page_title: The Age of Steel
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: The Age of Steel / Plot
caption_attribution_description: Cyber controller Doctor Who Experience
context_page_description: "The Age of Steel" is the sixth episode of the second series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 20 May 2006 and is the second part of a two-part story. The first part, "Rise of the Cybermen", was broadcast on 13 May.
  The episode is set in London in a parallel universe. In the episode, the businessman John Lumic has overthrown Great Britain's government and taken over London. A human resistance movement seeks to stop Lumic's plan to convert humanity into Cybermen by destroying Lumic's transmitter controlling London's population.
  The episode was the first Doctor Who story to feature the Cybermen since the show's 2005 revival.
context_section_description: The Cybermen have the Tenth Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and the Preachers surrounded. The Doctor uses the recharging power cell from the TARDIS to overload the Cybermen. The group escapes with Pete, but Jackie is trapped inside. As they flee, Pete explains to the Preachers that he is the Preachers' secret source of information on John Lumic. Pete had mistakenly thought he was communicating with law enforcement. From his hovering zeppelin, Lumic activates the EarPod devices and use them to control the people of London and bring them in for conversion at the factory in Battersea Power Station.
  When they reach the factory, the group discovers Lumic's zeppelin moored nearby and head towards it. Ricky is deleted by the Cybermen while trying to scale a fence to meet Mickey. Mickey and Jake decide to board the zeppelin to destroy the EarPod transmitter on board, Pete and Rose try to find Jackie, and the Doctor and Mrs. Moore try to find their way to Lumic. Pete and Rose are captured by the Cybermen and taken to Lumic when a now-converted Jackie catches sight of them. Mrs. Moore is deleted by a Cyberman, but the Doctor discovers that each unit contains an emotional inhibitor. He deduces that if he disables the signal from the inhibitors, the realisation of what they have become will kill the Cybermen. The Doctor is captured by a Cyberman and taken to Lumic.
  In Lumic's office, the Doctor discovers the Cybermen have converted Lumic into the Cyber Controller. Mickey and Jake successfully disable the transmitter, causing the humans to flee the factory. The Doctor subtly tells Mickey over a surveillance camera to find the inhibitor code in the Lumic family's database. He finds it and sends it to Rose's phone. The Doctor plugs the phone into the computer systems, causing the inhibitor signal to drop and sending the army of Cybermen into despair. The Cybermen explode, setting the factory on fire, and the group escapes to the zeppelin. The Cyber Controller attempts to follow, but after Pete destroys part of the ladder using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, he falls into the factory just as it explodes.
  The Doctor plugs in the recharged power cell and revives the TARDIS. Rose reveals to Pete that she is his daughter from the parallel universe. Overwhelmed, Pete walks away. Mickey, feeling that Rose no longer needs him, decides to stay in the parallel universe to help care for Ricky's elderly grandmother (whose counterpart in Mickey's universe died years earlier) and to help the Preachers stop the remaining Cybermen.
caption: The Cyber Controller, at the Doctor Who Experience.
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