepancy made all the more obvious as
Slipback
was broadcast within two years of
Terminus
and was written by its script editor, Eric Saward. If we wanted to reconcile the two accounts, we could speculate that the
Vipod Mor
explosion was the spark that ignited the fuel jettisoned in
Terminus
.

[
14
]
Four to Doomsday
. Monarch never achieves this goal.

[
15
] Dating
Timeless
(EDA #65) - This occurs at the universe’s start.

[
16
]
Sometime Never

[
17
] “Hunger from the Ends of Time”