Spare Parts

"I will not be your template for your monstrous parodies of human kind!"

Writer: Marc Platt

Format: Audio

Released: July 2002

Series: Main Range 34

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa

Synopsis 

"I'm not even sure they are people by the end. They’re just so many tinned left-overs..."

On a dark frozen planet where no planet should be, in a doomed city with a sky of stone, the last denizens of Earth's long-lost twin will pay any price to survive, even if the laser scalpels cost them their love and hate and humanity 

And in the Mat-infested streets, round about tea-time, the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa unearth a black market in secondhand body parts and run the gauntlet of augmented police and their augmented horses.

And just between the tramstop and the picturehouse, the Doctor's worst suspicions are finally confirmed: the Cybermen have only just begun, and the Doctor will be, just as he always has been, their saviour...

Verdict 

Spare Parts was an excellent audio adventure! It perfectly portrays just how beautiful these Big Finish audios are and that they can do just about anything they want - and they're brilliant! With Genesis of the Daleks being highly acclaimed with it being the origin story of the Doctor's deadliest enemies, I think this story does a wonderful job in giving us a somewhat surprising origination for another great enemy of the Doctor's - the Cybermen! As you can see from the cover, the Cyber design is obviously reminiscent to what we saw in The Tenth Planet and I loved the fact that this story served as a prequel to that really. Mondas was already escaping its orbit and returning to its twin planet and the Cybermen were just being born with the final adjustments being made in this story itself. The Cybermen had arrived. It's obvious to say how this story helped form the basis for Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel with a lot of similarities though I do wish I had done this story first. That modern TV story depicted the creation of extremely different Cybermen to what we saw in the First Doctor's swansong. The Cybermen that appeared in that story remain my favourite design. It's just so wonderfully retro but it also sees the Cybermen as close to human as we ever saw. It was clear then that it hadn't been long since the Cybermen had made themselves machine-like and removed their emotions and this audio story confirms that. The purpose for which the Cybermen were created may have been the biggest surprise though. Unlike the story it inspired with John Lumic offering immortality in the form of Cybermen, the Mondasian Cybermen were created so they could reach the surface of the planet without dying. It was quite the surprise. The pairing of the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa is a decent one but it's far from being the strongest. I'm not sure whether that's because we didn't actually see it on TV apart from the beginning of Arc of Infinity or because they're just not as strong on audio as the likes of the Sixth Doctor and Peri. But hey, they both did a good job here. I loved their arrival on Mondas, especially once the Doctor had figured out where and when they were. It wasn't quite like Earth but it was extremely similar. There was no other explanation. The Doctor was on a planet that he never wanted to step foot on at the precise time he didn't want to be there. His first encounter with a Cyberman in the story wasn't actually quite that at all. I loved how he referenced the cloth mask, confirming beyond doubt what design of Cybermen we were dealing with here. With it being an origin story though that's kind of a given. The fact that a horse was half machine was quite the surprise though! A Cyberhorse? Now that would be something. The appearance of the Cybermats was fantastic and I loved how they were seen as pets on Mondas amongst the civilians. They were harmless. Of course they were, right? The Doctor's reaction to Nyssa inadvertently bringing one aboard the TARDIS was fantastic. He didn't like being where he was at all and he just wanted to get away. He knew he couldn't prevent the creation of the Cybermen because that could mean drastic changes in his timeline. He may not have regenerated for the first time when he did, Earth may not have been invaded and Adric may have survived. There was too much that couldn't be changed. I always love to echo that astounding line from The Aztecs. The Doctor could not rewrite history. Not one line. Nyssa working out that the population of Mondas would be the future Cybermen was intriguing and I liked the heartfelt references to Earthshock. They hadn't really stopped to mourn Adric. That was rather sad. Doctorman (a very intriguing and clever name) Allan being the creator was a surprise and I somehow can't see her returning in the way Davros has over the years after the events of this story. But now she's quite the place in Doctor Who history! The stories behind Yvonne and Thomas were brilliant and what happened to them in the story was quite sad. The Doctor being challenged over referring to a Cyberman as 'he' when he knew who had been converted was excellent. In turn, I loved how the Doctor knew what horror was being created but was helpless to prevent it from happening. The Fifth Doctor's been rather privileged in these audios though arriving here to meet the Cybermen before they knew of him and also in The Mutant Phase arriving to meet the Daleks before they'd first meet him in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The fact though that every Cyberman the Doctor would ever meet was based off his own template must have been a sour pill to swallow though. I'm not sure how he must have reacted inside. But overall, an excellent audio story and I loved how the end was just the beginning of what we would see in The Tenth Planet. The voices were absolutely incredible.

Rating: 9/10