Spare Parts

So here we are, a few weeks after the listen, and I'm still pondering how I feel about Spare Parts.

I will say right up front that it's an incredible audio. The actors and the crew were clearly enjoying themselves. The production values are very high. Fans of audio dramas, even ones who may like other audios more than they like Doctor Who, should check these out. They make great background for doing all kinds of things - I highly recommend them for airports and public transit, for instance.

The thing I most like about this one, oddly enough, is that the Doctor doesn't win. He decides this time he is going to try to change what would later be called a fixed point, and he blows it - and the depth of his blowing it isn't clear till the last second. In fact, there's no telling if the Doctor *ever* finds out how much he failed. It's entirely possible he goes on through the rest of his existence and doesn't clue in.

I also like the way Doctor and Nyssa are still working out their relationship post-Adric and Tegan. Despite the fact that it's been decades since the relevant events in real time, in the story it's been... weeks? Months, maybe, and they have been dancing around it? The cast brings their years of additional experience and wisdom to the scene, portraying the relationship with finesse and wistful remorse. It's quite frankly beautiful.

It's not perfect. A few weeks out the imperfections melt away, though, and the positives far outweigh the negatives. I really recommend this one. Give it a listen.

Spare Parts

'Spare Parts' is one of those stories that's almost, almost, almost legendary. It's very good, don't get me wrong, and certainly quite well-remembered; Marc Platt is one of my favorite 'Doctor Who' authors, and this is one of his better works. But you can feel the story pulling back just a little at the end, because it has to risk being hated to be perfect. And it's just a little bit too afraid of not being loved to do what it needs to do to be legendary.

The story is, in structure, similar to 'The Aztecs'; the Doctor and his companions travel to a historical civilization that straddles the line between brutality and glory, and must choose whether to use their power to change that civilization to eliminate the brutality, or to keep history on its established course...only to discover that they don't have quite as much choice in the matter as they thought. The only difference is that here, the "historical" civilization exists in Doctor Who's history, not the textbooks; this is Mondas just before it became the home of the Cybermen, monsters who've been a part of Doctor Who almost since the beginning.

Like 'The Aztecs', 'Spare Parts' gives us a well-grounded, sympathetic portrayal of the society the Doctor and his companions enter; we meet the Hartley family, some of the most charming and likeable characters in the history of Doctor Who, and Doctorman Allen, who has to be the most likeable and sympathetic total bastard Doctor Who has ever given us. (She's not quite Bester, but she's damned close.) We see how a pre-Cybermen Mondas might work, and for the first time we're really given to understand the dilemma that led the Mondasians to become Cybermen. Doctorman Allen at one point challenges the Doctor to come up with a solution to their problems, if he's so willing to sit in judgment on the one they came up with themselves, and his silence is telling.

Every character is great, really. Dodd is the kind of character who would be the villain of any other story, but here he's almost decent; he might be a literal organ-stealing mercenary serial killer, but even he's horrified by what Mondas is becoming. Sisterman Constant is a zealot and a prude, but you see her enough to know that she genuinely cares about her charges and believes that she's doing what's right. Even Zheng, the chilling harbinger of Mondas-To-Come, is doing the best he can to save his homeworld and its people. It's just that when you look at it in the cold light of logic, well...the only way to save everyone is to convert them. Nobody has ever shown the Cybermen's side of things before, and it's surprising how easy it is to agree with their methods even as you shy away from the ultimate extension of those methods.

Which is, unfortunately, the problem with 'Spare Parts'. Unlike 'The Aztecs', this story tries to have its cake and eat it too. It doesn't take its story to the ultimate conclusion we know is coming, the tragic ending that we saw from the beginning as the Doctor realizes he can't avert Mondas' horrible destiny. It's understandable, really; taking the story to its logical extension would mean sitting through a chilling, brual ending with the deaths of pretty much every character we've grown to care about. (As opposed to the deaths of pretty much every character we've grown to care about except three...it's hard to tell why they try so hard, given how bleak everything's been up until Part Four.)

As a result, the ending feels hollow. We all know the fragile peace won't last. We all know that the Cybermen are right from their perspective, and their perspective is the only one that matters to them. The stinger ending feels like it should have been the real ending, or else the Doctor should have been allowed to make a difference. Trying to do both doesn't quite achieve either. That's not to say the story isn't very, very good; every actor is amazing, the worldbuilding is fantastic, the dialogue is note-perfect. It's only at the very end that you feel the difference between the tragedy the story wanted to be and the adventure mold Doctor Who usually fits into.

Chat Two: Spare Parts

John: And we’re back, from the back half of ‘Spare Parts’, and I have to say...I’m not sure whether listening to the second disc in isolation revealed that it’s not nearly as good as the first, or whether on some level I knew that and that was why it took us so long to get around to listening to Parts Three and Four. What do you think?

Dee: It was a revelation for me, but I’m cutting it lots of slack. For one thing, it’s still really good. For another, “not nearly as good as the first” is a fair statement, but the bar was set really high in the first place. The big problem I have is that the vocal processing to make the voice of the Committee was just too overdone, and so parts of the episode were nearly indecipherable. As a whole, the characterization was sound and consistent and the plot worked.

John: Well, the plot worked except for the fact that really, the ending is delayed until after the Doctor and Nyssa leave so we can get a hollow, fake uplifting ending with the surviving Hartleys. That was my big problem with Part Four; it’s a lot of time spent on various schemes to defeat the Committee/Cyber-Planner, none of which feel like they should work because the story is a tragedy and up until now, it’s known it. The tone has been “bleak but poetic” the whole time, and then it tries to pretend that everything’s going to turn out fine when we all know it won’t. Or maybe it really is that the schemes don’t feel like they should work because they’re kind of silly. “Quick, let’s get the cyber-gestalt drunk!”

Dee: That’s not how I heard it, on reflection. There had to be a reason for the Doctor to leave. The reason was that he thought he’d changed history a little. I agree it’s thin, but I can understand why they did that. And it’s even harsher, in a way, because the hope they thought they had comes crashing down and it’s even more of a tragedy. I can understand you disagreeing, though. It’s up in the air whether they succeeded in what they aimed for there.

John: I do get that part of it, too; like you say, there has to be a reason for the Doctor to leave, and the only options at this point are either “The Doctor thinks he’s limited the damage” or “Every single person on Mondas has been killed or converted and if he stays, he or Nyssa will be next.” And that’s a pretty freaking bleak story, and I can get why they weren’t willing to go that far. It’s just that to me, what they replaced that bleak part with feels more like, “We’re postponing the really depressing stuff until after the Doctor’s gone,” and less like, “The Doctor’s achieved something.” I think they should have really gone with one or the other. That said, even when this story is at its worst, it’s still got a lot going for it. Davison loves his dialogue. He’s always a professional, he gives every story a good effort--heck, he gave ‘Time-Flight’ a good effort!--but you can tell when he gets a speech he absolutely relishes, and he got several here.

Dee: Oh yeah. Even the little things: “Hmm. Genuine anise-seed.” Hee. And you can imagine how it looks when he’s losing his cool. In fact, except for the Committee, I really liked the production. The sound work is good, and the scripting is fantastic for an audio drama. I forgive the missteps.

John: Which means, to come back to the question I asked at the beginning, that it probably is the former for me--with only Part Four fresh in my mind, the absolutely glorious Parts One through Three don’t make up for the slightly weak Part Four nearly as much as they usually do. And totally apropos of nothing I just said, by the way, but totally in line with what you just said, I love the fact that they had the nerve to use the original Sixties sing-song voices for the Cybermen. They’re a little bit silly in the way that the booming, macho Eighties voices weren’t, but they have a lovely tonal quality, and the Cybermen here aren’t trying to be scary. They’re trying to survive. In their own way, they’re tragic figures just like the humans, maybe even moreso.

Dee: And they work so well in an audio drama, where you can’t see the jerky movements.  And the actress who played DoctorMan Allen did such a wonderful job portraying world-weary,cynical exasperation.

John: The scene where she’s waiting in line, having collapsed into utter fatalism, is so great that it totally makes me forgive her previous random changes of heart over the Committee. Actually, I’d forgive the random changes of heart even without that, because Sally Knyvette puts such total passion into them. She sells that character. Everyone sells their part, sells the world, and sells the story so well that it’s easy to overlook the flaws and appreciate the virtues.

Blood Heat!

Jim Mortimore's "Blood Heat" is like a cross between Jurassic Park, The Hunt For Red October, and Planet of the Apes - all set in the Whoniverse. I'm not sure I really liked the book, but I do have to give him credit: it's a fantastic examination of actions and consequences, and he does a good job of faking that no character is too important to kill off. At various points, it almost seems to apply to the Doctor himself.

My reasons for not being sure if I like it stem from my general dislike for mass bloodshed and military novels, coupled with my equally-general dislike of dystopian fiction. But the changed Earth of "Blood Heat" is expertly drawn. While there is a lot of new information since the book came out on dinosaurs, it's clear he spent some time researching the ecosystems of prehistoric Earth. I particularly liked the "no flowers" touch and the fact that humans were starting to be nearing a food crisis with the changes to everything.

It's those little touches that really make the difference. Watching familiar characters die. Moments of bravery. Strangeness in characters we thought we knew well, but we can see why the strangeness is happening. Ace's little smartbomb. The TARDIS sinking into a tar pit, of all things!

I hadn't encountered the Silurian's third eye before, but my exposure to them has been limited to new series characters and I'm not at all sure at this writing (within minutes of having closed the book) whether the third eye is something Mortimore made up or if it's found in the earlier Silurian episodes. What I do know is that I like it. But then, I have a weakness for telepathy.

I don't hate this book, not by a long shot. It's well-written and well-thought-out. I just don't think I'm the target audience. Its audience will love it.

Still here, we promise!

The reason for my radio silence this time is that I've been running an edit pass on my middle-grade story and sending out query letters. It's been intensely nervewracking and I'll probably have next to no fingernails for the next six months or so. The reason for John's is that he's working on other projects and kind of got sidetracked. Expect a post this weekend, and thanks for sticking with us!

Chat One: Spare Parts

John: Hi, folks! We’re going to do something a little different with these audio “Side Trips”--since the audios are broken up into two discs, we’re going to do two chats. (In fact, we might do a chat after each episode in future, but we’ll see how that goes later.) So at this point, we’ve finished Disc One of ‘Spare Parts’, and I think what we’re both most agreed on is that the Mondasian elements are the best bits. In some ways, this might even be better without the Doctor. Agreed?

Dee: Agreed. And this is not only on-purpose, even the Doctor knows it. He IS a Spare Part. And that’s one of the things I love so much about this title: At this point, every character except Doctorman Allen is, in fact, in one way or another completely unnecessary, completely redundant. It’s so sad, and yet so completely perfect for the fall of an entire planet and the desperate reaching for survival of an entire race.

John: A lot of the story involves the way people react to being made redundant. Sisterman Constant is furious--she’s always assumed she’s irreplaceable. Yvonne is terrified; she assumed she was doing her duty for her planet, but in the end she’s just another interchangeable cog in the work crews. Mister Hartley scrimps and saves and barters and bargains, hoping for some sort of ease that will never come, while Dodd...he’s a survivor in his own way just as much as the Cybermen. You can see him as the last human being alive, cracking open the bones of the second-to-last to get the marrow. And Doctorman Allen...but she hasn’t found out how redundant she is yet, has she?

Dee: Frank is the one who gets to me, really. He wants to be a hero, sees hope in the conversion, and is so very very wrong that he will get either heroics or hope from it. But he’s Yvonne’s kid brother, and he’s every kid who ever dreamed of being more. And it’s that, I’m sure, that made Nyssa bring up Adric.

John: I got the impression that Nyssa brought up Adric because she was upset and it was the most hurtful thing she could think of to say right at that moment. Which is kind of a surprise, given that it is Nyssa we’re talking about here, but I don’t think it was out of character. She’s finding out that she’s redundant, too; neither she nor the Doctor belong in this place and time, and they don’t have any role to play in the destiny of Mondas. But while the Doctor is trying to be fatalistic and fall back on his Time Lord detachment (and doing a lousy job) Nyssa is angry. She’s watching people suffer and die, and sitting back and letting it all happen is anathema to her...even if she didn’t know that the monsters created out of this will go on to murder one of her closest friends. And because the Doctor won’t stop it, she blames him. She is being tested in a way that the character never was on-screen, and good for Platt for doing it.

Dee: Oh, you are very right. I just think that Frank plus Cybermen equals a lot more than just a sucker punch to the hearts. And I saw her pulling that as evidence of exactly how disturbed and angry and sad she is: Nyssa never struck me as the dirty-pool-comment type. I think that was more Tegan’s thing, right? And the Doctor is angry too. “You let a Cybermat into my TARDIS?!” - that line is enraged, but there’s a sense of relief. She’s actually done something he can yell at her for!

John: And further, she’s given him a concrete problem he can solve. He can’t do anything about Mondas dying, he can’t do anything about the Cybermen, he can’t do anything about the inevitable future staring them both in the face...but he can do something about the little metal rabbit nibbling his TARDIS cables! (I think it’d have to be a rabbit. Rats don’t chew cords, do they?)

Dee: (Yes, they do, if their humans aren’t smart enough to supervise running-around time.) So they’re all extraneous, all useless... and meanwhile, the world keeps spinning on toward its destiny and the extinction of all non-converted inhabitants. And this is so different from Iceberg, because even the already-converted have a sense of pathos along with the menace. I also think it’s interesting that it feels like the Doctor, in not really doing anything much, is doing more than in Iceberg.

John: And I think it’s interesting, as we look ahead to the second disc, that just as Nyssa is being tested by finding out that she’s entirely superfluous to events, the Doctor is going to be tested by discovering the exact opposite...far from being an observer, his presence is absolutely integral to the future of the Cyber-Race. But we’ll talk more about that next time!

Chat: Iceberg

John: So it might be a loaded question, but I just have to start this off by asking. Was that what you imagined the Doctor was doing when he wandered into the interior of the TARDIS at the beginning of ‘Birthright’ and didn’t come back out until the very end?

Dee: No. I’d rather hoped it was something more... I don’t know the right word for this, but this is not what I imagined. I was even more disappointed when he showed up in the cruise ship. I mean, really? I am hoping his weirdness is a side effect of what he did to the TARDIS, and serve him right!

John: I think his weirdness was...well, I don’t want to say that as a writer, David Banks makes a terrific actor, but I do think he was wandering pretty far afield in his interpretation of the Doctor. I understand that some people might see the Doctor as an eccentric sage, but there’s more than a hop-skip-and-jump from that to making him a portable Lao Tzu, complete with his own miniature jade pagoda. It felt like he was writing about a character he’d made up that interested him, and then slapped the “Doctor” label on that character. I’d say his original characters were better, but really the only good character in this one was Ruby. And even she was your basic “plucky young lass”, as comes kitted standard in the new series. Or did you like the supporting cast better than I did?

Dee: This isn’t a mature novel. It feels a lot like a teenage fanfic, and accordingly the characters aren’t developed. Ruby was way too young to have the position she had. None of the other characters are given any kind of development at all. I also think that the diversity of the cast was a very paint-by-numbers thing: Oh, let’s have a black guy, and if we have one of them we need an Asian woman. That’s even more problematic given the links to Tomb of the Cybermen, which wasn’t exactly the most racially sensitive of episodes either. The thought processes we’re shown of any given supporting character are interchangeable. A couple of times I had to check who was the focal character in question.

John: I do think that Bono was there as a deliberate counter to Toberman in ‘Tomb’--sort of a “Look, this African-American character is really really smart and well-spoken as well as being physically powerful!” thing. Which made me uncomfortable in a whole different way, because there’s nothing quite like tone-deaf overcompensation for racism to compete with tone-deaf oblivious racism for cringe-worthiness. Other than that, yes, I think pretty much everyone is either undeveloped or developed poorly. He was clearly trying very hard with Mike Brack; the character has a dark secret, a Byronic brooding intensity, and winds up making a heroic attempt to save the day at the cost of his own life...only to turn up alive at the end and win the heart of the female lead.

Or, at least, that’s what Banks was aiming for. In practice, Brack is just a grumpy asshole who drinks a lot and has no chemistry with Ruby’s character, to the point where you’re sort of surprised at the end when Banks seems to imply that they get together. (Really, does this make any sense as a romance? “Yes, I know I came off like an arrogant prick and a creepy stalker. But it’s only because I didn’t want to tell you that I’m the guy who crippled your dad!”)

Dee: Yeah... absinthe isn’t as edgy as Banks thinks it is, either. And I really wasn’t paying attention at the point where he implies they get together, because I was all riled up at the Doctor and didn’t really care about the supporting cast.

I keep coming back to “The Impossible Planet.” There are so many parallels, but it succeeds where “Iceberg” fails because you end up caring about the characters early on. It’s not just the classic “base under siege” elements becoming boring, either. The creepy sneak-up-and-convert Cybermen are more effective than new series Cybermen. But you have to care about the characters being converted, and here I just don’t.

John: It helps that in most “base under siege” stories you actually get, you know, bases under siege. The good Cybermen stories worked because there was a sense of claustrophobia that was almost tangible; the characters were either trapped inside by the monsters, or trapped inside with them. Banks keeps skipping away from key points in the action (the capture and brainwashing of all the station personnel, the planting of the bomb, the Doctor’s escape...) to go faff about on the cruise ship for another sixty pages or so. Which would be almost unforgivable in and of itself, but ultimately the cruise ship turns out to have nothing to do with the Cybermen’s plans. Brack isn’t working for them, Straker isn’t allied with them...they just happen to be passing by when the Cybermen need a convenient source of body parts. And then, just as that becomes important, we jump back to the army base! It’s like Banks has a pathological aversion to drama.

Dee: And that further sabotages feeling any sympathy for the Doctor, in my opinion. I can’t shake the feeling he didn’t really do anything, even though if I recount the plot he did do quite a bit. We just never saw it. It’s hard to like a book without any real developed heroes.

John: Or any real developed anything, for that matter. This one felt like opening a Christmas present and finding out that the giant box contained one action figure and a million foam peanuts. Luckily, we’re pausing in the books for a little bit to look at how the Cybermen should be done. Join us next time for our first Side Trip, to Marc Platt’s ‘Spare Parts’!