View Full Version : Why are the Cybermen seemingly employing Rube Goldberg to devise their plans?


plekhanov
11-01-2009, 21:20
Well I finally got round to watching the Dr Who Christmas special and have to say that even by the low standards set by Davies I was shocked by the idiocy of it all.

So the Cybermen need to turn a few wheels to get their very silly but rather cool steam punk giant mecha going so how do they go about this simple task?

1 - Turn the wheels themselves.
2 - Employ some casual labourers to turn the wheels.
3 - Use a steam engine (this is in the midst of the industrial revolution after all).
4 - i. Kill a man to attract a bunch of other men to his funeral,
ii. carry out a mini massacre at the funeral & capture 4 attendees who run workhouses and take over their minds.
iii. Have these mind controlled philanthropists march their collection of Christmas orphans through the streets in as conspicuous a manner as possible.
iv. force the urchins to turn your wheels in a desultory fashion which would produce next to no usable energy.
v. dress up a middle class boy in urchin chic & lots of mascara and strand him on a high platform for no particular reason.

For reasons best known to himself Davies obviously had the Cybermen go for option 4.

It's hard to think of a more unnecessarily convoluted and over elaborate plan to achieve such a simple task.

If they'd needed the children to use them as experimental subjects, 'neural processors' or some similar technobabble purpose which only children/humans would serve then the convoluted plot to kidnap the children might have made some sense and Davies would still have had the Cybermen acting cartoonishly evil & got his Christmas Orphans. But simply to turn a few wheels?

sTaGeWaLkEr
11-01-2009, 21:28
Just for you. (http://www.oswald.us/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bunny-pancake.jpg)

;)

x

plekhanov
11-01-2009, 21:36
Just for you. (http://www.oswald.us/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bunny-pancake.jpg)

;)

x
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg):

Reuben Garret Lucius Goldberg (4 July 1883 – 7 December 1970) was an American cartoonist who received a 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning. He is best known for his series of popular cartoons depicting Rube Goldberg machines, complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.

ChrisTodd
11-01-2009, 23:10
I know why they couldn't use casual labour.

The Inland Revenue was having a crackdown on it and the Cybermen didn't want to pay PAYE!!