Genesis of the Cybermen Although once referred to Bill Potts ' cyber - conversion as the " genesis of the Cybermen " , ( TV : " World Enough and Time " ) the Twelfth Doctor corrected ' s repeating of the statement by calling the Cybermen a product of parallel evolution , as they " always get started " where there was people , such as on Mondas , Telos , Earth , Planet 14 and Marinus . ( TV : " The Doctor Falls " ) These various groups of Cyberman were created for many different reasons . By most accounts , the Cyberman of Mondas were born out of desperation to survive in an unsustainable environment . ( TV : " The Tenth Planet " ) The Cybermen of Telos were created as an attempt to gain immortality , ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Cybermen " ) while the Cybermen of Earth in an alternate universe were created for at least partially commercial reasons — a drive to find human ity ' s next " upgrade " . ( TV : " Rise of the Cybermen " , " The Age of Steel " ) History . Creation on Telos . Some of the Cybermen originated on the planet Telos . The inhabitants of Telos sought to achieve immortality with cybernetics . They gradually replaced parts of their bodies with machinery until they reached the point where they replaced their brain s with computer s . These first Cybermen became aware of their lack of love and emotion and found a new goal : power . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Cybermen " , " Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen " , " The Revenge of the Cybermen " , " Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet " ) Something forced many of the Cybermen to leave Telos and take refuge on Mondas . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet " ) Some Cybermen remained in the cyber - tomb s of Telos . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen " ) Creation on Mondas . One account did not explain the earliest origins of the Cybermen , but showed Cybermen existed on Mondas alongside the Lizard King s , the Mondasian versions of Silurian s , as well as the Sea Devil s . These Cybermen died out until centuries later when Mondasian archaeologist s discovered the remnants of ancient Cyber - technology . Presumably , the Mondasians recreated the ancient Cybermen . ( COMIC : " The Cybermen " ) Another account showed that as Mondas travelled beyond the outermost planets of the sol ar system , conditions on the planet deteriorated . The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa arrived on Mondas prior to the rise of the Cybermen . They discovered the survivors living in an underground city roughly on a parallel with Britain in the 1950s , although with more advanced technology . They witnessed the Mondasians slowly slide towards cyber - conversion , as the Faction had . The Mondasian cyber - conversion program was conceived by the cybernetic gestalt intelligence controlling Mondas as a solution to the planet ' s increasingly desperate situation . These early Cybermen were , however , plagued with serious design flaws and the conversion method proved very unstable as the biological systems of most of its unfortunate victims would fail soon after they were turned , causing most subjects to perish . The conversion project ' s chief scientist , Doctorman Allan , managed to discover a solution when the Doctor was captured by Mondasian police . By using data extracted from a forcibly biological analysis of the Doctor , she discovered an extra brain lobe unique to Time Lord s , dedicated to mechanical and other bodily functions . She was able to replicate this trait into a new Cyberman prototype , greatly increasing the survival rate of the newly converted . The Doctor was horrified about his unwilling hand in the creation of the Cyber race , so much so that he tried to derail history by poisoning the Cyber - Planner before it could manage to convert the entire population , and afterwards he helped the Mondasians with starting a research program into how to undo the conversion process . However , after the Doctor and Nyssa ' s departure , it turned out his efforts were ultimately in vain as the Cybermen soon overpowered and converted the remaining Mondasians . ( AUDIO : " Spare Parts " ) The Cybermen evolved and changed on Mondas . The CyberFaction , a group dedicated to more radical cyber - conversion , moved to Planet 14 . The Mondans stayed on their home planet . ( PROSE : " Iceberg " ) Creation on Marinus . One account stated the planet Marinus was an earlier name for Mondas . According to this account , the Voord acquired Worldshaper technology to accelerate time and turn themselves into full cyborg s . The Cybermen later remembered this planet as Planet 14 . ( COMIC : " The World Shapers " ) Creation on a Mondasian colony ship . One group of the Mondasian Cybermen were first created on a newly built Mondasian colony ship . The ship nearly fell into a black hole and , as a result , time on the bottom of the ship moved slower than at the top , the former being where descendants of the original skeleton crew lived . With their part of the ship becoming old and uninhabitable , the colonists began transforming themselves into Cybermen with the participation of . In front of , he presented a fully Cyber - converted Bill Potts to the Twelfth Doctor and declared this ship to be " the genesis of the Cybermen " . These Mondasian Cybermen ( TV : " World Enough and Time " ) continued to evolve towards more robotic forms , and greater technology . Most of them were destroyed by the Doctor , however , as Nardole noted , they would eventually regroup and continue Operation Exodus . ( TV : " The Doctor Falls " ) Creation in other universes . Independently , John Lumic , the CEO of Cybus Industries , created the Cybermen of a parallel Earth . These Cybermen believed that all of humanity needed to be " upgraded " to cyber - form so that information would never be lost and that the humans ' physical and emotional weaknesses were abolished . Cyber - conversion usually involved removing the brain of the subject painfully and placing it within a suit of armour . ( TV : " Rise of the Cybermen " ) Once complete , the new Cybermen had a special implant that prevented them from feeling emotions . If the implants were disrupted , the Cybermen entered into a traumatic state caused by the pain of the conversion . This inevitably resulted in an agonising death from the emotional overload . ( TV : " The Age of Steel " ) Cybermen created by Missy . In the 2010 s , founded 3W , ( TV : " Dark Water " ) and began preserving bodies of the rich , ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) who believed their minds stayed conscious after death , in tanks filled with dark water which only showed the organic material , allowing Missy to convert them into Cybermen , supposedly exoskeletons to protect the bodies while uploading their minds to the Nethersphere , a Matrix data slice . There , she removed their emotions to download them back into their bodies and create a Cyber army of the dead . When Danny Pink died , the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald found 3W and Missy activated the Cybermen and released them from their tanks in St Paul ' s Cathedral . ( TV : " Dark Water " ) The Cybermen marched into the streets where they were greeted by curious on - lookers before UNIT arrived to confront them . The Cybermen flew off until one was over each area of major population density in the UK , then self - destructed , creating a rainstorm of Cyber - pollen that went into the ground and Cyber - converted all of the world ' s dead . The Doctor teamed with UNIT to try to stop them , despite the human race being outnumbered , while Clara was saved by Danny who was Cyber - converted but retained his emotions as he chose not to delete them and his emotional inhibitor was thus never activated . When Missy broke free , she had the Cybermen attack the UNIT presidential plane Boat One . The Doctor got sucked out of the plane in the attack , but managed to get into his TARDIS . Missy gave control of the Cyberman army to the Doctor , who then gave control to Danny . Danny , who retained control even with his inhibitor , ordered the Cybermen to fly into the rain clouds and self - destruct , burning up the clouds and stopping the conversion of humanity . A few minutes later , a surviving rogue Cyberman made out of the Brigadier shot at Missy after having saved his daughter Kate Stewart from the attack on Boat One and flies off . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) Behind the scenes . Continuity contradictions . Taken at face value , the origins of the Cybermen given in the " Doctor Who Magazine " comics feature " The Cybermen " conflicts with that given in " Spare Parts " and neither accords very well with " The World Shapers " , which had earlier appeared in " Doctor Who Magazine " . Lance Parkin has speculated that perhaps Cybermen have originated in different planets and times independently , just as they had in different universes , as illustrated by the parallel universe Cybermen having no connection with the Cybermen of the main universe . The television story " World Enough and Time " showed the creation of the Cybermen on a Mondasian colony ship , suggesting that the Cybermen did indeed have numerous beginnings . Alternatively , the Cybermen shown in " The World Shapers " may have preceded the ones in " The Cybermen " , though they do not match visually . ( The former resemble the sleeker , later Cybermen while the Cybermen of " The Cybermen " resemble the ones of " The Tenth Planet " . ) The explanation of the creation of Mondas by the Constructors of Destiny in " The Quantum Archangel " also contradicts that given in " The World Shapers " . In the 2017 story TV : " The Doctor Falls " , the Doctor acknowledges that there were several different origins of the Cybermen . " Genesis of the Cybermen " storyline . Gerry Davis , who had co - created the Cybermen with Kit Pedler , had written " Genesis of the Cybermen " , an outline for a Cybermen origin story which David Banks included in his " " .