THE DWM INTERVIEW
MACHINE INTELLIGENCE
The relentless Ashad was a chilling adversary for the Doctor in the closing episodes of the 2020 series. “The intention was to breathe new life into the Cybermen,” actor PATRICK O’KANE tells NICK SETCHFIELD.
Actor Patrick O’Kane.
“My strongest memory of Doctor Who as a child was being terrified by the Cybermen,” says Patrick O’Kane, recalling the moment the silver invaders imprinted themselves indelibly on his psyche.
“It was Patrick Troughton as Doctor Who, and he descended into a tunnel under London through a manhole. The camera was close on him, and when he reached the ground he stopped and he sensed there was something behind him. And he turned around and there was a giant Cyberman bearing down on him. I remember practically having to jump behind the sofa!
Patrick as Ashad, ‘the Lone Cyberman’.
“So I was really delighted when the offer came through to play this particular part, because the Cybermen were the one group of iconic Doctor Who baddies that genuinely terrified me as a child. It was great to know that I was going to be part of that and, with any luck, do the same to the children of this generation.”
Call it the circle of life – if stalking the universe as a ghoulish, hate-filled cyborg is any kind of life. Introduced in The Haunting of Villa Diodati (2020), Ashad proved to be one of the show’s most memorable antagonists: the fabled Lone Cyberman, self-appointed Cyber-messiah, halfway to total conversion and still burning with the darkest of emotions. Determined to extinguish all organic life, this hulking fusion of flesh and metal targeted Gallifrey itself as Series 12 climaxed with Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children.
“It was his humanity, I suppose,” says Patrick, recalling what initially intrigued him about the role. “I read the script and I thought ‘Oh, that’s interesting…’ Just the fact that the Cybermen, historically, have been completely devoid of humanity. That’s their USP, really. So this was a prototypal version of that, who had been caught mid-frame, so to speak, and hadn’t rid himself of his humanity.