Cybermen in Doctor Who

Post Reply New Topic

From the book Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, in an essay titled "Cybermen Evil? I Don't Think So!" Courtland Lewis writes:

“Like doctors, Cybermen are altruistic in the sense that they really believe they’re helping an inferior species gain a better life… Cybermen, however, unwittingly violate the rights that their converts believe they have, because they rarely, if ever, get the informed consent of converts. Instead, they parentalistically force the conversion process onto others. In other words, Cybermen think they know what’s best for humans, and for the good of humans they force them to become Cybermen. This parentalism is not bad in-itself, but there’s a more morally acceptable way for the Cybermen to act.”

Please share your thoughts on this excerpt. I am having some issues with it.

Very interesting. A great analogy to describe the behaviour of pro-cure organisations towards Autistics who don't want to be "cured", and also, the general consensus in society that anyone who doesn't conform is defective.

^ +1

And Hitler thought he was helping the human race by "purifying" it.

Two points:

1. Part of the conversion process involves "turning off" the human capacity for emotion. In the Age of Steel two-parter, the means of defeating the Cybermen was to turn that emotion back on. Self-realization destroyed them from the inside out.

2. Lewis goes on to wright, "we need to figure out a way of communicating to [Cybermen] the principle of respect for the autonomy of beings." That coupled with Lewis's statement above regarding the 'right rights that their converts believe they have' certainly put the burden on the human to explain why they shouldn't be converted. (I can't help of think of people with communication difficulties and how this puts them at a severe disadvantage.)

In David Layton's book The Humanism of Doctor Who, he states: "The Doctor's 'good' derives from the notion that all sentient and intelligent persons (human or alien, which is to say quasi-human) deserve the same standard of treatment based upon the rights that existing gives them."

I think these points mark the line between altruism and evil .... at least in the case of the Cybermen.