Date Posted:14:04:12 10/25/02 Fri Author: Omega Subject: Review: Doctor Who, Spare Parts
Spare Parts, written by Marc Platt of Ghostlight fame, has is one of the better -- if not best-- Doctor Who audio stories that have been produced. Peter Davison gets to shine in this story, sometimes being annoyed with Nyssa (she brings an early model of a Cybermat aboard the TARDIS early on, and he gets real annoyed), while on the other hand, one sees the Doctor himself in a quandry: does he help save the people of Mondas, with their developing Cyberman population, survive -- or does he let the planet get destroyed as it runs adrift in the universe, and close to a point of destruction?
The whole imperative of the Cybermen in this story is survival. The Doctor knows what they will end up as, but he does not know exactly how they were produced -- or even his own ties with the Cybermen. There is no "Davros" figure per se in this story telling the origins of the Cybermen -- but there are a few people who are involved with their creation -- which have various motives, but primary among all of them, is the survival of a dying planet, which has a population living underground unable to go above ground, unable to help fix the course of Mondas. The Cyber "General" and the Doctor even come to an agreement that the salvation of Mondas, as a planet, has to be achieved -- at the expense of halting production of more Cybermen.
The story does end quite naturally, in a way where the Doctor thinks he might have changed slightly the development of the Cybermen, but afterwards, the listener finds out otherwise -- and the story leads clearly towards "The Tenth Planet." I think there needs to be a sequel to this story, which takes place between Tenth Planet and The Moonbase, to explain the changes in the Cybermen -- to becoming a more ruthless foe of the Doctor, but yet one can see Platt's description of their creation allows for one to have a new -- understanding -- of the whole of the Cybermen and their quest for dominance.. as a quest for survival.
The story gets a strong A, with only a few scenes which are difficult to follow having no actualy accompanying visual to go along with it, and one has to figure out what happened by the description of the events later.
