Cybermats! Tiny little chums of the Cybermen! And, frankly, mainly a bit rubbish after their first two appearances. And and and, with the second appearance being a step down from the first anyway.

The metal eel of Revenge Of The Cybermen held the title for worst Cybermats ever for a fairly long time! I’m sorry, as much as I do enjoy the whole Nerva Beacon sequence, the sight of actors holding a tin eel to their necks, pretending to be bitten, has always thrown me right off. Which probably says more about me than it does the model, right? Me? I am absolutely fine with a Taran Woodbeast. Tin eels? Not so much.

(Yeah, that is definitely a me problem. Do they have therapy for this sort of thing? I’ll ask.)

So in the absence of the actually quite funky ones that were to be in Silver Nemesis not making it to broadcast (which I do actually like — unlike Silver Nemesis itself), that leaves the Tomb Of The Cybermen incarnation as officially, the only Cybermat design I really like.

Now, you might be thinking “Rob! Rob. But what about the ones from the newer stories?” and I’m sorry but no. Cybermen (and Cybermats) have seen the worst redesigns of Who monsters outside of the Silurians pretty much until the Chibnall reworks and we especially do not speak of the toothy Cybermats because oh for Molyneux’s sake. Just no.

Whoever takes over the show next has a pretty easy win on their hands for me then. If we’re gonna do Cybermen, Chibnall finally got the designs on track and the Cybermasters are fully comic book funny too so, erm, yeah, just try and work from there and I won’t have to hate everything that shows up on the screen as being of Cyberman origin.

Because obviously, catering to my super weird taste is going to be top of anyone’s and everyone’s list. There would be no higher priority in television. Trufax.