I don't own Doctor Who. Most of the things in this story are taken from different sources of the origin of the Cybermen from Mondas and from Pete's World, and blended together.
Survival on Mondas was always precarious. Ever since the planet had been blasted out of its home solar system, the inhabitants of the planet had been forced to develop new ways of dealing with the sudden changes. The Mondasian people had long since been advanced, more so than their cousins on Earth, but even they had needed time to become acquainted with the need to construct underground cities, learn how to tap geothermal energy from the planet's core to provide power to take away the risk of using too much nuclear energy. There was no where else for them to go.
The surface was virtually uninhabitable, most of the indigenous flora and fauna had become extinct. The Mondasian people's general feeling after the disaster was "We will survive." And the Mondasians lived by it ever since. It would be the defining edge behind any motion of research conducted by the people of the planet over the aeons. They would live by that creed for the rest of their existence, every decision they would make would be angled against that question, but eventually they would discover for themselves just how far their people were willing to go in order to survive.
Life on the drifting planet was always tricky, but over the centuries the population noticed they were getting weak. Their lives spans were growing shorter and shorter, and if it continued then the Mondasians would die out completely. That went against their credo, so they looked for ways to live. Genetic engineering was researched, and in a few years they discovered how to introduce new genes into people without invasive surgery. Once the first breakthroughs were made, the Mondasian scientists looked into utilising genetics to save their people. It took off some of the edge of their weakening bodies and the shortness of their lifespans, but not all scientific effort was being concentrated in just one field. The Mondasians had started studying cybernetics and bionics around the same time as genetic research was performed, and they soon discovered the benefits very quickly. Like most sciences it wasn't expected to become such an important field of study, never mind one where it would be seen as the ticket to their people's survival, but on Mondas its benefits soon saw it's scope grow, and like most things it was purely accidental.
Unfortunately, at the same time they'd also forget the basic rules of morality and of the ethics of what they were doing, all because they were determined to survive against the odds. It didn't start out that way. At first basic bionic technology was used to build exoskeletons for the Dome engineers. The cities of Mondas, although underground, were covered in some regions with reinforced domes to keep the harsh environment at bay. These Domes were designed to absorb cosmic energy and trickle it down into the city below, and were meant to be kept in excellent condition at all times, and understandably it was labour intensive work, and not all were fit to do the job. Sometimes there were careless accidents, but everything that happened or could happen would affect the way the Mondasian people lived.
The exoskeleton was designed to house a man and boost his strength without him needing to expend any effort. But the exoskeleton was one of the first instances of using cyber technology, though the designers who'd come up with it had probably never imagined what their idea would blossom into. The first bionic limbs and artificial organs replacing the old flesh and blood and bone had appeared, hearts that were stronger than the originals, lungs which could process oxygen more efficiently, limbs that were stronger and more durable than weaker hands and legs with bones that could shatter due to a number of causes. Very quickly bionic limbs were used by almost everyone, like a trend of clothing except this was a trend that could never be taken away. The fields of cybernetics, bionics and genetic engineering were around long before the knowledge they were dying, it was only that threat which made Mondas' scientists really drive the fields forwards.
Genetics may have had potential, but too many scientists were really interested in cybernetics, and genetic research became a thing of the past. Soon two camps were created as the years went by as the leaps and bounds in cybernetic research showed the Mondasians how things could go. One camp, headed by a scientist known as Doctorman Allan, believed limbs and organs replaced by cybernetic body parts with the brain modified safely to better handle the stress of the transformation was dominate for many years. It was basically a more drastic echo of how things had been on Mondas for so long, limbs and body parts simply being replaced quickly. But Allans' research into the brain was slow because most of her resources were being spent laboring over making the cybernetic implants more sophisticated than the crude technology she'd had to work with previosuly. But that was the work of the second camp. The strange thing was it's origins weren't steeped in the general survival of Mondas' struggling population at all, they were trying to develop a more advanced form of internet where they could patch or link their brains into it to process and download information much more faster and easier. The hope was to pass information and knowledge over quickly so the people could spend their time doing things for the benefit of their race. It took time, and there were a few accidents along the way with the victims becoming brain dead due to the overload of information.
Doctorman Lumic's introduction into the group could not have come at a better time; Mondasian society usually banned research where and when too many lives were being lost due to unforeseen incidents or accidents. Lumic changed all that by simply making his experiments and using the results to improve his theories and then trying again before finally succeeding. Although at first, you wouldn't think him to have the key to the survival of the Mondasian race. He had originally been instrumental in the creation of devices that could download information into the brain, and he offered the products throughout the planet. His later work was more radical. He'd found a way of numbing the brain so it could accept the information flow, and he modified the flow so it wouldn't flood the brain all at once. Developing an internet like technology, Lumic's work wouldn't be believed to have anything to do with the cybernetic implant research being undertaken, but if you looked beneath the surface then you'd see how similar it was. Lumic had originally hoped to download the knowledge of everyone into a computer system, but that changed.
Lumic's work attracted the attention of the government and of Doctorman Allan, who felt Lumic's work might help her own research, and she persuaded the government to persuade Lumic to come. It didn't take much persuasion. He had good reason to join. Doctorman Lumic had originally joined Allan's group and learnt all about the integration of cybernetic biotechnology, and he quickly set out to help them succeed by patching his research into theirs, and successes became apparent very quickly as the two cyberneticists started working together on the project. But the reasons why Lumic was so excited were only too apparent when you met him. Originally Lumic had joined because he was dying, his body literally wasting away because of a disease. Naturally in a society where survival of the species was paramount and crippled or diseased citizens were either given the chance to end their suffering, or just killed by a lethal injection to safeguard precious resources.
The Mondasians called it a humane and merciful death. Doctorman Lumic was one of the fortunate ones to be granted access to precious resources to stay alive because of his contributions to Mondas. He was still dying, and he came to believe the research into cybernetics could save him, but it quickly became apparent to Lumic that Doctorman Allan's research was flawed. Doctorman Allan and her research team were simply following a belief that had permeated Mondas for centuries, that by gradually but rapidly replacing living parts with limbs and components of metal and plastic, the subject would virtually become immortal and invulnerable. There was nothing wrong with the principle, it was the means that bothered Lumic. It was just simply splicing and cutting up the body and replacing the organic mess with motors and implants, nothing more.
He felt they had their research wrong, that the brain should be what was saved because the conversion did not actually cure the flesh, it just preserved it with electrical motors, metal and plastic composites and nothing else. To Lumic's horror the type of conversion Allan and other scientists like her were proposing would not rid him of his weakening and disease riddled body, he would still be living with bits of it with cybernetic body parts sustaining him. No effort was made to find a way to preserve the flesh besides cybernetic conversion and he quickly set out to prove it. There was no way he could tell the population of Mondas that the cyber research was pointed in the wrong direction without some form of evidence. Using his clearance Lumic carried out research on patients suffering from locked in syndrome, and he quickly came to learn that in most cases the patient was aware of everything happening around him and what was being said around them.
It was nothing really knew, but it provided Lumic with the foundation of his thesis. With the results from neurologists and with his earlier research into downloading information into the brain without it causing long term harm and trauma, and with the basics of cybernetic conversion, Lumic started making noise. He began by experimenting on living subjects that were too far gone; the governments' policy of cybernetic research meant that only critically sick or injured patients were to be used was a godsend because most of them would have families trying hard to pretend they weren't related anyway, so Lumic's research was easy to conduct in secret at first until he was ready to finally show Mondas what he'd been doing. The first experiments were virtual failures, and naturally enough because the idea was so new and so much needed to be done to make it easier. The scientists who Lumic had enticed to help him were growing nervous, believing the experimentation they were carrying out was both dangerous and unethical.
Lumic knew about their unease despite not saying anything to their faces, he just felt their hypocritical and self righteous attitudes funny because they'd been conducting similar experiments on others for longer than he had, and they were having second thoughts because a few people had died for the greater good of Mondas. But when Lumic came back with an idea that came from his old research into downloading information into the brain. He believed that by suspending the pain response and by accelerating the conversion, it would be possible to transplant the brain into a fully mobile life support unit. It worked and Lumic developed the procedure with his fellow scientists. Ethics and cybernetic research didn't always live side by side on Mondas, and sometimes the rules had to be relaxed or even forgotten for the greater good to be achieved, but even some of the scientists who'd worked with Lumic were uneasy by the lines of research they were following now. It wasn't until the first successes that they began to see Lumic's point they need only save the brain and place it into a mobile life support unit to better ensure survival. Word of Lumic's research soon reached the upper echelons, and many were disgusted by Lumic's work because it was so radical, but when they compared his findings with his now rival, Doctorman Allan, they realised his work may offer the best chance for success. Many people still disagreed, believing it to be obscene, more obscene than the work Allan was carrying out, there they believed the conversion was acceptable because they would still have a bit of their original selves underneath the plastic skin and metal armor. The disagreements went on between the two camps for years and years. The stress was apparent whenever someone looked at Lumic, and saw how the stress was adding to his woes. His research was flourishing, and the cybernetic bodies he was creating resembled robots more than living humanoid beings, but that was to be expected. Allan's work, however, just resembled a humanoid robot with fleshy silver plastic draped over them, and a heavy chest plate placed over where the heart and the lungs used to reside. But then something happened, something which would end the rivalry. It wasn't until two important members of the scientific community conveniently fell ill, seriously ill beyond the means normal Mondasian medical care could keep them alive, that both Allan and Lumic were given the assignment to save them.
Both scientists were geniuses, their work was in a different direction from the survival research led by people like Allan and Lumic. In the past Mondas's population had relied on genetics and bodily transplanting to keep alive, but for the long term the survival of the species was in the balance with the random movement through space. Work had commenced to build a propulsion system to reverse Mondas's course and return to their home system. The work itself was difficult enough as it was; above the underground cities was a frozen atmosphere and because they'd lived underground for so many centuries, too many who saw the surface went insane with fear. This had made Lumic secretly prepare a mechanism to dampen the emotional response in the brain, but the government had made it clear that for the project to work a reliable and quick conversion process for the workers, and if successful for the majority of the population. The two scientists were essential because their knowledge would ensure the propulsion system would work, and they would need their help in the future. Lumic and Allan were given one scientist each, and they underwent the conversion process, and when it was over the effects were quickly seen. Allan's conversion process took too much time because of the delicacy of the operation, and the condition of the propulsion specialist under her care didn't help matters either. Years previously Lumic had postulated nanotechnology could offer a better means of converting the body without cutting it up and splicing it back together with mechanical parts, but the present resources of Mondas meant it would be years before nanites could convert people, so Allan and her team of surgeons worked for hours to save the specialist. Allan and her team were professional surgical cyberneticists, but even they knew better than to make things worse. There was so much damage to the body of Allans' specialist they couldn't really do much better to make much difference. Once they came to that realisation they decided to take the opposite approach and took out what did work. The only body parts they could save where the head, the lungs and heart, his right hand and his left foot. That was it. They quickly created a cyber suit capable of carrying his body better than his flesh and blood body. Allan was triumphant though exhausted. Her triumph disappeared very quickly when she learnt of what Lumic had done. Using automated saws, Lumic and his team had cut out the brain from its host body in under a minute and placed it within a cyber suit of their design, an exoskeleton with a cradle where the brain would suspended in a mix of protein fluids and chemicals to preserve it. Although the work was carried out differently, the end result was the same. The first Cybermen had been fully created, unfortunately the specialist Allan had been operating on almost went insane when he saw for himself what had been done to him after insisting he see it after realising something was wrong. It wasn't until Lumic had used his emotional inhibitor that Allan realised what Lumic was doing, and she protested, but he made a speech that the humanoid mind simply could not cope with the sight of full body prosthesis. The ethical dilemma went on, but in that time the two Cybermen worked on the propulsion system. It was during one of the tests that Mondas found itself on the edge of a nebula charged with a lethal blend of microwaves and radioactive isotopes that could reach even underground and damage organic tissue. Mondas caught some of it, and too many lives were lost. The resultant fear of being burnt on a molecular level by a nebula pushed aside the fear of Lumic's cyber conversion process, and many rushed to become converted when it became clear the Cybermen were fine.
It wasn't until more and more Cybermen were present that the unconverted realised what they had created. The Cybermen lacked emotions, making them dependent on logic and reason. Their logic and the computers built into their cybernetic bodies, programmed by the desperate Mondasians who'd programmed them to simply survive, had logically reached the conclusion the survival of the Mondasian race on the whole outweighed the emotional fear of those who didn't wish to be converted, and they had already foreseen the possibility of resistance though they couldn't understand it. For centuries the Mondasians had relied on a sophisticated ventilation system to pump fresh air around in place of the original atmosphere. It didn't take much work for the Cybermen to infiltrate the system and use a sleeping agent to knock the Mondasian population out and make them lethargic enough for the Cybermen to take them to the conversion chambers. Aside from one or two acts, the Cybermen takeover of Mondas was non violent. Lumic and Allan were the last to be converted. For one it was out of choice, the other was held as a kind of hostage. Allan didn't want to be converted, not after seeing for herself what she and Lumic and the others had created. But there was no way she could escape her fate, though she tried. It was futile and soon she and Lumic were converted. In Lumic's case it was the culmination of everything he had wanted since learning he was stricken with disease, though even Allan could tell he was more than frightened by the prospect of his body being sawn and his brain taken out and shoved into a metal body.
She tried to escape, but Lumic had her stopped. When both of them had been converted themselves and their emotional responses were removed, the two became the Cybercontrollers. The Mondasian people were now aimless. They had achieved immortality, albeit gruesomely, and now they had the survival they had wanted in their fleshy forms. They even had a means of reproduction; one of their earliest and simplest plans to ensure Mondasian civilisation survived was to create a race bank where DNA was stored, and could be used to grow a new generation from vats, and knowing nothing how to care for infants since the information was deemed irrelevant, they would simply accelerate the growth factor of the newborns until they were old enough to be mentally programmed to become Cybermen later on.
In the meantime, they had other work to commence. With their emotional inhibitors and cybernetic bodies and augmented strength, the Cybermen were able to complete the propulsion system and travel away from the nebula. By the time they'd cleared it the entire population were Cybermen, and they set about rebuilding their civilisation to fit their new lives.
All of Mondas's culture - art, literature, music, treasures of their history perfectly and carefully preserved through the centuries to remind the Mondasians of who they were and where they had come from... All destroyed by the Cybermen who had no reason to keep them and saw them as illogical. But...deep inside, many of them must have felt something below the range of their new emotional inhibitors.
In their place were cold structures designed for efficiency and for purpose. Under the newly converted Allan and Lumic, the Cybermen rebuilt the Mondasian civilisation, and because they no longer had issues with the outside of their cities on the surface the Cybermen were able to begin experiments with basic spaceflight. The drive to survive told the Cybermen they could not survive indefinitely on simply cloning because of fears that the gene pool would not be able to sustain itself. Their only hope was to convert others to ensure the Mondasian Cyber race survived.
With their new doctrine the Cybermen began looking into space for other races to convert. Survival had taken a whole new meaning for them, and while theoretically their cloning program using old Mondasian DNA to grow new brain matter for their exoskeletons could ensure their race survived, neither the Allan or Lumic Cybercontroller wanted to rely on them too much. By cutting out their emotions, the Cybermen had driven their need to survive to the next logical level - they would seek out other races, and they would give them perfection and equality. They would become like the Cybermen. They had added the need for power to their need to survive. And they would stop at nothing to get it. They started beaming radio signals out into space, using old Mondasian television broadcasts spliced into the messages as they moved Mondas slowly through space, hoping they would attract somebody to arrive. At first they started small with their transmissions, and then they began to send larger broadcasts before slowing down.
The Cybermen began sending up space capsules as part of their experiments into space travel, and because they no longer cared about diverting their time to worrying about resources meant for living people, they continued sending one space capsule after another into orbit before their patience was rewarded. A ship belonging to the Dominators scouting for new worlds to conquer and colonise landed on Mondas, and were overpowered. There were six Dominators, and they were taken for experimentation. The Cybermen came across their first hurdle when they simply tried to remove the brain of one Dominator, only to discover their brains were different. Although the Cybermen were unimaginative due to their emotional inhibitors, Lumic and Allan were not, and they had foreseen the problem so they'd studied nanotechnology and done research into synapses, and with this knowledge they managed to adapt the Cybersuits for Dominator brains. They would not have been able to do this with Doctorman Allan's cyber conversion technique, which was a more delicate process, and required the genetic coding of the Mondasians to work.
But Lumic's technique was more simpler, and only needed the slightest adjustments to work. Once the remaining Dominators were converted, the Cybermen used their knowledge to advance their space faring technology. But it still was not enough. After detecting an inhabited world, the Cybermen moved Mondas closer, and they began the long game. The civilisation was seen as perfect by the Cybermen for conversion. They were an Earth type culture at a late 20-21st century level.
They took their time and studied it, taking over the minds of the heads of government, the media, and the industrialists whilst kidnapping members of society and taking them back to Mondas for study as Cyber conversion factories were constructed. Their mobile communication network was hacked, and subliminal messaging was encoded into their brains as their foods were subjected to a mixture of chemicals designed to drive the people to despair, and a nanotechnology virus was planted in water supplies and in the atmosphere to implant the neural systems into the brains to lower the resistance factor. The Cybermen had finally achieved their goal with nanotechnology and were now using it as part of their conversion process and they used it to adjust and reprogram the subjects brains and tag them, but the clever thing was they weren't planning to stop the civilisations technological process. No. After a period of 20 years as they used the civilisation and their superior resources to advance their own technology, the Cybermen made their move. They activated their neural circuits and the subliminal programming and the drugs brought a willing army into the factories. Once the entire species was converted, the Cybermen began spreading to the other planets. As on Mondas, the Cybermen had arranged for cloning facilities to be constructed and new generations of Cybermen were created. Mondas left the vicinity, leaving behind a new race of Cybermen who had been left behind with Dominator derived technology and hardware, and were now building a whole fleet of spacecraft, preparing to spread Mondas' legacy.
On its way back to its home solar system, the Cybermen despatched a number of spacecraft to investigate potential planets for conversion. Mondas discovered seven of them, and following the successful pattern of the previous invasion, they increased their numbers and their technological knowledge. Two of the civilisations were even connected by a form of FTL known as warp drive, and the Cybermen had a hard time converting them, but when they did they had access to warp technology. The Cybercontrollers gave the new races of Cybermen the task of converting the different races in their territories. They did this continually for many years, and the Cybercontrollers watched their new races construct fleets of ships go into the galaxy, and into the wider universe. The invasions did a lot of good for the exhausted Mondas; millennia of travelling through space, supporting first the Mondasians and later the Cybermen had taken its toll on the planet.
The Cybermen recognised this problem, and in keeping with their desire to survive decided that they would steal their twin world's energy surplus, and their population; they might have already converted dozens of planets and any passing ship unlucky enough to cross Mondas's path, but the Cybermen were still driven to survive. That became their plan, they would return to Earth's solar system, and convert the planet's population. In the meantime, the Mondasian Cybermen prepared a fleet of ships meant for long haul spaceflight, and despatched two thirds of their number into space. They would ensure the survival of the Cyber-race by any means necessary in case Mondas failed. One of the Cybercontrollers went with the fleet, the one once known formally as Allan stayed on Mondas whilst the one known formally as Lumic went off with the fleet. It was logical one of their leaders, one of the custodians of the vision of the Cybermen, survived and guided the Cyber-race onwards. Once the fleet of ships had left Mondas, bound for a small solar system where the Cybermen could set up a colony and a base for launching attacks/raids on other worlds to add to their army, but also to build much larger and stronger ships after taking away so many from their former mother planet, Mondas continued on its way.
Confidence is an emotion, but the Cybermen believed they would logically overwhelm the humans, and soon they would chant "We Shall Survive. You will become like us."
What do you think about the different take of the origins of the Cybermen? I always felt it was a bit tricky even though "Rise of the Cybermen" did a good job, so I decided to paste the Cybus Cybermen in with the old Cybermen.