The award-winning writer will reintroduce the classic villains in a 2013 episode of the sci-fi drama starring Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman.
© PA Images
© BBC
"Steven [Moffat] wrote to me and said, 'Will you make the Cybermen scary again?'" Gaiman told French website Reviewer.fr. "And I thought back to when I was 6 or 7 years old - 'The Moonbase', 'Tomb of the Cybermen'... I saw these when they were first broadcast."
Gaiman claimed that the Cybermen's near-silent, creeping nature made them scarier than the more bombastic Daleks.
"Daleks went around going, 'Exterminate', and blowing things up," he said. "Cybermen were just... You look up and there's a Cyberman.
"I thought, 'Let me see what I can do when I take the 1960s Cybermen and [incorporate] everything that's happened since'. So that's what I'm trying to do. I don't know if it will work."
Warwick Davis (Life's Too Short), Tamzin Outhwaite (EastEnders) and Jason Watkins (Being Human) will all appear in Gaiman's episode, which Doctor Who star Matt Smith has predicted will be a "fan's favorite".
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Watch a classic Cybermen clip from '60s Doctor Who below:
