Spare Parts
By Christopher Fain
Audio Drama by Big Finish
Productions
Written by Marc Platt
Release date July 2002
Length 2 hrs 1 min
We all want
immortality, says Thomas Dodd; he's cynical but not wrong.
It's
Doctor Who at its science fiction best, the disparity of technology capable of
cybernetic augmentation set in a 1950s Londonesque city locked down with
rationing and curfews and cyber-Police on cyber-horses. Spare Parts is,
to a newbie, a good place to start with Big Finish's Doctor Who audio drama
line. The Cyberman voices are a throw-back to the television serial "The
Tenth Planet" and that is continuity at a grand, scary level.
Intending
to take Nyssa to the picture show in London, the Doctor has accidentally
brought her to the wrong place. Not an unusual occurrence, but this time it
could have larger repercussions than those usually faced by the time traveler
and his companions. They have arrived in an underground city on Mondas, the
lost twin of Earth, where the Cybermen were first created. They're just in time to witness the last
gasps of humanity on a planet where the surface is lethal and its people are
being used up as a form of cannon fodder.
Here
we find one of Big Finish Productions' most thought-provoking audio dramas,
penned by Marc Platt. Spare Parts is a terrifying and darkly gritty tale
set on Mondas, where the computerized committee government now enforces
totalitarianism in the interest of survival.
Once
he suspects the truth of where they are, the Doctor is sure he doesn't want to
be involved. Getting involved means
changing the course of Cyberman history. To do so does not mean preventing
their creation, but any alteration could result in a far worse trajectory than
the one which both the Time Lord and his companion have been witness to. There
are consequences to interfering with known events.
As
the Doctor explains at a later point in the story, arguing with Nyssa about why
they should stay disinterested: 'Sometimes you play. Sometimes you sit on
the sideline. Sometimes you run afterwards with a stretcher.'
Unable
to turn away immediately, they separate to explore on the cusp of the city's
curfew and are caught up in the gears of Mondas' last days as a human
world. The population is doomed with
disease, slow starvation, and the threat of a nebula which hangs ready to
devour the frozen planet.
There
is a black market for flesh body parts and the Police have been secretly
ordered to dig up the cemetery, to provide the city with nutrients. Few of the
processed Cybermen are surviving more than a week as their bodies reject the
cybernetic augmentation. The propulsion system used to give the planet some
means of directed travel is located on the frozen surface, needing crewmen for
repairs and operation. Workers who go to the surface don't survive very long;
even when protected by heavy gear, their minds cannot endure the terrible
blackness which is their open sky.
Once
again, the Doctor gets involved in saving the Cybermen, this time very much
against his will. His physiology is mapped as the template for a new and
improved cyborg, one that can survive the rigors of the surface.
Mondas
was perhaps doomed from its start. The people have lived in underground cities
for a very long time, the planet's surface a mystery. Life on the surface is
now memorialized in the ceremonies and trimmings of a holiday which seems to be
similar to Earth-based Christmas but with symbolism that accents the
differences between Earth and Mondas. For the Mondasian, the decorated fir tree
is a reminder of an unremembered time when they lived on the surface, where the
trees grew; the fairy lights are stars and the star at the top of the tree
stands in for a long-lost sun, the star Sol.
They
have reached an untenable position in their society. The people are dying out,
fighting mortality with life-saving augmentations such as replacement hearts.
Drifting in space, away from the light and heat of a star, the surface of
Mondas is physically lethal and psychologically devastating.
In
this story, there is no central enemy to fight. These are organic beings with
emotions and frailties. This is a war for survival in the hands of those who no
longer have human feelings. With the Cybermen, the desire to survive subsumes
personality and all other flesh needs into programmed responses. In the push
for the survival of Mondasian humanity, they kill what it means to be human.
Spare Parts is full of easily understood characters
both rich and colorful who turn the story into historical science fiction,
ghastly and heart-wrenching by turns. The average citizens are like frightened
rats, scurrying to be safely indoors by tea, when the curfew starts. They are so like Earth humans that the
listener cannot stay detached. The city might look like 1950s London, but it
has social tones of an earlier era, with wartime rationing, curfews, and
call-ups for recruits who are waved off with cheers and pride to their new job
on the surface work crews. Many suspect what is really happening to those who
go off for processing, but it is easier to pretend ignorance and accept the
dictates of a secret government.
The
Hartley family, who represent the average citizens of Mondas, clings to life on
short rations and little hope, turning the telly up when a neighbor begs for
help as she is collected by the Police. They sound like they're from the north
of England, as dirt-common as Yorkshire. They decorate for the holiday, worry
over a sluggish pet cyber-bird, fret over what to have for tea, and live in an
interconnected unit which relies heavily on each beating heart---even when one
of those hearts is an augmentation complete with turning paddles.
Dad
Hartley is a mat-catcher who has, at some point in the past, lost his wife. He
apparently sold her body to a black marketeer; this doesn't make him a bad man,
only one desperate to take care of his children. He's a brilliant, world-weary
character who has become fatalistic in the face of encroaching doom.
Yvonne
Hartley's a sweet and innocent teenage girl who works in the hydroponic
factories, where the food is grown. She has breathing problems and a young man
whom she fancies; she's as normal as any woman of her age can be and it's easy
to admire her pluck and generosity of spirit, which makes her fate particularly
touching. The one character who does not anticipate or deserve such a
frightening end is the one character with whom you walk the queue for
processing. Stripped of clothes and confused among other recruits, Yvonne only
comes to the realization of what processing truly means as the knives and laser
saws begin to flash.
Frank
Hartley wants to be recruited for service but is also ignorant of what it
means. He thinks there's honor and a steady pay packet to be made by joining
the surface work crews. Frank's frustratingly jealous of his sister, Yvonne,
for being given her call-up papers, and it's the listener who knows what Frank
does not yet understand. This is no honorable service but a death sentence
given for no other reason than Yvonne's suffering from consumption.
The
true horror of this audio play comes from within their home, in one of the most
heartbreaking scenes ever written for a Cyberman story. If your loved one was
turned into a Cyberman, would you want to see them again? Would you want to
know? What if they turned up at your door only half-processed and schizophrenic
with the mental torment of an incomplete conversion, incapable of remembering
their humanity but childlike in their need for you?
Other
secondary characters who flesh out this tale include Thomas Dodd, a wide-boy
who runs a body parts shop, trading in misery and spare transplant materials.
He's an opportunist, but he isn't alone; Mondas has only one underground city
left and its population has shrunk to a few thousand. Dodd won't be the only
one capable of seeing the truth and working to make a profit while a profit is
possible.
The
city is run by a Central Committee, twelve of Mondas' finest minds hooked into
a computer. They are aided, primarily,
by those who still possess the physical bodies necessary to carry out the
gruesome task of conversion.
Doctorman
Allan is an alcoholic scientist who is responsible for the creation of the
Cybermen race, but she is no John Lumic or Davros; she is human and hates
herself for what she's done to her people. She has stripped the humanity from
living Mondasians and her conscience is pricked by this; she spends much of the
story drinking and it is, in fact, her wine which offers the Doctor a chance at
stopping this metal march to doom. Allan is every bit the cynic that Thomas
Dodd, the black marketeer, is. But while Dodd is working to supply body parts
to the little man for a profit, Doctorman Allan has a grander goal of saving
the world.
She
is assisted by Sisterman Constant, a selector. The selectors move among the
remaining population, choosing the sick and damaged for processing. She takes
pride in her position and is aware of its implications. Sisterman Constant
believes she is doing good and is sanctimonious about her duty. Her blindness
to the inevitable outcome is painful; she can only see the present need and not
how this situation must eventually play out. In this way, she can be likened to
the kapos of WWII concentration camps, a judas goat.
Commander
Zheng, a processed Cyberman in charge of the surface work crews, answers
directly to the Central Committee; without emotion or human thought, he acts as
he is ordered to and begins the job of processing the full population with an
intent of shutting down the city; there is no more choice, because the roof of
the underground cavern is opened, letting in the frozen atmosphere from above.
He is the instrument by which Mondas' destiny is fulfilled and his last line is
just as chilling as the Central Committee/Cyberplanner's repeated cries of 'We
must survive'. Zheng, despite being an emotionless Cyberman, lingers in the
mind as strongly as any of the unprocessed human characters and reveals to the
listener that, in the end, the Doctor's involvement has changed little.
Even
if the sight of this legendary Doctor Who alien doesn't frighten you, the idea
behind their existence should. The mesh of a human desire for survival with the
cold logic of the machine should be enough to scare any living soul. A species
of cyborgs whose most basic ambition comes from within its human origins: the
drive for survival, at any cost, even the loss of humanity. How far are we from a similar fate? A breast
implant today, a hip replacement tomorrow, a new nose in a few years,
cyberthetic limbs for the wounded soldier returning from war, cyberthetic eyes
which contain a camera and a connection to the visual center of the
brain...what's next? A neural augmentation for wifi?
The
push for physical, emotional, and social perfection can be a killer.
This
audio drama has been influential in the Doctor Who television show, beginning
with the parallel world episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The
Age of Steel", which see the Doctor witnessing the birth of Cybermen on
Earth in another universe. But, this is not where the influence ends. In the
episodes "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the director of
Torchwood One at Canary Wharf, is named Yvonne Hartman (close enough!)
and she retains some of her humanity after conversion, enough so for us to draw
a correlation to Spare Parts' Yvonne Hartley's uncompleted processing
and the human behaviors which both Yvonnes show from under the Cyberman mask.
Many
fans comment on how difficult it is to understand the Central Committee's
voice, claiming it to be garbled and distorted. It is true that this particular
voice is hard to follow at times, but given that the character is, story-wise,
meant to be a composite of twelve brains joined together through a computer,
the Central Committee's voice(s) is just about what a listener should
expect.
Spare
Parts is a masterpiece of storytelling, a captivating dystopic history for one
of the Doctor's greatest foes.
_________________________________________________________
Art used here comes from:
http://alphabetswhop.blogspot.com/2013/05/c-is-for-cybermen.html
You can find this audio drama at:
Marc Platt is a British writer well known for his
contributions to Doctor Who. He has written twenty-one Doctor Who audio plays
for Big Finish Audio. He wrote the 7th Doctor television serial "Ghost
Light" and five Doctor Who novels, including the much-acclaimed
Lungbarrow. Spare Parts was the inspiration
for the 2006 Doctor Who episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The
Age of Steel".
Directed
by: Gary Russell
Sound
Design: Alistair Lock
Music:
Alistair Lock
Cover
Art: Clayton Hickman
Number
of Discs: 2
Duration:
Disc 1 (59:08) Disc 2 (73:50)
ISBN:
1-903654-72-6
Recorded:
26 & 27 March 2002
Recorded
At: The Moat Studios
Chronology:
This story takes place between the 5th Doctor's television adventures
Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity.
Cast:
The
Doctor --Peter Davison
Nyssa
--Sarah Sutton
Doctorman
Allan --Sally Knyvette
Sisterman
Constant --Pamela Binns
Thomas
Dodd --Derren Nesbitt
Mister
Hartley --Paul Copley
Yvonne
Hartley --Kathryn Guck
Frank
Hartley --Jim Hartley
Mrs.
Ginsberg --Ann Jenkins
Gary
Russell --Philpott/Nurse
Alistair
Lock --Minister/TV Commentator
Nicholas
Briggs --Zheng/Cyber Voices/Radio Announcer/Citizen/Nurse
(Paul
Copley also appeared as Clem McDonald in Children of Earth)
