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February 08, 2009
Cybermen or how to get ahead in business.
Rated as the second most feared adversary of Dr Who [the first being Daleks] the Cybermen also reach the top ten in the all time bad guy list when it comes to dodgy aliens.
Surprising considering they started out as men in shiny suits with practice golf balls and old Hoover pipes stuck to their arms and a legs with some sort of space accordion strapped cheerily to their chests. But then that was the sixties when television was black and white and far more terrifying as a result.
The plain fact was their plastic heads were incapable of expression. So they just had to appear round a corner, ruthlessly, to send most ten year olds scurrying round the back of the settee. There was no reasoning with these fellas.
Like all good baddies, when the BBC realised they had struck a chilling chord, they wheeled them out for a second time and the costume department spent a bit more money. The Hoover pipes and space accordions were still there but the practice golf balls had gone, replaced by sinister knobbly valve-type things.
Now, with all the special effect machinery available, the Cybermen have become, to me, less frightening. OK, I’m a bit older, but these now look like toys. When the Cybermen first appeared there was nothing that looked remotely like them – except, and here is the key, us.
Whether it’s plastic golf balls or injection-moulded exo-skeletons, their success was due to their lack of emotion. Cold hearted killers, that’s who we fear most. The Daleks were wonderful and intelligent and ruthless, but they didn’t look like us, they were frightening, but not terrifying. They couldn’t fit in a telephone box, they couldn’t go up stairs. Your bedroom was safe from Daleks – but not from the Cybermen.
They say the best businessmen are the ones without emotion.
Posted by john at February 8, 2009 01:30 PM