Spare Parts
Jul. 22nd, 2008 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meddowI listened to Big Finish's Spare Parts last night, in which the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa witness and become a part of the origins of the Cybermen (it could easily be called Genesis of the Cybermen). I intended to listen to the first episode before bed but wound up listening to the whole thing in one go. It's brilliant.
Cybermen are for me on paper the scariest Who monster. Unfortunately their potential rarely gets anywhere on screen. They take out your brain, remove all emotions and you live the rest of your life a cold metal drone, and that's if your lucky. If you're unlucky, the Doctor comes along, plays with your emotional inhibitor chip and the realisation of what you are causes you so much trauma you explode. I'd rather be exterminated. (The resolution of Age of Steel is up there with the Family of Blood punishments in the 'Doctor, you bloody hypocrite!' list).
As criticised as it is for not being very good, I like Rise/Age just because it get the closest to driving this horror home by doing all of the above to poor Alt!Jackie. Rise/Age isn't much like Spare Parts at all (even though its supposedly based on it), however, the taking an innocent person, turning them into a Cyberman and watching them die with the realisation of what they are - that was the biggest similarity. And the Cyberisation of Yvonne Hartman has to be a shout out to poor Yvonne Hartley (who is a cheerful teenage girl).
The big difference in Rise/AoS the Cybermen are a result of one megalomaniac's struggle against death. In Spare Parts, the Cybermen are a result of a civilisation's struggle against extinction (or as the Doctor theories at one point, the natural progression of plastic surgery – I don't really agree with this logic). It seems that a major thesis in Doctor Who the most horrific monsters are created in a struggle for the survival of a species – the Daleks and also the Toclafane fall into this category. I really don't think it's done on purpose by the writers, but it is interesting that some of the Doctor's actions that fandom has found most objectionable have been undertaken by him in an attempt not to let a person die, such as what happened with Ursula in Love and Monsters and River Song. It seems like 'everything has it's time and everything dies' is a cardinal rule of the Whoniverse and it's breaching this rule that creates the most problems.
The whole thing is set in an underground city, reminiscent of an Orwellian London, with the planet slowly crumbling apart. I think it's in large part the setting as well as the story that makes it so chilling. Rise/Age suffered in that the world had to be one we would not mind Rose and Mickey living in.
Anyway, I thought Spare Parts was just great and what I would really really love to see an actual adaptation of it on television. Or just bring back the Mondas Cybermen, because knowing their origins, it make them just a little bit more interesting than the parallel Earth Cybermen.
Cybermen are for me on paper the scariest Who monster. Unfortunately their potential rarely gets anywhere on screen. They take out your brain, remove all emotions and you live the rest of your life a cold metal drone, and that's if your lucky. If you're unlucky, the Doctor comes along, plays with your emotional inhibitor chip and the realisation of what you are causes you so much trauma you explode. I'd rather be exterminated. (The resolution of Age of Steel is up there with the Family of Blood punishments in the 'Doctor, you bloody hypocrite!' list).
As criticised as it is for not being very good, I like Rise/Age just because it get the closest to driving this horror home by doing all of the above to poor Alt!Jackie. Rise/Age isn't much like Spare Parts at all (even though its supposedly based on it), however, the taking an innocent person, turning them into a Cyberman and watching them die with the realisation of what they are - that was the biggest similarity. And the Cyberisation of Yvonne Hartman has to be a shout out to poor Yvonne Hartley (who is a cheerful teenage girl).
The big difference in Rise/AoS the Cybermen are a result of one megalomaniac's struggle against death. In Spare Parts, the Cybermen are a result of a civilisation's struggle against extinction (or as the Doctor theories at one point, the natural progression of plastic surgery – I don't really agree with this logic). It seems that a major thesis in Doctor Who the most horrific monsters are created in a struggle for the survival of a species – the Daleks and also the Toclafane fall into this category. I really don't think it's done on purpose by the writers, but it is interesting that some of the Doctor's actions that fandom has found most objectionable have been undertaken by him in an attempt not to let a person die, such as what happened with Ursula in Love and Monsters and River Song. It seems like 'everything has it's time and everything dies' is a cardinal rule of the Whoniverse and it's breaching this rule that creates the most problems.
The whole thing is set in an underground city, reminiscent of an Orwellian London, with the planet slowly crumbling apart. I think it's in large part the setting as well as the story that makes it so chilling. Rise/Age suffered in that the world had to be one we would not mind Rose and Mickey living in.
Anyway, I thought Spare Parts was just great and what I would really really love to see an actual adaptation of it on television. Or just bring back the Mondas Cybermen, because knowing their origins, it make them just a little bit more interesting than the parallel Earth Cybermen.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 02:27 pm (UTC)Anyway, short circuiting the mass emotional control thing was probably the most comprehensive way of stopping them. It just really brings home the tragedy of what's happened to them even more, which is unfortunate.
Anyway anyway, yes, actually being on Mondas at the beginning, watching everything fall apart, was scary and fascinating. That's the thing about it that I consider more effective than in Rise/Age, because the whole parallel thing...you're just dealing with something new entirely. But in either case, it was the beginning of something, and I did like that two parter well enough. (An image that really struck me from the episode was the homeless people being kidnapped for experimentation because they were expendable.) Another parallel I saw was Nyssa and Rose's respective reasons for attaching themselves to Mondas/parallel Earth, another way in which Spare Parts was more effective, I thought.
Yeah, I really like the whole monsters born of a society's desperation thing. And I kinda wish the show would remember "everything has it's time" more often, especially in light of stuff like that. Like, Last of the Time Lords, I liked it, but it ended in a YAY FLUFFY HUMANS CAN DO MAGIC WITH THEIR PRAYERS note, whereas I was sitting there going "BUT THE TOCLAFANE ARE HUMANS AND THE MASTER NOTED THE HORRORS THEY'RE CAPABLE OF...I FEEL LIKE WE COULD GO SOMEWHERE WITH THIS MAYBE?!"
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 01:12 am (UTC)Short circuiting was probably the best way, would have been nice if the Doctor seemed to care that he killing them in the cruelest way possible.
I think maybe origin stories are more interesting and satisfying when they come sometime after their introduction. I don't think Genesis of the Daleks would have been half as good if it was the first ever appearance of the Daleks. And I think that's where New Who Cybermen suffer.
The Toclafane were such a good idea. They are to humans what the Daleks are to the Kaleds. Oh, the drama that could have been gotten out of humans knowingly fighting for their existence against the monsters they become. How do you bring yourself to fight and die for your species when your disgusted at what your species will one day be? But RTD never really did explore their potential. Thankfully we got the perfect Midnight which was something of variation on the theme.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 05:29 am (UTC)You are, I believe, totally spot on about where origin stories should be placed.
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