We are now into week number three of our Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Villain Battle Royale! The Cybermen haven’t made an appearance yet, so now seems like a good time to introduce the silver men and have them take on a formidable foe – the Black Guardian.
Black Guardian
The Black Guardian is an anthropomorphic personification of the forces of entropy and chaos, the counterpart of the White Guardian, a personification of order. The two Guardians balance out the forces in the universe, although the Black Guardian seems to desire to upset the balance in favour of chaos and evil while the White Guardian prefers to maintain the status quo. The Guardians both appeared in Season 16 of the programme, where all six serials of that season were linked together in the quest for the Key to Time, an artifact of immense power that would give the wielder supreme power over all existence.
Cybermen
The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television programme, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth’s twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with every emotion deleted from their minds.
They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the show) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest up until the show was cancelled.
12 Comments
As dangerous as the Cybermen are, they are a known and physical threat that can be dealt with. The Black Guardian, on the other hand, is a personification of chaos itself. While it seems that he must act through others to achieve his goals, the power and influence he wields is undefined and potentially far, far greater than anything an army of Cybermen could bring to bear.
Just how many robot/cybernetic bad guys does the Doctor face? Don’t get me wrong, I love the cybermen, and the daleks, and even the huggable yeti, but I had to vote for the Black Guardian to mix things up a bit.
Besides, I love his hat.
I’ll take an agent of entropy and chaos over a legion of emotionless metal men any day.
The Cybermen are limited physical creatures where the Black Guardian is something more. As cool as the Cybermen are, I don’t think they would stand a chance.
Why would personification of entropy and chaos fight Cyborgs that promote entropy and chaos in the universe?
Also the Black Guardian doesn’t appear to do anything but pretend to be other people to try to trick them, and then fail at that.
The Cybermen actually promote an extreme application of order… every living thing a part of the Cyber nation!
The Black Gaurdian is much more the type to manipulate the Cyberman and use them to his own ends. He would convince the Cybermen to come to Earth and manipulate the Doctor into destroying them for him.
I expect the cyber,net ow in on name recognition, but it seems like the Black Guardian is in a different league. Would a good Marvel analogue be something like comparing Ultron to a cosmic entity?
Yeahs, autocorrect failure. I expect the cybermen to win on name recognition.
Yeah, I still need to watch more stories with Black Guardian, but he wins. Personifications of idea(l)s wins over killable men from Mondas.
Cybermen win in the vote due to the ignorance of the populace, but the Black Guardian wins due to power and cunning.
Cybermen also have a better picture.