User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-5.173.129.25-20130511233914

I think it's pretty obvious by now, both from the episode itself (e.g. dead Cybus-style Cybermen both with Cybus logo and without it) and from Neil Gaiman's comments that the intent is for the Matt Smith era Cybermen to represent a result of the alliance between the Cybus Cybermen and the Mondasian Cybermen. They share characteristics of both, like the general appearance of the Cybus version and the use of cybermats and other Mondasian technology. At this point, even if a given story from before series revival was meant to feature a future version of the Mondasian cybermen, from the in-universe perspective, we cannot determine them to be purely Mondasian/Telosian in origin unless they actually are shown to be one of the models shown on TV in the classic series.

To quote Gaiman:

"For me the absolute joy of bringing back the Cybermen was coming up with a weird rationalisation: in the Tom Baker universe the Cybermen pretty much died out. They were incredibly unsuccessful and clunky. And then you get the Cybus Cybermen. My theory is the Cybus Cybermen were sent to Victorian days and zapped off into time and space at the end of “The Next Doctor”. They met a bunch of the Mondasian/Telosian Cybermen, and there was some cross-breeding and interchange of technology, which is why you then get the ones that look like, but actually aren’t, the Cybus Cybermen."

The articles are already one big mess, with some Matt Smith era appearances lumped under Cybus, some under Mondas, and some considered separately.

Therefore, I propose that Cyberman (Mondas) and Cyberman (Pete's World) be merged, to cover all versions of the Cybermen. The history section could e.g. have an "Origin on Mondas" sub-section in the beginning, then an "Origin on a parallel Earth" section with information on how they ended up in the Doctor's universe in different time periods, and then the rest of the history of the Cybermen. This way, we would actually have a history of their activities in the Whoniverse without having to distinguish between the two varieties now that they are obviously mixed or at the very least of uncertain origin.