Peter Capaldi would like to register a complaint.
When the Mondasian Cybermen made their long-awaited return to the show during Series 10’s finale, you would expect a massive Doctor Who fan like Peter Capaldi to be over the moon…well there was one very specific complaint related to design differences in the new Mondasian Cybermen when compared to their 1960s counterparts, that didn’t pass muster with this Doctor Who fan.
Speaking to the This Week in Time Travel podcast (courtesy of the Radio Times) the finale director Rachel Talalay, elaborated on the source of Capaldi’s nit-picking complaint:
“Steven and Peter both feel strongly about how they remember these things. So they were both involved and had thoughts.
“Peter called me after the first Mondasian incident and said, ‘Why is it they have gloves on their hands, when one of the great things about them was that they had bare hands?’”
It’s a fair point. The bare hands were one of the creepiest design features of the original – hinting at the human engine underneath the cyber-technology.
Defending the change in design, Talalay elaborated:
“I explained that the Pearl Mondasian, we would have an issue with skin colour. And therefore that given in the [original series] black-and-white version you couldn’t really tell if they had skintone gloves, it seemed like we could get a scarier feel and something more artificial by putting the gloves on them.
“But it was partially an issue because of skintone.”
So, there you go. Now where did the Cybermen get all those gloves? Other design tweaks include having to alter the look of the partially converted “patient” Cybermen at the last-minute due to their chest units looking like cyber-breasts.
Talalay went on to share a little bit about her collaboration with superfans Capaldi and Moffat:
“So a lot of the passion of it has been to go back and actually learn the things [Capaldi and series showrunner Steven Moffat] grew up with. Because I had Star Trek growing up in America.”
Of course, the three of them will be bowing out of Doctor Who this Christmas with Twice Upon A Time on BBC One on Christmas Day.