Gaiman on Making Cybermen Scary Again
Neil Gaiman has spoken about how his Series 7 episode
Speaking to Reviewer.fr he said: “Steven asked me to write a new episode and I said no because I was too busy. And then he wrote and asked if I wanted to make the Cybermen scary again. And I thought back to when I was six or seven years old: ‘The Moonbase’, ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ … when I saw them when they were first broadcast. The Cybermen were far more frightening than Daleks, because they do not make noise. Daleks move in all directions, shouting ‘Exterminate’, etc.. With Cybermen it’s different. You turned around and bam! There were Cybermen. It’s scary.
“I told [Moffat] that I would revive the Cybermen for the 50th anniversary year and everything that has happened since, and see what I could do. I do not know if it will work, we’ll see.”
He added: “This will be a stand-alone episode, it will be the penultimate episode of Series 7. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.”
Gaiman also stated that the title of the episode, currently believed to be The Last Cyberman, could still change: “‘The Doctor’s Wife’ was’ Bigger on the Inside’, up to two weeks before release. It could be anything,” he said.