We have one of Big Finish’s biggest triumphs with Spare Parts. This follows a line of continuity between Season 19 and Season 20 where the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa briefly travelled by themselves after Tegan left in the former’s season finale….and then came back one episode later, genius! Well Big Finish decided to pad the gap out a bit and I’m grateful for that as the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa make for my favourite Fifth Doctor TARDIS team and it's certainly improved my opinion on Nyssa. She suffered quite a lot from always being the third wheel in the Fifth Doctor’s companions. Originally you had her, Tegan and Adric; Tegan being the loudmouth who was more involved in the story and Adric being the unlikable jerk which meant Nyssa sort of just drifted into the background and was just there to look pretty. From what I read, apparently JNT attempted to write her out of the show on several occasions but was always stopped by Peter Davison. While the run of audios makes me appreciate them not writing out Nyssa early, I don’t exactly blame them for trying given how little she had to do onscreen. A good example of this is Earthshock where she spends almost the entire episode in the TARDIS doing nothing. Thankfully for Nyssa, given the chance to travel solo with the Doctor has allowed her to properly develop her character and be more involved in the stories.

Which brings us to Spare Parts and it’s honestly poetic that while Genesis of the Daleks is widely considered the best Dalek story ever written, on the opposite side we have Spare Parts which is without doubt the best Cyberman story of all time!

There’s a very good reason why Spare Parts tops a lot of people’s recommendation lists for first time listeners of Big Finish. With Genesis of the Daleks proving to be one of Doctor Who’s most highly acclaimed stories, could the same concept work with exploring the genesis of the Doctor’s second greatest villains. The answer was an emphatic yes with the universally beloved Spare Parts. Taking place on the Cybermen’s home world Mondas, the Doctor and Nyssa explore a civilisation on the point of collapse and the brink of extinction as the inhabitants so very alike to those on Mondas’s former twin planet, Earth, gradually and surgically remove their souls in a desperate bid to survive. Spare Parts showcases more than any other why the Cybermen are one of sci-fi’s greatest villains and what they represent; the fear of dying and the desperation to survive by any means necessary, even if it means giving up everything that makes you who you are. It’s made more effective by just how bleak this world is. Everything we learn about Mondas from its people to the various disasters crippling the dwindling population is just dripping with nihilism and despair.

Fun little fact about Spare Parts, Russell T. Davies took inspiration directly from this story when he brought back the Cybermen in Series 2 as Rise of the Cybermen is presented as a remake (a very inferior remake I might add) and Spare Parts features a family called the Hartleys with a young woman named Yvonne, a name that was reworked into Yvonne Hartman from Army of Ghosts. Also, not to give too much away but both characters suffer a similar fate that in the case of this story is a scene that never fails to bring me to tears. It’s a perfect scene that shows the tragedy of losing a loved one to the Cybermen and how the unfortunate victim has lost themselves forever.

Now I should address the elephant in the room that while Rise of the Cybermen from Series 2 was looked on as a remake of Spare Parts, fast forward to Series 10 where we get a much more direct remake in World Enough and Time. While it’s not as strong as this story I do give World Enough and Time its dues for being a much worthier remake than Rise of the Cybermen and frankly I consider it the best televised Cyberman story to date. But that still doesn’t make it as strong as Spare Parts which is all the more reason to give this a listen. I also consider this to be my favourite performance from Peter Davison as the Doctor, his dialogue and his line delivery is just so perfect in this. This is the story that really turned around my opinion on the Fifth Doctor.

I’ve gushed over this one quite a bit, but it is honestly one of those rare Doctor Who stories where I cannot think of a single flaw. Spare Parts is not only one of the Fifth Doctor’s best and the greatest Cyberman story, but this belongs in the top 10 Doctor Who stories of all time