The Monthly Adventures #034 - “Spare Parts" by Marc Platt

Alright, let’s get this over with. Spare Parts is good, it’s really, really good. There is a reason it’s such an immensely popular audio play and that is due to the sheer writing capabilities of one Marc Platt, an author famous for his grand designs and vivid alien worlds that effectively create the Cybermen’s very own Genesis of the Daleks, moulding a bleak and oppressive tale of grim fates and a doomed world. But, is it perfect? Many would say so, besides The Chimes of Midnight, it fights for the spot as most popular Big Finish audio play and for many it is the quintessential Cyberman story. However, Spare Parts is no perfect story for me; despite its undeniable brilliance, there are just a couple things that bug me.

Mondas: the twin planet of Earth and a world on the brink of annihilation. Living in subterranean cities, the dregs of the population battle for survival, desperately trying to break free onto the poisoned surface. When the Doctor arrives, he can do nothing but watch as human kind turns to machine. But with Nyssa getting more and more involved in the plight of the Mondasians, maybe he won’t get to choose his role.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I don't think calling Marc Platt an inconsistent writer would be a controversial statement. Although he has created a couple fan favourite stories, most of his work falls under fire for being slow, or convoluted or just plain boring. But seemingly, his most consistent element is his world building; often praised for his bizarre and wild creations, Platt is undeniably a visionary author, with a lot of grand, expansive ideas that always seem to translate well to paper. Frankly, I can't think of many people who would've done Mondas this much justice. It is a bitter world, choked in dust, without sunlight, without joy - a subterranean 1950s London with cybernetic horses patrolling the streets and digging up the graveyards. It's a decidedly grim landscape that is expertly made real to us and is the primary reason this audio is so skilled at making you feel hopeless. This is a bleak story and it perfectly conveys a world at the brink of destruction. You can very easily buy into how the Cybermen slowly and insidiously took over, the central, cybernetic committee of Mondas expanding the bracket of who would be converted wider and wider until even those who could oppose it were stripped of their souls and individuality. And can I just say that Platt gets the Cybermen; they're a villain I love in concept but find to be rarely well realised, but  not here. This may very well be my favourite depiction of the Mondasian tinmen ever. And through our metal friends, Platt creates this lingering sense of doom and turns the whole story into a ticking time bomb of melancholy and imminent annihilation. What really helps the immersion are our cast, as every one of which is on top form. Leading the audio are Davison and Sutton returning as Five and Nyssa, who are at what is by far their most interesting outing so far - Platt truly giving them some much needed character. Nyssa is the tortured scientist desperately trying to save a fated world after losing her own and is the main sympathetic link here whilst Davison hands in a stellar performance, becoming increasingly desperate and conflicted as he fights his instinct to save a world he knows he cannot help. Playing alongside our main duo are a near perfect cast of incredible characters, chief among them the Hartley family, who take Nyssa in when she becomes separated from the Doctor. All three of them feel astoundingly real and make for the emotional crutch of the whole script, their fantastic performances allowing the trio to become alive as the plot progresses and allow the reader to be hurt immensely when they start to fall apart. Perhaps the most famous part of this whole script is when Yvonne, the compassionate and lively eldest child of the Hartleys, is partially converted, left human enough to regain her memories and stumble back to her home, where we watch in horror as her family attempts to comfort their daughter as she is slowly becoming more and more a machine. It's one of those moments where the lines just land in the most spectacularly horrifying way: "Father must see my new uniform.' 'Look how tall they've made you!'. Considering Yvonne was basically one of our main characters in the first half, this reveal hits like a truck and is the perfect example of the sheer brilliant misery that persists throughout the entire story.

And yet, for all its near perfections, there's just one too many things that disappoint me. Chief among them is how much this story circles. The middle parts are somewhat aimless and mostly consist of the Doctor getting chased at nauseam around the city, not to mention the plot has a couple contrivances that annoy me personally, like the Hartleys apparently being the one family on Mondas considering how often the Doctor and Nyssa coincidentally run into them. It's not egregious but can be quite tiring, especially when the ending seemingly forgets it's meant to be the Cybermen's origin. It ends like a completely normal Cybermen story, with the threat beaten and the day saved, before Platt hurriedly injects one last scene that shows the Cybermen magically survived and all is doomed. For being an origin story, it's strange you could remove one scene and turn it into any other Cyberman story, if a particularly good one. There's also the... odd plot beat of revealing that the template for every single Cyberman was the Doctor's physiology which, whilst not being the most damaging retcon the show has ever seen, is a decidedly pointless one that makes the Doctor, once again, seem too large a figure in history; he had to cause every single major historical event, no exceptions! And another thing that got on my nerves was the sound design, occasionally. Specifically when it comes to the Cybermen themselves - I adore the monotonous, slightly human sounds of the Mondasian Cybermen as much as the next guy but that, constantly, paired with the utterly incomprehensible Committee, is murder on the ears.

There are some stories that maybe don't deserve their reputation, whether that be in a positive or negative sense, but Spare Parts is not one of them. It is iconic for a reason and it's no surprise that it's been copied to hell and back in New Who and following expanded media. It's one of my favourite takes on the Cybermen ever and it's a bitterly beautiful listen that gets a little monotonous at points but sells itself as a near Shakespearean tragedy of metal men and desperate people doing desperate things. You won't see me calling it the greatest Doctor Who story ever but it very well may be the best Cyberman story we've ever gotten, and for very good reason.

9/10

Pros:

+ Mondas is sombrely and vividly realised

+ The Doctor and Nyssa are incredibly well characterised

+ The Hartleys make for great side characters and massively assist immersion

+ Yvonne's conversion is an utterly gut wrenching scene

+ Truly evokes a feeling of hopelessness in the face of Armageddon

+ One of the absolute best uses of the Cybermen

Cons:

- Cybermen voices get progressively more grating throughout the audio

- Story forgets that its meant to be an origin for the Cybermen

- The Doctor being the template for every Cyberman was a weird and unnecessary retcon

- The story begins to go in circles around the middle