Just announced for iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad App store is a new interactive Doctor Who video game titled The Mazes of Time. As many have already pointed out, the graphics look far superior to the Wii and Nintendo DS games released earlier this year.
The story follows the adventures of Amy and the Doctor (Rory is MIA as usual) as they attempt to rescue an innocent family, scattered through time by the fallout, from a Dalek attack.
Gameplay is said to mix action and puzzles with the player able to switch between the TARDIS duo.
The new screenshots show a top-down perspective, and while the graphics are fairly basic, remember this is a mobile game.
There has been some talk at Doctor Who Spoilers here and here about an adventure for series 6.1 being set in Egypt during the 1920′s and possibly featuring mummified Cybermen. So, why is this a big deal? It’s because it could be the ‘real’ Cybermen and not the ‘new’ Cybermen that have been troubling the Doctor since 2006.
This would mark the first appearance pf the classic Cybermen since 1988′s adventure Silver Nemesis. The cybernetic baddies were introduced way back in 1966 when the cybernetic race of the planet Mondas piloted their dying planet to attack Earth and drain the world if its energy. A small squad of Cybermen were sent as an advance assault team and while the Doctor managed to keep the monsters at bay, it cost him his life. In the adventure called Tenth planet, the Cybermen explained that they had find a way to escape death by replacing their failing body parts with cybernetic parts until they were nearly all robotics and hardly human at all. Emotionless beings driven by motors pumping fluids through their few remaining organs, seeking to further their race by pillaging bodies for parts and turning others into Cybermen as well.
In the subsequent adventures of the regenerated Doctor were set after the initial attack by the Cybermen, developing a kind of linear timeline that hinted at a Cyber-War and an apparent defeat of the baddies only to see them return triumphantly from their ice tombs on Telos in the fan favorite adventure ‘Tomb of the Cybermen.’ The streets of contemporary London were trod upon by an army of Cybermen in 1968′s Invasion, resulting in some of the most iconic Cybermen moments of Doctor Who.
Cybermen from the Invasion
The Cybermen were mainly absent from Doctor Who with the exception of Revenge of the Cybermen in 1974 until they came back in a big way for 1984′s Earthshock where the youthful fifth incarnation of the Doctor faced the baddies who sought to threaten a World Peace Conference by first exploding a bomb deep under the surface of the planet then piloting a massive invasion force straight into the proceedings.
Here’s a lovely video that summarizes the Cybermen of Doctor Who from their first appearance through 2008′s The Next Doctor.
In 2006, the Cybermen were featured in a two-part adventure set in a parallel world. In this alternate Earth an ailing brilliant industrialist sought to use his influence to replace the entire population with ‘enhancements’ that would make them immortal.
Since 2006, these ‘Cybus Industries’ Cybermen are the only Cybermen viewers have seen, leading fans of the classic program curious if we will ever see the ‘real’ Cybermen from Tenth Planet-Silver Nemesis.
These recent rumors are hardly confirmation that the Mondas Cybermen are coming back, but with Steven Moffat quoted as saying that we will see the old Daleks return in the 6th or 7th series, it’s not impossible.
