Doctor Who - Spare Parts (2002) - Audio Review

Starring: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Derren Nesbitt, Sally Knyvette & Nicholas Briggs

Written By: Marc Platt

Directed By: Gary Russell

 

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, around tea-time, the Doctor and Nyssa unearth a black market in second-hand body parts and run the gauntlet of augmented police and their augmented horses. And just beneath the tramstop and the picturehouse, their worst suspicions are confirmed: the Cybermen have only just begun, and the Doctor will be, just as he always has been, their saviour...

 

'Spare Parts' is generally regarded as the crowning achievement of Big Finish, and is one of their most popular and acclaimed releases. Back when I was unfamiliar with the worlds of 'Doctor Who' on audio, 'Spare Parts' was the story everyone seemed to unanimously love, often being sold as both a great story and a great place to start. Because of this, it became the first Big Finish play I ever listened to, and it feels appropriate that it should be my first Big Finish review. Having listened to it multiple times now, and given that it's opened up a whole new world of audio dramas for me, I can safely say that 'Spare Parts' lives up to a lot of its hype.

 

This is one of the very few stories where we actually get to visit the Cybermen's original home planet Mondas. It's a world that often gets referenced, but rarely do we get to experience it. Thanks to some brilliant world-building and attention to detail, 'Spare Parts' paints a great picture of Mondas. With its dark, underground city, the Cybermat-infested streets, curfews, shady businesses selling second-hand body parts, the arrival of the city's first snow, the mechanically augmented police and their augmented patrol horses – it feels incredibly bleak and devastated. It's a civilization that are having to literally sacrifice everything just to see the sky, and even then their expeditions to the surface of their world only take them somewhere else that's uninhabitable. You can really see just how much the ideas here influenced 'World Enough & Time'.

 

Not only is the world-building great, but the structure is excellent too. Part 1 introduces and gets us invested in some of the city's inhabitants, allowing us to feel sympathy for them once things start to go wrong later on. Characters such as Yvonne, Frank, their dad, and even Thomas Dodd all crucially feel very, very human. It feels as though they've been written with the same kind of care Russell T Davies never fails to pour into his characters, and because of this, they feel like people you could meet just walking down the street, and you remember them long after you've finished listening. While Part 1 is dedicated to establishing character, Parts 2-4 are more plot-oriented, introducing things such as the first fully-fledged Cybermen and the plans of the mysterious committee. It's during these parts where you find an ever-increasing sense of scale and devastation.

 

It's not just the Mondasians who are written with great care however, as both the Doctor and Nyssa get the same treatment too. Here they feel much more natural and comfortable than at any point during Seasons 19 and 20. Having recently gone and re-watched some of Peter Davison's tenure, I'm beginning to view his time as a whole more critically, mainly because of the relationships between the TARDIS crew. The scenes of the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric in the TARDIS can be honestly unpleasant to watch at times, as they spend way too much time shouting and being horrible to each other. It's far too serious, and it's rare that they ever come across as friends. However in 'Spare Parts', the Doctor and Nyssa work together a whole lot better, with both being given plenty to do. Sarah Sutton in particular finally gets the dramatic material she really needed to work with during the TV series, and both the Doctor and Nyssa even share a touching moment where they discuss what happened to Adric. What do you know, even that's handled better here than it was in 'Time-Flight'.

 

However the real stars of the show here are of course the Cybermen. 'Spare Parts' works so well as an origin story, and I love how we experience the gradual progression from human to Cyberman, beginning with partially-augmented humans in Part 1 to proper Cybermen by Part 4. Once they begin converting everyone, they come across as a genuinely unstoppable force. Those who created them in the hospitals begin to lose control of the very thing they've created. These moments also provide some great lines of dialogue, with one of my own favourites being: “'I created you!' 'And I am superior to you. Be proud while you still have the capacity.'” 'Spare Parts' further does what so many Cyberman stories forget to do, and that's convey their sense of horror. You hear people like me shouting all the time that the Cybermen are more than just generic robots … but that's because they are. They are us and they're horrific – the thought of becoming like them should be terrifying, and scenes such as the one where Sisterman Constant is forced onto the conveyor to be processed, complete with the sound of whirring saws and machinery, emulate that fear. And of course let's not forget what is still one of the most powerful moments I've heard from any Big Finish play – Yvonne's return home. A converted but unstable Yvonne cries the word “Dad!” through a mechanical voice, but doesn't recognize her family, while being fascinated in the same way as a young child would be by the lights on the tree – it's absolutely gut-wrenching stuff. This scene alone is one of the most powerful things to come out of 'Doctor Who'. And as origin stories go, 'Spare Parts' is honestly on the same level as 'Genesis Of The Daleks'.

 

If 'Spare Parts' was a televised story and had a wider audience, I guarantee that it would be hailed as one of the classics. It just gets so much right, has made me re-evaluate my thoughts on the original Cyberman design, and it rarely puts a foot wrong. In fact, the only criticism I could possibly make of it is that the ending feels a bit abrupt to me, going from all hell breaking loose to calm and collected very jarringly. However that isn't enough to spoil everything that works so well, and it is just as good as it's made out to be. As I've said this was my first time trying out 'Doctor Who' on audio just over a year ago now. Not only is it an obvious and perfect place to start out, you can pick it up pretty cheap, and having listened to much more of Big Finish's output since, this is still one of my favourites. Give it a listen, and I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Spare Parts

9/10