Cyborg

Origin

Although the show does not explain Cyborg's origin, it is for the most part similar to his origin in the comic book. Cyborg's real name is Victor Stone and is the son of prominent scientists Silas and Elinore Stone who ran experiments on him to raise his intelligence. Growing tired of this, Victor began to participate in gang fights and got in with the wrong crowds on the streets. Visiting his parents one day though, a freak accident occurs where an interdimensional being emerges through a portal and tears apart Victor. After forcing the being back into the portal, his parents use their technology to save their son by fitting him with a cybernetic body that would keep him alive. It was after this that he left home and made his way to Jump City where he would meet up with future members of Teen Titans: Robin, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy.

In the series, Cyborg appears to be more easy going than his comic book counterpart. Although serious and a strong fighter in battle, when relaxing, Cyborg tends to act the fool and more jovial at the Titan's Tower. He spends free time doing many things with the rest of the Titans but spends most of his time working on his car that he built with his own hands or other gadgets that he creates for battles.

Creation

Cyborg made his first appearence in DC Comics Presents #26 and was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. The version of Cyborg in the television series was created by Glen Murakami and David Slack.

Character Evolution

In the beginning of the series, Cyborg comes off as a proud individual who prefers not to show signs of weakness or being wrong. This is seen in the first episode arguing with Robin over who was at fault for letting a villian get away. It took him a while before admitting that he was in the wrong and came back to work for the Titans. As time went on, Cyborg displayed his knowledge for technology and strategies when fighting on the battle field. One of his biggest issues came up when training as he explained that since he is part machine, his body has upper limits since his functions can only allow him to use 100% of his energy and no more. Cyborg expresses frustration over this but soon realizes that since he is also part human that he should not allow a data read out to hold him back from pushing his limits.

Another change in Cyborg came when he was asked to oversee the development of Titans East, a branch of the Teen Titans that was in works in Steel City. After assisting the group with a few villians, he expressed an interest of being the team leader. He showed potential for being a leader of a group but felt that he would be better suited in Jump City and left the management of Titans East to Bumble Bee.

Major Story Arcs

Since each season ot the television series is mixed in with filler amongst the key elements of the overlying plot, unrelated filler episodes will be skipped over in this article to focus on the important events of each season that Cyborg was involved in.

Season One

In the first season, most of the episodes are used to introduce new characters and develop the five main heroes of the series. Through this season, we see most of Cyborg's easy going personality mixed in with the seriousness when it comes to fighting. His first major conflict came up with Robin over a dispute on who messed up a combination move they were trying to pull off to defeat Cinderblock. Cyborg promptly quit the Titans but came back later after cooling off and joined back up. The biggest episode that involved Cyborg was entitled "The Sum of His Parts" where after his system failed due to low batteries, he is taken in by a junkyard owner who attempts to fully fix Cyborg. The mechanic, named Fixit, claims that Cyborg's human parts are what are holding him back from true greatness as Fixit converted himself to a machine to be perfect. Cyborg pointed out that true power comes from the soul and spirit of a human and is able to escape before being converted to a full machine. Another episode, "Car Trouble", dealt with Cyborg's ability to create his own car for the team to use and obsessed over it and ran all over town to find it. With the help of Raven, he is able to retrieve it from Gizmo but destroyed it after being possessed by Overload. Raven and Cyborg worked together to build the second T-Car.

Throughout the season though, Cyborg and the rest of team were focused on finding a new adversary who was behind many breakouts and attacks on the city, Slade. Slade's main obsession was with Robin though and used the team as leverage. Slade infected Cyborg and the other Titans with a deadly parasite that would kill them if Robin disobeyed Slade. After fighting Robin and being defeated by their former friend and getting attacked by the mysterious parasite, Cyborg built a machine to detect the entities in their blood streams. The group put two and two together and went to save Robin, stating that they did not care if they died in the process. Robin infected himself deliberately to make Slade turn off the device and escaped. Cyborg again was called in to use the original device to make a cure to get rid of the parasites in their bloodstreams.