User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20170702051931/@comment-24894325-20170702224715

Not disputing or agreeing with the suggestion above (need time to think), I want to point out a terminological subtlety. The Doctor explicitly uses the term parallel evolution. This is not an invented term, it exists in scientific practice. Here's a proof:. And it means specifically that Cybermen evolving in different places are (at least originally) different species. How do we normally treat such things in everyday language? Well, I give you "crabs", or rather the process of crabification, officially known as. While we call them all "crabs" 'cos that's what we can see, under the hood they are different species and different families of species that are not that closely related to each other. Instead, they evolved independently in the same direction.

Thus, my understanding of the Doctor's words is that Cybermen are not a species. Instead, it is an evolutionary form that is "inevitable" when there are "people". At least for me, the analogy to crabs works very well because in both cases I very often cannot tell which particular crab or which particular Cyberman I see.

Again, this has little effect on how the Cybermen articles should be structured. I completely agree with OttselSpy25 that the theoretical basis of our current structure has more or less been shattered by the Doctor after being gradually eroded for years. In particular, all the "according to one account" prefaces are now unnecessary since we have explicit confirmation of them all in one sentence. They do not contradict each other anymore: they are parallel evolution.

All I'm saying is that the end terminology should not be one species "Cybermen" evolving in many places, but multiple Cyberman-like species evolving independently and then, possibly, forming hybrids.