Audio Club: Spare Parts

Audio Audio Club
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Okay. I relistened to this one because I felt it deserved a more recent opinion than my vague memory. And I stand by what I said. It’s good, but it’s not the Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Heard.

This is one of those stories that gets worse with every part. Parts 1 and 2, yes, I will give you that. They are brilliant. The setting is immersive and spooky and the threads all dangle tantalisingly. From the very start, you can tell it’s cybermen, and as you realise that more and more, you get this lovely sense of dread that the story does follow through on.

One of the things I always say about cybermen stories is that they MUST to be about the horror of survival. They MUST be about how far people will go to survive, and the horror of conversion. And Spare Parts does do that. Yvonne being fully turned is an inevitablilty, and her being found by her family is harrowing and devastating.

But by part three, I feel the story starts treading water. I like that it stays close to the Hartley family, but it also turns into a bigger story, and it’s at this point that it loses my attention. I think Marc Platt stories don’t tend to vibe with me in general, and though this is certainly one of his best ones, by the time parts 3 and 4 roll around, we’re converting people. And we’re converting people. And people are getting converted. As I say, it starts treading water. Even ‘converting’ the Doctor isn’t that exciting to me because by this point, I’ve started to lose interest.

I think a lot of that is a function of the fact that we know where this ends, and that the creation of the cybermen is inevitable. I’m often a fan of doom and gloom kind of stories, but by the end of this one, I’ve drifted. And for me, the ending just isn’t strong enough for it to balance out the hour of trudging through parts 3 and 4.

It’s not as underwhelming as I remember, but I understand why I thought that now. It’s because as the story goes on, there’s a lot of padding. I have actually raised my Guide rating to 4, because it is a good story. But to me, it’s just not the classic that everyone says it is. (Though, for an early Five story, yes. It’s amazing)

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22

This is the truth. The way things are meant to be.

It’s surprising how few Cyberman stories actually deliver on this. It’s why I simply adore the whole “Pain! … Pain! … Pain!” scene in World Enough and Time.

I’m pleased you are able to get more out of Spare Parts than you used to, because squeezing a little more enjoyment out of Doctor Who is always a win in my book. That said, your observations about episodes 3 and 4 do ring true. I mean, I still love it, but you definitely have a point.

:smiley:

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23

I listened to this the other day but still don’t really know what rating to give it or what to say because it just did not gel with me.

Maybe I was in a bad mood at the time or not paying attention :laughing:

I definitely need to give it a re-listen because enough people are saying it is perfect.

Can I just ask though why were the Cybermen defeated by wine??? That made zero sense to me and might be why I was unsatisfied.

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If it doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. We all have that one story everyone thinks is the bees knees but we just can’t see it [cough] Heaven Sent [cough].

I wish my review of it was better because it’s one of my early ones and it’s rubbish writing!

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25

You can edit your reviews!

Can you explain why wine kills Cybermen to me please?!

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26

I don’t actually remember that bit!

And you think I have time to edit reviews!!

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27

Can any one remind me why gold works on Cybermen?

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28

Rock beats scissors
Scissors beats paper
Paper beats rock

…Gold beats Silver

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29

It’s been quite a while since I’ve listened to it. Drunk Cyberplanners shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery?

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30

Thank you!!! I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get why this one is hailed as a great. The end just fizzles out in a way that doesn’t do it for me at all

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31

The image illustrates the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock," depicting the five gestures and the winning interactions between them in a star-like formation. (Captioned by AI)
The image illustrates the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock," depicting the five gestures and the winning interactions between them in a star-like formation. (Captioned by AI)1000×1000 145 KB

…which reminds me of this

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32

I mean, if we’re doing silly ways to defeat Cybermen, Closing Time is king. I actually find it quite insulting. If love is all it takes, then a very large number of Cyber conversions are doomed to fail from the off (or Craig’s love for Stormy is stronger/purer than most peoples. Give me a break! They’d have thought about such a fundamental problem. Technological evolution of reproductive efficiency would be savagely effective. It’s like Roberts just didn’t care. Emotional inhibitors, anybody? Or is love suddenly too powerful to be inhibited? Not buying it.

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33

This is a good point - it’s not like there’s ever been much consistency in what will polish off a Cyberman - radiation, gold (including coins fired into their chest unit and the tiny bit of gold around the edge of a badge), emotions and nail polish remover (yes, I deliberately chose the word ‘polish’ earlier on).

Closing Time’s choice doesn’t bother me. It’s not that far removed from The Invasion’s Cerebron Mentor which induced emotions in Cybermen to make them go mad.

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34

What can I say what hasn’t been said about this one?
This one is definitely a Highlight for the early Days of BF (admittedly a bit “overrated”) but still excellent as ever. I really love the whole Concept of the Cybermen, sadly only rarely we explore the personal tragedy of conversion or the body horror of it. This one does, and it really does it well. I think one thing I noticed with early BF plays that they can be quite unmemorable, sadly, despite often having a pretty solid cast with solid performances. With this one, I still vividly remember most of the Cast besides our leads. Davison and Sutton are really stellar here. And the world building is superb. It’s amazing. Is it perfect? No, I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t blame anybody viewing this one as one of the best. Still @sircarolyn has some great Things to say in particular about the second half of the Story.

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35

Is this a perfect story? Not entirely, no story is. But, it’s pretty darn close. It’s a tragedy as the inhabitants of Mondas become more and more desperate. It’s a story of what happens when a society looses hope. I love that for most of the story, we focus on a single family. I love that the name “cyberman” isn’t anything special but just an extension of the Mondasian career-naming template (doctor-man, sister-man, electri-man, cyber-man, etc). This is one of those stories where I sometimes feel like I need subtitles for the voices of the Committee. As I said earlier in this thread, one of the things that makes this so powerful is that it makes the survival of the Cybermen, and thus the death of Adric, specifically the Fifth Doctor’s fault thus making that tragedy sting even more. Davison and Sutton are on fire here, especially Davison who really lets loose in Part 4. Even if this isn’t perfect, it’s still very good and one of my favorites.

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36

Its been a while since I last heard this.

I rather enjoy it. Worlds building, acting, story are all great. My only issue, and why this isn’t a 5/5, is that the Committee voices are almost unintelligible.

4.5/5.

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37

I just finished this one. Normally I try to avoid reading too much about stories before I listen to them, but it seems like everyone lists this in the “best ever” Big Finish lists, so unfortunately I went in with extremely high expectations.
…and… it’s quite good, I guess. I mean I enjoyed it and the characters were all excellent, but I’m not sure I’d classify the best thing ever.
The committee voices were unnecessarily hard to understand, the part about the doctor becoming a cyber template was extraneous to the plot and, if true, should have come up in other stories (“hey, cyber dad!”) , but the biggest question I have is what exactly was the doctor doing there in the first place?

Why exactly did he choose to go to Mondas, initially pretending to Nyssa he didn’t know where he was? He was trying to change history, but only a little bit? Not prevent the Cybermen from arising, but… make them a bit nicer? And he goes away thinking it worked? Stories that deal with changeable / unchangeable aspects of history are really not the best, in my opinion, as the series is massively inconsistent about what can / can’t be done and the impact it has / doesn’t have. This is one of those where if you stop to ask too many questions the setting starts to unravel. (While we’re on the subject, why couldn’t he go back in the TARDIS and rescue Adric? I never was clear on that one.)

Also, why didn’t Nyssa take her key with her when she left the TARDIS? Just seems an out-of-character moment of random stupidity to keep the story going.

Anyway, I’d rate it a solid 4 (I did love the characters), but looking at the stories I’ve rated 4.5 (Colditz, Chimes of Midnight, The One Doctor, plus Sympathy for the Devil in the Unbound series), I think Spare Parts is a bit lower on my scale. Colditz in particular handled the “changing history” theme better.
I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t gone in with such high expectations, but this being the best ever (and Zagreus being confusingly bad) seem to be the closest thing to a consensus Big Finish fans have…

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38

These days, we’d probably talk about fixed points in time, but at the time, I think he just didn’t have good enough control of the TARDIS. It also would have involved crossing his own timeline, which is problematic…

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39

Could not agree more - this is a good stort for sure but one of the top five all time greats? I can’t see it

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40

Fair enough…I’m not 100% convinced but within the very loosely defined continuity on the matter it kind of fits, I guess :slight_smile:

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