The Doctor and Nyssa (No Adric or Tegan… WOO!) land in an enclosed city that appears to be London in the 1950’s. However all is not what it seems, just why are the streets closed off at night, who are the Central Committee, and just what is happening on this planet? The Doctor will find out soon enough, and become the savour to one of his deadliest enemies in ‘Spare Parts’
So this review marks a first for me, well two firsts. The first ‘first’ is that this is my first review of any of the Big Finish audio’s, and my second ‘first’ is this is also my first review for Doctor Who Worldwide, and not for my own site Review The Who. Anyway enough of the firsts, just what is ‘Spare Parts’ all about?
The Doctor and Nyssa land in an enclosed city that seems to be 1950’s London, our duo split up to explore. Nyssa befriends Yvonne Hartley and her Dad, helping them after a mat catching incident goes wrong. Meanwhile the Doctor befriends Thomas Dodd, who confirms the Doctor’s worst fears of where he really is - The Planet Mondas. The Doctor sets about trying to give Mondas a ‘wake up call’ to show the population just what is happening, helped and sometimes hindered by Dodd. Nyssa on the other hand helps the Hartleys and learns not only of the human crisis that is befalling Mondas, but of the problems suffered by the family. With both now seen as troublemakers, it is not long before the Doctor gains the interest of Doctorman Allan and the Central Committee, with the committee seeing the Doctor as a threat yet the Doctorman seeing him as someone of use. Yvonne is called up for conversion, but the process is interrupted by a power surge, leaving all of the semi-processed Cybermen to wait futher instructions. Yvonne wonders off and sets off to home, as the memory of wanting her father to see her in her suit still lingers. The Doctor meanwhile has saved the committee and planet by reconnecting the power, showing what resilience his boday has. Doctorman Allan then wishes to scan the Doctor as it may hold some important information that could help them in this time of need. Yvonne arrives to see Frank, her dad and Nyssa. All are horrified as to what the processing has done, and shortly she dies looking at the tree she had earlier decorated. The Doctor becomes the saviour of the Cybermen by being the template that they are all based upon. With the planet now entering the Cherrybowl Nebula, the Committee orders everyone to be converted in order to save the population, and use the Doctor’s own biology as a means to do this. Yet the Doctor, Nyssa and the Harleys (and eventually Doctorman Allan & Cyber Commander Zheng) all fight this, managing to not only stop the mass conversions, but also to steer the planet out of the nebula and onto a course home, and in the process stop the Centrral Committee (who have at this point turned into the very first ’Cyber Planner’) with a mass attack by Cybermats. All seems to be on cause for the Mondasians now to take control of their own destiny as the Doctor and Nyssa leave, yet all is not what it seems at the end.
Right, now that is the story done (Well as best as I can put without fully spoiling the thing), what of the cast. The main thing you notice listening to this is just how much older Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton sound compared to the days when they were in the show, yet after a few minutes that melts away as you start picturing both as they were in the 1980’s in your head. Both Davison and Sutton had by this point done a few stories together, and you can see… Well hear just how well both get on during the recordings, and how well the idea of a series inbetween Time Flight & Arc of Infinity would have been rather than Tegan coming back to the show after a season break. The rest of the cast also interact well, with Darren Nesbitt playing the perfect counterpart to the Doctor in Thomas Dodd. Seemingly a bit of a rogue, Dodd, via Nesbitt, becomes the person we feel the Doctor needs to have as a counterpoint. It is sad to see Dodd eventually become one of the first true ‘Cybermen’, as he suffers a fate worse than death. The other key players in this story are the Hartley family, with Paul Copley (Dad), Frank (Jim Hartley) and Yvonne (Kathryn Guck), all of whom give the story a human face of tragedy with Yvonne being called up to be converted, only to have the process fail on her and be found by her father and brother. It is this moment, when Yvonne is left a shadow of her self with only a fragment of memories remaining that show the true horror of what the Cyber-Processing entails, more so than the scene we see in ‘Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel’ with the Tenth Doctor and the Cyberman whose inhibiter was deactivated. The remaining cast of Sisteman Constant (Pamela Binns) and Doctorman Allan (Sally Knyvette) act as not only the official ‘Human’ face of the Central Committee and the Cybermen, both starting out as very much workers of the machine, yet both in their own way seeing just how things are truly going, with Allan turning to alcohol and the Sisterman clinging on to her position. The cast as a whole works because Platt manages to write just he right number of people into his story, and the cast is also believable at what they portray on audio, unlike some performances in previous and later audio’s that have felt almost ‘phoned in’.
The Cybermen here work better on audio than they did in The Tenth Planet because they feel human and inhuman at the same time. Our imagination is allowed that little bit of room to imagine them without the Sellotape holding them together. The horror of not only a people forced to survive at all costs buried alive, but a people driven mad at the sight of the dark sky is brilliant. The imagery that you have with their version of ’Christmas’ being a celebration of the star that they left and the tree being the forests that once stood on the surface, coupled with the idea of their journey brings to it a story that has a tragedy on so many levels that you want the Doctor to intervene and break the biggest laws of time, and also rip apart his own timeline to the point where it probably would end the universe. Where as the Dalek’s origins leave you feeling less sympathy for them with their nature explored in Genesis, the Cybermen’s own genesis is one not born of war, but born of necessity to survive on a planet that has no natural light, no view of the galaxy it is travelling in, and of the survival of a population that now only numbers in the thousands.
Although Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis are the true pioneers of the idea of the Cybermen, Marc Platt comes into the mix by taking the tragic story of a people driven to the edge of despair, and give the story a human quality that is missing from other origin stories in Doctor Who, and also getting the full fear that Pedler had about dehumanising medicinal procedures with the not quite fully converted Cybermen on horseback (See the DWM picture for the full horror that brings). Platt also takes the human elements of the family struggle (with the Hartleys) and lets Nyssa fully grieve of the loss of not only Adric (though personally I jumped for joy when he died) , but also of the lose of Traken and her father with the scene of her and Yvonne decorating the tree. This little subplot give Nyssa a new level in her character that was never fully seen on screen. The Doctor is also given more depth with his own feelings on the Cybermen, knowing that he cannot directly stop the creation of them, but can convince the remaining population to avert their destiny, little knowing that in reality he himself is the main cause of that destiny being the template of all future Mondasian Cybermen. It is this twist that makes Spare Parts far more emotional in its feel over other audio’s, and in some ways other stories on TV.
Now I will get this out of the way, Spare Parts is my favourite Big Finish audio, it was the first that really got me into the Big Finish line. If anyone was to ask you of a starting audio, or you were thinking of an audio to jump on to start off with, then this is the one to go for. It gets a 10 out of 10 from me.
Written By: Marc Platt
Directed By: Gary Russell
Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor); Sarah Sutton (Nyssa); Sally Knyvette (Doctorman Allan); Pamela Binns (Sisterman Constant); Derren Nesbitt (Thomas Dodd); Paul Copley (Dad); Kathryn Guck (Yvonne Hartley); Jim Hartley (Frank Hartley); Ann Jenkins (Mrs. Ginsberg); Nicholas Briggs (Zheng/Cyber Voices/Radio Announcer/ Citizen/Nurse); Alistair Lock (Minister/TV Commentator); Gary Russell (Philpott/ Nurse)
Spare Parts was released by Big Finish in July 2002 and is available now from BigFinish.com or the Amazon link below.
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